spenvo

There is a straightforward manner to overtake your phone number (call your carrier and use social engineering). There is nothing you, the customer, can do to lock that down. (I've tried with my carrier.)

With email, you can lock that down with robust 2FA (Google Authenticator/Authy/etc) and crooks have no straightforward way of defeating that.

This is how it plays out year after year and why SIM-swap gangs are so prevalent.

Thanks for highlighting this initiative, I'll add it to the article. And Done.

From the article: > For many years, people in the industry have invariably said something like: "Well... offering SMS-based authentication is better overall for customer security, because of its convenience (despite its shortcomings) vs other methods" (such as the far-more secure use of email for verification). To that I say: "who are YOU to deprive your customers of security?"

and

> Much of the ire relating to SIM-swap attacks has, understandably, been directed at carriers. Indeed, carriers do a terrible job of securing customers’ phone numbers, and may be liable for that shortcoming. But here’s the thing: carriers’ security has always been bad, it has even been legislated into being bad, and other companies have still chosen to build mission-critical systems on top of that weak link.

and

> Despite offering poor security, SMS offers a nearly frictionless way to sign up new customers (think of Uber's onboarding) and handle password resets, and companies felt they had to match competitors' adoption of this technique.

This last bit was unfortunately overwritten in a Wordpress post update, and I added it back.

This is the first time in years that I've been interested in a Windows laptop.

This writeup doesn't include price, but others do, like https://www.engadget.com/the-asus-zenbook-duo-is-a-stunning-... . It starts at $1,499.

It's also just 3 pounds, which is 0.5 lbs lighter than the 14" Macbook Pro. I really like this breakdown by TechChap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzBxLYTUuK4, Dave2d's video is also good.

The thing also comes with a pen with high sensitivity.

It feels like this is priced as a loss leader for ASUS.

Then X restores them, but they show fewer followers (maybe just a bug?). Again, none of this with explanation. Though it appears the uproar was enough for X to care somewhat and reverse its unexplained editorial decision. https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/1744767372043383105

Who here missed https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/12/researchers-c... Put simply: the breakthrough here (not related to the IBM news in parent link) massively cuts the physical qubits needed to do error-correcting (in the pursuit of logical qubits). What they demonstrated in this regard was vastly more efficient (more than the 1000:1 industry benchmark, though it's not apples to apples) than the current state of the art (as well as what IBM is hoping to achieve in its next generation chip). It seems to have pulled game-changing quantum computing years closer to reality. The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06927-3

Sorry if it's seen as off topic, my standalone submission on it didn't generate discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38705445

Put simply: the breakthrough here massively cuts the physical qubits needed to do error-correcting (in the pursuit of logical qubits). What they demonstrated in this regard was vastly more efficient than the current state of the art (as well as what IBM is hoping to achieve in its next generation chip). It seems to have pulled game-changing quantum computing years closer to reality.

The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06927-3

Hey! (thanks for expounding on your concerns).

The claim from the article is that a fixed 'charge to 80% feature' is "likely possible on earlier models". I asked Apple to comment and am curious what they say. We do have evidence for the article's claim: iPhones dating back to at least the iPhone 8 support a feature that limits charging to 80% for multiple hours per day already. It just only occurs during hours Apple chooses via its learning algorithm. I never claim that the hardware is/is-not different; you simply have to look at what is already supported to understand what the devices are capable of.

Author again, “I question the whole premise of the article”

What? You got tripped up on my wording, sorry. But the article's premise is valid, and it's not cool that the top comment on this submission for its first three hours on HN has totally lacked curiosity and come to a sensationalist conclusion. Do you have any actual problems with the article? Could you list them? (You responded to others but not my previous comment)

Edit: Ah, I can see how you thought my wording was confusing. The feature "kicking in" is that it is not charging (when it typically would be charging). But it could sound like I meant that it's charging when idle. Rephrased to be clearer, thanks. --------

Author here, I think my Optimized Charging description is a fine description of how it works in practice. To borrow from another publication: "Optimized battery charging is a feature on iOS 13 or newer that limits overnight charging to protect your phone's battery in the long term." [0] With it, iOS learns your habits and will try to keep your phone charged under 80% until soon before it thinks you will take the phone off the charger, when it tops it off to 100%. "The algorithm aims to ensure that your iPhone is still fully charged when unplugged." [1] I have also used the feature personally since it came out, and this is how it works. What do you take issue with specifically?

