On modern versions of macOS, you simply can't power on your computer, launch a text editor or eBook reader, and write or read, without a log of your activity being transmitted and stored.
It turns out that in the current version of the macOS, the OS sends to Apple a hash (unique identifier) of each and every program you run, when you run it. Lots of people didn't realize this, because it's silent and invisible and it fails instantly and gracefully when you're offline, but today the server got really slow and it didn't hit the fail-fast code path, and everyone's apps failed to open if they were connected to the internet.
Because it does this using the internet, the server sees your IP, of course, and knows what time the request came in. An IP address allows for coarse, city-level and ISP-level geolocation, and allows for a table that has the following headings: Date, Time, Computer, ISP, City, State, Application Hash
Apple (or anyone else) can, of course, calculate these hashes for common programs: everything in the App Store, the Creative Cloud, Tor Browser, cracking or reverse engineering tools, whatever.
This means that Apple knows when you're at home. When you're at work. What apps you open there, and how often. They know when you open Premiere over at a friend's house on their Wi-Fi, and they know when you open Tor Browser in a hotel on a trip to another city.
Now, it's been possible up until today to block this sort of stuff on your Mac using a program called Little Snitch (really, the only thing keeping me using macOS at this point). In the default configuration, it blanket allows all of this computer-to-Apple communication, but you can disable those default rules and go on to approve or deny each of these connections, and your computer will continue to work fine without snitching on you to Apple.
The version of macOS that was released today, 11.0, also known as Big Sur, has new APIs that prevent Little Snitch from working the same way. The new APIs don't permit Little Snitch to inspect or block any OS level processes. Additionally, the new rules in macOS 11 even hobble VPNs so that Apple apps will simply bypass them.
@patrickwardle lets us know that trustd, the daemon responsible for these requests, is in the new ContentFilterExclusionList in macOS 11, which means it can't be blocked by any user-controlled firewall or VPN. In his screenshot, it also shows that CommCenter (used for making phone calls from your Mac) and Maps will also leak past your firewall/VPN, potentially compromising your voice traffic and future/planned location information.
Those shiny new Apple Silicon macs that Apple just announced, three times faster and 50% more battery life? They won't run any OS before Big Sur.
Related Stories
Linus Torvalds doubts Linux will get ported to Apple M1 hardware:
In a recent post on the Real World Technologies forum—one of the few public internet venues Linux founder Linus Torvalds is known to regularly visit—a user named Paul asked Torvalds, "What do you think of the new Apple laptop?"
If you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, Apple released new versions of the Macbook Air, Macbook Pro, and Mac Mini featuring a brand-new processor—the Apple M1.
The M1 processor is a successor to the A12 and A14 Bionic CPUs used in iPhones and iPads, and pairs the battery and thermal efficiency of ultramobile designs with the high performance needed to compete strongly in the laptop and desktop world.
"I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux," Torvalds replied. "I've been waiting for an ARM laptop that can run Linux for a long time. The new [Macbook] Air would be almost perfect, except for the OS."
[...] In an interview with ZDNet, Torvalds expounded on the problem:
The main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it, because that's likely what would hold me off using it because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up... [that] seems unlikely, but hey, you can always hope.
[...] It's also worth noting that while the M1 is unabashedly great, it's not the final word in desktop or laptop System on Chip designs. Torvalds mentions that, given a choice, he'd prefer more and higher-power cores—which is certainly possible and seems a likely request to be granted soon.
Previously: Apple's New ARM-Based Macs Won't Support Windows Through Boot Camp
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
New report reveals Apple's roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon
Citing sources close to Apple, a new report in Bloomberg outlines Apple's roadmap for moving the entire Mac lineup to the company's own custom-designed silicon, including both planned release windows for specific products and estimations as to how many performance CPU cores those products will have.
[...] New chips for the high-end MacBook Pro and iMac computers could have as many as 16 performance cores (the M1 has four). And the planned Mac Pro replacement could have as many as 32. The report is careful to clarify that Apple could, for one reason or another, choose to only release Macs with 8 or 12 cores at first but that the company is working on chip variants with the higher core count, in any case.
The report reveals two other tidbits. First, a direct relative to the M1 will power new iPad Pro models due to be introduced next year, and second, the faster M1 successors for the MacBook Pro and desktop computers will also feature more GPU cores for graphics processing—specifically, 16 or 32 cores. Further, Apple is working on "pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest-end machines" for 2022 or late 2021.
New Mac models could have additional efficiency cores alongside 8/12/16/32 performance cores. Bloomberg claimed the existence of a 12-core (8 performance "Firestorm" cores, 4 efficiency "Icestorm" cores) back in April which has not materialized yet.
The Apple M1 SoC has 8 GPU cores.
Previously: Apple Announces 2-Year Transition to ARM SoCs in Mac Desktops and Laptops
Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
Linus Torvalds Doubts Linux will Get Ported to Apple M1 Hardware
Initial Patches Posted for Bringing up Linux Kernel on Apple Silicon M1 Hardware
Initial Patches Posted For Bringing Up The Linux Kernel On Apple Silicon M1 Hardware
It was over the weekend that Corellium began posting their work of Linux booting on the Apple M1. It's now to the extent they can get Ubuntu's Raspberry Pi ARMv8 desktop image booting on Apple M1 hardware to a GUI albeit without any hardware acceleration. The Apple M1 graphics support will remain the big elephant in the room given the big challenges involved in bringing up an entirely new OpenGL/Vulkan driver stack and needing to carry out all of that reverse engineering first under macOS.
Apple M1 Open-Source GPU Bring-Up Sees An Early Triangle
The open-source/Linux Apple M1 work continues to be quite busy this week... The latest is Alyssa Rosenzweig who has been working on reverse-engineering the M1 graphics processor has been able to write some early and primitive code for rendering a triangle.
Alyssa Rosenzweig of Panfrost fame has been working to reverse engineer the Apple M1 graphics as part of the Asahi Linux effort with developer Marcan.
This week the milestone was reached of drawing a triangle using the open-source code. It's an important first milestone but important to keep in mind that this isn't an initial driver triangle but rather hand-written vertex and fragment shaders with machine code for the M1 GPU. Those hand-written shaders are submitted to the hardware via the existing macOS IOKit kernel driver. If not clear enough, this was done on macOS and not the early Linux state as well.
Previously: Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
Linus Torvalds Doubts Linux will Get Ported to Apple M1 Hardware
ARM-Based Mac Pro Could Have 32+ Cores
Apple Pulls the Plug on User-Found Method to Sideload iOS Apps on M1 Mac
Apple has announced two new Arm SoCs for its upcoming MacBook Pro laptops. Both share the same CPU, but differ in GPU and RAM size.
The Apple M1 SoC for Macs has 8 CPU cores: 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. The newly announced M1 Pro and M1 Max have 10 cores: 8 performance cores and 2 efficiency cores. CPU performance (multi-threaded) is about 70% faster, at around a 30 Watt TDP (M1 Pro) instead of 15 Watts for the M1. The 16-core "neural engine" with 11 TOPS of machine learning performance is unchanged from the M1.
While the M1 has an (up to) 8-core GPU with 2.6 TFLOPS FP32 of performance, the M1 Pro doubles that to 16 cores and 5.2 TFLOPS, and the M1 Max doubles it again to 32 cores and 10.4 TFLOPS. The M1 Pro is comparable to an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti discrete laptop GPU, while the M1 Max is comparable to an RTX 3080 laptop GPU. These levels of performance are achieved at around 30 Watts for the M1 Pro and 60 Watts for the M1 Max, compared to around 100-160 Watts for laptops with discrete graphics.
