Re: "data warfare"
I'm wondering whether you can "sandbox" the Garmin app to prevent it from uploading data to anywhere else ... if that's possible, then you can enjoy both your tracker and peace of mind.
Posts by Waseem Alkurdi
1240 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2018
It's all in the wrist: Your fitness tracker could be as much about data warfare as your welfare
Samsung reminds rabble to scan smart TVs for viruses – then tries to make them forget
Tuesday 18th June 2019 13:04 GMT
Re: JUST SELL THE FUCKING SCREEN !!!!!
Do you mean that I should take my own $OLD_LAPTOP and install Linux, a TV capture card, MythTV, and cheapo IR/Bluetooth remote control? That's so 2005! (/s, of course).
Smart TVs are just a polished implementation of "computer hooked up to TV", except that it's worse as for support after EoL.
Idle Computer Science skills are the Devil's playthings
Monday 10th June 2019 09:38 GMT
Re: One more slip and he’s out with 0 notice and shit references.
If he didn't realise that the box that was created to do repetitive tasks quickly then took the very repetitive task and did it very quickly, then he’s missing the point.
This!
That’s not a BOFH, that’s a user with little knowledge making poor decisions.
The same act in a different context (that of a sysadmin, like the BOFH himself in the '90s) can constitute a BOFH's act.
Monday 10th June 2019 09:26 GMT
Re: Back in the day ...
Exactly!
One point though:
Separating actual fools from their money is unethical.
Correct, but crooks have been separating fools from their money since forever. This is nothing, erm, "newsworthy". Or have people believed up until that point that Apple was a charity (or an honest garage-run neighborhood sale), not a big, fat megacorp?
Monday 10th June 2019 09:00 GMT
Re: Back in the day ...
and charge $999 for simple, nondescript monitor stands.
<sad Apple geek>
How dare you call it simple and nondescript! Shhh, she's going to hear you!
</sad Apple geek>
Anyhow, I really wonder as to why did people give a hoot about this. It's basic capitalism. Sheep willing to pay, and a company willing to sell to the flock. Supposed customers of "Pro" products are willing to splurge $6K - $15K on a display, ahem, reference display, so why not sell a $1K stand if there are customers willing to pay?
Monday 10th June 2019 08:53 GMT
Today,
he'd be called a script kiddie, and punished accordingly. Which he deserves, from an ethical point of view.
That aside, if I were to be responsible for hiring for any organization which does "serious" work (i.e. security contractor, banking firm, TLA), I definitely won't hire him. Though he's a "deviant soul", thinking out of the box, and creative (mischievously so), this non-conformity could be a curse as well as a blessing.
Help the Macless: Apple’s iPadOS is a huge update that will enable more people to do without a Mac... or a PC
Thursday 6th June 2019 17:13 GMT
Re: Er, no..
I know, but I've been referring to Apple's marketing-lie generalization, "iPad has always been fast and responsive."
Nope, it has not always been fast and responsive, Apple. It starts life as being fast, but when you decide that I should upgrade, you'd slow it down to unusability.
About your question, Apple devices which are killed off by iOS updates, like your iPhone 6, are definitely going to become unpatched-vulnerability-chewthings. I'm currently advising all friends and family who have an iPhone 5s and 6 to sell their devices before the devices lose their resale value, and the prices are already dropping since the Apple announcement.
Take for example the iPhone 5 and iPad 4, which were killed at iOS 10.3.3. Lots of iOS vulnerabilities were discovered since then (for example, the various text-message crashes). No update has been issued for either device since then.
This is a major argument against iPhones, because Apple uses the lack of security updates to force you to upgrade.
Thursday 6th June 2019 14:26 GMT
Re: Er, no..
iPad has always been fast and responsive.
My iPad 3 begs to differ. One iOS update has managed to completely b0tch up a device that was completely usable one iOS update before that. And the excuse that it's underspecced don't cut it; iOS 7 was a major update and it took that, while iOS 8 was a minor update in comparison.
Thursday 6th June 2019 14:15 GMT
Re: I picked up a Lenovo MiiX 320 (yes horrible name) about a month back
Great laptop/convertible, but it's got an Atom. Not particularly future-proof, and while it might work today, it won't do after a couple years. The iPad has a faster CPU (Apple claims laptop performance on some chip or the other it had released, can't find the reference, but this claims that it is equivalent to a recent MacBook Pro, however, take with a grain of salt.
And the internal storage card is an eMMC. Shock-proof, unlike a HDD, but only slightly faster than a hard disk.
