It's because they are taking to gol darn scooters!
And God forbid you should try to WALK to work in any dense urban area. You are going to be MOWED OVER by scooters on the sidewalk!
Pretty-much every form of transportation is now total shit-show, at least in said dense urban areas.
- scooters/bikes/electric bikes on the sidewalks and streets
- circling and double-parked Uber and Lyft cars with clueless and uncourteous drivers
- handicapped spaces occupied by Uber/Lyft cars waiting for an assignment
- Uber/Lyft cars stopping in dangerous places. (They stop unexpectedly to load/unload all the time near me in a red zone just past a train track, thus leaving cars on the track unable to move. There is a reason for the red zone. One of these days....)
- roving bands of gangsters on the latest "low-rider" electric bike/scooters whatever they call those things (I guess they either are free for the first month, or they've figured out how to hack them already)
Fortunately, this all resolves itself eventually. The scooters/bike will crash into unexpectedly-opened Uber/Lyft doors, which then will give the roving gangsters an opportunity to rob the Uber/Lyft driver and injured scooter/bike rider. This at least take some of the extra traffic off of the street for some period of time.
Always wondered about that. Back in the 'old days', porn shoots looked like they were done in Motel 6. After the 2008 recession, lots of porn looked like it was being made in high end, well furnished properties
Dead give-away that it's shot in an AirBnB (the kind that is not somebody's actual home) would be the "artwork" from HomeGoods. Stupid, inspirational phrases in the cheapest possible frames.
My friend shops at AmVets for artwork. Cheaper than HomeGoods, and actual art, or at least nicely-framed reproduction prints.
The bad thing about that incident is it WAS in my friend's actual home. He vacates from time to time if he gets a bite from a "whale". It's set up for that - everything personal gets locked in his bedroom (separate entrance) behind a cool pivoting mirror wall.
He also decided to turn a 3-bedroom into a 2-bedroom, locking one bedroom off. At least for weekend-only guests. 3 bedrooms are trouble. The say they need a bedroom for the kids, and the third bedroom for Uncle Phil. But it's the whole extended family, or else all of the college buddies, packed 4 to a room plus the living room.
Robot baristas have been here for a while, right? I hope they become more common.
I hope they will have a program that will slap millennial customers who make everybody else wait while they engage in chit-chat (bro!) and take ten minutes to order when they haven't decided when they get to the front of the line, and have a zillion question about the ingredients. Also, a non-overridable function for the robot to not ask about the desire for "an alternative milk". And not throw indecipherable passive-aggressive shade.
(Us Baby Boomers can be a bit rude when we don't get good service. But we say what we are unhappy with so that you don't have to guess IF there is something wrong, and if so, WHAT is wrong. In other words, we were taught some basic communication skills.)
Customer service with millennials on both sides of the counter are a shit show. But neither side will say anything about it, so it never gets fixed.
I actually don't know if that bank accepts a.info or not. Maybe their limit is 4 characters. Maybe they use a list. I know their site (and apparently even internal systems - I asked if they could just open an account at a branch, the old-fashioned way) cannot accept a.education.
Filtering.info would be a good way for the bank to avoid dealing with scammy customers, though!
That's on the webdev doing shitty regex..info has been around since 2002
Hire non-Indian webdevs.
Unfortunately, I don't work for the bank.
But name a bank - or a phone company (I'm looking at you, ATT) that doesn't hire non-third-world webdevs.
The Peter Principle was right. The greatest incompetence works it's way to the top.
I sometimes answer questions about jQuery (a dying thing, I know) and am just appalled at the garbage that ATT's webdevs produce. (I know this, because they come crying for help, and post links to their internal development site, instead of bothering to make a jsFiddle.) Every dev (new one for every project, of course) adds another layer to the complexity, with two more scripts that solve the same problem as a dozen scripts from their predecessors...
FWIW, I realize we could have used the.net that I already had set up for the bank account. I wanted to keep infrastructure separate, which actually is in keeping with the original intent of.net.
We use the.com as an "emergency" email domain in case we run into further issues dealing with others that can't handle a.education domain.
