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Johnny555

15,335 karma · joined July 23, 2015

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Johnny555··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
He said it's "unauthorized access of his computer", even though he implicitly authorized it by clicking through the agreement (apparently without reading it).

If people actually read these clickthrough agreements and started sending devices back when they don't agree, it would encourage the industry to change.

No one "needs" an iPhone, they can support one of the open source phones with far less onerous terms.

Johnny555··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
I think you'll find that you agreed to it somewhere in their voluminous terms of service.

I looked it up and indeed, it's in section 1, paragraph C:

Your Device will periodically check with Apple for Apple Software Changes. If a change is available, the change may automatically download and install onto your Device and, if applicable, your peripheral devices. By using the Apple Software, you agree that Apple may download and install automatic Apple Software Changes onto your Device and your peripheral devices.

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS26_iPadOS26.pdf

Johnny555··on US halts flights at busy East Coast airports, says fiber line cut
I thought Musk got an FAA telecom contract for Starlink back when he was effectively running the government (or at least running it into the ground)?

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/25/business/musk-faa-starlink-co...

Johnny555··on I don't like passkeys
>This means if you go on a trip somewhere you absolutely need two devices

If you want multi-device redundancy, you have to carry a second device of some type, it's hard to get around that. I almost always travel with an iPad in addition to my phone, so I have a second device.

In addition, my wife (who travels with me so if my iPhone is stolen, hers might be too) is one of my Apple account recovery contacts, plus I've set my sister as an addtional recovery contact, so even if I'm out of the country and I have to activate a new iPhone, I can call her to help with the recovery. So all I have to do is find an Apple store and buy a new phone.

I also carry a USB key tucked into my luggage with the recovery kit (encrypted) for 1Password so I can activate 1Password on any new device and have access to my passwords and whatever passkeys I don't have in iCloud.

Johnny555··on I don't like passkeys
I updated my reply to be more complete.
Johnny555··on I don't like passkeys
>How do I use it on my desktop or laptop then

>What if I switch browsers on my phone

>What if I get a new phone

You can let Apple sync your passkeys between devices using iCloud Keychain. Then you can create a passkey on one device and have it available on all of your devices. Google also syncs passkeys to the cloud and lets you use them on Windows (with Chrome)

>What if I change from android to iOS or visa versa

I resolve this by storing most of my passkeys in my password manager. I still store the "important" ones (like online banking) in my phone so a password manager breach doesn't make me lose my money.

>What if I need to log into the site on my Wii U's browser?

Passkeys were designed to let you have more than one, so if you have a device that doesn't let you use your password manager, then just set up another passkey.

Johnny555··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
Eventually you'll probably be made whole (unless the bank isn't one of the ones that waives your $50/$500 liability). But usually they won't return your money until after they resolve the dispute so your account is still missing the disputed money which could make you bounce checks or be unable to use your debit card until the dispute is resolved.
Johnny555··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
But that's not what happened when someone steals your debit card number. Once the teller enters the deposit and you walk away from the window, the money in your account is yours, the cash the robbers stole is the banks.

When someone steals your debit card number and uses it, it's your money that is debited from your account, not the banks, and debit card transactions have much different rules than credit card transactions where you're generally not held responsible at all for fraudulent transactions)

But with debit card transactions, you can be responsible for up to $50 of fraudulent transactions reported within 2 days, and $500 for those reported within 60 days. And the bank is not required to return the money while they investigate the fraud.

Though many banks waive those liabilities and treat debit card disputes the same as credit card disputes (but still may not return your money while they investigate, so you could be bouncing checks when someone makes a $1000 fraudulent transaction if you can't float the $1000 yourself while they investigate)

I refused to allow the bank to issue me a debit/ATM card against my primary checking account, fortunately they are one of the few banks that still offer a dedicated ATM card so even if I lose the card, it's useless without the PIN.

Johnny555··on iPhone Duo
I had no problem buying a ream at Staples.
Johnny555··on The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
If it hasn't been retrofitted out, then it's still in use today. That sentence would only be incorrect if the new solution was retrofitted on all aircraft.
Johnny555··on The Helicopter with Radioactive Blades
Since the radiation source is only exposed if it's indicating a potential main rotor crack, and it's not a very strong radiation source in the first place (so it's not like it allows long distance tracking), it seems like a minor risk -- if the radioactive capsule is exposed, the pilot is going to be returning to safe place to land.

Beta particles typically only travel a few meters in air before they lose most of their energy.

Johnny555··on Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America
>It's not clever satire because unlike say, the Gulf of Mexico, South America is an actual real geographical designator in common usage.

It's almost as dumb as renaming lake Ontario to Lake America to "punish" Canada (presumably because it shares its name with the province of Ontario), when that lake has had its name since the 1600's (before the USA or Canada even existed) and is based on a Native American Iroquoian word. And the province of Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around.

But at least with South Park, I can understand their motivation.

Johnny555··on Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown
The Coffee issue is easy to solve, just bring a pitcher of water with you in the morning to pour into the coffee maker - it's what I did when my home office was in a spare room above the garage. The walk from his back yard to the indoor bathroom is probably shorter than the walk he'd have in any office.
Johnny555··on Building a backyard office, the build and cost breakdown
I don't know what kind of tech stuff you have, but since you can run ethernet (or better, fiber) to the shed, you could keep most of it locked in the house and just walk out with your laptop to your workspace each day.

Monitors are relatively cheap these days, you can get a name brand 32" 4K monitor for around $300 - if someone busts in and steals it, the door/window repair will probably cost more than the monitor.