For the same price (if used), you could've bought one with an i5 and a real SSD. A used Surface possibly.
Alexa Conversations: Amazon's AI assistant is about to get a whole lot more like Clippy
It's that time again: Android kicks off June's patch parade with fixes for five hijack holes
Thursday 6th June 2019 14:44 GMT
Re: Great news
Why are you relying on your provider? Why don't you have LineageOS/any custom ROM/your own builds from source (which is easy to do if you have device/kernel/vendor trees)?
Even Google knows that Android and updates are a case closed and nailed shut - hence Fuchsia OS and its multilayer model of which Google controls the lower ones.
Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...
Thursday 6th June 2019 14:03 GMT
Something strikes me as being odd about this
If it's really Apple trying to "censor" the "boo"ing in the video, then they would've removed it from the official version too. And the version with the "artificial" laugh
From how I see it, the only premise to the argument that Apple is censoring the audible booing is that they filed DMCA takedown requests for a couple of vids.
Even if we were to suppose for the sake of argument that they purposely kept the "boo" in the official stream and didn't take down the others as not to be accused of censoring stuff. But what's the proof for that?
It's the curious case of the vanishing iPhone sales as Huawei grabs second place off Apple in smartmobe stakes
Tuesday 28th May 2019 18:02 GMT
Re: Yes this is their Hongmeng OS
Just because a company is big, that doesn't mean they will be perfect.
I think that you misunderstood my argument here. It's not that Huawei is big, it's that it's no startup. It's not that it's definitely immune from error because it's big, but that it is less likely to ignore such fundamental issues.
Saying that they might have some trouble trying to update a billion devices in the field to something that might be an entire replacement of the operating system is a very sensible worry, born out by the experience of trouble that happened every other time such a massive change was attempted.
But then again, the risks Huawei are taking with such a mass deployment are large. This means that it has warranted some research attention with regards to the possibility of FUBARs. Doesn't mean that they are absolutely perfect and nothing is going to be amiss, but that it's unlikely that they'd just totally ignore that risk.
Tuesday 28th May 2019 17:56 GMT
Re: Marketing
Agreed, but I have a few comments:
Nobody really knows to what extent if at all there is a backdoor running on current phones. Huawei might harbor one just as well as any other manufacturer.
Even worse: it could be inside Qualcomm SoCs, especially with Android running in an underprivileged ARM execution level on Snapdragon devices, with the higher level (EL2) being used by a proprietary hypervisor on which information online is scarce.
Just because you don't like the action of the U.S. government, that doesn't make the company harmed by that action into the best thing on Earth.
Also known as 'Choose your poison".
I am inclined to agree that the restrictions placed on them don't make sense from the stated security benefit and are a purely political stunt for the purposes of a continued trade war.
Not only that ... the restrictions will be reversed, and life will continue as normal, just like it did with ZTE. I even tend to think that this HongMeng OS is not even ready for prime-time, but is a "response tactic" instead (you've cut us off ... we don't care, here is plan B!)
Tuesday 28th May 2019 17:07 GMT
But that price hike is going to be backed by a media campaign (Be American, Buy American! or something)
Apple would probably switch to a country like Taiwan (where HTC and other big names exist) or Malaysia (known for final assembly of Intel CPUs and for IDT Inc. and others) instead of straight to the US.
Tuesday 28th May 2019 17:01 GMT
Re: Marketing
With an open source OS
Who told you that HongMeng is open source? Unlike Fuchsia OS, we haven't seen any Git repos floating around anywhere ...
Except if they decide to release it as open source when it's done ... but that's very un-Huawei, the very Huawei that disabled bootloader unlocks for its whole Android range.
Tuesday 28th May 2019 16:58 GMT
Re: Yes this is their Hongmeng OS
only this is worse because Huawei has far more hardware models. Odds are high this will be very very ugly, with bricked devices everywhere.
Why?
A company the size of Huawei, and a project that has been in progress since seven years, and they would fail to consider the impact of such a move?
They might even have already compiled a secret build of HongMeng OS for each and every device they released since then.
Tuesday 28th May 2019 13:56 GMT
Oppo and Vivo? They're one company.
From the article:
Rounding off the top five highest selling smartphone vendors in Q1 was OPPO and Viva [sic], with sales of 29.6 million and 27.3 million each, up 7.3 and 6.1 per cent respectively.
Why are figures for Oppo and Vivo cited separately? The two are basically two brands by one company (BBK Electronics). Their third brand is OnePlus.
