First is that there's two completely different technologies called Airdrop that don't interop. First was old-Mac Airdrop that only worked on Macs. Then iOS Airdrop which was different. Then new Macs started using new-Airdrop, but they required newer Bluetooth hardware than lots of old Macs had, so the old Macs still used old-Mac Airdrop & didn't interop with new Macs or iOS. Clusterfsck in other words...
Handoff uses the newer Bluetooth hardware (so no old Macs), but at least it's the same on all the iOS & Mac versions that claim to support it & designed to interop across platforms. I think the hybrid BT/Wifi tricks they pull also make it more likely for devices to find each other than the old-Mac pure network based approach used to.
Handoff is tied to the iCloud account. If you leave your iCloud account logged in on your kid's phones, they have access to your photos, mail, contacts, calendar, notes, Safari history & bookmarks, notes, credit cards (via Wallet), keychain passwords, and every document that any iCloud enabled app has ever stored for you from either your phone or computer. You maybe don't want to do that...
Setup family accounts, and let them login to their own. Everyone shares purchases, and everyone has their own sandbox for storage, Handoff, etc.
It's almost like by doing research and asking questions we can learn how these magic lightning boxes work and dispel the Fear (uncertainty & doubt) of the Unknown...
Apple accounts are per-person. If you're sharing them, all kinds of cross-linked badness will happen. Dad uses the main account & kids have family accounts (with limits & allowances set). All purchases are shared, but pasteboard & assorted iCloud storage is kept separate. There's no good reason to be sharing accounts.
The shared pasteboard is useful, and I love it. Browsing slashdot on my phone, have to type a rant-y reply... Type on Mac, copy/pasta & paste into phone.
Did you factor in the cost of this being at the height of its FUD cycle on iPhone 7 release day? I'd love to see a rough figure of how many people try to exchange their Samsbomb phone today, get told there are no non-exploding ones available, and decide to return it for refund and go to the Apple store. Would also love to see a follow up figure of how many of those users stay with Apple for their next phone.
You know which column of the periodic table lithium is in, right? I suspect charging a faulty battery underwater would not improve the overall outcome.
This is just a temporary measure until they come up with a better solution.
Sorry, I don't buy that. If the problem is that some people are over-using the systems preventing others from using them, then completely disabling them for everybody while you look for a better solution is worse than doing nothing. You've turned unavailable for some people in some places at some times to unavailable for all people every place all the time.
There's no question this was a knee jerk reaction to "pr0n is bad!" They're not trying to prevent people from hogging them. They're preventing people from viewing material they consider objectionable.
The current home button doesn't help much if the software fails. It's seldom able to interrupt a locked app or crashed phone. They do have a watchdog on the Home/Power combo. As long as they maintain that on the (presumably still there) power button, there's nothing lost. "Hold power for 10 seconds and the watchdog barks" is good enough to deal with a complete software lockup.
Pretty sure it would only take a few uses to figure out the right spot. There was a previous/. posting that mentioned (I think) a patent filing of using haptic feedback for a virtual button. So you'll get the tactile *tap* when you "push" it. The haptics on Apple Watch aren't quite as good as physical buttons, but maybe they'll get better in the interim. There's definitely a responsiveness thing they need to get right.
The watch has a uncomfortable delay to a lot of its responses. If they can get as good as a physical button click with the haptics, then I don't see a problem. If it's laggy, then I wouldn't be a fan.
Anybody look at the "artist's concept" sketch in the article? I have a hard time taking any speculation seriously when their artist puts "Press any key to unlock" on a touch screen only device.
It's unfortunately possible for places to intentionally cripple their readers to *not* take Apple Pay. CVS pharmacies in New York do this. They'll take MSD, but they refuse Apple Pay. I'm guessing it's because they want to track your purchases via your constant credit card number and not lose the tracking ability to the one-time use card numbers Apple Pay uses.
The most annoying thing is that the readers all show the NFC logo, they even trigger the phone's receiver so it shows the "Pay with Touch ID" screen and will receive the information and complete the NFC process with the phone. And then they refuse the sale and you need to use your physical card. I still use the phone every time and complain to the manager every time for all the nothing that accomplishes.
Your phone doesn't need wireless coverage to complete a transaction. Apple Pay at least stores a batch of one-time use card numbers in the device's secure element. You can use Apple Pay in a Faraday cage just fine. You need to get back in network range eventually to replenish the card numbers, but I've never had a problem, even in some pretty no-bars areas.
