On Tuesday, Google released a new update for Chrome, upgrading it to version 130.0.6723.91/.92 for Windows and Mac, and 130.0.6723.91 for Linux. When you install the update and refresh your browser, you won’t be greeted with a new UI or a handful of new features or changes. Instead, you’ll be running a browser that patches two security vulnerabilities found in older versions.

One of those security vulnerabilities is labeled as “High” severity. Tracked as CVE-2024-10488, this is a use after free vulnerability in WebRTC, a real-time communication protocol for web browsers. In use after free flaws, a program fails to clear the pointer to a memory location after freeing that memory location, which enables bad actors to exploit the flaw and attack the program.

The other flaw, however, is a bit more interesting to me. CVE-2024-10487 is labeled as “Critical” severity, and is an out of bounds write in Dawn, the open-source implementation of WebGPU in Chrome. An out of bounds write flaw occurs when a program writes outside of its allocated memory. An attacker can take advantage of this situation to crash the program and run their own code.

But what makes CVE-2024-10487 interesting isn’t that it’s an out of bounds write flaw, nor that it’s Critical: It’s that Apple discovered it. Google credits SEAR, Apple’s Security Engineering and Architecture team, with identifying the vulnerability on Oct. 23.

While it’s funny to note that Apple, a clear competitor of Google’s, discovered a flaw on the company’s world-famous browser, it’s not the first time this type of situation has happened. In fact, just last week, I wrote about how Microsoft discovered a major security flaw with Safari. Apple bundled that security patch as part of the wider macOS Sequoia release, unlike Google, which released this tiny Chrome update specifically to issue these two security patches to users.

The truth of the matter is, while Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all competitors, big tech companies have many shared interests—especially when it comes to privacy and security. As much as Apple would love for everyone to use Safari, many Mac users browse the web with Chrome instead, and having those many users running a compromised browser on their Macs would be bad.

As tech headlines frequently highlight the places where companies compete and fight—iPhone and Android, ChatGPT (and Copilot) and Gemini, macOS and Windows, etc.—it’s refreshing to see that there are still times these companies work together in the name of bettering tech for everyone.

Using a computer is a lot faster if you become a keyboard shortcut ninja instead of doing everything with your mouse or trackpad. The problem: browsing the web is extremely mouse oriented. A hidden Safari option can help.

Open Safari’s Settings, head to the Advanced tab, and check the Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage. Now you can use the tab key on your keyboard to highlight the top link on the current page—you’ll see a blue box around the link. Keep pressing tab to cycle between links, then press Enter to open the current link. It’s fast, provided there isn’t an overwhelming number of links on the page. You can also press CMD+Enter to open the current link in a new tab in the background.

I like using this while reading the news. I’ll open the homepage of a publication, use Tab to cycle between the articles, and open the ones that look interesting in a new background tab. Then I can use the keyboard shortcut CMD+W to that tab and jump to the next one. In this way I can read every article I’m interested on a site all without touching my mouse.

Now, there are dedicated apps for doing this including Shortcat, which offers more features for controlling the web (and other applications) using only keyboard shortcuts. That app is particularly good if you want to jump to a particular link right away, instead of having to press tab repeatedly to get to them. It’s worth looking into but you might not need it: Safari’s feature works well enough for me and doesn’t require me to install anything, which is nice.

Give the feature a try if you’re looking for ways to use your mouse less often—it’s already making me feel like a faster internet user.

Even during the coldest days of the year, I love being able to go out to my garden and grab some basic vegetables and herbs. It’s how I plan what to grow over winter: carrots, celery, onions, and leeks. Everyone should grow onions, but don’t sleep on the leeks. They’re a gentler alternative to onions and garlic, with a little bit more heft.

Onions and leeks are the basis of every recipe

Every soup and stew starts with alliums like garlic, onions and leeks, so having them in the garden makes sense. You want to grow and eat leeks, if you never have. Anything made with onions could use leeks instead. The flavor is complex, but milder than onions, and creates a silkier finish. My fall is full of potato leek and cauliflower leek soup. Braised leeks with bread crumbs are an unexpected but memorable side dish.

Growing your own onions gives you the opportunity to grow varieties you won’t see in a grocery store. While it makes sense to grow “keeper” onions that you can cure and store (this is what stores sell you), you can also grow Egyptian walking onions, which are fascinating and grow tiny onions at the top of their greens, which flop over and replant themselves. There are also cippollini onions, beautifully colored purple onions, and super sweet yellow and red onions that you wouldn’t find at the supermarket. Growing your own gives you the chance to experiment.

