Thank you, Lord, for this day. May it be used for your glory!
Good morning everyone and welcome to the 42nd edition of Friday Inspiration.
Do y’all remember Vine?
It was essentially the same exact thing as TikTok.
I still haven’t tried TikTok out yet. I downloaded it and made an account, but haven’t opened it yet. But I assume it is really not that different from Vine.
Vine peeked around 2012 when it had roughly 100 million users per month.
TikTok has 1 billion! That’s 10x what Vine did!
What caused TikTok to become viral? To the degree that it outdid Google.com in terms of unique visitors.
There was so much skepticism at the beginning since it was owned by China and all of that. And yet, here we are, over a billion users!
I just don’t get it.
Well, today I have yet another sketchy TikTok news story that will ultimately have zero effect on TikTok users.
After that, I also have an article about a new car for all those rich TikTok influencers out there!
Let’s jump in!
TikTok’s In-App Browser Includes Code That Can Monitor Your Keystrokes, Researcher Says
First, it’s unveiled that TikTok is a Chinese-owned app, and we all said that’s fine. We trust China.
Or maybe it’s not about trust.
I mean Facebook is owned by an American-owned app and we know what they do to our data. Yet, Facebook has over 2 billion active users a month still.
Maybe people just don’t care.
Either way, there is some new data out about TikTok.
Have you ever opened a link in any of these social media apps on your phone? Did you ever realize it wasn’t actually opening in your default browsers like Safari or Chrome?
That’s right! Most of these apps have their own built-in browser to open links right in the app!
I guess in theory it makes the whole user experience smoother or whatever.
Whatever the reason, it’s a common practice.
There is also a common practice in the Software Engineering world called DRY. It means Don’t Repeat Yourself. In other words, it means if someone has already built something, don’t rebuild it. Just use what already exists.
A lot of software companies do this.
Usually, when they do, there is a pretty strict vetting process before they just import some random 3rd party’s code. To ensure it’s secure and whatnot.
Apparently, that’s not the case for TikTok.
The code they imported has some suspicious lines in the middle that actually track all your keystrokes! That means if you open a link in TikTok and this code gets triggered, it will track all you type in that browser.
So if you happen to type in any credit card info, boom! They’ve got it.
Now, TikTok claims they didn’t know this was there and that no one is actually storing the keystrokes or using them in any capacity.
I personally believe them, but think it’s pretty sad they didn’t know this was there before releasing it to their 1 billion users.
Lucid unveils top-of-the-line performance EV that does zero to 60 in under two seconds
https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23312956/lucid-air-sapphire-edition-speed-ev-specs-monterey
It seems like every other day I hear about some new electric car.
Well, today is no different.
A car company called Lucid just unveiled an epic supercar called the Lucid Air Sapphire.
They boast it can hit 0-60mph in less than 2 seconds!
And 0-100mph in under 4 seconds! That’s outdoing the Tesla Model S Plaid.
Can you imagine that?
Well, like I said if you are one of those fancy TikTok influencers you could get one! They are going to start at around $250,000!
And with that, it’s a wrap!
Have a great weekend!