862 karma · joined September 13, 2016
Although the proximity requirement severely limits the possible impact, it does make us think again about the security of our Wi-Fi networks, and as a result we may identify areas to improve, which is a benefit.
Is it a concern? It depends on what you're doing. It is absolutely a concern if your corporation is handling ultra-sensitive information. However, you should also question your physical barriers in that case and whether you should use Wi-Fi at all for some aspects of your operation. Is it a concern for the vast majority of office workers or someone at home? Probably not; there would be easier ways to find a valid credit card number that don't involve the time and effort for a hacker to travel to your place where they could be discovered. There's no need to replace all your AP's with new hardware, although the Wi-Fi Alliance would love for you to do that.
Does this exploit warrant its own fancy name and domain name? As was the case for KRACK, I don't believe so. That should be reserved for vulnerabilities that have a severe impact AND are extremely trivial to exploit with no proximity requirements. If not, the fancy-name-vulns risk being deprived of their ability to get the attention that is required.
Patches for vulnerabilities are listed per release on https://www.openbsd.org/errata.html
Clear text DNS is the ultimate compromise, a gentleman's agreement if you want, that benefits everyone. We can see just enough to filter what we are required to by law on a best-effort basis, but we never see what you are actually doing thanks to the prevalence of TLS. DoH just broke that agreement.
It's a sad example of how a privacy solution like DoH will eventually result in less privacy, at least in some environments. And I'm not even considering how DoH will be the excuse for totalitarian regimes to up their surveillance antics.
A solution like this could resolve many of the lingering "hum" cases. Often they are only heard by a few people, and those in charge of environmental control don't tend to take it seriously because "they don't hear it", or because they or the higher-ups are hiding something.
Acoustic consultants are extremely expensive, may require many hours if the sound is only apparent during random hours, and even then may come up with nothing.
An app that would at least be able to give a good estimate of the direction from where a sound is coming would be extremely helpful.
The printing paper had very uncommon dimensions and was hard to find. You could buy them from Berg, but they charged a lot for the rolls. There would also be a lot of paper waste due to the "face" that needed to be printed after every job. Cute, but no practical use.
In the end, however, it did what it advertised, and it did so with remarkably few of the hiccups that were (and are still) common for the IoT devices of the time; it was a good "version 1" for an IoT device. It's unfortunate that they never got to make a second version.
After the project was shuttered I bought an Epson TM-T20II. It prints from the LAN, it prints extremely quick, and the standard paper dimensions that it uses are easy to find on Amazon. It doesn't print a cute face after every job, though, but you can buy a buzzer add-on to make it beep after every job if you want.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
Amazon could easily make the case that even though the item you ordered was "in stock," it was still unavailable to ship immediately due to warehouse backlog or other operational reasons.
However, when it comes to the question of responsibility for preventing a third SARS outbreak originating from China, the answer lies with the CCP.
The CCP is the one that needs to be made responsible. However, they will label any attempt from the west as racism towards the Chinese, to avoid having to take up that responsibility.
Change will only happen when it doesn't look like the CCP is losing face by listening to what the west is dictating. Economic sanctions are the alternative, but that would threaten the supply of cheap Chinese labor.
Messages doesn't entirely cut you off from people who don't bring money to Apple, and it doesn't require another app to communicate with them. It will handle and integrate it all in the same interface with iMessage, seamlessly switching in the background to make that possible. Whatsapp, OTOH, plainly refuses to let you interact with anyone who prefers not to accept an intrusive TOS and bring in (ad) money to Facebook.
I agree that both apps have different approaches and both have pros and cons, but I don't support the suggestion that Whatsapp, or any similar app for that matter, is any less "vendor lock-in" than Messages.
I'm not. That is what the Twitter OP indicated as the actual reason.
He was left out "specifically because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic). Or in the student's own words: "we would start a new group chat, and the group would realize I was the reason it was green, and they would start another group chat without me". Nowhere is mentioned that the degraded experience is the reason.
It could be that that the SMS experience is the reason when it comes to adults who are mature enough to leave the green/blue behind them but have a lot less tolerance for poor UX.
But for teens - which is what this thread is about - I fully agree with OP's conclusion that the social stigma surrounding the color is the primary reason.
That number is biased, however, as 1) it's solely based on a survey done in high schools, and not every teen will feel comfortable admitting they have something else than an iPhone 2) the surveys are performed by DECA Inc. which is more affiliated with private schools and public high schools in affluent neighborhoods.
Still, I estimate that about 3 in 4 teens (and increasing) have an iPhone, either new or a model that was previously used by a parent who bought a new one. That's huge, and iMessage plays a very big role in that.
[1] https://www.ped30.com/2019/04/08/apple-piper-jaffray-genz/
However, when a community of people chooses Whatsapp as the exclusive form of communication, everyone in that community is forced to get that app or be left out of the loop. Those who object to installing Whatsapp because of the serious privacy controversies surrounding its parent are left with no choice.
This is where Messages shines, as it doesn't exclude those who can't or don't want to get an Apple device. And while the SMS fallback is indeed degraded, it still fulfills its basic promise: quick textual exchange of information. Additionally, if the recipient does get excluded because of the degraded experience, it shifts the fault and liability for not-knowing from the recipient who didn't want to accept the WhatsApp TOS to the senders who didn't provide the information because they didn't like the green bubble, although I'm fully aware that that's not how it always plays out in reality.
Neither approach is ideal, but I believe it's more important that no one should feel forced to install a proprietary app they don't trust just so they can stay up to date with their community, even if they are the single person objecting.
TL;DR Even though it falls back to its most rudimentary form, Messages by default doesn't cut off people that don't bring in any money for its parent. WhatsApp does.