Alliums love winter

Onions and leeks are perfect for overwintering. Leeks require anywhere from 75 to 115 days to mature, but that’s dependent on full sun. The leeks you plant now will be ready to harvest in spring, which gives you a lot of time to achieve that white, blanched portion of the final vegetable. Onions are also a long investment of three to four months, so you’ll be harvesting them in spring, as well.

Get leeks and onions started in fall from seed, sprouts or sets

Onions can be grown in a few ways: You can plant seeds, and you could direct sow onions if you’d like into your garden. Most nurseries sell onion starts, which come in bunches of 25 onions, about five inches tall. This time of year, you can also buy onion sets, which are tiny, baby onion bulbs that you plant like you do flower bulbs. These onions need to get into the ground now. If you’re planting sets or starts, you can dig a long trough in your bed, lay the onions down with their roots in the trough, or the onion sets in the trough, and then cover the trough back up. The sets will be buried. If you used onion starts, the greens will still be exposed, but the roots will be buried.

Leeks, like most onions, are quite easy to sprout from seed, so you can direct sow them if you want. Even when very young, they withstand a lot of handling as you separate the seedlings. When you plant leeks, you want to plant them as deep as possible: The entire leek, save an inch, should be below the soil. If your leek seedlings are five inches long, the hole for the leeks should be four inches deep. When leeks are this small, the best way to make these long holes is a pencil, which you’ll use as a dibbler (a gardening tool that makes holes for seeds or plants). You can plant leeks six inches apart or so, into well-worked and compost-rich soil.

Replant for mostly white leeks

Onions don’t need interventions, but leeks benefit from it: Since the white part of the leek is the part you’re most likely to use, here’s how to get mostly white leeks. The onions and leeks will grow through winter, even under snow, though not to full size. In late winter/early spring, dig up all the leeks, which should be quite long. Cut them down to 10 inches. You’ll now need a nine-inch dibbler, which you’ll use to make holes nine inches deep and replant the leeks. Just cut a piece of PVC pipe to create one, or use the handle of your shovel or rake, or even the handle of a house broom. Push the dibbler into the soil, then pull it out and drop your leek seedling in. Though you only need to do this once, you can repeat the action of digging up the leeks, trimming and replanting them a number of times over the early spring, and the result is that your leeks will get longer. The more leek that’s underground, the longer the white section of leek will be.  

Harvesting alliums

Another appealing aspect of onions and leeks alike is that you can kind of harvest them anytime. Sure, they may not be full size, but even young alliums taste the same as full-size—unlike, say, a tomato or carrot. This is an effective way of thinning the alliums over the winter.

That said, onions benefit from being left until spring, when the tops of the onions flop over and the neck of the onion, which is the part between the onion and the tops, dries out and hardens. This is a sign that the onions are ready to harvest; the best way to do so without harming the onions is to use a pitchfork to loosen the soil under them. Once dug up, you need to cure the onions by dusting the onions off (not washing them) and then laying them in a single layer or hanging them to dry in a warm, dry location with good air flow. Curing takes up to four weeks. You can tell the onions are done when the outside layers of onion become papery and dry.

When you’re ready to pull your leeks out (which I tend to do on an as-needed basis), make sure you use a shovel and dig out the entire leek, which will be quite deep. I use a garden hose to spray dirt off the root ball before I bring the leek inside.

Because of how they grow, leeks tend to have a lot of dirt in them. Slice them in half the long way to clean them effectively, under running water. Then use the white part as you would garlic or an onion, and the green part is still useful in any way you’d use the green from scallions. I chop them into salads, or make a pesto from them, or stir fry them.

Not everyone can afford an OLED TV (even when they’re discounted), and that’s okay. But you don’t necessarily need to sacrifice quality when opting for a cheaper option. The Sony BRAVIA 7 is a mini-LED TV that is cheaper than OLEDs but still excels in many aspects, especially if you plan to use it for gaming.

Right now, all the sizes of this set, ranging from 55 to 85 inches, have hit their lowest prices yet according to price-checking tools. Over on Amazon, the 55-inch Sony BRAVIA 7 starts at $1,298 (originally $1,699.99), or you can get the 65-inch for just $100 more (and $600 off the retail price of $1,999.99, though that discounted price might not show until you add it to your cart). The largest 85-inch model is marked down $800, to $2,498.