[0] - https://www.pocket-lint.com/what-is-optimised-battery-chargi... [1] - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512

This rules inconsistency (alongside unpredictable (dis-)approvals and double standards for WeChat, Roblox, and (at times) Amazon and others) came up as one of a dozen reasons that, as a solo casual game developer, _launching_ in the App Store is not necessarily the no-brainer decision it seemed to be a decade ago (despite its enormous market power) I lay out in a separate post here https://keydiscussions.com/2023/07/26/as-a-web-game-dev-poin...

Hi HN, I've been making simple word games lately. In this one - you have one job, find a word! My wife is really good at it, usually takes her under a minute. I look forward to making more web games, and -as a Swift-app dev- I'd love to write something soon about why web-first.

Please enjoy and let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions!

Consider the sourcing here -- Digitimes rumors are notoriously baseless.

> far ahead

Losing external GPU support with apple silicon has become a major deal. In the age of AI tools like stable diffusion, performance per watt matters less if you lose the capability to scale up these kind of workloads. Gurman's report about the mac pro tower gave us reason to hope on this (that the upcoming mac pro will have eGPU support), but when it comes to MacBooks, let alone the pros, no one knows when/if the support will arrive and when/if nvidia support will be added.

Even there, it looks like Samsung is on track to beat TSMC to mass production of 3nm chips: https://www.reuters.com/technology/samsung-elec-starts-3-nan...

> Companies that cater mostly to luxury clients

Nah - look at what happened to the Boating industry in 2009. The values of jetskis, sailboats, etc took a major hit as demand dried up. Boats are considered luxury items

IMO, the Japanese surrender had just as much to do with the USSR opening a new front against the country (less than a month before) with its massive invasion of Manchuria, and its capitulation was similar in a way to German forces moving west to surrender to the US instead of the USSR.

Blog post author here, the title is altered because of the 80-character limitation.

The tldr; of the post: Despite multiple cases of hackers successfully scamming banks by impersonating people via deepfake audio, many big banks and ISPs are rolling out voice-based authentication at scale. Spectrum says "With Voice ID, you don’t have to worry about remembering security codes or passwords."

Dell XPS laptops not only pull of a bezel-less design, but also fit a webcam with infrared component for Windows Hello face unlock in there too. Apple has a notch with no Face ID.

the notch is a major design compromise and apple is not trying hard enough. i can not imagine paying six thousand dollars for a new laptop and literally staring into an unforced error every day. (See, Dell XPS bezel-less displays like this: https://twitter.com/SpencerDailey/status/1450170126360358914)

I hide my menu bar for maximum space, and you can't do that here without eating into your main apps' vertical space. the notch also reminds people of iphone features, which makes a touch screen an even more obvious omission, as well as Face ID. (FaceID is trending on twitter b/c people assume this laptop ships with it: https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1450162489795170307 )

Many people take the following maximalist stance: "Apple can't save users' privacy in China, nor can it push back against laws, so therefore it's unreasonable to ask them to hold the privacy line." But for every China there is a Brazil, Hungary, or India.

For every "completely authoritarian" regime, you have handfuls of (historically democratic) governments on their way toward authoritarianism. In these countries, it's often not the laws calling the shots but the politicians that happen to be in charge at that moment.