I recall registering live.net many, many years ago, at a cost of $0, by sending an insecure email.(I was the original registrant.) live.com had been taken a few months earlier. I had to come up with a justification that this had something to do with "network infrastructure". Since the purpose of the site was to put live cameras on the web, I was able to make some sort of an infrastructure argument because of the video feed aspect.
Beware of incompatibilities due to assumptions that domain names have no more than a 3-letter TLD.
The company I work for has a.education domain. They were not able to open a bank account at a certain bank, because their system does not permit an email address with a TLD > 3 characters.
Although I HATE the practice of multiple domains to "brand" different functionalities or marketing channels (example.com, example-mail.com, example-cloud.com, myexample.com (I especially hate the "my" prefix...)) I had proactively set up.net for our backend API (our company name includes the word "education" at the end). Multiple domains with similar names confuse consumers, leaving them uncertain if an auxiliary domain is really associated with the main one. And then it slowly entrains them to automatically trust, which they shouldn't. IBM is currently going through a painful rebranding of bluemix.net to cloud.ibm.com. Which is what it should have been in the first place. (They are also rebranding softlayer.com/net at the same time, not avoidable by thinking ahead, since it was an acquisition.)
So anyhoo, then I had to set up.com so that we could open a bank account at the bank that only takes 3-letter TLDs. That's probably what we should have had in the first place. Thankfully, the company name is long enough that.com and.net were available, so long as we used the full company name with "education" included.
I first heard about it this morning on a local morning news show.
While there are a few scattered national and international outlets reporting on the incident - including Bloomberg, and LOL Sputnik - and a smattering of out of the area local outlets who picked up the story... the San Diego press is now completely silent.
While I don't think it was an intentional hit by a CBP drone, I think an accidental one is the most likely scenario.
That area is an industrial area on the U.S. side. No parks where somebody would likely be flying a drone. Dunno about the Mexican side. And it would be really foolish for a hobbyist to be flying a drone that close to the airport. However, we don't know exactly where the plane was when hit, nor if it actually 'strayed" across the border, as almost every flight has to cross over U.S. territory to land/take off at that airport.
Minor possibilities are a drone used for smuggling (yea, sure, you're gonna smuggle with a drone in the most likely place to get caught...), some *&^%$! realtor making a video of a warehouse, or a drone used for surveillance by the S. American migrants. (About whom we have now not heard a peep about for at least a week now. OK, other than the kid that died of dehydration.)
Reports on local news this morning say that the plane went off it's planned flight path and strayed north of the border.
The plane was bound for General Abelardo L. Rodríguez International Airport in Tijuana from Miguel Hidalgo and Costilla de Guadalajara International Airport.
The Tijuana airport DIRECTLY abuts the border fence. I have photos I took of landing planes, the tower, etc. from Big Toy Depot on the other side of the fence. (My friend was keeping his bus there.) I mean it is literally RIGHT THERE. There was talk a few years ago about expanding it to be a bi-national airport.
(I think they have just rebranded this "Amazon Renewed"?)
Whoops! Amazon Renewed is from third parties.
Amazon Warehouse Deals is what I was referring to. I've bought several items - garbage disposer, Sennheiser wireless headphones, etc. Never had a problem with anything. If it isn't suitable for Warehouse Deals, then it goes out in auction lots. So, people who resell the auction lots are reselling Amazon's rejects that they didn't feel comfortable re-selling themselves.
There's a good chance that the $100 printer, the $300 wide-screen monitor, or the $170 router you recently bought from Amazon weren't supplied to the e-commerce giant by their original manufacturers. In fact, the order may have been fulfilled by someone like Casey Parris, who resells items that customers previously returned to retailers.
No, you didn't purchase these "from Amazon". You purchased them "through Amazon". That's referring to an independent seller.
As far as Amazon direct sales, they are transparent about it. Returns are sold through their own refurb department. (I think they have just rebranded this "Amazon Renewed"?) I have purchased several items and all were good deals in great condition. They disclose in advance anything cosmetic defect, missing item, etc. with photos. It is usually no more than a cosmetic defect to the BOX.
