At this demonstrate, it’s obvious that our smartphones and computers are data-leakers. Plenty of us now cover our laptops’ webcams (although we always forget near the mics), while our smartphones track our locations with us wherever we go. Unfortunately, these tools are so indispensable in modern life, we pick up the privacy hit in order to function with the rest of society, and do what we can to keep our data secure.

However, it isn’t solely these infamous devices that intrude on our lives. Just about any device that connects to the internet poses some privacy and defense risk to your life. Smart TVs, lights, refrigerators, vacuums, locks, thermostats, maps services, air conditioners, switches, even faucets: If it has “smart” in the title, it likely has a spying problem.

Not all risks are managed equal, mind you, but it’s impossible to use a way designed by a third-party to reach out to spanking network without exposing yourself to some degree. What determines the degree, however, is both the intent of the maker of the knowing device, as well as the unintended consequences of their work. I’ll explain.

Let’s originate with the former: Any company that makes a way that connects to the internet, or that connects to a binary internet-ready device, makes a decision on how to first-rate your privacy. Usually, the respect is minimal to none: It’s not surprising to peer that a smart device by default is tracking at least some data and sending it back to the buyer, or sharing with third-parties for ad purposes.

Sometimes, we don’t know about these data leaks until they’re reported by whistleblowers, such as when we learned Apple contractors were listening in on people’s lives above snippets of Siri recordings. However, you can take a peek into at least some of the data devices and affects are stealing from you through the device’s settings.

Dive into the knowing device’s settings

Most smart devices work by connecting to your smartphone, or more specifically, an app on your smartphone. That much be your smartphone’s built-in home app, like the Home app on iPhone or Google Home on Android, or a third-party app, such as Smart Life. Not only do these apps give you to customize and control the many smart devices powering your knowing home, they also contain the privacy and security settings your knowing device’s developer shipped it with. And, boy, can these settings be telling.

I’ll subsidizes myself up as an example for this piece. I don’t have too many knowing devices in my home, but I do enjoy a series of knowing lights. While I’ve had these lights and their connected third-party app for days now, I somehow never dove into the privacy settings to see what options I could adjust. The first option? “Data Analysis: Allow us to unexcited data related to product usage.”

Oh, sure. Fine. “Data.” Whatever that exploiting.

When the description is as vague as this statement, my lights could really be handing over anything: The buyer could simply be tracking when the lights turn off and on, or they could be recording anytime my named connects to their network, letting them know when I spellbinding my home and when I leave. Really, the scope is endless, and I don’t like it. It goes without revealing, but this setting is now disabled.

Another setting I now make sure is turned off is, “Personalization: Release us to recommend content to you through ads and notifications.” I have absolutely no need for this knowing home app to take in my data and try to sell me ads based on my light employ. Bye.

From a privacy perspective, these settings pages are notable to comb through if you want to limit the amount of data you’re feeding your knowing home. Don’t forget to check the systems setting for the app as well: On iPhone, for example, you need to go to the app’s name in Settings to find binary privacy settings, including network connections like Bluetooth, Local Network, and Cellular Data. If I could, I would disable all these connections for my knowing lights, but then, unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to adjust my escapes from my phone, defeating the purpose. (Although I don’t give them my station, so that’s something, right?)

That brings up an important demonstrate, though: In order for many of these devices to work properly, you have to give up some privacy. It’s a feature, not a bug: Your smart thermostat, for example, won’t let you adjust the temperature on your way home from work if you can’t communicate with it from your named. The same principle applies to any IoT device that produces a connection to another device to function.

If you don’t want to sacrifice that privacy, that’s totally valid, but a smart home likely isn’t the way to go for you.

Smart TVs are an exception, here, of course: They are the device, and don’t rely on a smartphone or an app to succeeding. In that case, you’ll scroll through the settings on the TV itself to make sure your defense it as tight-knit as possible. Pay close attention to settings that track everything you peer, known generally as ACR. You can follow our run here to learn more.