For me, using the phone is much more convenient. It's right in my pocket. I can pull it out with my thumb on the reader to unlock it in one motion. The NFC part of the transaction is usually done with the phone back in my pocket before the clerk is even done scanning items.
With a card, I have to pull out my wallet, fish out the card, stick it in the slot, wait for the clerk to finish, wait for the chip card dance to complete with the "RED ALERT BATTLE STATIONS!!!" warning most of the readers play when it's time to remove the card, then stick the card back in my wallet & wallet back in my pocket all while the clerk is handing me a receipt, and I'm trying to gather up my stuff without dropping anything. With the phone, the clerk is usually surprised when the register is spitting out a receipt & I have my bags in my hand before they've even realized I paid.
Honest question: Given everything else on your phone, the fact that your bank & everyone else has your actual personal info, and the government has everything... How does having 16 digits worth of credit card number secured with your fingerprint make you materially worse off?
You can always carry cash and/or a card as a backup. It seems unlikely if your phone was confiscated that they wouldn't find an excuse to claim civil forfeit on your cash.
When you use a wallet with one-time use cards (Apple does this, not sure about the others), you're more secure than using your physical card. The card number transmitted at point of sale can't be reused if the merchant gets hacked, and it can't be used to aggregate your habits when you shop at the same merchant in the future. What's the downside?
I love how many places I go to with my Apple Watch or iPhone where the staff doesn't even know they accept it.
"That doesn't work..."
ka-ching!
"Oh.... Wow... That's neat!"
The only place I've seen that has terminals with the WiFi-like NFC logo that doesn't work is CVS, and I think they're in the same boat as Wal*Mart and Target in holding on to customer tracking via credit card numbers.
2. It unfairly punishes big companies which are involved in a lot of things, and as a result, make a lot of mistakes.
That's a feature, not a problem. A big company should have the resources to verify things before bot-filing a takedown and the legal savvy to understand what they're doing. If they're still generating a lot of false takedowns, they should be fined accordingly. Don't want to pay a lot of fines? Don't claim you own something that you don't.
I'd say at a bare minimum, a false DMCA takedown should be treated as willful copyright infringement. It's a claim by someone who didn't own the copyright that they did. I don't see how that's any different than selling a copyrighted work, implicitly claiming you have the right to do so when you don't. $150,000 statutory damages for willful infringement isn't much to Paramount, but it's a start.
Using a tool with important security and usability benefits (battery life, faster page loading, etc.) makes me an asshole, according to someone running an ad network. Good to know. That little bit of guilt in the back of my mind? Yeah, who am I kidding... Didn't have any guilt before, but definitely don't now...
It's interesting what you said about "safer" way to communicate. To me, my paranoia of FB et al. monitoring means absolutely nothing but the shiny & happy goes on FB. If something "bad" as simple as my cat took a dump on the carpet happened, that's not going on FB. Nevermind somebody died or I'm having a rough time & need help. I've got end-to-end encrypted messaging to simply reach out to my real friends, and face to face meetings for anything more in depth than, "Hey, mind if I come over?"
I might be a bit paranoid, but better safe than Room 101...
Easy. AdBlockPlus Element Hiding Helper. For one, you could block on any 'img' or 'a' tag that had a 'href' or 'src' starting with data:. Next up, you can block by CSS class or DOM ID of any element. If there aren't any identifiers, you block an XPath to the element's location, relative to any other ID's element if necessary. I haven't met an ad that ABP+Helper can't block.
And if none of that works, I close the website & don't come back. I've been *this close* to deleting my FB account since the day I opened it, so it wouldn't take much of a reason to just replace my profile with an email address and "email me if you want me."
That's not inevitable. This shouldn't be the case for well-designed builds.
When you build GCC from source (at least in a Gentoo stage-1), you build your new GCC with whatever you have lying around, then build GCC again with the GCC you just built, then finally build GCC again with *that* GCC. The last two binaries should be identical, or something's badly wrong. The first & second might differ since building GCC with some other compiler (even a different version of GCC) yields different output than the current GCC would, but the second two builds (both built by the same GCC) must be identical.
Not that any of that helps against an actively malicious compiler or toolchain of course...
I wish them luck with their niche business model. Hopefully the Faraday cage won't be too expensive to remove for the next tenant of the space when they go out of business.
Slashdot Mirror
Couple of bad things with Airdrop...
First is that there's two completely different technologies called Airdrop that don't interop. First was old-Mac Airdrop that only worked on Macs. Then iOS Airdrop which was different. Then new Macs started using new-Airdrop, but they required newer Bluetooth hardware than lots of old Macs had, so the old Macs still used old-Mac Airdrop & didn't interop with new Macs or iOS. Clusterfsck in other words...
