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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

I had a phone stolen a couple of weeks ago, and initially I was trying to buy a new phone outright (ended up filing a claim and having my new one overnighted, but lack of SMS access would have prevented me from doing my job, hence the urgency). None of the local Verizon stores had any phones (11 Pro Max) in stock (they explicitly said it was due to China supply chain), but Best Buy did.

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>None of the local Verizon stores had any phones (11 Pro Max) in stock (they explicitly said it was due to China supply chain)

That may be true...but it may be just as likely they are minimizing their own inventory to keep their own costs down/cash on hand, which is not something they would freely tell their own employees or customers.

Perhaps. They did tell me they could get me one as fast as Fedex could get it to me (probably a couple of days). If there is constrained stock, centralizing inventory probably makes the most sense.

Alternate theory: I spoke to someone who works at a Cricket. They never keep higher end phones in stock, as they are frequent robbery targets (though I often see armed security at larger carrier stores).

Apple has already stated in their disclosures that they expect serve impact on their iPhone sales due to supply constraints.

Verizon will hold inventory for priority customers once the parts are constrained upstream. Your state/local .gov and some medical users will get priority access to inventory.

I've heard that new Apple employees aren't getting any equipment because they don't have any to give.

I ordered an Apple watch on March 3rd and it won't arrive until March 24th.

I'm pretty sure they are having serious supply chain issues.

Everybody has. There is Chinese New Year, always surprising companies exporting from China every year like Christmas, and than at the same time Corona. Now there is a huge backlog of produced goods in Chinese ports, a huge order backlog at Chinese manufacturers amyd not enough shipping and production capacity. Ultimately things will revert to normal, so. That Corona is now hitting the destinations of these backlogs doesn't help, obviously.

My thought is that cargo capacity is down a lot without passenger jets flying around.

And cargo operations staff may be reluctant to fly to China.

Staff wouldn’t be permitted to stay on the aircraft until takeoff. And would likely violate hours of service anyway.

or a combination of the two: Verizon keeps less stock on hand in general, and they ran out of theirs, while Best Buy had a larger backstock and so could still sell theirs.

I have nothing against you, but I wish more people would get burn by the sms 2fa without backup/alternatives.

Maybe at some point we will realize that it's a terrible idea.

I actually agree with you. Aside from apps that don't offer anything other than SMS 2FA, I always opt for TOTP-based 2FA. However, one compromise I've made is with Authy: they back up your saved config, but you must SMS verify (or have it installed on a 2nd device to verify a new device)

If you're comfortable with a paid option, consider StandardNotes' TokenVault: https://standardnotes.org/extensions/tokenvault

Any 2FA is inherently susceptible to losing one of the factors. It's designed to deny access when only one factor is present, so this is kind of a feature not a bug, and part of the security-vs-convenience tradeoff. Do you have any specific reason to think SMS 2FA in particular is a terrible idea?

Not if you have a password-protected Yubikey with GPG/RSA signing, encryption, and authentication keys and a second backup Yubikey with the same keys. If you lose one, order two more ASAP, use the backup key to change your keys in every machine and revoke that key (thereby rendering the lost Yubikey and your backup useless). Wait for the new Yubikeys to arrive, generate new keys, change all machines to these new keys, and revoke the temporary keys you generated.

For 2FA specifically, SMS is weak because of its vulnerability to SIM swap attacks[0]. There's been a few reported incidents where attackers stole cryptocurrency from accounts protected by SMS 2FA[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_swap_scam

[1]: https://btcmanager.com/sim-swap-attacks-amplify-companies-re...

I waited a whole month for a Macbook Pro with 256 RAM. Before the "crisis". The apocalypse is near.

But the maximum is 64GB RAM? https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/

It is now yep! 32GiB was the prior max.

Not 256 G of RAM... Just 256 RAM. I bet the delay is they're having trouble getting it to boot...

Having to waiting for a fancy laptop to arrive is hardly "the apocalyps". It's what people used to do.

Yes, Apple has some serious supply issues. I am already waiting three weeks to have my Mac repaired :( Temporary bought a new one to get work done.

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