Galaxy Nexus Review @ the Sweetest Aftertaste

 Today I have my hands on the latest phone from the Google/Samsung camp, running the newest version of Android. It’s called the Galaxy Nexus, and it’s powered by delicious and futuristic Ice Cream Sandwiches.

I’m quite confident that Google’s vision for the Galaxy Nexus was to make it the destroyer-of-all phones, running the absolute best operating system they have ever made and running on the best hardware that their partners Samsung could find. Most of this vision has made itself to the Galaxy Nexus, but as you’ll find it’s not a completely smooth ride.

Facebook fixes bug that exposed private photos

The apparent result of flawed design, Facebook's flagging feature is to blame for allowing any user to view private photos contained in any account. The flaw affected everyone, including Facebook's very own CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook promptly disabled the flagging feature and has since fixed the issue. A forum user from bodybuilding.com has been widely credited for exposing the flaw. As it turns out, no expertise was required to take advantage of the exploit. Here's how it worked:


First, find a user and report them for having an inappropriate profile picture. During the reporting process, Facebook would display that person's photos, completely disregarding their privacy settings. If this person was not on your friends list, you could only view scaled down photos. If this person was on your friends list already but had blocked you from seeing certain photos, you could view these pictures at their full resolution.


The issue was resolved shortly after Facebook released the following statement:


Earlier today, we discovered a bug in one of our reporting flows that allows people to report multiple instances of inappropriate content simultaneously. The bug allowed anyone to view a limited number of another user's most recently uploaded photos irrespective of the privacy settings for these photos. This was the result of one of our recent code pushes and was live for a limited period of time. Upon discovering the bug, we immediately disabled the system, and will only return functionality once we can confirm the bug has been fixed.


The privacy of our user's data is a top priority for us, and we invest significant resources in protecting our site and the people who use it. We hire the most qualified and highly-skilled engineers and security professionals at Facebook, and with the recent launch of our Security Bug Bounty Program (http://www.facebook.com/whitehat/ ), we continue to work with the industry to identify and resolve legitimate threats to help us keep the site safe and secure for everyone.
While facing the exaggerated threat of being taken down on November 5, most analysts seem to agree that Facebook's security was top-notch. Despite Facebook's hardened security against hackers, there have been a number of seemingly blunderous oversights like the attachment bug which resulted in a slew of pornography and macabre photos, unauthorized users posting to public profiles and measures taken against data mining not living up to expectations.


As the statement mentions, the company currently offers a bounty program, paying people who report vulnerabilities up to $7000. I wonder if the person who shared this on bodybuilding.com missed his or her chance to cash in?

Google Music Review

While you can argue that Google offers de facto IaaS style storage with Gmail and Google Docs, Google doesn't offer, despite many rumours, a Gdrive. What Google does offer is a music storage service. Unlike the other services, though, Google doesn't give you a fix amount of storage space. Instead, you can it to store up to 20,000 songs. On the Google Music web page, Google provides a counter to let you know how close you are to hitting your limit. At an estimated 5 MB a song, that works out to about 20 GB of storage. The cost? Nada.

Apple iCloud review

iCloud is perhaps the most advanced personal cloud service out there. It comes with 5 GB of free storage. That's more than it sounds like, though: Your Apple-purchased music, apps, books, and TV shows, as well as your Photo Stream, don’t count against your storage quota.