Handoff uses the newer Bluetooth hardware (so no old Macs), but at least it's the same on all the iOS & Mac versions that claim to support it & designed to interop across platforms. I think the hybrid BT/Wifi tricks they pull also make it more likely for devices to find each other than the old-Mac pure network based approach used to.
Settings -> iCloud
Handoff is tied to the iCloud account. If you leave your iCloud account logged in on your kid's phones, they have access to your photos, mail, contacts, calendar, notes, Safari history & bookmarks, notes, credit cards (via Wallet), keychain passwords, and every document that any iCloud enabled app has ever stored for you from either your phone or computer. You maybe don't want to do that...
Setup family accounts, and let them login to their own. Everyone shares purchases, and everyone has their own sandbox for storage, Handoff, etc.
It's almost like by doing research and asking questions we can learn how these magic lightning boxes work and dispel the Fear (uncertainty & doubt) of the Unknown...
You're logging in wrong...
Apple accounts are per-person. If you're sharing them, all kinds of cross-linked badness will happen. Dad uses the main account & kids have family accounts (with limits & allowances set). All purchases are shared, but pasteboard & assorted iCloud storage is kept separate. There's no good reason to be sharing accounts.
The shared pasteboard is useful, and I love it. Browsing slashdot on my phone, have to type a rant-y reply... Type on Mac, copy/pasta & paste into phone.
Verb. You should verb your Galaxy Note 7. Otherwise we have no idea what you're talking about.
Did you factor in the cost of this being at the height of its FUD cycle on iPhone 7 release day? I'd love to see a rough figure of how many people try to exchange their Samsbomb phone today, get told there are no non-exploding ones available, and decide to return it for refund and go to the Apple store. Would also love to see a follow up figure of how many of those users stay with Apple for their next phone.
You know which column of the periodic table lithium is in, right? I suspect charging a faulty battery underwater would not improve the overall outcome.
It's nothing but blood & guts and rape apologies for good God fearing Christian folk!!!
This is just a temporary measure until they come up with a better solution.
Sorry, I don't buy that. If the problem is that some people are over-using the systems preventing others from using them, then completely disabling them for everybody while you look for a better solution is worse than doing nothing. You've turned unavailable for some people in some places at some times to unavailable for all people every place all the time.
There's no question this was a knee jerk reaction to "pr0n is bad!" They're not trying to prevent people from hogging them. They're preventing people from viewing material they consider objectionable.
The current home button doesn't help much if the software fails. It's seldom able to interrupt a locked app or crashed phone. They do have a watchdog on the Home/Power combo. As long as they maintain that on the (presumably still there) power button, there's nothing lost. "Hold power for 10 seconds and the watchdog barks" is good enough to deal with a complete software lockup.
Pretty sure it would only take a few uses to figure out the right spot. There was a previous /. posting that mentioned (I think) a patent filing of using haptic feedback for a virtual button. So you'll get the tactile *tap* when you "push" it. The haptics on Apple Watch aren't quite as good as physical buttons, but maybe they'll get better in the interim. There's definitely a responsiveness thing they need to get right.
The watch has a uncomfortable delay to a lot of its responses. If they can get as good as a physical button click with the haptics, then I don't see a problem. If it's laggy, then I wouldn't be a fan.
Anybody look at the "artist's concept" sketch in the article? I have a hard time taking any speculation seriously when their artist puts "Press any key to unlock" on a touch screen only device.
It's unfortunately possible for places to intentionally cripple their readers to *not* take Apple Pay. CVS pharmacies in New York do this. They'll take MSD, but they refuse Apple Pay. I'm guessing it's because they want to track your purchases via your constant credit card number and not lose the tracking ability to the one-time use card numbers Apple Pay uses.
The most annoying thing is that the readers all show the NFC logo, they even trigger the phone's receiver so it shows the "Pay with Touch ID" screen and will receive the information and complete the NFC process with the phone. And then they refuse the sale and you need to use your physical card. I still use the phone every time and complain to the manager every time for all the nothing that accomplishes.
Your phone doesn't need wireless coverage to complete a transaction. Apple Pay at least stores a batch of one-time use card numbers in the device's secure element. You can use Apple Pay in a Faraday cage just fine. You need to get back in network range eventually to replenish the card numbers, but I've never had a problem, even in some pretty no-bars areas.