Even in democracies with laws as guardrails, presidents will push for data on political opposition - at times threatening techies along the way (see: Brazil jailing WhatsApp execs for access to data [0], Twitter/India raids, or, in the USA: Trump DOJ asking Apple to turn over info on House Dems [1])

Simply "doing what you're told" around the world (no-questions-asked, aka "being in the arena" as Tim Cook says) will turn you into an enabler of authoritarianism, and not just in totally FUBAR countries like China but in many nations with a lot of freedom at stake.

0 - https://washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senior-fa...

1 - https://www.techmeme.com/210610/p51#a210610p51

From: https://twitter.com/SpencerDailey/status/1426008754143776771

Author here: I decided to alter the title to satisfy character limit constraints.

Regarding the "list": Amnesty said 34 iPhones were forensically checked. 23 successfully had malware (specifically NSO's Pegasus) installed on them. The other 11 saw attempts at malware infection. [0]

That's a 100% hit rate on their sampling of the "list".

That makes this statement demonstrably false: "The numbers in the list are not related to NSO group." At this point, why would you even care to read the rest of this statement if it includes a bald-faced lie at the top? (You would have to disbelieve both Amnesty and Citizen Lab (who provided peer review) to see it as anything but a lie.)

But, as others are saying, NSO contradicts itself with respect to what it says it does and does not know about who is attacked with Pegasus. Here's a good thread on that: https://twitter.com/zackwhittaker/status/1417127080672776192

This company's PR communications are so self-contradictory and deceitful that it's insulting.

[0] -https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/07/19/apple-i...

Author here: just noting I picked a title that was more fitting for HN's character constraints.

Precisely! Especially for your average Chrome extension from a developer you don't trust.

(Also, author here: I submitted the link with a shorter title that works best with HN's character constraints)

thanks cryptoz

I actually did try emailing Tim Cook a few months ago, but I got bounce backs. I tried tim@apple.com and timcook@apple.com but the mailer daemons said the addresses weren't registered. It sounds like a crazy thing to do, but I remembered how Steve Jobs would reply to users' emails and read an article where Tim said he set aside time to read users' emails.[0]

[0] - https://www.inc.com/business-insider/tim-cook-wakes-up-at-4-...

Author here: the gist is that it's practically impossible to scroll to the beginning of an iMessage chat, and that's the only way to get to the beginning of a conversation. These old conversations take up several gigabytes of space, yet there's no good way to search them (because search for old messages is unreliable).

This aspect of the iMessage user experience has remained untouched for a decade, despite everyone's chats growing longer. Searching for particular iMessages sucks because the results miss the broader context of the conversation (a single message is not useful when you want to reread a conversation).

(Also just noting, as the post author I created a title better-suited to HN's 80 character limit.)

Just wait a few months, when millions(?) who "own" ethereum on Robinhood realize not only do they not really own ETH, they actually "own" a security that tracks the price of Ethereum 1.x, and therefore can't upgrade to ethereum 2.0 or earn "staking" rewards. Proof of Stake is genuinely neat, but the transition to Ethereum 2.0 is going to be rocky because it will involve another hard fork that will create severe confusion for millions of Robinhood users. Furthermore, there are other cryptocurrencies, such as Tezos, which currently offer proof of stake, with staking rewards, etc. I don't get how Ethereum is better set up as a store of value at this point.

This is either a pretty elaborate disinformation campaign or … some pretty interesting stuff in terms of our understanding of physics.

It's also interesting how these alleged observations seem to exclusively happen within restricted US airspace over oceans - but not over US land.

Other UFO HN threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

My bet has to be on it being an elaborate disinformation campaign, to throw off our nationstate adversaries and keep the public in fear and/or distracted. It requires one to be super cynical, but our government has done worse to US citizens in terms of disinformation [0] (but not since the 70s that i know of).

That explanation accounts for why these sightings only appear to happen in the US, and is (to me) far more believable than an encounter with otherworldly technology.

At least with respect to the 2004 encounter, I think the least likely explanation is that the object belonged to another superpower - b/c it feels like something totally out of reach in multiple domains for 2004 tech.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=COINTELPRO%....