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thejsa

46 karma · joined January 11, 2020

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thejsa··on Apple introduces iPad mini built for Apple Intelligence
The battery was the main reason I moved from my 12 mini to a 15 (save for USB-C) — just wasn’t holding up, even after a replacement. I still hold out for a 17 mini, though.
thejsa··on Epic Games Store and Fortnite Arrive on EU iPhones
It’s the same bits, just with feature flags for things like eligibility to install third party stores.
thejsa··on Apple okays Epic Games marketplace app in Europe
In case it’s helpful- apparently you can just use a secondary Apple ID (even one made just for this use) with AltStore and it works just as well without risking one’s main ID. (Though for 365 day signing, that’d also need to be added to its own, or a non-individual, dev team.)
thejsa··on SSSL – Hackless SSL bypass for the Wii U
Telemetry on the 3DS is minimal compared to what Nintendo put in place on the Switch — you’ll be alright, especially if you use the Pretendo online servers.
thejsa··on SSSL – Hackless SSL bypass for the Wii U
We [0] did for a while - discovered by the same dev as found SSSL — and sat on it for a long time at Kaeru, but it was independently discovered [1] and reported to Nintendo by someone else, so it unfortunately got patched before EoL.

[0]: https://twitter.com/KaeruTeam/status/1340021213352128512

[1]: https://github.com/MrNbaYoh/3ds-ssloth

thejsa··on Fireworks and Confetti: Apple Video Feature Wreaks Havoc at Meetings
Apple have at least added a way for developers to set the per-app default in the latest releases - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ios-ipados-release... - which Chrome appears to make use of already.

I do agree though - online meetings could do with a bit more fun and whimsy.

thejsa··on Engineer bought prison laptop and 1,200 incarcerated folks lost their devices
The article covers this:

> So how does a prison laptop end up on eBay?

> The laptop that Zhang bought came from a state whose corrections department contracts with a Milwaukee-based nonprofit to dispose of its old laptops. But instead of recycling the devices, the organization resold them, selling out of 100 Securebooks after Zhang’s post went viral.

thejsa··on Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union
The main obstacle I see is the €1mm letter of credit, to be honest.
thejsa··on BrowserEngineKit – Apple Developer Documentation
I don’t remember where I read it, admittedly, but apparently the iPad didn’t cross the market share thresholds or something like that; would be happy to be wrong.

Suppose we’ll see in due course whether the European Commission takes them to task on it…

thejsa··on BrowserEngineKit – Apple Developer Documentation
Unfortunately, from what I can tell, Apple is only being forced to open up iOS (iPhone), not any other platforms like iPadOS, and they’re not doing a jot more than they have to here.
thejsa··on Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union
> You can already do that today

Not if you want to use a JIT compiler or multiprocess support

thejsa··on Mozilla's new Firefox Linux package for Ubuntu and Debian derivatives
> the infamous “We Need More Deplatforming (2021)”[1] article

That seems a misquote; the title of the article you link is "We need more than deplatforming", and it isn't apparent to me that it advocates for deplatforming at all.

thejsa··on Free Godot engine port for Nintendo Switch
Not without a Nintendo SDK license agreement and signing their NDA.

On the other hand, there’s a nice homebrew port you could certainly use that’s been around for years:

https://github.com/Stary2001/godot

thejsa··on App store to be 'split in two' ahead of EU iPhone sideloading deadline: report
> The regulation doesn’t allow you to mmap w^x willy-nilly

Yesn’t; I don’t think the regulators would look kindly upon Apple restricting third-party JITs, since it’d give Safari/WebKit an unfair competitive advantage over other browser engines on iOS (something I believe the DMA is also meant to open up.)