For me, using the phone is much more convenient. It's right in my pocket. I can pull it out with my thumb on the reader to unlock it in one motion. The NFC part of the transaction is usually done with the phone back in my pocket before the clerk is even done scanning items.
With a card, I have to pull out my wallet, fish out the card, stick it in the slot, wait for the clerk to finish, wait for the chip card dance to complete with the "RED ALERT BATTLE STATIONS!!!" warning most of the readers play when it's time to remove the card, then stick the card back in my wallet & wallet back in my pocket all while the clerk is handing me a receipt, and I'm trying to gather up my stuff without dropping anything. With the phone, the clerk is usually surprised when the register is spitting out a receipt & I have my bags in my hand before they've even realized I paid.
Honest question: Given everything else on your phone, the fact that your bank & everyone else has your actual personal info, and the government has everything... How does having 16 digits worth of credit card number secured with your fingerprint make you materially worse off?
You can always carry cash and/or a card as a backup. It seems unlikely if your phone was confiscated that they wouldn't find an excuse to claim civil forfeit on your cash.
When you use a wallet with one-time use cards (Apple does this, not sure about the others), you're more secure than using your physical card. The card number transmitted at point of sale can't be reused if the merchant gets hacked, and it can't be used to aggregate your habits when you shop at the same merchant in the future. What's the downside?
I love how many places I go to with my Apple Watch or iPhone where the staff doesn't even know they accept it.
"That doesn't work..."
ka-ching!
"Oh.... Wow... That's neat!"
The only place I've seen that has terminals with the WiFi-like NFC logo that doesn't work is CVS, and I think they're in the same boat as Wal*Mart and Target in holding on to customer tracking via credit card numbers.
2. It unfairly punishes big companies which are involved in a lot of things, and as a result, make a lot of mistakes.
That's a feature, not a problem. A big company should have the resources to verify things before bot-filing a takedown and the legal savvy to understand what they're doing. If they're still generating a lot of false takedowns, they should be fined accordingly. Don't want to pay a lot of fines? Don't claim you own something that you don't.
I'd say at a bare minimum, a false DMCA takedown should be treated as willful copyright infringement. It's a claim by someone who didn't own the copyright that they did. I don't see how that's any different than selling a copyrighted work, implicitly claiming you have the right to do so when you don't. $150,000 statutory damages for willful infringement isn't much to Paramount, but it's a start.
Using a tool with important security and usability benefits (battery life, faster page loading, etc.) makes me an asshole, according to someone running an ad network. Good to know. That little bit of guilt in the back of my mind? Yeah, who am I kidding... Didn't have any guilt before, but definitely don't now...
It's interesting what you said about "safer" way to communicate. To me, my paranoia of FB et al. monitoring means absolutely nothing but the shiny & happy goes on FB. If something "bad" as simple as my cat took a dump on the carpet happened, that's not going on FB. Nevermind somebody died or I'm having a rough time & need help. I've got end-to-end encrypted messaging to simply reach out to my real friends, and face to face meetings for anything more in depth than, "Hey, mind if I come over?"
I might be a bit paranoid, but better safe than Room 101...
Easy. AdBlockPlus Element Hiding Helper. For one, you could block on any 'img' or 'a' tag that had a 'href' or 'src' starting with data:. Next up, you can block by CSS class or DOM ID of any element. If there aren't any identifiers, you block an XPath to the element's location, relative to any other ID's element if necessary. I haven't met an ad that ABP+Helper can't block.
And if none of that works, I close the website & don't come back. I've been *this close* to deleting my FB account since the day I opened it, so it wouldn't take much of a reason to just replace my profile with an email address and "email me if you want me."
That's not inevitable. This shouldn't be the case for well-designed builds.
When you build GCC from source (at least in a Gentoo stage-1), you build your new GCC with whatever you have lying around, then build GCC again with the GCC you just built, then finally build GCC again with *that* GCC. The last two binaries should be identical, or something's badly wrong. The first & second might differ since building GCC with some other compiler (even a different version of GCC) yields different output than the current GCC would, but the second two builds (both built by the same GCC) must be identical.
Not that any of that helps against an actively malicious compiler or toolchain of course...
Cats you say? That's when they send out the cat detector vans. Can pinpoint a pur at 400 yards!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5MnyRZLd8A
I wish them luck with their niche business model. Hopefully the Faraday cage won't be too expensive to remove for the next tenant of the space when they go out of business.
Nope. Friends don't let friends...
I think it stands for "apple is cool and you Should think we're cool too."
But I could be wrong...