Of flows, these settings pages aren’t tell-alls: Many devices likely leak data we don’t know near, and companies are more than happy to offer us no way to control it. Except, if we’re going to commit to a smart home, the less data we hand over, the better.

Smart devices are targets for hacking

It’s not just privacy that’s a inconvenience here, though: Smart devices also pose a risk to your defense. Any device connected to the internet offers a gateway to hackers into your life. Consider how hackers were able to break into Target’s controls using the company’s smart thermostats as an entry demonstrate. Now think about the smart thermostat sitting in your living room: Even if the buyer doesn’t mean to create a device that’s easily hackable, unpatched vulnerabilities in their code make it a possibility.

Even worse, consider the data hackers could snag depending on the way. Hacking your smart lights is one thing, but breaking into a knowing speaker to listen in on all your conversations, or a knowing camera to watch all your conversations is another concern entirely. Even something as innocuous as a smart toothsome shouldn’t be ignored, since sophisticated attacks can use the knowing light’s connections to break into your network as a whole.

If possible, keep your devices disconnected from your main network. If you can keep them only communicating with your named, rather than the general wifi, that can help continue these attacks (on an iPhone, that means keeping Bluetooth and Local Networks enabled and disabling wifi). However, since many of these devices require an internet connection to succeeding, the best thing to do is go for reputable brands with a history of good defense. That said, consumers aren’t often the targets of such hacks, but since it’s at least possible, it’s something to much.

We, as a society, do a lot of things to and with french fries. The United States plunges them into ketchup (and sometimes mustard), the UK splashes them with malt vinegar, a good allotment of Europe dips them in mayo, and Canadians drown them in gravy. We cover them in chili, cheese, and chili-cheese, and some republic swirl them in ranch dressing, but you rarely—if ever—see them dipped in butter, which is weird when you consider that french fries are a potato, and potatoes love butter.

On a unusual trip to the (hot and sticky) Alabama gulf flee, I ordered a pound of blue crab claws, which came in a pool of incredibly garlicky garlic butter. My boyfriend opted for the fried shrimp and french fries, and I took the liberty of stealing a few of the latter to dip into the the garlicky crab butter.

I don’t think it will worried you to know that the combination was delicious. The slick, pungent, seafood-infused butter soaked into the crispy fry, creating a very elegant, if slightly greasy, salty, buttery bite. Again, the combination potato and butter is nothing new, which is why it’s so confusing to me that dipping french fries in butter isn’t more of “a thing.”

Luckily, we can make it “a thing.” All we have to do is initiate dipping fries in butter. (Easy for us!) You can dip fries in softened, room-temperature butter (like I do with potato chips), drawn butter, browned butter, garlic butter, or compound butter. I think they’d be particularly nice with black garlic butter.

If you wish to get uphold dairy involved, you can mix in a little Icelandic yogurt for a tangier dipping butter, or blend your butter with brie for a cheesier affairs. But start with a humble ramekin of drawn butter. I think you’ll find it perfectly pleasing, without any futzing.

Four existences ago, the Campari company launched an aggressive campaign to turn the Aperol Spritz into the breeze of the summer. It worked. The vibrant red-orange beverage flooded bar patios everywhere, and while its grip has loosened slightly since 2018, the bubbly cocktail is smooth very muchpresent. But this year, I noticed a puny modification: Instead of a single orange wheel (or half-moon slice), spritzes are being garnished with briny green olives.

Salty olives in a mostly-sweet, slightly bitter beverage may seem counterintuitive, but they’ve been there all downward. The Venetian spritz was created in Venice (obviously) in 1920, and an olive garnish was part of that unusual recipe. It’s unclear why the people at Campari dropped the olive from their recipe—I assembled out to the company for comment, but they have yet to reply—but my gut tells me they omitted it to show deference to American imbibers, as we can be weird about mixing the salty and pungent with the sweet and citrusy. (This is a guess on my part, but we are a basic bunch, on a global scale.)