Please elaborate. No iPhone user has to switch from the "iMessage" app to the "SMS" app to reach an Android user or include an Android user in a group chat. While it does indeed involve a different mode of communication, it's all handled seamlessly in the background from the same app.
In fact, if it wasn't for the coloring, they wouldn't even have noticed, except if you exchanged other data than pure text, but I can't imagine this being a real deal-breaker for planning?
Note how the Twitter OP also explained how they were texting the Android student from iOS until they decided to abandon him and create a new group. Not because they had to switch to another app to reach him, but "because he was on Android and turned the thread green" (sic).
Try finding a recent US-produced music video or hit movie/TV series that shows a green bubble (or Android for that matter, as it still has a higher market share).
The point I want to make is that Messages is not preventing them from including Android users because they don't have an iPhone, which is a general misunderstanding that I often observe when talking with Android users who use Whatsapp or similar and is also recurring here. If the Android user gets locked out, it's because a human decided to, not because Messages refused to include that user based on ecosystem lock-in (unlike Whatsapp).
However, like Twitter OP, I can testify that teens attach a lot more weight to the blue/green than they should. But then again, it's everywhere in popular culture. Try finding a recent hit movie/TV series or music video, produced in the US, that shows green bubbles (or Android for that matter, even though it has a higher market share).
But it will color the bubble green. And that's why they get locked out.
iMessage is very different from Whatsapp. For starters, there is no dedicated iMessage app. iMessage is managed from the iOS Messages app, which handles both iMessage and SMS. It's very good at managing both from one unified interface. In fact, it's so good that it uses arbitrary coloring of messages so you can see what message was sent through iMessage and what message was sent through SMS, because you would often not be able to tell otherwise as it's all in the same interface.
A lot of caveats apply here, but broadly speaking, while an iMessage user is typing a message, Messages will contact Apple to check if the recipient is also an iMessage user. If yes, it will try to send the message through iMessage and color the text bubble blue. If no, it will go through SMS and the bubble gets a green color. If iMessage fails in the first scenario, Messages will offer to revert to SMS.
So unlike Whatsapp, Messages doesn't care if the recipient has iMessage or not. And it also does not care if the recipient has an iPhone or not. It will get the message over regardless, as long as the recipient can receive SMS, which any Android phone can. Whatsapp, OTOH, does put the onus on the recipient to have the app. In other words: when it comes to the recipient, Messages (the app) is actually a lot more inclusive than Whatsapp (the app).
These HS teens aren't locking others out because they can't text their Android friends. They perfectly can, as OP from the Twitter thread also acknowledges, from the same app that they use to text their iPhone friends. They lock them out because Messages colors the bubbles green, which has become a social stigma in our high schools. Nothing more, nothing less. So it is not a technical limitation, and neither is it a cost issue, as virtually all wireless plans include unlimited (SMS) texts in the US. It is purely a human factors issue, which teens of all times and generations have been very prone to. As sad as it is.
To what does Whatsapp revert when the recipient doesn't have Whatsapp?
For example, on certain aircraft models with limited OH space, a number of luggage OH bins - especially towards the extreme ends of the cabins as that is where the FA stations are - store emergency equipment as well.
https://i2.wp.com/thepointsguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/1... - an extreme example on Delta to prove the point, usually they store smaller emergency items.
If you decide to lock the bins, then either you have to sacrifice OH space and reconfigure the bins to move the emergency equipment to exclusive bins, re-certify the plane (as it involves emergency equipment) and re-train cabin crew to never store any emergency gear in the other bins. Or, keep the bin configuration as it is, but don't lock the ones storing emergency equipment while you lock the others, and face a situation where pax in the extreme ends of the cabins - where emergency exits happen to be as well - can still get their stuff, which may encourage others to pry their bins open and lose a lot of time.
As of today, the registry unit is still part of Verisign, while Network Solutions changed hands many more times.
They registered the name, and just before the 5-day ICANN Add Grace Period would end, they reversed the registration and received full credit for the registration fee.
At that time the domain would immediately become available for registration again through any registrar with no grace/redemption/deletion periods.
While Facebook by default erects walls around content, Reddit by default promotes the free sharing and equal access to information, which resonates much more with the original promise and mission of the internet.
It's encouraging to see Reddit overtaking Facebook in popularity at a time when the freedoms of the internet are often under attack. Yes, Reddit has its flaws, but in the end, it is one of the best defenses that we have.
Let's first be totally clear: GAFA isn't suspending their EU operations, nor is any other company that 1) has already an established EU base and 2) can afford the cost of compliance. What I think will happen is that new players will stay out of the EU, because of the perceived risk (accurate or not) and the cost of compliance. So I do agree with the parent that the GDPR will eventually lead to a slow pauperization of the internet in the EU, the only difference with China being that it is self-inflicted rather than self-imposed.
Note that there are very few regulations out there (EU or US) that have actually helped the internet. Most of the regulation that was drafted in good faith turned out to bring more harm than good to the internet, the recent FOSTA bill being a prime example. At this time, I have no indication to believe that the GDPR will succeed where most other bills have failed. But if it turns out otherwise, I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong.
I can confirm from the same experience, however, that it prevents most hacking attempts from ever going to the authentication stage.
I can recommend American Nautical Services[0].
It's beyond me why so many merchants opt for the revenue-losing and customer-hostile choice to silently cancel flagged orders and let their competitors run away with the money, while they could easily get a safe sale by making a non-negotiable offer to use an irreversible payment method when a credit card gets flagged.
This reverses the trust issue, it's then up to the customer to determine if he trusts the merchant enough and is willing to give up the additional protection that a purchase on a credit card may offer - some of which the merchant may offer instead - to get the item he wants.
This is a recent investigation that I found particularly intriguing. It involves a device used to monitor electric utilities that ended up interfering VZW's signal in Silicon Valley.