Apple's New MacBook Disconnects Microphone "Physically" When Lid is Closed

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 October 31, 2018  Mohit Kumar Apple introduces a new privacy feature for all new MacBooks that "at some extent" will prevent hackers and malicious applications from eavesdropping on your conversations. Apple's custom T2 security chip in the latest MacBooks includes a new hardware feature that physically disconnects the MacBook's built-in microphone whenever the user closes the lid, the company revealed yesterday at its event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York. Though the new T2 chip is already present in the 2018 MacBook Pro models launched earlier this year, this new feature got unveiled when Apple launched the new Retina MacBook Air and published a full security guide for T2 Chip yesterday. "This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed,...

Best Windows 10 apps this week

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Three-hundred-and-six in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on the Windows Store in the past seven days.
Microsoft is still working on getting the next feature update for Windows 10 ready for wider distribution. The company had to pull the upgrade days after initial release because of data loss issues.
As always, if I've missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email.

Discounts this week
The following list is a selection of the best deals. Make sure you check out the Store for all offers.
Some apps are discounted for more than one week. Only new apps and games are listed below. Check out the previous post in the series for past offers that may still be valid.
New Windows 10 apps and games
Fluent XAML Theme Editor

Fluent XAML Theme Editor is a free tool for developers by Microsoft. The application provides developers with options to generate application themes for their UWP applications.
The editor is easy to use and supports light and dark themes for applications. The code is exported to a XAML markup resource dictionary for use in UWP applications.
Microsoft published the source code of the application on GitHub.
Hausautomation

Developed for the German market, Hausautomation gives users control over devices that support HomeMatic, a Home Control System.
It displays all connected devices and detailed information about each.
OCR Text Detection Tool

OCR Text Detection Tool is an optical character recognition app for Windows 10 to extract text from image and PDF files.
The application supports the detection of handwriting and comes with translation functionality that works with 114 different languages, at the time of writing.
Text recognition supports a large number of different languages as well.
Spotlight Wallpapers

Spotlight Wallpapers is a simple wallpaper application for Windows 10 to find new desktop backgrounds.
The application supports Windows Spotlight and Bing Wallpapers, and displays these in the interface when you start the application.
Wallpapers can be downloaded to the local system or set as the desktop background or lockscreen background from within the application.
Notable updates
Windows Mail app will get full dark theme support soon.
Skype application (not classic) got split mode functionality to display multiple chats side by side.
Sticky Notes will soon support different themes (dark and light) and a new keyboard shortcut Ctrl-H to open all notes while the application is active.