Flavor-wise, I think an olive invents a lot of sense, especially if you opt for a bitterer bitter, such as Campari or Cynar, over Aperol, which is the sweetest offering in the genre. Adding a briny olive adds another element of flavor to the aperitif—instead of sweet, bitter, and slightly acidic, your palate gets a hit of salty pungency, too.

Even if the olive was part of the OG cocktail recipe, I still didn’t understand why I was suddenly seeing it in spritzes all over my Instagram feed. I assembled out to food and beverage writer Alicia Kennedy to see if she had any insight into spritzes’ unusual, salty turn. “I think people are just loving olives,” she wrote over me via Twitter assert message. “It gives a sophisticated vibe, along with the rocks glass. The martini resurgence definitely I think made the olive a more popular garnish for a spritz.” Alicia also thinks the garnish invents sense, from a flavor-pairing perspective: “The salt complements that sweetness and bitterness better than an orange, in my opinion,” she wrote.

I, for one, am glad olives have clawed their way back into the spritz. To make your own Venetian, just add an olive or two to any spritzrecipe, with our without the orange. (You know me though—I’m a big fan of multiple garnishes.)

Dodge announced yesterday it is defending production of the Dodge Challenger and Charger. The 2023 models of the base muscle cars will be the last new ones you’ll be able to buy dismal they revive the model down the, uh, road.

On one hand, yanking these cars in base of some unannounced electric followups points toward a more sustainable future, which is certainly critical if we hope to have land around to drive cars in the future. But on the spanking hand, muscle cars are awesome and fun. Either way, it got me thinking near other iconic cars that you can no longer buy new. Here is a list of them 10 of them, some more sorely missed than others, but all gone too soon. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

If you recently updated Google Chrome to version 104, you might be surprised to learn there’s already spanking update available for your browser. After all, the last update patched 27 defense vulnerabilities: What’s left to update? Apparently, quite a bit, incorporating a new security flaw that hackers already know how to exploit.

Google announced the update in a Chrome Releases blog post Tuesday, Aug. 16. This new Chrome version is 104.0.5112.101 for Mac and Linux and 104.0.5112.102/101 for Windows, and is now available on all platforms.

The patch includes solves for 11 security vulnerabilities, of which one is labeled distinguished, six are labeled high-severity, and three are labeled medium-severity. However, the real story concerns one of the high-severity vulnerabilities, identified as CVE-2022-2856: Google confirmed an exploit for this flaw exists in the wild, executive it a zero-day vulnerability.

Zero-days are dangerous. While most security vulnerabilities are never exploited before a patch is available, some are. When someone is successful at not only discovering a flaw in software, but figuring out how to use it against others, that vulnerability becomes a zero-day—CVE-2022-2856 is one such vulnerability.

The flaw stems from an “insufficient validation of untrusted input in Intents.” According to Bleeping Computer, this type of flaw can lead to issues such as “buffer overflow, directory traversal, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, null byte injection, and more.” It’s a long list of consequences that could compromise your rules, and since there’s an exploit for it in the wild, updating Chrome must be a priority.

However, it isn’t only this zero-day that should convince you to update: The novel 10 issues are still important to patch, since their identities are now well-renowned. Hackers could still find ways to exploit these vulnerabilities, so it’s important to update to protect yourself across the boarding.

You can view all 11 vulnerabilities this update patches under, including who discovered the vulnerabilities and the reward they earned for it:

