Well, now my home server and Relay FM’s live streaming box are both ineligible for repair. I’d replace one or both of them, but the Mac mini on sale today debuted 1,145 days ago. Woof.
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RSS Sponsor: Balance Open⇢
You’ve probably heard of Bitcoin, one of the earliest crypto-currencies, but there are others like Ethereum. Balance connects to the most popular crypto-currency exchanges like Coinbase along with traditional financial institutions bridging the gap between the old financial world and the new one.
If you’re not familiar with this stuff, that’s okay…
Balance want to help teach you about crypto currencies, and the macOS and iOS apps they are building will serve as a wallet for all the world’s currencies.
Elon Musk Discusses Sending His Tesla to Mars Orbit
Last night on Twitter, SpaceX boss Elon Musk tweeted about the upcoming debut launch of the company’s Falcon Heavy vehicle:
Falcon Heavy to launch next month from Apollo 11 pad at the Cape. Will have double thrust of next largest rocket. Guaranteed to be exciting, one way or another.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017
The Falcon Heavy will be the world’s most powerful operational rocket when it finally launches, with the ability to lift 54 metric tons. That’s still shy of NASA’s retired Saturn V rocket that took men to the moon, but it is twice the horsepower of the Delta IV Heavy, the current record holder. The rocket is constructed from three of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets being strapped together.
‘Month 13 is Out of Bounds’⇢
Rob Griffiths has come across a super fun bug affecting Mac users right now:
But if you’re unlucky enough to be a Mac user in the month of December, 2017, then you’ll probably be seeing a lot of “Month 13 is out of bounds” messages in your Console. And by ‘a lot,’ I mean an exceedingly excessive never-ending stream of spewage…
Thousands and thousands and thousands of them — I’m getting anywhere from two to 20 per second, continuously. Ugh.
Security Update 2017-001 for High Sierra Breaks File Sharing for Some Users⇢
Today’s fix for Apple’s nasty root account bug has broken file sharing for some users, including on my iMac. Apple has published a fix, and I assume this will be resolved in a future, less critical software update:
- Open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
- Type
sudo /usr/libexec/configureLocalKDCand press Return. - Enter your administrator password and press Return.
- Quit the Terminal app.
Apple Releases Security Update 2017-001, Patching root Vulnerability⇢
An attacker may be able to bypass administrator authentication without supplying the administrator’s password. A logic error existed in the validation of credentials. This was addressed with improved credential validation.
Stop what you’re doing and go install this patch.
Here is Apple’s statement, as relayed by Matthew Panzarino:
Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS. When our security engineers became aware of the issue Tuesday afternoon, we immediately began working on an update that closes the security hole.
Pixelmator Pro⇢
If you need a full-featured image editor and Photoshop isn’t your thing, Pixelmator Pro looks like a fantastic alternative.
Forecast⇢
In an average month, I edit and publish a whole bunch of podcast episodes on Relay FM. I edit every episode of Liftoff, Query and Ungeniused,1 and sometimes handle Connected and Download.
I edit in Logic Pro X, adding music, removing crosstalk, tweaking segments and — as of about a year ago — adding chapters. These chapters allow a listener to easily skim around within an episode. We were slow to adopt them because there was a real lack of good tools to create and manage them on macOS, but with Forecast, Marco Arment changed the game:
Connected #170: Playing Chicken with Jony Ive⇢
Myke returns with many comments about last week’s show and a surprise Black Friday purchase. Meanwhile, Stephen has installed Windows 10.
My thanks to our sponsors:
macOS High Sierra Bug Allows Admin Access Without Password⇢
A newly discovered macOS High Sierra flaw is potentially leaving your personal data at risk. Developer Lemi Orhan Ergin publicly contacted Apple Support to ask about the vulnerability he discovered. In the vulnerability he found, someone with physical access to a macOS machine can access and change personal files on the system without needing any admin credentials.
Users who haven’t disabled guest user account access or changed their root passwords (likely most) are currently open to this vulnerability. We’ve included instructions on how to protect yourself in the meantime until an official fix from Apple is released.
Clipper Slipper⇢
Jason Davis at The Planetary Society has written up the complex situation NASA is in when looking at its next outer solar system robotic mission and the rocket on which it should launch.
Kbase Article of the Week: Apple Watch Edition (1st generation) - Technical Specifications⇢
I went looking for this article after making a joke on Twitter about this product:
…but really you wish you had one in your collection.
— John Siracusa (@siracusa) November 27, 2017