I bought a high-end garbage disposer that had a scratch on the bottom. I really don't care if the plumber's eyes are offended by the scratch.;)
But even if not, they were easy to open up and clean out.
These Apple products are not user serviceable. At best, you need special screwdrivers. At worst, you need to use a specially-designed cutting tool, and have a replacement gasket handy.
Imagine your app has a configuration file, which it can download from your company's website, and suddenly the app changes its behaviour. Without any review.
I don't think that's what this is about, though. Though that can be a problem as well, if not disclosed.
From the article linked above (that was linked from the C|Net article, but that the author apparently didn't read or comprehend...) this is actually about downloading executable code.
There are these crazy schemes that use Javascript (which is approved - but NOT if you download the Javascript code later...) that vector off to an adapter library that allows you to hot-patch Objective-C code.
I can see, though, that configuration data as well could be a slippery slope, if it controls behavior.
I try to keep watch on this sort of thing, since I use an app development platform that uses Ruby code in the app. Apple is cool with this, because it's compiled to Ruby bytecode at build time, and eval() is disabled. (No run-time ability to compile Ruby source code.) Javascript is also used for UI, and CAN be used for MVC (either in webview or embedded nodejs server) - but again - all the JS code is shipped with the package and no new code downloaded.
But still it bothers me when I see stuff like this because some bad actors could jeopardize the ability to use this sort of architecture, because it COULD be used in a way counter to the guidelines, and Apple could get pissed enough to ban it.
But, as you suggest - even just configuration data can do the job if the idea is just to fool the reviewers and not show them behavior that will be enabled later. Why go to the trouble of downloading additional code, when you could just include the code in the first place, but disable some functionality during some embargo period in order to pass review? It's unlikely that Apple is going to analyze the code and conclude "oh, there's crypto-mining code here!"
This is about out of App Store updates. See also: Apple begins strictly enforcing rule that prohibits iOS app updates outside of App Store [appleinsider.com]
Stop being dense.
The C|Net article said nothing about that. It left us in the dark.
They did link to the article you cite above, which does explain it. Should have been in the article. Yes, I was aware of this and noted the press coverage at the time, but didn't make any connection from that poorly-written article.
As an app developer, I'm well aware of this rule, and surprised that it hasn't been enforced in the past. I am always surprised when I see online posts that show that developers haven't read the submission guidelines, and think they can do all sorts of stuff that it clearly not allowed.
But it seems that Apple hasn't really been enforcing this one. Or, perhaps not so easy to detect.
Yes, Apple doesn't allow apps that update code outside of the App Store. That's be well-known and understood for years. You aren't allowed to do it by downloading code for an interpreted language (indeed, there are strict restrictions on the use of interpretive languages - they can be used only if compiled to bytecode at build time, and no e.g. eval() ), nor are you allowed to use these crazy schemes like rollout.io that actually allow you to patch native code in a round-about way.
Maybe this has been a bigger problem in the Chinese app store, as there is more incentive for abusing this rule in order to bypass government restrictions. So, put out an app that is approved, and later enable the non-approved functionality.
Given that my ISP is Google (actually, WebPass, which is now owned by Google Fiber): No, it's not.
(But I don't have a 4K streaming box, or any need, given I don't have a 4K TV given that you can't tell the difference at normal seating difference and I couldn't get a 4K plasma screen if I wanted to...)
Google Maps is not and never has been a good navigation app. If you want to navigate, get a navigation app!
I used to use the excellent Navigon app, until Garmin killed it, and stopped releasing updates and updated maps. (Garmin bought them, and sold both Garmin and Navigon apps for several years.
I've switched to Waze. I didn't like Waze very much when it was new, but I've been pleasantly surprised since switching from Navigon.
Slashdot Mirror
It's because they are taking to gol darn scooters!
And God forbid you should try to WALK to work in any dense urban area. You are going to be MOWED OVER by scooters on the sidewalk!
Pretty-much every form of transportation is now total shit-show, at least in said dense urban areas.
- scooters/bikes/electric bikes on the sidewalks and streets
- circling and double-parked Uber and Lyft cars with clueless and uncourteous drivers
- handicapped spaces occupied by Uber/Lyft cars waiting for an assignment
- Uber/Lyft cars stopping in dangerous places. (They stop unexpectedly to load/unload all the time near me in a red zone just past a train track, thus leaving cars on the track unable to move. There is a reason for the red zone. One of these days....)