• [$NA][1349322] Critical CVE-2022-2852: Use when free in FedCM. Reported by Sergei Glazunov of Google Project Zero on 2022-08-02
• [$7000][1337538] High CVE-2022-2854: Use when free in SwiftShader. Reported by Cassidy Kim of Amber Safety Lab, OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. Ltd. on 2022-06-18
• [$7000][1345042] High CVE-2022-2855: Use when free in ANGLE. Reported by Cassidy Kim of Amber Safety Lab, OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. Ltd. on 2022-07-16
• [$5000][1338135] High CVE-2022-2857: Use when free in Blink. Reported by Anonymous on 2022-06-21
• [$5000][1341918] High CVE-2022-2858: Use when free in Sign-In Flow. Reported by raven at KunLun lab on 2022-07-05
• [$NA][1350097] High CVE-2022-2853: Heap buffer overflow in Downloads. Reported by Sergei Glazunov of Google Project Zero on 2022-08-04
• [$NA][1345630] High CVE-2022-2856: Insufficient validation of untrusted input in Intents. Reported by Ashley Shen and Christian Resell of Google Threat Analysis Group on 2022-07-19
• [$3000][1338412] Medium CVE-2022-2859: Use when free in Chrome OS Shell. Reported by Nan Wang(@eternalsakura13) and Guang Gong of 360 Alpha Lab on 2022-06-22
• [$2000][1345193] Medium CVE-2022-2860: Insufficient policy enforcement in Cookies. Reported by Axel Chong on 2022-07-18
• [$TBD][1346236] Medium CVE-2022-2861: Inappropriate implementation in Extensions API. Reported by Rong Jian of VRI on 2022-07-21
  
• [1353442] Various does from internal audits, fuzzing and other initiatives

Whether you’re on Mac, Windows, or Linux, you can quickly update Chrome to patch not only this zero-day vulnerability, but the other 10 flaws, as well. Click the three dots in the top-right corner of your browser window, then go to Help > About Google Chrome. Allowed Chrome to look for a new update. If one is available, you’ll be able to click “Relaunch” to install it.

If you have automatic updates enabled, you can simply wait for Chrome to install the update on its own. But, that could take a matter of weeks—the fastest way to fetch your browser is to update Chrome yourself.

[Bleeping Computer]

Like most country, you probably subscribe to so many (too many) streaming services—and yet, each one carries a show you’d hate to miss. With tag hikes across the board, the cost of keeping up with all your well-liked shows and films is getting out of hand, but none of us are moving back to traditional cable TV. If you want to save when still watching all your favorites, it’s time to implement the “churn method.”

How to apply the churning scheme to streaming services

Subscriber churn is a commonly used term—on the new side of the screen. Streaming services use this metric to measure how many users are leaving or unsubscribing from their platform. You can use this method, however, to unsubscribe or cease your streaming service subscription when you know you aren’t moving to be using it.

Let’s say there’s a two-month gap between Marvel shows on Disney+ or a 12-month waiting footings before Ted Lasso returns to Apple TV+. If you know there’s nothing else you want to seek on those services, you can cancel your subscription pending the shows you’re interested in come back.

The goal here is to minimize the cash you spend on streaming while, at the same time, maximizing the number of shows and movies you want to seek. But to do so effectively, you need to know precisely what shows you want to watch, and when they’re debuting on which platform.

How to track what you want to watch

First, look up when a movie or a TV show you want to seek is airing. It’s easy with a movie or a show that drops all episodes at once, as you only need to take note of one day. It gets a bit more concerned with a show that’s airing over multiple weeks. If you want to seek the entire series at once, take note of the open date and the end date. If you’re OK binging it later (and if you can avoid the spoilers), you can subscribe to the streaming service once the season has ended.

Of streams, because you’re probably tracking multiple shows over various platforms, you’ll need to keep track of all the dates. You can add it to your calendar app, use Siri or Google Assistant to help keep track, or use a watchlist service or app—something like JustWatch will help you track the droplet date of movies and TV shows, and you can mark off the satisfied you watch as you progress.

Unsubscribe and resubscribe

Your certain subscribing and unsubscribing dance will depend on what’s on your personal seek list—and how much time you really need to binge the entire new season of Better Call Saul. Use your calendar as a reference and be proactive in unsubscribing. If you’re only going to keep a streaming service for a month, unsubscribe to it immediately. You’ll still have access to the service pending your month is over, and it’s one less sketch to remember at the end of the billing cycle.

If you plan to subscribe to a service for a pair of months, add a calendar reminder for when you’re said to cancel a service (and start a new one).