Johnny555··on Buy Your Friends Batteries
I think the people that can easily put aside €100 for the birthdays of a dozen or more friends could also just pay the €1600 and buy the battery for themselves outright without having to wait for a birthday "surprise"
Johnny555··on Buy Your Friends Batteries
>thirty-two people contribute €50 each.

I guess Europeans have more friends than Americans -- I can't think of 32 people I'd invite to a birthday party, and certainly not 32 people that I'd expect to give me a €50 gift. I haven't received a real birthday present from friends (beyond a cheap gag-gift) in decades.

Johnny555··on Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo
>...data centers are better neighbors than almost any other commercial real estate

The biggest reason I wouldn't want a data center next door as opposed to an office building is the noise and pollution from backup generators (that may run more than expected if the datacenter has load shedding agreements with the utility)

The sea of parking lots doesn't seem any worse than the huge featureless datacenter building.

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2026-04-2...

Johnny555··on LLMs reward expertise
>No, of course not. I just do the surface-level things that make the lawn and shrubs thrive.

And others want the green lawn and big bushy shrubs, but don't want to learn all of the surface level things to make their lawn thrive so they hire a service to do it for them. And there's nothing wrong with that - not everyone enjoys the yard work, but they still want the thriving lawn and shrubs... and they are happy to write a check to OpenAI... err...Lawn Doctor every month to get that result since the time they save by not dealing with their lawn, they can pursue things they do want to do.

Not everyone wants to (or needs to) learn every detail along the way of getting the results they want.

Johnny555··on Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise
Offsite retreats seem like a bad idea in general, I've never been to one where I felt the team or company worked together better afterwards, and I've seen some spectacularly bad results... like the time the facilitator tried to get to the bottom of tensions between the CTO and head of sales (the classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"). The discussion quickly turned shockingly personal and within a month after the retreat both the CTO and head of sales quit. At least they called an end to the retreat early.
Johnny555··on Latest Airbus single aisle aircraft innovations
The parent poster said "Economy plus", not "Premium Economy".

And while the names are confusingly similar, Economy Plus is usually a seat with extra legroom (but no additional width) and is a small price bump, but Premium Economy is a larger wider seat with generous recline (but not lay-flat), and is a large price increase, sometimes approaching business class pricing.

Johnny555··on Does creatine make you smarter?
>And I flat out do not understand how some of the supplement stores survive.

I think mostly through placebo effect, people buy a supplement to treat condition X and they think it's getting better, so they keep buying.

I mean, just look at the wide variety of homeopathic "cures" that are often so diluted that there might not be any molecules of the active ingredient left. Yet people keep buying it.

Johnny555··on Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras
>This radar system is ideal for protecting larger properties, with its range of up to half a mile and adjustable detection zone. It’s old school: With no Wi-Fi or app needed, you simply turn on the receiver and pair the detector. It then sounds an alarm whenever a person or animal moves into the area

This doesn't sound that useful without a camera unless you're using it in an indoor space where you know animals aren't going to trip it. Otherwise, what do you do when you get an alert at 3am and you don't know if it's a racoon or a burglar?

Johnny555··on Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s
If I go out bowling with friends, I'm there to socialize with my friends. If I rent the lane from a Kiosk, I'm fine with that being the end of the transaction I don't need the manager to come introduce himself.
Johnny555··on When A.I. is a member of the family
I do wonder if conversational AI has a place for those who don't otherwise have someone to talk to.

We just moved away from a condo where my wife was the only friend our elderly neighbor has - she can't drive, has no close family and few friends in the area. There is someone from the senior center that comes a few times a week to bring meals and generally check in on her, but she only stays for 15 minutes.

My wife would visit her a couple times a week and they'd spend a couple hours together. Now that we moved away, they chat mostly via text and about once a month for an in-person visit.

Would an AI chatbot be better than no one at all?

Johnny555··on Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS
I created a user for my wife, set up the Protect App on her phone and she has the same access to the cameras as me.
Johnny555··on Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption
How is that not temporary? "Ok, you asked for an exemption for a minimum of 18 months, we're granting you what you asked for, an 18 month exemption".
Johnny555··on Robinhood now lets your AI agents trade stocks
And not just informed professional traders -- also insiders with privileged information about world events that let them trade before the news hits. Now AI agents are going to be chasing phantom signals that look like they might be evidence of an insider's move.
Johnny555··on Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit
Does that really scale well? Thanks to cascading dependencies, even a medium sized project can import hundreds of dependencies. Can a developer really review them all to figure out if they are safe and that there's not security fix that was fixed in a newer version of the package?
Johnny555··on Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement
>How are these fruits "stolen" if they still have what was allegedley stolen?

If you write a book and I take it and embed its knowledge into my product that is so pervasive that no one needs to buy your book any more (and I don't even credit you so no one knows where that knowledge came from), to you really still have what was stolen? And I didn't even buy a copy of your book to copy it.

Johnny555··on Two millionth electric car registered as market rebounds from tax changes
> PH = Plug-in hybrid (Same as a hybrid but you can charge up the hybrid battery at home)

You can, but in practice most people don't. And I can understand why -- it's inconvenient to have to plug in after every short trip, and the short electric range of most PHEV's means you do have to plug in after every short trip.

I plug in my EV around once a week, and it's more convenient than going to the gas station, but I'm not sure I'd want to have to plug it in every time I come home from even a short trip to the supermarket.

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