The M1 Pro has around 33.7 billion transistors fabbed on TSMC "5nm" in a 245 mm2 die space, while the M1 Max has 57 billion transistors at 432 mm2. The M1 Pro will include up to 32 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and the M1 Max will include up to 64 GB.
Also at Wccftech.
See also: Apple Announces The M1 Pro / M1 Max, Asahi Linux Starts Eyeing Their Bring-Up
Previously: Apple Has Built its Own Mac Graphics Processors
Apple Claims that its M1 SoC for ARM-Based Macs Uses the World's Fastest CPU Core
Your New Apple Computer Isn't Yours
Why is Apple's M1 Chip So Fast?
ARM-Based Mac Pro Could Have 32+ Cores
Booting Linux and Sideloading Apps on M1 Macs
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @11:33AM (20 children)
Not being a brain-damaged millennial, I wouldn't buy a piece of shit overpriced Apple computer in the first place.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shrewdsheep on Saturday November 14 2020, @11:54AM (4 children)
You can get one fore free, legally: https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox [github.com]
Works well, but I do not know what to do with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:21PM
Play some games? Maybe chess will work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @01:25PM (1 child)
After "fixing" with dos2linux
All dependencies satisfied.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Saturday November 14 2020, @04:26PM
Just a user of the scripts, so I am not be able to help much. Only remark that might help: you really have to follow the instructions, mainly waiting with pressing return until asked. The underlying shell script can inject key presses but cannot detect completion of the steps. In my first try, I followed my youth habit in not reading instructions en plowing on as seemed logical. That failed miserably, and I do not remember the error message I got. Second remark is that resetting the password in MacOS seems hard. I actually managed to mistype a standard password twice so that I couldn't log in after the install. I figured it out in the end but otherwise I would probably have had to reinstall (which I wouldn't have done). I was marginally interested in Xcode but for that I would have to create an Apple ID. Couldn't be bothered for now, so I zipped the image.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Saturday November 14 2020, @03:01PM
Another version is here - https://github.com/foxlet/macOS-Simple-KVM [github.com]
Works by creating a headless install that uses VNC to use it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @11:55AM (1 child)
That is completely unfair. Apple Phanbois aren't something new, that appeared with the millennial generation.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @09:56PM
Plus fascists will have a hard time reconciling neoliberal promotion of generational division with fascist promotion of youth.
But likely Trump Youth do not count as millennials.
(Score: 4, Funny) by deadstick on Saturday November 14 2020, @02:23PM (10 children)
79 years old, computer user for 56 of them, >=1 personal computing device on hand since the Atari 800, and I've never possessed an Apple product. I see a pattern developing.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @03:41PM (1 child)
Congratulations, but in United Soviet America, Apple products possess YOU.
Also, sorry about your dead stick, but they have little pills to fix that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @03:06AM
A razor-sharp hatchet and propane torch can also fix it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:15PM (7 children)
I never owned one until 2006 when a fanboi gave me a job paying $115K/yr + new MacBook, and two 30" monitors and a pro at work.
Then in 2009 we won a free iPad One, which was actually a pretty killer product for a year or two before they remote-nuked it with mandatory software upgrades.
We did buy a couple of replacement "upgrade" iPads after that, but each successive generation was less and less impressive in terms of quality and especially durability.
Cable durability has always been a problem with every portable Apple product we have owned, it's like their razor blade strategy.
Oh, and Dad gave us a University cast-off iMac he got for $25 at the school sale. Eventually replaced that with a new one under an educational grant for the kids - it's great for what they use it for, which is basically YouTube, but otherwise it's nothing special.
I do believe when the current crop of products finally die, they will not be replaced with more rotting fruit - there's just no incentive.
Back when I worked for the fanboi, we did some analyses of the "value" of Apple computers, and it came down to this: if you want EXACTLY what Apple is pushing, the computers were competitively priced as compared to PCs of the same spec. Well, except for RAM, Apple RAM prices have always been for sucker-chumps. The Apple computer products came in, of course, near the top end of PC quality levels, but by no means the absolute best in performance, and often not the absolute best in available appearance/form factor, but to get that superior performance/appearance in a PC you'd be paying more than for the Apple. Then they tried to differentiate on software, but sort of mostly failed there except for in a few niches.
Sure, plenty of people love their Apples because they're easy to shop for (lack of choice), and they find the software intuitive - though a well configured PC is just as intuitive, powerful and beautiful on the software side for the vast majority of users - but, there's the rub: the vast majority of users can't, or won't, be able to shop for a PC that meets their criteria and then configure it to their needs - so they pay that premium for the Apple products. Well, of course I'm just going on about people who actually use their PCs and think about things.
The real value of the bitten fruit is, of course, that it is a social wealth signal and moves one closer to a "better" (looking) crowd of people. Can't afford Gucci, Rolex and Ferrari? At least you can afford an iPhone on a 2 year contract.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:26PM (1 child)
One of the guys I work for gave me an iPhone 6 a couple of weeks ago. I think he was itching for an upgrade. The Lightning connector had accumulated enough crud that he couldn't get it to charge. Not sure what was in it, but it was like dried clay. Carefully picked it out, carefully rinsed it with alcohol, and it's perfect. Not sure what to do with it though...
So do I tell him about the crud, or keep quiet knowing an iPhone 14 is coming to me in a couple of years... :)
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday November 14 2020, @10:21PM
Crud.
Cum.
Almost the same spelling.....
....hope you wore gloves to clean it! :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:41PM (1 child)
"when a fanboi gave me a job paying $115K/yr + new MacBook, and two 30" monitors and a pro at work."
I would have told him to keep the Mapple shit. Of course, i'm not a splay-legged whore.
(Score: 5, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 14 2020, @07:03PM
I did advise him that Apple was not the best way to go with his software development, he did NOT appreciate that advice at all and became an absolute Trumpy pouty "You're FIRED" bitch when he learned that I was unarguably right.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @10:13PM (2 children)
> social wealth signal
My social wealth signal is that I've arranged my life to not include a cell phone.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @01:51PM
That's my goal, but I have young kids and terminally ill parents. I don't want to miss any phone calls.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday November 15 2020, @10:29PM
Have your people call my people and we'll do lunch.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:20PM (1 child)
The people I know buying Apple computers, and devoted to the Apple ecosystem, are in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. Only the 30-somethings are Millennials, so you can't blame this on them. Honestly, I think the Gen-Xers are worse in most ways, which sucks for me because I'm one of them. But of course, the Boomers are the worst generation of all.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @09:54PM
As a GenXer, I'd debate the point with you, but I don't care.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 14 2020, @11:51AM (63 children)
Those who have chosen to live within the walled gardens will likely cheer this news, as they cheer at all news from their pope/shaman. Doing otherwise would be to admit that the garden might be less beautiful than they had believed. Each of them owns their own corner of the beautiful garden, and no ugliness can be permitted to exist in the garden and/or their imagination of the garden.
On IRC, I pointed out that Microsoft has it's own version of logging and reporting. "Telemetry" is the term used, like each computer is some kind of remote spaceship which must be kept track of.
The question is, do the common people ever have their fill of constant surveillance? How much longer will people put up with Big Brother looking over their shoulders, listening to every word, watching every action, judging and evaluating?
They always have the option to join us in *nix land, of course. *nix may be a bit less pretty, it may have some sharp edges here and there. But most Unix-likes are entirely free of surveillance*. The concept of ownership is highly respected here in *nix land. My computer is my computer, and it will remain my computer unless someone roots my machine.