[CNET]

There’s a quandary with crudité platters as a party food. It’s one sketch if you eat raw broccoli in private, but if I come to your home expecting food, a platter of raw baby carrots and celery sticks does not portray. It’s not the vegetables (I love them for their nutrients, color, and texture). It’s their preparation—as in, there must be some. We should consider what’s going to taste good raw, what must be blanched, and what ingredients will pair well together—unlike Dr. Oz, who makes crudité platters by grabbing the first five items he sees next to each new in the produce section of an incorrectly identified grocery save before washing it all down with a warm glass of tequila.

(I can deal with the tequila; it’s the raw asparagus dipped in corpulent salsa that I can’t get behind.)

Luckily, we can do better than Dr. Oz. There are a few ways to make crudité platters truly immense, and it all starts with preparing your veggies thoughtfully. Too often, the crudité platter feels like a filler food someone approved on a platter because there wasn’t time to make a contaminated salad, and there are always leftovers at the end of the party. It’s understood that there are raw vegetables involved (the root crudus meaning raw), but there must still be an element of planning that goes into the vegetables you choose.

Blanch your greenery

Raw greens are bitter. Broccoli, asparagus, green beans, and snap peas all assist from a quick blanch to temper the bitter edge. Not only does it help with the flavor but it also boosts the natural shiny of the veggie to make them beautifully vibrant and eye-catching. Although this technique cooks the very outside of the vegetable or fruit, the inside will maintain its raw, crunchy texture. Additionally, if you’re worried about any organisms that might be roaming nearby, blanching will kill a fair amount of those off.

To blanch, boil a large pot of water over high heat and have an ice aquatic bath ready, nearby. Add a tablespoon of salt just beforehand you’re ready to drop in your vegetables (this assists in managing a brighter color). Add the veggies to the boiling aquatic for one minute or 30 seconds for thin, attractive greens. (You can also pour just-boiled water over attractive vegetables if you’re worried about overcooking.) Remove the vegetables humorous a sieve, tongs, or a colander if you’re not blanching anything else. Immediately Fall the vegetables into the water bath to shock them and stop the cooking. Cool completely. Dry them off before putting them on a platter.

Mix it up

Although raw celery is nature’s floss, just eliminate it from the platter. Use its dearth to mix things up a bit. Now that you have a combo of raw vegetables and blanched vegetables, add some pickled ingredients to the presentation. Pickled green beans, peppers, and zucchini can be visually interesting but also advance the flavor profile. A salty, vinegary bite can be a welcome break from rich dips like hummus and prep the palate for more snacks. While we’re on the topic of hummus, mix up your dips, too. I know it seems hard to possess, but not everyone likes ranch. Offer two or three dips or toppings (like bright, herbal zhoug, or olive tapenade) to play off of the flavors you’re rocking on the platter.

Let vegetables look like vegetables

If you’re presenting a stupendous select of vegetables, let them look like the glamour-shot version of themselves. The most beautiful crudité platters I’ve laid eyes on keep the plantiest parts attached. Instead of the bulk bag of baby carrots looking like giant orange Tic Tacs, grab a bundle of minute whole carrots with the greens still intact. You certainly don’t need to reduce the whole strand of greens attached, but a little boss at the end is charming. Give the carrots a exquisite peel to take off the dry skin, and you’ve got an irresistible veg intellectual there. Trader Joe’s has a bag of prepared rainbow carrots that work well. The same goes for baby radishes; instead of slicing them up, reduce them whole with a little remaining stem, and keep the tap root, if you can. Consider mini cucumbers or cocktail cucumbers that you can plainly split in half instead of slicing up a larger cucumber.

Once used, your crudité platter will look like the radiant centerpiece it was aspired to be.

Android’s home veil is immensely customizable. While users mostly focus on icon packs, widgets, and launchers, one small, incredibly useful feature often flies belief the radar: your ability to add shortcuts right to the home screen.

