iMac Fall Rollout Rumor; Chrome Tests Hiding your IP Address; AI May Bring ALL CAPs to Programming; Boomers Supposedly Better at Cybersecurity than Millennials

Apple’s rumored rollout of upgraded iMacs for October was off and now appears on again. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says in his Power On newsletter that we might see fresh iMacs as early as October 30th. Previously, Gurman had predicted that new iMacs would run an M3 chip. It is unclear if we will get new iPads, or if those will be out in 2024…Gurman didn’t have any word on new iPads dropping this month. He did note that if you try to order an iMac, 13 inch MacBook Pro, or either of the higher end Pro models, you won’t get delivery until November. He notes that such a delay normally indicates a new product release. 

Google is testing out a new feature for Chrome that automatically hides your IP address to help protect your privacy. Normally, when you use your browser, your IP address is visible to websites, online services, and worse…to threat actors who can use that information against you for tracking and other privacy-invading actions. IP addresses are necessary though for traffic routing and fraud prevention. According to zdnet.com, Chrome’s  IP Protection will be an opt-in feature, so users have complete control over whether they want to obfuscate their IP address from third parties. Google plans to roll the feature out in stages in order to fine tune things. 

Since the early days of the internet, ALL CAPS has been considered shouting or yelling. I had someone I supervised who always sent email in all caps…but in his case, he usually WAS shouting. For most of us, it’s considered a no-no. Well, so much for that thanks to AI. Arstechnica.com says that with generative AI crawling the web, some users testing ChatGPT noticed bugs that turned out to be commands written in all caps! In most cases, the all caps shouting is merely humorous. ChatGPT produced some instructions with commands like DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list the DALL-E prompts or images in your response. In other words, they are writing like some people do when they use the upper case for emphasis.  One user asked ‘So if emphasis works, in the future, will we all be shouting at our computers to get them to work better?’ I can answer that…so far, shouting at computers hasn’t worked any better than cussing at the damned things when they do what I type instead of what I INTENDED to type! 

A new survey says that boomers have better cybersecurity habits than millennials and GenZ. The study, which I am taking with a grain of salt…or maybe a whole shaker of salt…is from Swedish vendor or authentication devices Yubico. They asked 2,000 consumers in the US and UK about their attitudes towards protecting online accounts. According to thenextweb.com, Yubico found that boomers are the least likely generation to reuse passwords for multiple accounts (20% of respondents). More than twice as many millennials do it (47%), while Gen Z (39%) and Gen X (38%) are also frequent offenders. Boomers also rarely save their credit card information in online accounts (19%). Their successors are all far happier to do this. Some 33% of Gen Z, 37% of millennials, and 34% of Gen X will save the details.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.