*What is the status of Ubuntu? I remember when they were flirting with the concept of actively tracking installations. Ahhh, the answer to that is here: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/linux/ubuntu-reveals-desktop-telemetry-for-the-first-time/ [bleepingcomputer.com] So, the garden doesn't have a wall yet, but it does have boundaries marked.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:32PM
I use Linux on my primary system. I do have also have an old Mac because others want me to develop (mostly build binaries) for the Mac (if someone knows a way to do that, legally, without owning a Mac, that would be very welcome). Having such system, and people often asking me to run some proprietary program, I use it for that as well. It's basically a system that I don't trust for things that I don't trust. This way I can keep my primary system clean.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Saturday November 14 2020, @01:20PM (5 children)
Apple, specifically, has been heading this direction for years. I expect that the monitoring will increase and that more of the data will be required to be housed on their servers and that applications will soon have to be connected to the net to even run.
More generally this damage was warned of in advance and something to continue to strive to avoid, for those that know have an obligation to warn those that don't and to at least explain why they should care. Eventually if macOS or Vistan get enough control, they can end general-purpose computing. Having control of your computer is more than just being allowed to press buttons in repsonse to on-screen stimuli.
Which references an earlier article from eight years ago.
RMS has had a strong and consistenly accurate track record on topics to pay attention to. It's time to contact legislators, again.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @01:40PM (4 children)
Yes, ever since St. Steve got that cancer diagnosis the company has been going further and further to control what people are allowed to do on their systems. This particular thing seems to serve basically no legitimate purpose that couldn't be solved in any other way. This is effectively just something they're doing because they can.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 14 2020, @04:41PM (1 child)
Your interesting post made me wonder if Apple are afraid of losing market share without Jobs' ideas and direction. We already know Apple like to corral their customers and protect their platforms. So they're doing everything they can to further corral their customers, watch to see what they're doing and want and need.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:40PM
I think early on when he got diagnosed it was probably more about him trying to preserve his legacy. These days, it's hard to say why, but it wouldn't be surprising to me if it had something to do with a lack of ideas and leadership. At this point basically all the big names that drove Apple's success are gone and they've got such a massive pile of cash that they could probably stop selling anything and exist for years without laying anybody off and still have plenty of cash on hand.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:33PM (1 child)
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:57PM
Apple has always been a controller. The level of control has increased, but it's ~40 years.
Not always. The Apple II and Apple II+ came with both source code, schematics, and other specs. Laster, first versions of OS X were basically NeXTstep and were very heavily open source [apple.com]. I think that kind of peaked with Snow Leopard though. I say "open source" there instead of Free Software because while they understood the development model for a while they completely miss out on or even actively avoid the Freedom aspects. However, in between the II+ and OS X Snow Leopard they've been way too closed and way too into control. With the M1 it does look like they plan to make the lock-in as permanent as they can get away with. Due to the lack of oversight, they might be able to get away with a lot.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @04:22PM (34 children)
Do you have a smart phone? If so, is it outside one of the walled gardens? If so, awesome. I wrestled with installing CyanogenMod on a few devices years ago but didn't have any success. (I know CyanogenMod is now LineageOS.) I know a few other people personally that run Linux for their personal computers and use email hosting that isn't from one of the big providers, but I don't know anyone personally outside the Android and iOS ecosystem.
Roughly 99% of the common people lack the technical skill required to escape the walled gardens, and it's difficult to convince them that skill is worth acquiring. I think the worst offenders are in the tech industry. We are the 1% of people who do have the skill, and most of us are too lazy. How can I expect my wife the medical professional or my brother the accountant to learn how to escape Microsoft, Apple, and Google when I work with a bunch of Linux system administrators that all use Macs for their personal computers? One of my friends used to run a Linux User Group in a major city, and he gave up on Linux and uses Macs.
I run some flavor of Linux on all of my personal machines - an open source Linux distribution, not ChromeOS or Android. But I still have an Android phone. I'm contemplating a PinePhone.
Also, while there are plenty of great Linux options out there that are totally separated from Ubuntu, it's important to note that the same article you linked to on Ubuntu installation tracking notes that participation is opt-in at install time and the tracking code is open source. I don't think that qualifies as a step towards a walled garden, I take them at their word that they're just trying to figure out which applications and desktop environments people use the most to focus their support and development efforts.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 14 2020, @04:40PM (25 children)
I've owned a couple "smart" phones. Both times, I got sick of all the limitations, and simply stopped charging the batteries. They lie around now, as inert as a phone can be. Trying to remove pre-installed apps was too big a pain in the ass. Trying to install "unapproved" apps just as big a pain. Both phones were locked down tight by the manufacturer and/or the Telco that purchased them, so that the end user was just screwed completely.
Bad enough that the telcos log my metadata, I refused to share the actual data with them as well.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:03PM (10 children)
I don't trust smartphones with my "stuff", so I mostly use mine for simple web browsing, maybe occasionally email, and only using Dolphin browser for email, but I have no idea if it's secure, and I don't care as I have nothing to hide.
If it's Android, there's a learning curve, but you can "root" the phone, and use some tools to get cli access to the filesystem and pretty much do what you need to do. The ones I found and have used are "Minimal ADB and Fastboot". You connect through USB and run the DOS cli app, like: "adb shell" and you're logged in to the phone's Android / Linux.
From there it's a bit of a learning curve- Android does many things differently from most "normal" Linux / *nix process control, filesystem layout, etc., but it's do-able.
Someone recently gave me an iPhone but I haven't messed with it and have very little inspiration or need to.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:25PM (6 children)
Someone recently gave me an iPhone but I haven't messed with it and have very little inspiration or need to.
Wow, you must have some billionaire friends or something. A $1000 phone is not a small gift. And you're just letting it sit around? You must be loaded too. If someone gifted me a $1000 phone that I had no intention of using, I'd immediately put it up on Ebay. I won an Apple device at a company party, and since I don't use Apple crap, I immediately put it up for sale and got $100 for it, so I was pretty happy about that (I effectively got a $100 bonus for the trouble of making an appearance at a company party).
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:53PM
You might have logic-leapt. It's only an iPhone 6. Haven't checked its value, maybe $100-200? He just gave it to me last week, and I'm just playing with it to get to know iPhone OS / layout. I forget which version it is. I'll report back much later today. I'm not sure if it's carrier-locked, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't do all RF bands. It was a Verizon phone, but my cell account is through an MVNO on AT&T. Tried my SIM card in it. I think it worked, don't remember for sure. Other more important things to do. Yes, the guy's pretty wealthy, and I do very valuable work for him.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:59PM (4 children)
He didn't say it was a new iPhone. Nevertheless, unless it's ancient - say older than the iPhone 5S, it's probably worth something secondhand assuming it's in working order. People pay crazy money for used Apple gear, including stuff that Apple has cut support and updates for.
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Saturday November 14 2020, @09:47PM (2 children)
New iPhone 6 can be bought for about $120. Used you might get $50 for it, if it's in good shape. Not what I'd call crazy money but that's obviously relative.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Sunday November 15 2020, @05:52AM (1 child)
An iPhone 6 is going to be 5-6 years old, stuck on a version of iOS that's two major version out of date, and is going to have a questionable battery. On the upside, at least it has a headphone jack. I don't know where you'd get a new one as they've been out of production a while, but maybe there's some new-old stock around, with a possibly questionable battery too at this point depending how it was stored. Maybe $50 isn't too bad, but the used value of most other phones of that vintage are e-waste.