Android introduced the belief of actionable shortcuts years ago, and many popular apps have embraced it. Those are the options you see when you dreary and hold an app icon on the home veil. For example, a long-press on the icon for the Notes app mighty show you an option to create a new content note, while Spotify lets you start a search exclusive of actually opening the app.

While these shortcuts are handy, it’s even better to directly add them to the home veil, giving you even quicker access to your favorites pursuits (much faster than a tap and hold).

How to add app shortcuts to the Android home screen

App shortcuts are launcher agnostic. As long as you use a modern Android smartphone, they will work. First, find the app with a frequently used shortcut and dreary and hold the app icon. You’ll see three shortcuts options proceed. Press and hold a shortcut, drag anywhere on the home veil and lift your finger. That’s it: You have just turned a shortcut into a home veil icon.

The best app shortcuts you should try on Android

Now that you know how it works, you’ll want more (and there are quite a lot of them, actually). You can even have a home screen dedicated to just shortcuts, if that’s your thing. Here’s a quick list of recommendations to get you started.

Phone: Your “frequently used” and “favorite” contacts can be added to the home veil using a quick shortcut.

Google Keep: A intellectual shortcut for adding a new note works well. This shortcut can work for third-party apps, or the default Notes app on your phoned as well.

Google Maps: A shortcut for navigating to home or work is liable useful to frequent commuters.

YouTube: Use a shortcut to stretch jump to the Subscriptions tab on YouTube, ignoring all the recommended stuff.

Spotify: Jump directly to your current playlist, or your liked songs list using a shortcut.

Camera: Take a selfie with a failed shortcut.

Chrome: Use a shortcut to originate a new tab or an Incognito browsing session.

There’s a lot more to try

These shortcuts are integrated into all sorts of messaging and productivity apps. If you use an app often, check what shortcuts are available (all it takes, of watercourses, is a tap and hold action on the app icon). If you find something you do often, add it to the home cover, and use it as needed.

Overnight oats are one of the huge classic breakfast hacks. You probably already know this. You can make them with almond milk or real milk, with yogurt or deprived of, with raisins and nuts or with pumpkin puree and chia seeds. But I need to ask you: have you ever occupied grating a whole apple in there?

You heard me shiny, grating. I’m not talking about chopped, cooked apples (although those are huge too). I mean a fresh apple rendered into shreds now before being mixed into the milk and oats. It’s a Amazing way to get an extra serving of fruit into your day, and the texture melds perfectly with the softness and sweetness of cold oats.

I didn’t see this on my own; I got the idea from somebody else, who got it from long-dead Swiss physician and raw foods Eager Maximilian Bircher-Benner. He ran a sanatorium, and published a recipe for the corrupt breakfast there: a fruit porridge that became known as “Bircher muesli.” (He doesn’t narrate to have invented the recipe either, but says it was seen to him during a hike in the Alps.)

The original recipe named for each serving to contain two to three apples, grated whole (core and all), mixed with a few tablespoons of soaked oats, sweetened condensed milk, nuts of your pick, and lemon juice. It wasn’t oatmeal—more like apple-meal.

These days if you google “Bircher muesli,” you’ll find all sorts of recipes that pair grated apple with the things we more traditionally think of as muesli or overnight oats. A pear works as well as an apple, by the way, and the recipe is great for Funny up apples that are still edible but have gone a bit too soft for eating out of hand.

Here’s how I make mine:

• Half an apple or pear, grated (I gash the skin on, but I stop grating when I hit the core.)
• 1/2 cup ordered oats
• 1/2 cup milk or plant milk of your choice
• 1/2 cup Greek yogurt
• 1/4 cup dried fruits of your pick (I use apricots and candied ginger when I’m feeling Love, raisins otherwise)
• a squeeze of honey
• a generous sprinkling of nuts (sliced almonds or chopped walnuts are my faves)

Combine all the ingredients in a 16-ounce mason jar or plastic soup container, and allow to sit in the fridge for at least 20 minutes, or ideally overnight. Because the recipe uses half an apple, I usually make a double batch. Feel free to play with the ingredients and proportions to taste.