Let's make laptops from radium. How's that for planned obsolescence?
Want a good Android smartphone without the $1,000+ price tag? Then buy Google's Pixel 3a
Saturday 18th May 2019 21:21 GMT
Re: Google to host videos ...
No, just flat-out refusing to run due to things like SafetyNet and the signature checks on modern Android phones
Ah, you seem to have missed systemless rooting through Magisk. It has a "SU hide" feature that allows such apps to run, as well as signature check bypassing, bootloader lock status spoofing, and the whole lot. Mostly needs systemless root though.
Samsung's KNOX is what keeps me away from them these days, ditto for any Android without bootloader unlock (aka phones by OEMs that don't respect their customer).
Most of the others that don't trip one of the red lines have features missing or are so niche as to not be supported by the likes of xda.
OnePlus, Google, Essential, and Sony* ... all don't. They have great community support.
* Sony is a special case. On the one hand, it goes as far as telling you how to build AOSP yourself (and provides the necessary device trees), but on the other, it wipes DRM keys when unlocking the bootloader, or so I've heard :-(
Saturday 18th May 2019 08:45 GMT
Re: Google to host videos ...
"panicking" as in being unstable and having a tendency to crashing often?
Rooting is simply a matter of obtaining, erm, root access. As long as dodgy Chinese rooting apps are avoided, the phone should be as stable as stock.
And a good custom ROM should be stable (but I agree that not all custom ROMs are factory-quality).
Still, it's been ages since I've experienced any crashes or instability with custom ROMs on modern, dev-friendly phones.
Thursday 16th May 2019 21:33 GMT
Re: Google to host videos ...
it does all I want it to at a fraction of the cost of even this phone.
Try to compile the stock kernel for it. Bonus points if it's a MediaTek SoC.
That's my chief complaint against phones from obscure OEMs ... but then again, even Samsung screws up kernel releases. At least Google releases proper kernel sources , so does OnePlus.
Apple hits back at devs of axed kiddie screen-time apps
Daddy, are we there yet? How Mrs Gates got Bill to drive the kids to school
Monday 29th April 2019 17:45 GMT
powerless women
Dear Ms. Gates,
There is a whole world of difference between privileged folks like yours truly not bothering to share the load, as commentards above pointed out, and women who lose their lives to ungrateful drunkards. Perhaps we should focus our priorities?
(However, her point about the tax system is good)
(Perhaps I'm being too judgemental, as I haven't read the book?)
Complex automation won't make fleshbags obsolete, not when the end result is this dumb
Thursday 25th April 2019 14:25 GMT
That is exactly why planes fly themselves - but professional pilots are still there in order to take control if anything goes wrong.
I've read somewhere that pilots are now getting very reliant on the autopilot and other automation ... to the extent that they're less able to fly manually than before, despite the training they get (which differs from real-life, because it's simulated, therefore, not that much stress).
ood new, fanbys. Apple spds up n-str McBook latop kyboad rpairs, ccrding t hs leakd mmo
Thursday 25th April 2019 14:05 GMT
Re: Change for the Red Dot
It's possible to run macOS in a VM, using VirtualBox or a modification to VMware.
However, for the experience to be even near optimal, you'd need to have two GPUs, a Linux host, and PCI passthrough. Otherwise, you'd have no graphics acceleration (Quartz Extreme / Core Image).
It's much, much easier to run it on your host instead of in a VM ... you simply need to have an Intel processor (no AMD as Apple didn't use these in real Macs) and an Intel iGPU or NVIDIA GPU (You can actually use AMD for the GPU, but I haven't tried) ... this is known as a Hackintosh (portmanteau of "hack" + "Macintosh"), and has been around since the first Pentium 4 Intel Transition Kit Mac (even before the first Intel Mac).
hackintosh.com is usually a good resource to start ... I've done it on a multitude of laptops, and so far, it's a great experience.
Thursday 25th April 2019 08:11 GMT
Re: "forcing me to use a much more decent Apple keyboard"
Sometimes, these could be "forced" upon one ... suppose a person inherits a huge fortune from their father, and along with the money, their father's status and social obligations. They'd be forever clamped to the Porsches and Rolexes even though they might not want them, nor they can voluntarily leave that status ...
Thursday 25th April 2019 06:47 GMT
For $250 from eBay, you can pick up a 2014 MacBook Air, with a proper keyboard, Broadwell (5th generation) Core i5, and a preinstalled SSD.