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday November 15 2020, @12:35PM
You can find them new with a quick search, altho obviously such stock is past it's "best by" date. I will concede that $50 is a heck of allot more than the zero most other electronics of similar age would fetch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @04:19AM
Only used (or unused) Apple gear that has some kind of historical value is worth something. The rest is worthless junk.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:29PM (1 child)
I don't trust smartphones with my "stuff", so I mostly use mine for simple web browsing, maybe occasionally email,
Why would anyone use a smartphone for anything really important? The form factor is such that it's nearly impossible to do any real work on. It's fine for looking up something on Wikipedia quickly, checking your emails quickly (but not replying unless it's a single sentence), and other quick tasks on-the-go, but the screen is just too small, and input is just so difficult, that it isn't suitable for anything really serious like editing documents, programming, serious web research (where you want to open multiple windows simultaneously), etc.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 16 2020, @03:54AM
Agree 100%. At the same time I'm somewhat curious / mystified at how so many people choose it as their primary information connection tool. For me the input is the worst. I touch-type pretty fast on a real keyboard, but have somewhat large fingers that touch-screens don't like. I could get a BlueTooth keyboard, but it's still a tiny screen, although I see well close-up. I might get a tablet but it'll have to be a real Linux distro before I trust it (no Android thank you).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @05:49AM
Have you tried Icecat? It can load plugins straight from the Mozilla app store
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:40PM
I have young kids, so I need a working phone all of the time to correspond with them, handle emergencies, and so forth. And just like the idiots that get roped into Macs or Windows when Linux will do, I find myself using a smartphone when a feature phone + separate camera + separate GPS would do.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday November 15 2020, @03:09AM (12 children)
I've accumulated a few smartphones. The old ZTE works very well for mapping wifi range, and for watching unsecured wifi with amusing names going by on the highway, but that's all it's done in years. The i6 someone gift me still has no job, tho some year I might get it a Ting account and make it live in the truck. The PocketPC (WinXP and a real keyboard) works great as a literal pocket PC, but at age 15 can no longer connect to a phone network. So what do I use? the dumbest flipphone ever made. Way less trouble, too retarded to do anything but make calls, and cost me 12 bucks (bought outright).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 16 2020, @04:15AM (11 children)
Could you configure one of your phones to be a mobile WiFi "hotspot", and connect the PocketPC through that?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 16 2020, @05:46AM (10 children)
That's an interesting thought, but in the course of trying to retrieve files for the previous owner, I've tried to get it to connect to both wifi and bluetooth, old, new, router, the ZTE, another PC, whatever I had -- and so far no joy. Sometimes they see each other and still don't connect. Same with USB.
If I could find a durn MiniSD card (or an adapter for a MicroSD), that would work for peeling off the files, but they seem to have had about two years on the market and are scarce as hen's teeth.
Dinked with it for a couple hours one day and didn't put a dent in the battery, and it's original. Too bad they don't all last that good!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 16 2020, @06:37AM (9 children)
There are lots of MiniSD cards and adapters on ebay and amazon (ebay's usually cheaper in my searches anyway). I don't remember ever coming across one. Some odd / unique camera cards back in the day, but not the MiniSD. But that's a great way to transfer the files.
If you go that route, check the phone's MiniSD card maximum capacity. You should be able to find the phone's specs online.
USB should work, but you might need specific drivers for Windows (assuming you're using Windows). Even if it does work, I've had odd situations where I couldn't get access to some things, even after "rooting" the phone.
An ADB toolkit might help, but it's fiddly. And there are many versions, and some work better with some phones and Android versions than others. I don't have any more specifics about what works with what, I just remember having to downgrade for one phone I have that's running Android 5.x.
What version Android is it running?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 16 2020, @07:46AM (8 children)
Micro to regular SD adapters, yeah, but Micro to Mini? haven't seen one. One of the specialty camera shops might have MiniSD cards, but they'd be pricey. It only has 48mb internal storage, but when I checked external storage support it was something like 32GB, or ridiculously larger than you'd ever see in a MiniSD card.
It doesn't run Android at all; it runs Windows Mobile, which is basically Micro-XP. Over USB, the XP64 system sees the device as a phone (apparently has all the drivers it needs) but does not see it as any sort of storage, and the phone can't see XP64. Linux didn't see it at all. I did try connecting a small flash drive, and it didn't see that either. I'm not convinced its USB port actually does anything other than charge it up and report its identity.
Sure would be nice if I could find a solution, cuz if I can get files on and off the thing, I'd use it as a literal PocketPC, given it has a pretty decent real keyboard and a teeny tiny version of Office, and apparently spectacular battery life.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @10:28PM (7 children)
Sorry, I'm a verbal moron. I meant: there are lots of MiniSD cards on ebay. Also, there are lots of MiniSD to USB, and MiniSD to SD, adapters on ebay. :)
Here's one, in Taiwan: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Original-Kingmax-2GB-MiniSD-Card-for-Old-Nokia-Phones/321979058322 [ebay.com]
And I just found this that you're looking for: https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-sets-HP-TF-to-SD-Micro-SD-to-Mini-SD-Memory-Card-Reader-Adapter-Converter/183871344100 [ebay.com]
Yeah, I don't know "Windows Mobile" at all, but I know XP pretty well. Not sure if there's something you can do- certainly you've done lots of web searches, right? Not sure about the phone's USB port. But the MiniSD FLASH card should hold what you need to sneaker-net over.
A friend of mine bought some "Pocket PCs" a few years ago- I think they were "iPaq" or some such, HP, something. He was going to use them for some data acquisition stuff but I think it ended up not working.
If it was up to me, there would be a law saying all storage in phones, tablets, etc., must be removable, easily, with minimal or no tools.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 17 2020, @11:08PM (6 children)
Wow, thanks. When I searched (ebay, Amazon, web at large) not a durn thing came up. These should do the job!
I found the manual and the help functions, and was not enlightened about why it would not play nice. Best guess on Bluetooth is that it was expecting something older... tried an older dongle (blank stare) and a 6 year old laptop (everything worked except that connect went nowhere). Wireless, IIRC, failed because it and router had no security protocol in common; didn't want to turn it off on my modem/router -- too much crap to disconnect (and prior bad experience with changing settings) -- and hadn't got round to dredging up one of the elderly good-for-nothings to try (which buried box are they in??) As to USB, might be it's 1.x, which sometimes just flat can't see 2.x anything.
It's this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cingular_8125_%28htc_wizard%29.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Really quite a nice little unit, solidly made, and decent performance for a lowly 200MHz CPU.
Hear hear on your proposed law for all storage being removable!!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @11:51PM (5 children)
Well, for my laws to take effect, I have to perfect my worldwide brain reprogrammer ray. :)
I haven't dealt with Bluetooth too much. I mean, made things pair, entered passwords / codes, etc., but never really troubleshot it. One thing I remember is that sometimes it can take a lonnnnnngggggg time to pair up. A.Noy.Ying.
Yeah, I'd surmise your WiFi is too new. I have a couple of older WiFi routers around that connect to most things older and most newer. It's a bit of fiddling, but you can pretty much disable the routing and DHCP and just use it as a media converter: Ethernet WiFi - it'll just pass the packets. But gotta program it first, and usually just between 1 computer and it- no other LAN stuff. But you knew that. :)
You're quite welcome for those finds. I don't like buying stuff from overseas but sometimes it's not available in the US (assuming you're in the US).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Wednesday November 18 2020, @12:26AM (4 children)
I am indeed in the US.... I buy a fair bit of small tech junk from China, and so far only one has failed to appear. Occasionally they show up in less than 48 hours! Anyway, being within the "not too much to lose" threshold, I went for it. Thanks again!
