Indie iOS app developer with a passion for SwiftUI

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • There are a couple of concerns with biometrics.

    The big one is, as you already mentioned, spoofing biometrics.

    The FaceID or TouchID sensor essentially saying “I got that face/fingerprint that you have in your Secure Enclave”. Granted it is a sophisticated attack, but nevertheless one you’d want to prevent if only because it’s good practice to maintain a secure chain in which the individual links can trust each other.

    For similar reasons the lockdown mode exists, which is mainly useful in limited scenarios (e.g. journalists, dissidents, etc).

    On the other hand, if ever there was a potential attacker, it would be a government because they unlimited funds in theory and it isn’t hard to imagine the FBI trying to utilize this in the San Bernardino case if it was available.

    A different risk, which would make the above quite a bit easier to accomplish, would be an altered biometrics scanner that, in addition to working the way it’s supposed to work, stores and sends off your biometrics or simply facilitates a replay attack.


  • Lossless is understood to have a bitrate of at least 1411kbps, or about 1.4Mbps.

    Theoretical sustained bandwidth capability of Bluetooth on the 2.4Ghz spectrum is 1Mbps, but in practice it’s a chunk lower in part due to overhead.

    Even if we assume if you could just cram a higher bitrate through a smaller bandwidth (spoiler, you can’t), everyone would be up in arms about Apple lying about lossless and class action suits would ensue.

    That said, you can’t. This is not like your internet connection where you’ll just be buffering for a minute.

    As for what is and isn’t perceptible, I think you’re mixing up your tonal frequencies with your bitrates here.


  • Honestly the most frustrating part is that there is plenty to criticize Apple on, so there’s no reason to get caught up in fabricated clickbaity nonsense.

    But instead of focusing on genuine concerns, people would rather hop on some misinformation train.

    All the while, if you espouse opinions that are bit more nuanced than “Apple bad”, then you must be a bootlicker like you said.

    It’s as if people are more concerned about missing out on joining the hype and showing off their armchair skills, rather than exercising a modicum of critical thinking.


  • Obfuscating what you have to do ≠ not providing you with a roadmap on what you have to do.

    If they didn’t obfuscate it there would be many tools out there already to let it be done.

    This is a non sequitur.

    It doesn’t automatically follow that a lack of tools means there is obfuscation. The simple fact that there can be many reasons why tools aren’t widely available alone breaks that logic.

    But I’d say the fact that we already know exactly why difficulties arise when replacing parts, definitely proves that there’s no obfuscation.

    Which again circles back to the difference between anti-repair and not pro-repair.

    Just because Apple doesn’t go out of their way to provide a roadmap and hold your hand and as a result you are having difficulties when you’re trying to do it yourself, doesn’t mean they are actively thwarting you.

    Apple doesn’t even think about you and me, their concern is to facilitate their own repair processes.

    They literally serial lock almost half of their parts.

    They don’t.

    Aside from biometrics none of the parts are serial locked.

    What you’re thinking about is parts based factory calibrated data loaded into the parts from a central database.

    Just because the system ignores the calibration data once the part doesn’t match the one the calibration was intended for, doesn’t mean it’s “locked”, it just means that you’re trying to use calibration data for the wrong part.



  • I’m not sure if you’re serious or trying to be sarcastic.

    Bluetooth and WiFi are two different things.

    For starters standard Bluetooth operates on 1MHz wide channels, BLE on 2MHz wide channels, whereas WiFi (nowadays) operates on 20 or 40 MHz wide channels.

    Modern Bluetooth (on 2.4Ghz) can theoretically do bursts of 2Mbps, but in practice even 1Mbps is hard to hit in a sustained fashion.

    2.4Ghz is just a frequency band and is not the same as bandwidth.

    You might as well argue that a pickup truck and a formula 1 race car should be able to reach the same top speed in the same time because their wheel distance is the same.

    I think […]

    Think again




  • Like some have pointed out there are ways to circumvent this, but it doesn’t make for a great experience, might cause issues down the line in particular with updates and there’s no guarantee it’ll keep working.

    If you’ve purchased this form your company’s surplus and they refuse to unenroll from MDM I’d just give it back and ask for my money back, it’s not worth the hassle and the warranty is a nonsense reason since they can take the MBP off of their warranty service plan.


  • This reads as incredibly condescending, naive and duplicitous, filled with hubris.

    For starters, the whole “yeah sure XMPP got EEE’d but who cares, only nerds cared about that, lol” is not only false (e.g. Jabber), but also does nothing to quell concerns.

    Here’s an account by someone who was in the XMPP trenches when Google started adopting it.

    Notice something? The “omg so cool!”, this is exactly the same as Rochko.

    It’s the hubris when you’re a FOSS maintainer who toiled away for years without recognition and now a $700B+ corporation is flattering him by wanting to use/interact with his work.

    The blog is a far cry from the anti-corporate tone in the informational video from 2018.

    Then there’s the fact that Rochko is extremely tight lipped about the off the record meeting with Meta and consistently refuses to deny having received funds from Meta and refuses to pledge not to accept any funds from Meta.

    There’s also the unsatisfactory answer he gave to people who started questioning some dubious sponsors and the fact that he rushed to lock the thread, killing any further discussion.

    I genuinely think the dude is just so hyped for the perceived recognition, that he lost the thread.

    So much so that he thinks Mastodon is untouchable.

    And it’s extremely naive to think that Meta has benevolent motives here or that Mastodon will survive any schemes Meta might have.
    What’s more realistic is that Mastodon will die because people will flock to Threads if their social graph has moved over.

    Similarly these lofty and naive ideas that people on Threads will make the switch to Mastodon once they get a taste of what it has to offer.

    So now all of a sudden the “difficulty” to get started in Mastodon, that is keeping people who want a polished corporate experience away isn’t going to be an issue?

    Especially when in the “extinguish” phase Meta will have siloed off from Mastodon and its portability function, having to leave their social graph behind?

    It’s all so increasingly naive, one can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional sabotage at this point.

    Mark my words, this’ll be the end of Mastodon especially when Meta can outspend Mastodon all day every day to add proprietary functionality.

    Sure perhaps years from now a few hundred to a few thousand people might still use it, but it will be as irrelevant as XMPP is to most people, and Rochko with it.

    @[email protected] in 2 years.