Only quirks are a 1366x768 screen resolution on the 11" model (or 1440x900 on the 14"), both with a 16:9 ratio, and the fact that the SSD uses a proprietary connector.
QEMU 4 arrives with toys for Arm admirers, RISC-V revolutionaries, POWER patriots... you get the idea
Thursday 25th April 2019 06:41 GMT
x86 Memory Protection Extensions (MPX) support has been dropped from all CPU modes.
Ah damn ... QEMU and older operating systems already don't play well. Now with that, it's probably going to be even worse!
Why not just keep it in there but disabled unless enabled at compile time? Is it really *that* much of a complex piece of junk code?
IT sales star wins $660k lawsuit against Oracle in Qatar – but can't collect because the Oracle he sued suddenly vanished
Thursday 25th April 2019 06:00 GMT
Re: first rate arse licking
Exactly! However ...
But in about 1200 the encouragement of studying the Holy Books (all three Abrahamic religions) was apparently stopped, and replaced by simple unquestioning memorization of the Koran and rejection of the other books.
What brought this around is that around this period (or actually 200 years later), Spain reconquered Andalusia, which is one of the most prominent centers of Arab/Islamic scientific advancement, and the ensuing succession of caliphs couldn't give a crap about science, caring about more important things like increasing personal power, leaving the rule of the state to their viziers, who mostly won't give a crap either. As a result, every Tom, Dick, and Harry then wanted to become caliph, taking advantage of the weakness, and civil war ensued.
This continued until the Ottomans took over, but even they were toppled exactly the same way, though this time, the successors flew non-religious banners (secular, Communist, atheist, nationalist, or otherwise), and to this day, the Arab world is crippled by regimes that don't give two craps about scientific advancement.
Somebody once told me that being scientific advanced is basically something you buy: When the national scientific budget of Israel exceeds that of all Arab universities combined, the result, that Israel is much more developed, is not at all odd. When Arab/Islamic rulers properly funded science, they had much scientific progress. Same goes for any other nation.
Thursday 25th April 2019 05:51 GMT
Re: first rate arse licking
Looking again at what I wrote, I noticed that I dropped two words, causing the meaning to totally change:
The note would become as thus:
* Unfortunately though, it's not as if there are no brilliant minds who happen to come from Arabian ancestry or among the expats living there ...
Wednesday 24th April 2019 12:40 GMT
Re: first rate arse licking
As I said in another post yesterday, this is a result of the lifestyle they live ... they look down on every other non-<insert Gulf country here> as servants, nope, slaves, to the degree of a pure master-slave relationship.
Though the English should consider themselves lucky, as they [folk in the Gulf] seem to have a strange disposition to appointing British people to run their businesses for them (because they are too thick to run them on their own, perhaps ... *), and as a result, quite often live in a similarly lavish lifestyle to that of their employers. Arab, African, or Indian expats are absolutely not as lucky.
For instance, Emirates (the airline) is headed by Sir Tim Clark, and many British are on (the) board. (pun unintended), while Etihad (another airline of the UAE) has a James Hogan as president.
__________
* Unfortunately though, it's not there are no brilliant minds who happen to come from Arabian ancestry or among the expats living there, it's that the folk involved unfortunately believe that (a) other expats are too lowly to be put in a rank where they could manage nationals of their country and (b) one should just appoint a Westerner to turn their business into a Western success story to rival Apple et al. While that seems to be working, especially with their airlines, they don't understand that Western doesn't have to mean successful, nor the other way around.
Remember Windows Media Center? Well, the SDK is now on GitHub to be poked at your leisure
Wednesday 24th April 2019 14:19 GMT
The last, and most complete, version of Windows Media Center sported a clean interface familiar to Windows Phone users
Windows Phone? You probably mean Windows Mobile. Windows Phone 7 and beyond were TIFKAM (even if it wasn't even called Metro yet) ... Probably the only design element that reminds one of actual Windows Phone was the large, lowercase titles stacked next to each other (like the example contact details page in the second screenshot in this picture)
The rest of the interface was beautifully Windows Pre-TIFKAM, mostly Windows 7 and Windows Mobile 6.5.*
As a side note, I used to LOVE Windows Media Center (and Windows Mobile). Just beautiful, just simple. Although not 100% aesthetically or functionally perfect, it's not the mess that's in a modern TV-connected gadget, Apple TV included.
(Of course, just like most forms of art, it's quite functionally crippled).
__________
* Of course I'm referring to the Windows 7 implementation, not the XP one. The latter was ugly. Damned ugly.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
