According to the Dev-Team Blog, it looks like Apple might be making the practice of downgrading iOS using SHSH blobs, something typically stored by Jailbreak store Cydia and utilities like TinyUmbrella. The Dev-Team says this has to do with the process behind over-the-air (OTA) updates, but either way it’s not great news for frequent SHSH blob users.

Starting with the iOS5 beta, the role of the "APTicket" is changing — it's being used much like the "BBTicket" has always been used. The LLB and iBoot stages of the boot sequence are being refined to depend on the authenticity of the APTicket, which is uniquely generated at each and every restore (in other words, it doesn't depend merely on your ECID and firmware version…it changes every time you restore, based partly on a random number). This APTicket authentication will happen at every boot, not just at restore time. Because only Apple has the crypto keys to properly sign the per-restore APTicket, replayed APTickets are useless.

This will only be in place for iOS 5 onward, and only when Apple makes use of it. It also can’t stop limera1n, which happens before these checks in the boot sequence. What, if any, workaround may be possible the Dev Team doesn’t say… and won’t until iOS 5 is out of beta.

Whether or not Apple is actually targeting Jailbreak with this is difficult for me to say. I’ve often conjectured that Apple enjoys the “incubator” that is Jailbreak — a way for para-iOS features to be tested on a large user base without having to sanction it, and a way to serve the hardcore market without having to support it. They’ve even ignored exploits in past iOS point updates. We’ll have to wait and see if a) Apple implements it in furtherance of OTA updates, b) if the Dev-Team finds a way around it, and c) how Apple responds to any circumvention.

[Dev-Team Blog]

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LulzSec dumped one last load of AT&T documents on the internet, which though outdated and never meant for public consumption, does give some insight into some of the things they were at least considering — like speed and session-based pricing for their upcoming LTE network.

But one interesting tidbit is AT&T’s apparent plan to market LTE data with various speed tiers, which it’s calling “Speed Based Pricing.” Verizon’s about to switch to tiered pricing for its data plans (3G and 4G), but that’s based on total consumption, not speed. The basic idea would be pay more, and you get faster LTE speeds. Not exactly a new premise — cable companies have been doing this for Internet access for a while now, but it’d be an interesting change in the mobile space.

You could also pay for a session, or temporary speed boost if you needed it. Again, this is something broadband providers have been doing for a while.

Of course, we probably won’t get our hands on LTE until iPhone 6 in 2012, but it’s still interesting to see where the industry might be by then. Any of you have an interest in speed or session based pricing, or are data caps complicated enough already?

[LulzSec via Android Central]

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iOS 5

• Apple releases iOS 5 beta 2 for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes 10.5 beta 2 for Mac
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There have been some significant UI changes to Notification Center in iOS 5 beta 2, specifically, the way notifications are handled on the Lock Screen. In beta 1, notifications would simply appear as line items, with new notifications stacking as new line items, one after the other. In beta 2, if a single notification comes in, it now gets its own, newly styled popup.

In both cases, you could and can drag the associated app icon to unlock and be taken directly to the app, only the appearance of the first notification has changed. I addition, Apple has added a visible “window shade” UI element, complete with a little “gripper” handle, to the lock screen, above the single notification, so you can pull down the full list of recent notifications.

For alarms, the change is even more striking, as the addition of the “snooze” button seemed bitsy in the beta 1 UI but is now big and bold in the beta 2 UI (see above).

The most interesting part of this is that Apple is still working on, or experimenting with, the notifications user experience during the beta process. During previous iOS releases, the user experience for cut, copy, and paste, and for the multitasking fast app switcher and folders remained relatively unchanged during the beta process. (Though significant changes were made prior to the beta period, when it was still internal to Apple).

We know Apple hired the father of webOS notifications over a year ago, but also hired the developer of Jailbreak notifications just prior to the iOS 5 beta release. What, if any, impact that might be having on the betas is unknown, but it’s tremendous to actually “see” Apple’s design iterations on such a major new feature release.

George Hotz, the jailbreak ninja that brought us LimeRa1n for iOS devices as well as the Sony PS3 jailbreak, might just be working at Facebook now.

In a video interview yesterday, Joshua Hill (P0sixninja) a member of the Chronic-Dev Team, confirmed that Geohot had a day job working at Facebook; that is why he declined the offer to help with the iPad 2 jailbreak. Apparently he does not want the attention after being recently sued by Sony.

Also Gabe Rivera of Techmeme, discovered Geohot's Facebook page and confirmed that the first post at the top of the page said "Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over." The page has now been removed and throws up a message that the content is currently unavailable.

If true, this is an interesting development to say the least . Could it be linked somehow to the three recent Facebook stories which broke last week? We know Facebook is set to release a new photo sharing service, that Facebook was working on an iPad app, and also an  HTML 5 web app store.

Geohot’s efforts to date seem to be in a different area than app development, but even with his experience in breaking security we are sure he would be a great asset!

Video after the break. Do you think Geohot’s at Facebook and if so, what could he be working on?

[MyGreatFest, @gaberivera via Techunwrapped]