Whatever the size, this TV excels in offering a pleasing picture with bright, punchy contrast. It supports 4k resolution at 120Hz. It also comes with Google TV as its smart operating system in high-bitrate 4K content, which means you can use voice commands to control it through Google Assistant, but it’s also compatible with Apple products through AirPlay 2, according to IGN’s 8/10 review.

If you’re a gamer and play on PlayStation, this TV gives you access to PlayStation Remote Play. It also has Auto HDR Tone Mapping and Auto Genre Picture Mode, which adjusts the settings to optimize your gaming or movie experience. There’s also a dedicated Game Menu with all of the relevant settings in one place.

The biggest drawback, as with other LED TVs, is a somewhat restricted viewing angle compared to OLED sets. If you’re looking to get this as a main focal point in a large living room, you’ll need to go with a bigger size to avoid viewing angle issues. If you’re getting for gaming, however, it won’t be nearly as big of an issue, since you’re likely to be sitting right in front of the screen.

The new MacBooks for 2024 are finally here, although casual users might be a little disappointed. As expected, the MacBook Pro is getting a whole suite of upgrades, both to specs and the build itself, but the MacBook Air is leaving with just one change. 

M4 comes to the MacBook Pro

The biggest upgrade? New chips. This year’s MacBook Pros can be configured with either the base M4 chip released with the iPad Pro earlier this spring, the M4 Pro announced alongside the new Mac Mini just yesterday, or the newly revealed M4 Max. That’s par for the course for Apple at this point. The company also confirmed it’s done with major Mac announcements for now, so it’s likely desktop power users will have to wait until next year for the M4 Ultra and an upgraded Mac Studio or Mac Pro. (Don’t ask me why “ultra” is supposed to be more powerful than “max.”)

Apple gave prospective buyers a small idea of what M4 Pro performance will look like alongside its Mac Mini reveal yesterday, so let’s skip straight to the M4 Max. According to Apple, MacBook Pros equipped with an M4 Max are anywhere between 4.6 to 30.8 times faster than MacBook Pros with an M1 Max in rendering, processing, and building performance, depending on the program. That’s a pretty big delta, and while it isn’t compared against the M3 Max, take it to mean Apple is gearing this computer towards hardcore productivity workloads. On that note, the M4 Max can be configured with up to 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, as opposed to the 10/10 core limit on the base M4. More reliable numbers will have to wait until reviewers get their hands on the devices, but generally, Apple says the M4 Max is “2.2 [times] faster than the CPU in M1 Max and up to 2.5 [times] faster than the latest AI PC chip.”

Also, while the M4 Max still only supports 128GB of memory (more than most people will need), it has slightly faster memory bandwidth, at 546GB/s vs. 400GB/s on the M3 Max. There’s also Thunderbolt 5 support for faster data transfer speeds on compatible accessories.

As for the laptop itself, like on past models, it’s available in 14 inches and 16 inches. Both sizes can be decked out with any of these three M4 chips, so your choice is down to comfort: Do you prefer a bigger screen or a more portable laptop?

Regardless of what you pick, you’ll get a mini-LED liquid retina XDR display (a shame that there’s no OLED option like on the M4 iPad Pro) and what Apple promises is the “longest ever” battery life in a Mac, with an advertised 24 hours. There’s also a new 12 MP Center Stage webcam, and optionally, you can configure the screen to have an anti-glare “nano-texture” upgrade. MacBook Pros with either an M4 Pro or M4 Max chip will also have Thunderbolt 5 support on all three of their USB-C ports.

MacBook Air only gets one “upgrade”

Again, this is generally in line with Apple’s past MacBook Pro strategy, but what’s a bit disappointing is the company’s approach to the Air this time around. The MacBook Air is not getting any M4 chips as of yet, although the M2 and M3 MacBook Air are bumping their memory up to 16GB (with no change in price), to match the MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac Mini. Maybe Apple doesn’t want to cut into iPad Pro sales, or maybe we’ll see an M4 MacBook Air later on.

At any rate, that extra RAM might be there to support Apple Intelligence, which launched on Mac with macOS Sequoia 15.1 earlier this week, but it could also just be a sign of the times—8GB often doesn’t cut it anymore, even for casual web browsing.