- roving bands of gangsters on the latest "low-rider" electric bike/scooters whatever they call those things (I guess they either are free for the first month, or they've figured out how to hack them already)
Fortunately, this all resolves itself eventually. The scooters/bike will crash into unexpectedly-opened Uber/Lyft doors, which then will give the roving gangsters an opportunity to rob the Uber/Lyft driver and injured scooter/bike rider. This at least take some of the extra traffic off of the street for some period of time.
Dead give-away that it's shot in an AirBnB (the kind that is not somebody's actual home) would be the "artwork" from HomeGoods. Stupid, inspirational phrases in the cheapest possible frames.
My friend shops at AmVets for artwork. Cheaper than HomeGoods, and actual art, or at least nicely-framed reproduction prints.
The bad thing about that incident is it WAS in my friend's actual home. He vacates from time to time if he gets a bite from a "whale". It's set up for that - everything personal gets locked in his bedroom (separate entrance) behind a cool pivoting mirror wall.
He also decided to turn a 3-bedroom into a 2-bedroom, locking one bedroom off. At least for weekend-only guests. 3 bedrooms are trouble. The say they need a bedroom for the kids, and the third bedroom for Uncle Phil. But it's the whole extended family, or else all of the college buddies, packed 4 to a room plus the living room.
... though not as bad as in the linked article.
Never rent out for a "model shoot", etc.
It was supposed to be some sort of a photo shoot for some MMA personality.
It turned out to be a big party and porno shoot. There was a rape reported by the neighbors.
They ruined the pool table felt.
At least the Roomba captured about a pound of weed.
Has 9To5 Google ever employed writers? Or has it always been like this?
Robot baristas have been here for a while, right? I hope they become more common.
I hope they will have a program that will slap millennial customers who make everybody else wait while they engage in chit-chat (bro!) and take ten minutes to order when they haven't decided when they get to the front of the line, and have a zillion question about the ingredients. Also, a non-overridable function for the robot to not ask about the desire for "an alternative milk". And not throw indecipherable passive-aggressive shade.
(Us Baby Boomers can be a bit rude when we don't get good service. But we say what we are unhappy with so that you don't have to guess IF there is something wrong, and if so, WHAT is wrong. In other words, we were taught some basic communication skills.)
Customer service with millennials on both sides of the counter are a shit show. But neither side will say anything about it, so it never gets fixed.
Sorry, I meant "...that doesn't hire third-world webdevs"
(When does slashdot get an edit functionality?)
I actually don't know if that bank accepts a .info or not. Maybe their limit is 4 characters. Maybe they use a list. I know their site (and apparently even internal systems - I asked if they could just open an account at a branch, the old-fashioned way) cannot accept a .education.
Filtering .info would be a good way for the bank to avoid dealing with scammy customers, though!
Unfortunately, I don't work for the bank.
But name a bank - or a phone company (I'm looking at you, ATT) that doesn't hire non-third-world webdevs.
The Peter Principle was right. The greatest incompetence works it's way to the top.
I sometimes answer questions about jQuery (a dying thing, I know) and am just appalled at the garbage that ATT's webdevs produce. (I know this, because they come crying for help, and post links to their internal development site, instead of bothering to make a jsFiddle.) Every dev (new one for every project, of course) adds another layer to the complexity, with two more scripts that solve the same problem as a dozen scripts from their predecessors...
FWIW, I realize we could have used the .net that I already had set up for the bank account. I wanted to keep infrastructure separate, which actually is in keeping with the original intent of .net.
We use the .com as an "emergency" email domain in case we run into further issues dealing with others that can't handle a .education domain.
I recall registering live.net many, many years ago, at a cost of $0, by sending an insecure email.(I was the original registrant.) live.com had been taken a few months earlier. I had to come up with a justification that this had something to do with "network infrastructure". Since the purpose of the site was to put live cameras on the web, I was able to make some sort of an infrastructure argument because of the video feed aspect.
