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ncw96

1,106 karma · joined March 29, 2013

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ncw96··on Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources
CNBC is reporting this is false: https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1563136384059285505
ncw96··on Stanford requires booster shots for all students
Vaccines.gov seems to be kept up to date for people in the US.
ncw96··on Show HN: Neural-hash-collider – Find target hash collisions for NeuralHash
Currently, most likely.

I don’t believe Apple has said whether or not they send them in their initial referral to NCMEC, but law enforcement could easily get a warrant for them. iCloud Photos are encrypted at rest, but Apple has the keys.

(Many have speculated that this CSAM local scanning feature is a precursor to Apple introducing full end-to-end encryption for all of iCloud. We’ll see.)

ncw96··on Show HN: Neural-hash-collider – Find target hash collisions for NeuralHash
Apple has outlined[1] multiple levels of protection in place for this:

1. You have to reach a threshold of matches before your account is flagged.

2. Once the threshold is reached, the matched images are checked against a different perceptual hash algorithm on Apple servers. This means an adversarial image would have to trigger a collision on two distinct hashing algorithms.

3. If both hash algorithms show a match, then “visual derivative” (low-res versions) of the images are inspected by Apple to confirm they are CSAM.

Only after these three criteria are met is your account disabled and referred to NCMEC. NCMEC will then do their own review of the flagged images and refer to law enforcement if necessary.

[1]: https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/Security_Threat_Model...

ncw96··on Show HN: Neural-hash-collider – Find target hash collisions for NeuralHash
Apple has said this is not the final version of the hashing algorithm they will be using: https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5yzq/apple-defends-its-ant...
ncw96··on One Bad Apple
You are correct — most of the iCloud data is not end-to-end encrypted. Apple discusses which data is end-to-end encrypted at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
ncw96··on Apple's plan to “think different” about encryption opens a backdoor to your life
> As far as this is concerned, seems like if you don’t use iMessage or iCloud you’re safe for now.

Yes, this is correct. The Messages feature only applies to children under 18 who are in an iCloud Family, and the photo library feature only applies if you are using iCloud Photos.

ncw96··on Expanded Protections for Children
Sorry for the confusion — I was referring to just the CSAM hash feature that uploads results to iCloud.

There is also scanning for nudity in the Messages app, but those scans happen on-device and the photos stay on-device even if nudity is detected.

ncw96··on Expanded Protections for Children
A summary of the photo scanning system:

- Only applies to photos uploaded to iCloud

- Matching against a known set of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) hashes occurs on-device (as opposed to the on-server matching done by many other providers)

- Multiple matches (unspecified threshold) are required to trigger a manual review of matched photos and potential account suspension

ncw96··on Apple scores 35 Emmy nominations, including 20 for hit series “Ted Lasso”
The page you linked to is for the Primetime Emmys, which are the biggest awards that make it into the main TV broadcast (Prime Video has 4 nominations there). But there are also the Creative Arts Emmys, which include many more awards, often in more technical categories (where Prime has an additional 14 nominations).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/73rd_Primetime_Creative_Arts...

ncw96··on Apple to discontinue iTunes U after 2021
Title should have a (2020)
ncw96··on Eddy Cue wanted to bring iMessage to Android in 2013
There are some features for group messaging on iMessage that aren’t available in Group MMS. If you add a non-iMessage user to your group, the group downgrades to using Group MMS, which does still work for basic messaging, but the group loses all of its iMessage-exclusive features.
ncw96··on Ask HN: Why do iPad Pros with 1TB SSD and up have double the RAM
I think the really interesting question here is why does an iPad Pro have 16 GB of RAM at all?

The previous generation of iPad Pros maxed out at 6 GB, so this is quite a jump.

Adding Thunderbolt support is also a bit of a mystery.

I suspect this will all become clear at WWDC in June when Apple announces iPadOS 15.

ncw96··on Ask HN: For those who use Chrome, why do you?
Not sure what your use case is, but Firefox’s containers might solve your problem with the older profile system: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
ncw96··on Intel’s New IDM 2.0 Strategy
I’d expect to see Qualcomm in the mix as well, at least for laptop chips.
ncw96··on Show HN: Obsidian - OTP Authenticator
I think it might clear things up if you said that the data is not stored on any Obsidian servers, because the data is stored on iCloud servers.
ncw96··on Librem Tunnel Is Leaving iOS
Apple’s in-app purchase/subscription rules only apply to digital goods — not things like banks, Uber, food delivery, etc.
ncw96··on Librem Tunnel Is Leaving iOS
Apple has a well known exception to the rule requiring an option to subscribe inside the app for “reader” apps, a vaguely defined which includes Netflix, Spotify, Dropbox, and seemingly whatever else is convenient to Apple.

Apple did not lift this requirement for the Hey email app during the controversy over that last year. Instead, they reached a compromise where Hey would offer a free trial of their service inside the app, so they could be in compliance with the rule that an app must have some functionality without an account.

ncw96··on Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
30 of 32.
ncw96··on Apple has gone to extraordinary lengths to make scroll bars invisible
Go to System Preferences -> General and change “Show scroll bars” to “When scrolling” to get the behavior you want.
ncw96··on Four times I felt discriminated against for being a female developer
The Rooney Rule sounds good in theory, and yet 28 out of 32 head coaches in the NFL are white.

(For reference, only about 25 percent of NFL players are white.)

ncw96··on User Locked Out of iCloud Account for 6 Months Because Last Name is “True”
Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26364993
ncw96··on Data Transfer Project by Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc.
Possibly related to Apple’s recently added feature to transfer photos from iCloud to Google Photos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26344739
ncw96··on Ask HN: What services do you pay for every month?
Which Apple One services are you using? I find it curious that you pay for both Apple Music and Spotify.
ncw96··on Perseverance rover uses same PowerPC chipset found in 1998 G3 iMac
The helicopter, Ingenuity, that went to Mars with Perseverance uses a (somewhat) more modern Snapdragon 801 processor.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/aerospace/robotic-explor...

ncw96··on Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]
Worth noting that these letters are from two relatively low ranking members of the House Democratic caucus, not from anyone in leadership.
ncw96··on Zynga shuts down FarmVille after 11 years
They actually did make a mobile version, but it is not compatible with the old Flash version that was discontinued.
ncw96··on Going All in on the Mac App Store
Yep, this is how the program works. One thing I would add is the $1 million threshold is based on your net proceeds after Apple’s cut, not your total sales.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...

ncw96··on I Bought Apple Silicon
It is also my understanding that Apple refurbs are returned devices.
ncw96··on The M1 MacBook Air: Perfection
No, a lot of these returned devices end up in Apple’s refurbished store, or are used as replacement devices for warranty claims.
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