Know what you mean about reprogramming... when I become dictator, everyone will have flash ROM and a suitable port. :D
Yeah, I've got a bluetooth keyboard that takes so long you start to think the battery died... then discovered the phone didn't like it. They'd pair up but it wouldn't work. Grrrr.... The PocketPC and the laptop (Win8.1 Enterprise, cuz that's what came on it, and it's been relatively well-behaved) shook hands instantly, but the last connect step looked like it worked but nothing happened.
I R Not A Network Maven, so I didn't know that... one reason I like XP is that I point Explorer at the shared whatever (any of several PCs, printers, and external drives) and it instantly appears. Later Windows occasion some swearing (hoop jumping to share root of data drives, but at least it only needs to be done once), and the frustration with linux and networking never ends!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday November 18 2020, @02:14AM (3 children)
Yeah, I'm not running Win10 at home (well, one test computer) but at one place I work there are only a few computers. The main office manger has Win10. It used to see the shared resources on a Win7 machine I use there, but now no go at all. I assume MS have "updated" the Win10 machine so that it can not see the Win7 machine. Anything they can do to force people to "upgrade" to 10! My XP and 7 machines always played well, except recently I needed a Win7 machine to see a Linux Samba share and it just would not see it. I didn't spend much time on it. Ping worked. I'll work some more on it.
A guy I sort of knew a few years ago (tenant of someone I work for) was a very highly paid (250K) IT / development group (10+) manager at a major bank. At the time he said they all used Win8.1, and that it was the best Windows ever. He _hated_ 10. I've installed 8.1 and tuned it up for a friend. I know there's a way to disable the stupid tiles- maybe 3rd party software. I've been itching to put 8.1 on one of my several unused laptops. I have 7 on this one, and really had to play with some of the drivers. The latest versions would not work, and the manufacturer (Dell) doesn't provide Win7 drivers. I had to experiment with several. Was pretty annoying.
Oh- one thing I've found that can work well with Windows sharing- if you're comfortable doing it, use static IP on the machines, and don't expect Windows to find machines, just enter the share manually, like "\\192.168.1.45\shared_files\". Something's very wonky with Windows "discovery" process. I disable all of the "homegroup" and SSDP and other crap, so maybe that's hindering it, but it used to work with that stuff turned off.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Thursday November 19 2020, @01:04AM (2 children)
I have a few more or less permanent Win10 installs, but none gets used often enough to even remember I have 'em. (One only exists because the Lenovo workstation is in love with it and has an embedded license, but strenuously resisted XP64... which after numerous fails finally installed by accident or mistake, but then couldn't find an SAS driver that worked.) Can't complain about how Win10 runs (stable and adequate performance), but the interface is just too irritating, ALL the time, and we all know its obnoxious update habits. Also have a pile of castoff laptops that came with it, but it's been getting gradually replaced. BTW discovered that if you do your theming *before* it's connected to the network, it will usually allow that even when it's not activated... and then acts activated (no desktop or other nags) even tho deep in its bowels, it says it's not.
All I did with Win8.1 Ent. was install ClassicShell, and the stupid tiles automagically went away. Imported a nice dark theme from Win7 and improved its appearance enough that it doesn't make my eyes bleed. (Thought that wasn't supposed to work, but it did.) Only real problem I've had with it is that if it's pulling something across wifi, that 802.11ac hogs the ENTIRE connection and won't share at ALL, a problem I've never had with b/g/n and multiple other OSs. Otherwise it's been extremely well-behaved.
Yeah, they sure as hell busted something in network discovery as of Win7 (or maybe Vista, which I've barely dabbled with so don't really recall). It finds stuff when/if/maybe and loses most of 'em the moment you turn your back. I finally resorted to making a desktop folder full of shortcuts to the various shares, which at least doesn't wander off. I have a suspicion it's related to how now you have to enable the hidden Admin account (not the same one you see in Sharing Properties) to share the root of a drive, tho could be also the changes in Explorer where it tries to be "adaptive" with what it shows you. (Grrr, no, leave shit how I put it, dammit.) And it's not quite as stupid about it when it only has Workgroup and not Homegroup. XP/XP64 never gave me those problems!
As to linux, the one time I installed Samba, all it did was change how that PC was named on the network to "Samba server" and made it even more cranky. So now I just leave all that as default. Sometimes it'll show me all the Windows shares but not let me access 'em, but more often all I can see is the ONE share that it's decided is a permanent feature. (And why does it ask me for login credentials when there are none on the WinBoxen? apparently it wants its OWN login creds, wtf.) Peculiarly, a live CD may cheerfully access WinEverything, but once installed, it won't. Windows can see the linux PC, but is not allowed to touch its precious files under any circumstances. I've asked for help on a couple forums but got nothing useful. (If doing the obvious worked, I wouldn't be asking!) As noted I finally gave up and now use XP in a VM to schlep files to and fro; it sees everything no problem!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:06AM (1 child)
Wow, thank you for all that. Very informative and inspiring.
With Samba, you need a basic Linux OS login for the username you're trying to access the files with. IE, whatever login name you have in the Windows computer, needs to be a valid Linux username.
Then you run 'smbpasswd' to add the username to the /etc/samba/smbusers file. While there you can edit smb.conf and add 'null passwords = yes' if you want to allow users to have file access with no password, then use 'smbpasswd -n' to remove the password and things might work. But you have to set 'shares', 'netbios name' for the server's ah, well, netbios name.
Samba stores lots of good stuff in /var/lib/samba, and the password database in /var/lib/samba/private
Here's a working smb.conf, but edit stuff:
[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
server string = Variac1 Samba Server Version %v
netbios name = Variac1
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
security = user
passdb backend = tdbsam
load printers = no
cups options = raw
printing = bsd
printcap name = /dev/null
disable spoolss = yes
show add printer wizard = no
[homes]
comment = Home Directories
browseable = yes
writable = yes
available = yes
path = /home
directory mode = 0754
read only = No
[roots]
comment = only accessible by "root"
browseable = yes
writable = yes
path = /
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 19 2020, @07:58AM
And here I thought I was just griping about Windows. :)
[wakes up linux box]
Whoa, what sorcery is this??
So I find /etc/samba/smb.conf, and all I did was open it in Kate to look at the contents... which are mostly arcane instructions... closed Kate without saving, went back to the file manager, and suddenly....
WORKGROUP appears, as it has never done before. And under it, all my shares, with read/write.
WHAT DID YOU DO??!
Must be a magic wand around here somewhere... :D
Whether it'll stick remains to be seen, but ... will have to go over all smb.conf when I'm more awake; yeah, lots of stuff in there. Thanks so much!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday November 14 2020, @08:00PM (7 children)
"pinePhone"
Interesting. A lot cheaper than the librem phone and has hardware switches. Cheap enough that if it sucks I wouldn't feel burned. I'm going to look into that thing.
I used to be and OSX fanboi because it meant I could have a laptop and access certain media things which back in the 00s wasn't that easy. Being able to run X and interface with my linux machines made it a pretty sweet package, but the last good version of OSX was Snow Leopard and it's been going downhill fast since. I'd already decided I'd bought my last Mac, and so this story is only validation of that decision, but if I had been teetering on the edge, this story would have been the last straw.
Linux on laptops has gotten to the point where it's pretty damn fine. When the lockdown fell on us suddenly, as an emergency measure I put Linux Mint on a laptop we had laying around in the office, gave it to one of my assistants along with a telephone (IP based), explained the slightly different icons and organization for the browser, mail, calendar, word processor/spreadsheet, and messenger apps, explained which icon to click to make sure the VPN or WiFi was connected if she had some connectivity issue -- it was maybe a 15 minute phone call and the last we had on the subject. After about a week as things started to settle down, I asked if she wanted to take the Mac she used in the office home and use that instead. She said the laptop worked just fine for her and preferred to keep that. She's never asked a single question about the system -- she just used it.