Beware of incompatibilities due to assumptions that domain names have no more than a 3-letter TLD.
The company I work for has a .education domain. They were not able to open a bank account at a certain bank, because their system does not permit an email address with a TLD > 3 characters.
Although I HATE the practice of multiple domains to "brand" different functionalities or marketing channels (example.com, example-mail.com, example-cloud.com, myexample.com (I especially hate the "my" prefix...)) I had proactively set up .net for our backend API (our company name includes the word "education" at the end). Multiple domains with similar names confuse consumers, leaving them uncertain if an auxiliary domain is really associated with the main one. And then it slowly entrains them to automatically trust, which they shouldn't. IBM is currently going through a painful rebranding of bluemix.net to cloud.ibm.com. Which is what it should have been in the first place. (They are also rebranding softlayer.com/net at the same time, not avoidable by thinking ahead, since it was an acquisition.)
So anyhoo, then I had to set up .com so that we could open a bank account at the bank that only takes 3-letter TLDs. That's probably what we should have had in the first place. Thankfully, the company name is long enough that .com and .net were available, so long as we used the full company name with "education" included.
I guess Microsoft does't require interns to sign an NDA...
YouTube video with the ATC traffic and translation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Well, THIS is interesting...
Did a Google search (NOT news tab) for "Tijuana drone" and Google features 6 news stories with photos at the top, 3 and 3.
The 3 on the top are - LOL I kid you not - Sputnik, Bloomberg, and RT.
Now I think Russia did it.
FWIW, I am NOT a Trumpy.
Realistically, just the real fake news (Sputnik/RT) taking advantage of a news vacuum which got them pushed to the top.
.... annnnnd....
The story disappeared from local San Diego news!
I first heard about it this morning on a local morning news show.
While there are a few scattered national and international outlets reporting on the incident - including Bloomberg, and LOL Sputnik - and a smattering of out of the area local outlets who picked up the story... the San Diego press is now completely silent.
While I don't think it was an intentional hit by a CBP drone, I think an accidental one is the most likely scenario.
That area is an industrial area on the U.S. side. No parks where somebody would likely be flying a drone. Dunno about the Mexican side. And it would be really foolish for a hobbyist to be flying a drone that close to the airport. However, we don't know exactly where the plane was when hit, nor if it actually 'strayed" across the border, as almost every flight has to cross over U.S. territory to land/take off at that airport.
Minor possibilities are a drone used for smuggling (yea, sure, you're gonna smuggle with a drone in the most likely place to get caught...), some *&^%$! realtor making a video of a warehouse, or a drone used for surveillance by the S. American migrants. (About whom we have now not heard a peep about for at least a week now. OK, other than the kid that died of dehydration.)
OK, so it was some *&^%$@! realtor...
Reports on local news this morning say that the plane went off it's planned flight path and strayed north of the border.
The plane was bound for General Abelardo L. Rodríguez International Airport in Tijuana from Miguel Hidalgo and Costilla de Guadalajara International Airport.
The Tijuana airport DIRECTLY abuts the border fence. I have photos I took of landing planes, the tower, etc. from Big Toy Depot on the other side of the fence. (My friend was keeping his bus there.) I mean it is literally RIGHT THERE. There was talk a few years ago about expanding it to be a bi-national airport.
https://www.google.com/maps/pl...
You tell me whose drone it was. Duh.
Whoops! Amazon Renewed is from third parties.
Amazon Warehouse Deals is what I was referring to. I've bought several items - garbage disposer, Sennheiser wireless headphones, etc. Never had a problem with anything. If it isn't suitable for Warehouse Deals, then it goes out in auction lots. So, people who resell the auction lots are reselling Amazon's rejects that they didn't feel comfortable re-selling themselves.
No, you didn't purchase these "from Amazon". You purchased them "through Amazon". That's referring to an independent seller.
As far as Amazon direct sales, they are transparent about it. Returns are sold through their own refurb department. (I think they have just rebranded this "Amazon Renewed"?) I have purchased several items and all were good deals in great condition. They disclose in advance anything cosmetic defect, missing item, etc. with photos. It is usually no more than a cosmetic defect to the BOX.