The 2024 MacBook Pro is available (in black or silver) now and will ship on Nov. 8th, while M2 and M3 Macs with 16GB of memory are already heading out to customers. M4 MacBook Pro models start at $1,599, while a model with an M4 Max will run you at least $3,199. M4 Pro options begin at $1,999. If you go all out with every upgrade available, you’ll wind up paying $7,848, but hey, at least you’ll get Final Cut Pro thrown in.

Data leaks and breaches are an unfortunate reality of modern life, as they seem to be occurring with relative frequency. The latest high-profile incident impacts customers of UnitedHealth Group, whose subsidiary, Change Healthcare, reportedly suffered a ransomware attack, resulting in the breach of over 100 million individuals’ data. In short: It’s not good.

What happened with Change Healthcare?

As reported by TechCrunch on Thursday, threat actors attacked Change Healthcare back in February, which caused disruptions and outages for the company for months. Eight months later, parent company UnitedHealth Group shared the number of impacted customers for the first time: More than 100 million users had their data stolen in this event. That makes this the largest digital theft of medical records in the United States that we know of.

The implications here are staggering. Change Healthcare is responsible for a number of medical records, data, and processes: If you’ve worked with UnitedHealthcare, you’ve trusted Change Healthcare with your medical records, as well as your billing and insurance information. In fact, UnitedHealth Group’s CEO, Andrew Witty, claims about a third of U.S. citizens were affected by this hack, demonstrating the significant number of customers the company retains.

Bad actors attacked the company on Feb. 12. Subsequently, Change Healthcare shut down its networks in an attempt to stop the attackers from doing more damage. (Some of Change Healthcare’s network is down to this day.) UnitedHealth Group says the perpetrator was ALPHV/BlackCat, a Russian-based ransomware group that has since claimed responsibility. The company paid the $22 million ransom, which ALPHV/BlackCat leaders then kept for themselves, leaving the actual hackers (who were, apparently, contractors) in the dust. Those hackers, denied their cut of the ransom, then took the Change Healthcare data they stole and attacked UnitedHealth Group again: They published some of the stolen data, and managed to get their own payment from UnitedHealth Group in the process.

As part of the ransom payment, Change Healthcare was able to see the data that was stolen, which enabled them to reach out to affected customers.

How did hackers break in?

During the same Congressional hearing where Witty shared the number of Americans affected by the hack, the CEO also gave insights into how the hackers got in.

Actors were able to hack into Change Healthcare in February by utilizing stolen login credentials on a server that did not employ multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA ensures that, even if you have the correct username and password, you must further authenticate yourself with another security method, such as with a trusted device, or an authenticator app. As such, there was no backup authentication in this situation, allowing hackers to break in and run ransomware.

What you can do going forward

As with most data breach situations, there’s not much you can do to protect your compromised information. Any data that was stolen is, unfortunately, already in the hands of hackers.

What you can do, however, is be proactive about your personal security. First, look out for communications from UnitedHealth Group, as the company has been reaching out to all affected users since July. They will inform you whether your data was leaked, and will likely have advice of their own you can follow.

Next, consider subscribing to a identity theft protection service. While it might not help you recover your stolen medical records, these services may prevent actors from abusing your personal information to steal your identity. Our sister site PCMag has a list of their favorite services, so check it out if you’ve been impacted by this breach.

While these services can potentially prevent identity theft and fraud, they might not stop other types of misuse of your information. Bad actors may try to use your medical records for medical fraud, making false claims to your insurance. As such, keep a close eye on your insurance records, and flag any claims that you didn’t make yourself.

In addition, exercise caution with any emails or messages you receive: Your info is out there, which means scammers may contact you via email, text, or phone to try to trick you into giving over more data, or even financial information. Don’t click strange links, and don’t share data with individuals you don’t know. When in doubt, ignore the calls, and move the emails to spam. It’s better to contact an organization or individual yourself, rather than continue the phone call or respond to the email when you aren’t 100% sure who’s on the other end.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2024 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is issuing payments this week to agricultural producers impacted by natural disasters, including $143 million in crop insurance indemnities for Florida producers impacted by Hurricane Milton and about $92 million for livestock producers, nationwide, who faced increased supplemental feed costs as a result of forage losses due to 2022 qualifying drought and wildfire.

MANITOWOC, Wis., Oct. 30, 2024 – During a visit to Dramm Corp. today, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small announced that the Biden-Harris Administration is making investments that will strengthen American farms and businesses by expanding innovative domestic fertilizer production and increasing independent meat and poultry processing capacity, which will in turn increase competition and lower fertilizer costs for farmers and food costs for consumers.