We've gotten to the point with Linux that most hardware works and the UI is perfectly usable -- will there be edge cases where everything goes to shit? Yes of course. But honestly -- there have been edge cases on my OSX system where everything went to shit . Example: in OSX if you use the touchpad to do a certain type of selection with tapping you can't undo the selection with a separate mouse -- you must use the trackpad to unselect and until you use the touchpad, you can't use the mouse which was absolutely mystifying the first few times it happened to me. I think the issue is a triple click but can't say for sure. Anyway, nothing's perfect but Linux today is not the same as Linux in 1999 -- it's pretty damn easy these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @01:59PM (1 child)
I use only Linux on my desktops. On my laptops it's fine for most things, but suspend/resume is buggy and multi-monitor is buggy. I only use the laptop screen and it boots quickly enough that I just power off and power on instead of suspend/resume. I'm sure some Linux laptop experiences are better.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 16 2020, @05:52AM
Just for comparison... I use PCLinuxOS/KDE on various random desktops and laptops (the oldest from 2008), and never had a problem with suspend/resume or anything to do with sleep.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 16 2020, @07:57AM (4 children)
Why do you say Snow Leopard is the last good one? I don't normally do Macs (hate the interface) but I have Snow Leopard on a Hackintosh (Dell 9010, everything worked OotB except networking; didn't bother installing any kexts. Laggy with 8GB RAM; much better with 32GB). Have had halfhearted thoughts about upgrading [sic] it, but haven't got any further than the thought. Stories like this one make me reconsider even thinking about it.
That's a ...unique... bug you discovered... it sounds like something that was meant to be a feature but never got finished.
And likewise, I am grateful that linux has finally reached the point where it's the no-brainer instead of suffering through Windows 10!!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Tuesday November 17 2020, @07:58PM (1 child)
Post Snow Leopard it has been a bunch of stupid UI decisions making the system harder to use. Examples:
But those are just mere annoyances. The most annoying issue is that you get all these system overloading processes (as in you can feel the heat through the keyboard) so Spotlight can show you irrelevant crap that impairs your ability to get stuff done if you use it to try to find a file. It's more efficient, faster, and easier to use "find" and "grep" in the terminal than Spotlight. There are ways to turn Spotlight's daemons off, but once you do, you can't search your email box at all.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 17 2020, @09:59PM
I gather Spotlight is an indexing function? sound like it thinks it has to repeatedly index every byte. I always disable Windows indexing because it puts a lot of lag on the system, but haven't seen it turn the PC into a BBQ. I did note that on an i7 with 8GB RAM, which is plenty for any other OS to run slick, SL bordered on laggy; I suppose that's the reason.
That's a lot of stupid different-for-its-own-sake changes, for sure. And you gotta wonder if the people who designed 'em ever actually USE a computer for anything more strenuous than a paperweight, or test it outside of a kindergarten. BTW Snow Leopard has the backwards scroll wheel thing too; petty annoyance but you'd think ordinary logic (down is down, up is up) would prevail?? Apparently not. I didn't care enough to pursue it. As noted I don't really have a use for a Mac other than general interest in various OSs. Same reason I mess with ReactOS.
Saw somewhere today that the new MacOS is bricking some laptops... all I could think was .... here we go again!
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Tuesday November 17 2020, @08:01PM (1 child)
I've also done the hackintosh thing in the past -- had one running on some tiny computer I forgot the name of that used to come with ubuntu pre-installed. I wouldn't bother -- it's a dead end. The modern linux desktop is eminently usable, or at least I prefer it over anything else.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 17 2020, @09:49PM
Oh, I'm not expecting to use the Hackintosh as an everyday anything ... it's more persistent curiosity about various OSs (same reason tho I have a preferred linux, I still occasionally try out a bunch of whatever other distros come along). Haven't even had it up in a year; it's only still installed because it's too much bother to extract the 2nd HD from that system. Maybe someday I'll update it just to take a look, but as I've never like the Mac way, and have never been impressed with the astonishing array of drawbacks... for me, it'll remain a curiosity.
I have 9.2 on a G4 too, and about all I can say for it is that with more RAM and an SSD, it runs well enough to not tear your hair out.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @04:55PM (16 children)
I went to a Mac when Win10 came out with its malware baked into the op system. I'm not emotionally attached to Apple. I don't want to be tracked, or have telemetry, or whatever whoever is doing it cares to call it.
But after 30 years in IT, I don't want to be a sysadmin either. I long ago stopped considering dealing with computer problems on my home system as "fun". I just want it to fucking work. Yes, I'm a stinkin' user now. I don't want to go to Linux because I've tried it in the past (before I became totally world-weary), it didn't go well, and I just really don't want to fuck with it.
But here's the thing... is there a smartphone out there that isn't tracking users? Seriously, point me in the right direction if there is one, and it's not some half-finished hobby project or kickstarter scam. Because I'm not seriously going to give up on using a smartphone; it's my main communication device. And if my smartphone is already tracking me and everything I do, what the hell point is there in trying to dodge the tracking on my home computer?
I'm already on several lists of badthinkers to be rounded up, depending on who's in power this week. What's one more?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:20PM (11 children)
Admin used to be fun when things were (much) simpler, and you could get things to just plain work with minimal fiddling. Of course stuff built on stuff and more automation and software attempting to rewrite your config files and what we have now ...
It all reminds me of one of my hobbies: cars. They used to be very simple with a carburetor and Kettering ignition (coil, points, distributor). I'm okay with computerized cars, but sometimes it's a major nightmare to diagnose and repair, even for the dealers.
I haven't tried any yet, but there are some smartphone OSes that I assume you generally can get control of, and probably don't track you. There's LineageOS, which grew out of "CyanogenMod". You have to see if there's a LineageOS for your particular phone model though.
There's also the "PinePhone" that someone here has, and runs Linux (or maybe anything you want).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_operating_systems [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_firmware [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday November 16 2020, @08:08AM (10 children)
If I were in the market for another phone, I'd have to consider that PinePhone, or maybe experiment with KDE Mobile (next useless smartphone that comes into my hands may find itself being a test subject, and I saw somewhere that you can turn a Pi into a phone), for all the obvious reasons. If it's not yet perfect, well, I really just want a damn phone and maybe wifi, not a do-everything in a pocket-nuisance format.
Speaking of computerized cars... for umpteen years I drove a '78 Ford pickup. I'd go to my mechanic, point at whatever was leaking or broken, and say, "See that? Fix it." Problem solved. Meanwhile the whole rest of his shop was full of newish vehicles spending hours or even days hooked to the diagnostic computer, and he would gripe that sometimes they never did figure out what ailed 'em.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday November 16 2020, @03:48PM (9 children)
I do pretty much all my own car work, but I've known a couple of mechanics. Got it on good authority, from a dealer mechanic, that to reduce warranty work, the computers are "dumbed down" so as to ignore some pretty significant problems. A friend's car will stutter, stumble, and almost stall, yet the computer has NO trouble codes, no "freeze-frame" data. And to be fair, some things really are difficult to diagnose, because the idiots cut so many corners. One of my biggest gripes: no fuel pressure sensor on most cars until fairly recently. And yet, fuel pressure is a huge factor in injector flow and AFR. For example, the injectors on my car aren't linear- if fuel pressure drops below a certain point, there is NO flow due to a ball and spring check valve in each one.