I bought a high-end garbage disposer that had a scratch on the bottom. I really don't care if the plumber's eyes are offended by the scratch. ;)
Every desktop I've ever owned had inlet filters.
But even if not, they were easy to open up and clean out.
These Apple products are not user serviceable. At best, you need special screwdrivers. At worst, you need to use a specially-designed cutting tool, and have a replacement gasket handy.
I don't think that's what this is about, though. Though that can be a problem as well, if not disclosed.
From the article linked above (that was linked from the C|Net article, but that the author apparently didn't read or comprehend...) this is actually about downloading executable code.
There are these crazy schemes that use Javascript (which is approved - but NOT if you download the Javascript code later...) that vector off to an adapter library that allows you to hot-patch Objective-C code.
I can see, though, that configuration data as well could be a slippery slope, if it controls behavior.
I try to keep watch on this sort of thing, since I use an app development platform that uses Ruby code in the app. Apple is cool with this, because it's compiled to Ruby bytecode at build time, and eval() is disabled. (No run-time ability to compile Ruby source code.) Javascript is also used for UI, and CAN be used for MVC (either in webview or embedded nodejs server) - but again - all the JS code is shipped with the package and no new code downloaded.
But still it bothers me when I see stuff like this because some bad actors could jeopardize the ability to use this sort of architecture, because it COULD be used in a way counter to the guidelines, and Apple could get pissed enough to ban it.
But, as you suggest - even just configuration data can do the job if the idea is just to fool the reviewers and not show them behavior that will be enabled later. Why go to the trouble of downloading additional code, when you could just include the code in the first place, but disable some functionality during some embargo period in order to pass review? It's unlikely that Apple is going to analyze the code and conclude "oh, there's crypto-mining code here!"
The C|Net article said nothing about that. It left us in the dark.
They did link to the article you cite above, which does explain it. Should have been in the article. Yes, I was aware of this and noted the press coverage at the time, but didn't make any connection from that poorly-written article.
As an app developer, I'm well aware of this rule, and surprised that it hasn't been enforced in the past. I am always surprised when I see online posts that show that developers haven't read the submission guidelines, and think they can do all sorts of stuff that it clearly not allowed.
But it seems that Apple hasn't really been enforcing this one. Or, perhaps not so easy to detect.
Yes, Apple doesn't allow apps that update code outside of the App Store. That's be well-known and understood for years. You aren't allowed to do it by downloading code for an interpreted language (indeed, there are strict restrictions on the use of interpretive languages - they can be used only if compiled to bytecode at build time, and no e.g. eval() ), nor are you allowed to use these crazy schemes like rollout.io that actually allow you to patch native code in a round-about way.
For an explanation see https://www.fireeye.com/blog/t...
Maybe this has been a bigger problem in the Chinese app store, as there is more incentive for abusing this rule in order to bypass government restrictions. So, put out an app that is approved, and later enable the non-approved functionality.
Huh? I don't get it. ALL app submissions and updates have to be reviewed and approved by Apple.
Is there an additional step required in the Chinese store, to ask permission before submitting the update for review?
Given that my ISP is Google (actually, WebPass, which is now owned by Google Fiber): No, it's not.
(But I don't have a 4K streaming box, or any need, given I don't have a 4K TV given that you can't tell the difference at normal seating difference and I couldn't get a 4K plasma screen if I wanted to...)
I recall reading about Aurora this YEARS ago. (at the time, at least) Aurora is really just a proprietary storage engine that they dropped into MySQL.
They now have versions "compatible with" both MySQL and PostgreSQL.
The PostgreSQL one is the one they are using internally!
Breaker, breaker, 1-9! I've got some hot packets coming down the information superhighway. Anybody see Smokies up ahead?
Google Maps is not and never has been a good navigation app. If you want to navigate, get a navigation app!
I used to use the excellent Navigon app, until Garmin killed it, and stopped releasing updates and updated maps. (Garmin bought them, and sold both Garmin and Navigon apps for several years.
I've switched to Waze. I didn't like Waze very much when it was new, but I've been pleasantly surprised since switching from Navigon.