thejsa··on The Piccadilly line’s new air conditioned trains
Yes, given the size constraints of the deep-level Tube tunnels, which are much smaller than those for mainline trains; apparently developments in small air con systems have helped a fair bit here, fifteen odd years ago apparently it just wasn’t feasible.
thejsa··on Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads
On my iPhone, selecting this option brings the ads straight back, unfortunately.
thejsa··on Receiving unintentional voice transmissions from GPS satellites
Even listening is in a grey area in the UK; it’s a separate offence to “use wireless telegraphy apparatus with intent to obtain information as to the contents, sender or addressee of any message” where you aren’t an intended recipient. But the intent bit is probably hard to prove in practice.
thejsa··on Apollo’s Christian Selig explains his fight with Reddit – and why users revolted
Unfortunately, the App Store (and Play Store) rules ban this sort of thing — any access to third party web services needs to be in line with their terms of service.
thejsa··on Dolphin on Steam Indefinitely Postponed
Mostly relevant to Steam Deck users; a proper Steam release would offer better system integration, Steam Cloud, Steam Input, etc. as I understand it.
thejsa··on AT&T Wireless traffic shaping apparently making some websites unusable
Out of interest, which Three plan (& APN) are you on?

I’m working on using a Smarty (Three UK-owned budget label MVNO, for those unaware) SIM card in a 5G modem as a backup line, and haven’t been super impressed with speeds — so curious about trying your tip.

thejsa··on AltStore – An alternative app store for non-jailbroken iOS devices
Re: the gifted trojan device scenario, I think the primary line of defense would be to display a prominent boot time warning in the bootloader where a non-Apple root of trust has been used, just as many Android devices do already -- perhaps similar to the recovery screen, but with more warning signs and an open lock symbol or something.
thejsa··on Why MPs have two mobile phones
> Why would android even allow such restrictions to be enabled in the first place?

To enforce DRM in streaming apps, mostly; though other apps have ended up bodging that for their own purposes.

I suppose at least in the context of secure messaging or banking apps (which also do this) it makes you think twice before snapping something, but even so I think there should be a variant of whatever API which lets the user override it / disable it globally.

Only genuine security concern I can think of that it addresses is that of screen recording malware / stalkerware (assuming said malware doesn't already have root access on your device to circumvent it...), and perhaps the risk of accidentally screenshotting/capturing something sensitive like bank details while screen sharing.

thejsa··on Face ID and Touch ID for the Web
My understanding is that the permissions popup is used for the registration flow (generating & enrolling a key into the Secure Enclave), and after that if there are existing credentials, it's just 'Touch ID to login'.
thejsa··on WSL Getting GUI Support
Not so much with WSL 2, which Microsoft are focusing on at the moment; WSL 2 runs a real Linux kernel in a lightweight Hyper-V VM with lots of jazzy integration services.
thejsa··on I wrote Task Manager and I just remembered something
Have you tried clicking the ‘End Task’ button twice? It’s arguably rather unintuitive, but in my experience the first click seems to send a ‘politely quit’ signal and the second results in the merciless massacre which hasn’t failed me yet.
thejsa··on Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube
If you haven’t already, maybe try the plain HTML [0] or (failing that) Lite [1] version of DDG.

[0]: https://ddg.gg/html

[1]: https://ddg.gg/lite

thejsa··on Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube
I believe it was that YT was using the legacy v0 shadow DOM API that only Chrom[e|ium] supported, with a slow polyfill for other browsers, rather than the much better supported v1 API that all other major browser makers agreed to implement.
thejsa··on Security Flaws in Adobe Acrobat Reader Allow Gaining Root on macOS Silently
I believe on Windows the FlexNet DRM they use(d?) would overwrite Sector 32 and/or sometimes other nearby ones [0], which broke a fair few people’s GRUB2 bootloader installs as well as TrueCrypt as Flexera apparently didn’t check to see if it was in use for something else first.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexNet_Publisher#Issues_with_...

thejsa··on Nintendo has reportedly suffered a significant legacy console leak
Their copy protection schemes do largely stem from the basic ‘signed personalised tickets’ thing they’ve had going on since the iQue Player and then the Wii, but insofar it seems to have held up to attacks and no fatal fundamental flaws have been found yet. Short of software exploits, until 2048-bit RSA is broken it’s not a concern really
thejsa··on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS’ snap obsession has snapped me off of it
It doesn’t seem to do that on my Ubuntu 18.04 / 20.04 servers; I haven’t tried on desktop though as I don’t use Ubuntu there, would indeed be a huge violation of my expectations of how a system should work if so.
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