And this is on topic in that it's not only Apple, but car makers have been hiding things and making it difficult for 3rd-party repairs for years, and have had "black box" recording too. And of course all kinds of reporting your driving back to, well, whoever it's going to.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 17 2020, @10:06PM (8 children)
Yikes, did not know about the dumbed-down diagnostic computers to duck warranty work... wondering how the heck that doesn't make a big juicy lawsuit, if only because time hooked to it is generally charged by the hour.
Yeah, it's become kinda all one thing for literally anything that has reporting capability... of course the real problem is that if data can go one way, it can go the other way, especially when auto updates are in the mix. The potential for fun and fuckery is endless.
I'll keep my dumb truck, fridge, washer, stove, microwave, doorbell, and OS, thanks very much.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 17 2020, @10:45PM (7 children)
Frankly I wonder about much of life, how things are allowed / legal / never get prosecuted. I surmise the dealers don't have definitive enough information to sue the manufacturers. And, due to emission laws, the manufacturers can just say "it's working correctly, to spec, and any 'tampering' will increase emissions and violate EPA regulations", and that's the end of the suit. Who could be more expert than the manufacturer? And what dealer would want to sue the parent company...
An interesting one is the TPS - throttle position sensor, which is usually a potentiometer, and as such, they wear out, become electrically noisy and erratic. The computer should see the spiky signal as a problem and flag it, but nope.
In general the PCM tries to keep you running, and will go into open-loop mode pretty quickly if it doesn't have everything it needs from the sensors. But no trouble codes!
You forgot toaster. Everyone needs an app to properly toast things, and to alert you when it's toast. And IOT garage door opener. Those are great to hack (for the criminals).
Sarcasm and jokes aside, I wouldn't mind my dryer alerting me when it's almost done, so I can get stuff out and hang it before it wrinkles up. But I surely don't need it to be network / Internet enabled. Well, it could be LAN -> WiFi -> phone but local only.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 17 2020, @11:19PM (6 children)
Yeah, it would have to be owners (as the party being harmed) doing a class action suit, not dealers/mechanics. And as you say, the manufacturers have an easy out, thanks EPA!
Also wonder how many needless repairs get done, because -- well, it doesn't tell us what's wrong, but from experience we know it's probably one of these several things; which one would you like to pay to attempt first? Overheard my old mechanic discussing such with a customer... it's probably THIS, and the repair costs $$$$, but we can't guarantee that's the problem or that it'll be fixed.
Oh yes, forgot about the toaster, the garage door opener, and not to mention the Murphy bed, so you can be pitched out of it at a suitably dark-o-thirty hour, awake or not, before it automagically puts itself away. [Cue the old sitcoms where someone would get stuck in a Murphy bed]
Some old mechanical dryers had an anti-wrinkle sensor and could be set to stop and BLAAAAT at the appropriate point. Of course, that only worked if your ear wasn't stuck to your phone, so you could hear it. :P
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Wednesday November 18 2020, @12:07AM (5 children)
Problem with the alarms in appliances: they annoy everyone except the person they're intended for. :-|
I'll fire up my Murphy bed botnet and see if I can catch you in it. It has weight sensors you may not be aware of. My favorite one is the snore sensor auto ejector.
Gobs and gobs of perfectly good sensors, actuators, etc., get replaced at the customers' loss. That and the labor. I've only dabbled here and there, but I'm pretty tech savvy. A lot of mechanics aren't and just guess away. Sometimes the trouble code is spot-on and you just replace the offending sensor and you're good to go. But there are a few situations where the computer gives a BS P code, and often that's because 2 or more sensors are bad. I tend to test the sensors individually. Sometimes, like a MAP sensor- I'll give it 5 VDC and measure the output while using a vacuum pump and gauge and calibration chart. I'm borrowing an analyzer that will show a small graph of most sensor outputs as well as DC value (when there's steady state).
Quite a few years ago I was most impressed by some mechanics using an oscilloscope and current probe (I don't even have one of those) to look at fuel pump power waveforms, and they could glean a lot of info from that.
Recently worked on a friend's Honda mini-van. Needed a starter, which required removing the throttle body and intake manifold. Wasn't as bad as it sounds, but the very long big starter bold was corroded and took more than an hour with a long wrench and huge force each tiny bit of movement there was room for. Anyway, after all that it still had problems "catching". I surmised weak fuel pump, but Honda does not put in a fitting to measure fuel pressure. Unreal. Not sure what they're thinking is on that, unless someone considered it a potential leak point. But I was wanting to do the fuel pump current waveform trick. Gotta get a current probe someday...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday November 18 2020, @12:43AM (4 children)
Next time I need a mechanic, you're hired :D Good'uns are wizards; they can practically fix an engine by laying on hands. I understand tolerably well so long as it's entirely mechanical, but when we get to the electronic miscegenations, not so much.
Occurs to me to wonder how many of today's sensor-laden cars would survive sitting in the woods for 30 years (or even one year), yet still start right up like an old Ford pickup. (Or like the 1967 two-stroke mower I found buried under a tree, where it'd been for at least 20 years... poured gas in the carb, pulled the cord, started right up and ran like a top. Actually ran too good... cranked the flywheel key using it to cut big weeds!)
Maybe it's just that Honda does some weird design choices. My sister had a '79 Civic hatchback. The reason she never replaced the worn-out shocks is cuz to get to 'em, you had to pull the engine, which seemed a trifle excessive, as did the bill.
Fooled your botnet -- I sleep on the couch. :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday November 18 2020, @02:00AM (3 children)
Your lights will be flickering to an encoded brain-programming message that will make you sleepwalk outside in the cold. But it'll wear off in time so you'll be okay after a while. :)
Thanks for the kudos. I've been taking stuff apart since childhood, and that's a few moons ago. At some point, partially out of fear, I learned to start fixing stuff and putting it back together. Then did it professionally. Well, still do.
There are quite a few automotive forums regarding PCMs, etc. There has been free software for tuning / reprogramming for more than 20 years. I have to give those people huge huge credit for reverse-engineering PCMs, often having no real information to go on. Most of the chips are marked with custom part numbers. I can be tenacious, but those people are far beyond me. I guess they collaborated, but I'm not sure how they found each other. Again, great respect and admiration.
A few of the softwares can run live, IE, I would have a laptop on my passenger seat, displaying any parameter I want to see while driving. It records the parameters, and you can look through the datalog and graphs and figure out where something's off. I did a lot of that in my 1994 Chevy Astro van. It had the most advanced pre-OBD2 (1996) computer. In fact, there are several companies selling aftermarket EFI kits based on that GM PCM. To program it you remove an EPROM chip, erase it (UV), and re-burn. That chip only has tuning parameters, including transmission stuff. The main CPU has internal ROM with the OS. Believe it or not, super clever people wrote an alternate OS (reminds me of cellphone alternate OSes) that you can run from the EPROM. It's amazing to me that people figured all of this stuff out. I wondered if some had some factory "leaks" of information. But it's do-able if someone's determined enough. Kind of like Linus being annoyed with MS and writing Linux.
Anyway, after a year or two of tuning, I put an original ROM image in the van and it ran like a very sick dog. So the effort was pretty good and I learned a ton.
There are really only a few sensors that mean much in a car. As I mentioned above (IIRC) I keep some spares with me. I've had to use them a couple of times. Can't imagine what it would have cost me to get the thing fixed at Joe's Garage. But I do miss the older carbs. Well, some of them. I was big on aftermarket Holley carbs. Still am if I can get time and money to work on one of my older cars.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 19 2020, @08:15AM (2 children)
That's just amazing dedication, tho I feel sorry for your van. ;) These folks may eventually save us from the zombie carpocolypse. Wonder if any of what they've done can be applied to what's going on with farm tractors? I guess they're resorting to hacking the durn things too, for lack of better access to the computer guts. Me, I don't dysmangle anything more complicated than old lawn mowers... tho in days of yore I did get fairly good at fixing manual typewriters (cuz I wore 'em out), at least so long as I could still get parts.
Well, time to go test your brain coding skills. I hope your sleepwalking program doesn't land me in the river. :D
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 24 2020, @06:23AM (1 child)
I've got a Selectric or two you can HAVE. Some typeballs or whatever they call them too. One of them has solenoids and key switches- it was actually part of a very early word processor of some kind. You know you want them.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday November 24 2020, @07:11AM
Haha, you just want someone to haul them away... at her work my mom had one of the first Selectrics with proportional type. Lordy was that thing a jammer. Left it behind when I moved. I'd have kept the Silver-Reed with 15-pitch and the Brother with the 25k of *linear* memory (and some sort of partitioning software built in), but both were well past their best-by date and had lost their little electronic minds, and tho they could do a few things computer printers can't (at least not without lots of fiddling with advance)... not worth getting fixed.
I'd like to find another good manual typewriter, tho... after Things Fall Apart, you never know when you'll need one for samizdat. :P
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @06:50PM (2 children)
If you have the money to spend, a Dell XPS that comes preinstalled with Ubuntu or a System76 device preinstalled with their Ubuntu derivative PopOS "just works" without headaches. And in my experience, mainstream Linux distributions these days install and work flawlessly on most desktop hardware. Otherwise, laptops are still a problem if you install it yourself because you might hit issues with external monitors, suspend and resume, or poor battery life.
Again, I have an Android smartphone so I don't have the right or the will to judge anyone for using Apple, Google, or Microsoft products. But the effort to switch to Linux these days may be low, depending upon your needs and budget. My personal computers have only run Linux for over five years and I have far fewer headaches on my machines than I hit on my sons' Windows gaming desktops.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @08:09PM
I just got my daughter a System 76 laptop and it's great. No problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @10:02PM
So I should flee Apple (already fled Microsoft) to get the Linux distribution that shows ads on the desktop? I don't think so.
I should have kept my Amiga.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @03:40PM
There was for a while, but I think the guy who made them is doing hard time in the U.K.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday November 14 2020, @05:40PM (2 children)
Well, Debian has its popcon package, which reports on the packages you have installed.
But it does that only if you choose to install popcon. So although it might be a Unix-lookalike with surveillance, the surveillance is completely voluntary.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday November 14 2020, @07:36PM (1 child)
Interesting. I hadn't thought about it before. The source for popcon [debian.org] is available in the repository and, unless I missed something obvious, it seems not to use any kind of encryption. I would have thought that it would have used OpenPGP with a public key or else HTTP over TLS.
Then again, it is information about what is installed and that is not necessarily as secret what is used and how often.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @09:12PM
Yes you did. That package just fetches data from popcon.... it's right there at the top of the sources and description too..
The package you are attempting to find is called popularity-contest. It's a pearl script. By default it uses GPG to encrypt your package list before sending it.
https://sources.debian.org/src/popularity-contest/1.70/default.conf/ [debian.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday November 15 2020, @08:35AM
And this is why we need PiHoles. In this specific case, a PiHole update to fake out OCSP, which can be done by sending the value '2' back as an (unauthenticated) response, neatly neutering your high-security cryptographically authenticated certificate check.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MIRV888 on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:13PM (2 children)
With MJ on the hook.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @11:24PM (1 child)
Add to the track list:
Eye in the sky - Alan Parsons project
Electric eye - Judas Priest
Every breath you take - Sting
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Sunday November 22 2020, @07:13AM
Private eyes - Hall & Oates
Who can it be now - Men at Work
Prodigy (Mob Deep) - Mac 10 handle
Dream Police - Cheap Trick
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:38PM
i got nothin' to say. haven't used a mac since they sold them models where you had to put cd_roms into a plastic case before they could be inserted into the mac.
i did however recommend-switch family members to new intelmacOsX. i got more time and on the flip side they seems to be ding less on their macosX laptops. mostly they're busy streaming some radio station to the bluetooth from their ipads and playing solitare and hayday (lv 17x woah last i checked).
ofc it is a wise decision to stay away from apple ... can't really print a email attachment from the ipad to the wifi printer and trying to scan a document from the multifunction wifi printer isn't straight forward.
also, prefer to use money more ... rewarding.
ah, also real-time coms seems to be done on android phones via them miriad free (cross platform) apps, whatsapp, line, etc etc...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:40PM (5 children)
watching everyone's move is just creepy
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @01:18PM (2 children)
It already is illegal. It's called stalking.
but when you stalk millions of people at the same time that suddenly doesn't seem to apply anymore.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @03:21PM
laws are for the little people
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @08:04PM
It's like they say about debt -- if you owe the bank $100,000, it's your problem. If you owe the bank $100M it's the bank's problem. If you stalk one person, it's your legal issue. If you stalk a nation, it's the nation's problem.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday November 15 2020, @03:20AM
Good business kind of creepy. For now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @03:52PM
State level criminal legislation related to computer security is fairly broadly worded. The question isn't whether it is criminal, the question is whether there is anyone with deep enough pockets and a clean enough browser history to fight them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:44PM
There's a list and methods posted for blocking the microsoft spying
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rleigh on Saturday November 14 2020, @12:57PM (7 children)
The design apple used here seems like a gratuitous overreach. Thing is, when disconnected from the internet it "fails open", so why can't it be less strict when actually connected. I understand you want to check for revoked certs, but why not have a local database of revocations, and poll for updates in the background every now and again? Kind of like antivirus updates. So long as revocations are applied within a reasonable timeframe, it all works. Checking synchronously on every application start seems completely unnecessary. In fact, it makes one strongly suspicious that it's being used to monitor activity as a side effect.
The level of control this gives apple is unprecedented. Every mac on the planet has to *ask apple for permission* to run applications. And they can withhold that permission at any time if they so choose. Or cancel companies certs if they have a spat and kill their business.
If you were a business selling software for Macs, I'd hate to be in this position where your future is entirely controlled in this way. As for end users, the loss of control is also disproportionate to the risk. If a cert does get revoked, I'd still like to have the ability to choose to run it anyway.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NateMich on Saturday November 14 2020, @02:42PM (6 children)
This was obviously done so that they can control things. Imagine if a government didn't want anyone running a certain application?
Instantly, nobody can run it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Saturday November 14 2020, @07:55PM (5 children)
> Imagine if a government
I don't understand why people think governments are such a big deal. Governments don't matter much anymore. That's the whole point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @03:54AM
Stop paying taxes and you too can learn how big a deal government is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @04:37AM
When everyone around you bends over and blindly does what the government tells them without applying critical thinking skills, then governments matter. Without an educated and informed populace, governemnts are a dangerous enemy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @07:59AM
Governments still run electricity, water, and road maintenance; they still enact food safety and assault laws; they still have armies navies and air forces; they still have passports and other mechanisms of control.
Some for better - shared electricity - and some for worse - the USA criminalizing pot - but far, far, far from irrelevant to most contemporary human lives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @11:42AM
"I don't understand why people think governments are such a big deal. Governments don't matter much anymore. That's the whole point."
Seems you don't want to marry cute young girls (female children).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 15 2020, @01:38PM
Apple wants to be the government