Hacker News Reader

johnnycabon Hackers Hit Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a ‘SIM Swap’

>Apparently 2FA for Apple ids cannot be rolled back!

Apple removed the option to turn off two-factor authentication on some Apple IDs created in iOS 10.3 or macOS 10.12.4 and later.

A couple of years ago, I forgot the question/passphrase sequence for two-step verification and subsequently got frozen out. I had initially set it as samephrase1..2..3 in an effort to refrain from supplying PII. In order to reset, I managed to opt-in to 2FA and then revert back to initial setup.

I would have continued to think of the above process as the norm, until I read your comment and followed the support link provided by the other commenter, which states that the 2FA process cannot be undone anymore! However, there seems to be a slightly convoluted alternative i.e. unlinking existing AppleID and attach a new one for iCloud only, thus keeping the (old) existing one for the App Store and other services.

https://support.ikeymonitor.com/hc/en-us/articles/1150008243...

johnnycabon Apple has unveiled the new seventh-gen iPad

The 7th Gen is still lacking the quad speaker setup, ProMotion 120Hz refresh rate, True Tone and does not feature a fully laminated screen. At least, it has retained the 3.5mm audio jack. Although, the 10.5" (2017) iPad Pro will remain the superior choice for those willing to hunt it down; the new entry level model has a very attractive price tag.

johnnycabon iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max

If you think that differentiating between three phones in the new range is confusing, you should keep far away from Xiaomi!

johnnycabon Why Americans pay more for lunch than Britons do

There aren't many countries in the EU, which emphatically restrict Sunday shopping. Even where the restrictions are in place, trading laws can vary and not strictly imposed or adhered to. This can also be coupled with diminishing political appetite to choke the local economy.

'Gas stations' morphing into shops, is related to the phenomenon of channel blurring, rather than just exploiting the exemptions in laws/rules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_shopping

https://www.retailwire.com/tag/channel-blurring/

johnnycabon The growing need for human robot-minders could juice the remote workforce

>Now they are actually in the process of automating the trains, which has been criticised by many as a vanity project.

The DLR has been driverless, since it was introduced in 1987 ─ it is a working example of the paradox of automation, which states: the more efficient the automated system, the more crucial the human contribution of the operators. Humans are less involved, but their involvement becomes more critical. This will be the unwritten hard limit for the time-being, when it comes to implementing the levels of autonomy, irrespective of the condition of the rolling stock or wage costs, which are moot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway

https://www.citymetric.com/transport/one-picture-dlr-morning...

johnnycabon We Let Machine Learning Design Logos

Some of the points you make were also brought up in the ShowHN post for 'My Brand New Logo', which similarly uses AI as it's USP. I would like to know, what differentiates your service?

https://mybrandnewlogo.com/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19076745

johnnycabon Fraudsters Used AI to Mimic CEO’s Voice

>Whilst it's funny these guys did this with AI I can't help but feel that they could have done this with someone who is halfway decent at accents and saved themselves a lot of effort.

On the contrary, it seems like they did save themselves a lot of effort by deploying the de-centralised 'deepfake' AI model. It would be significantly hard for the opportunistic scammers to go out talent-scouting locally, trying to match the exact vocal characteristics of a person. It would also create a vulnerability, notably the person hired to impersonate the CEO.

johnnycabon The Problem with Believing What We’re Told

>I'm in Poland right now, the latest "big" news was that the son of some rich guy died jet skiing and that a thunderstorm killed some people in the mountains, not the crisis in Venezuela or protests going on in Hong Kong. I recommend Anchorman 2, if you haven't watched it already, great comedy and commentary about the state of the current news.

I was with you when you offered a critique of the news-cycle and the banality of infotainment, until you segued into recommending a comedy film, as a way to gain further insight and draw parallels with serious matters.

johnnycabon Dark Patterns

>If you try to cancel your Prime Membership, they make it sound as if you lose all benefits right away

This method of obfuscation is also prevalent on most music services I have subscribed to ie. Spotify, Deezer, Tidal et al., which also make it harder to access the option to cancel in the first place. If you use PayPal for the afore-mentioned services, an entry for recurring charges also gets placed on the account and once you cancel, it sits there dormant. Although, it can be marked as inactive manually, however, the process is not intuitive and hidden away in settings, where direct debits are labelled as pre-approved payments.

johnnycabon The “mail is hard” myth

Yak shaving refers to a task, that leads you to perform another related task and so on, and so on — all distracting you from your original goal.

Buffalo milking seems to be variously related to experience (see effortless squeezing) or Buffalo as a service ie. no buffalo on-prem or a backyard required.

johnnycabon Thunderbird 68.0

I am another long-term Thunderbird user and for most parts, it just works. However, there is a bug related to Global search [CTRL+K] which has still not been fixed, and is extremely frustrating, as it breaks the function of searching all mailboxes. None of the remedies work, or rather they are temporary fixes ie. deleting global-messages-db.sqlite and rebuilding the index, recreating the profile etc.

The problem seems to be related to either the size of the database or the number of messages contained in the folder i.e. 10K+ messages. A meta thread exists in bugzilla related to (Gloda) Global search. There are also various support queries on the topic.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1201650

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=541349

johnnycabon The Myth of Consumer-Grade Security

>Even working in prisons they are strict on equipment

The tone of incredulity in your comment suggests, as if this practice is extraordinary, when it would be considered SOP ─ tools and crims behind bars make the most unlikely bedfellows.

johnnycabon Cities Are Saying ‘No’ to 5G, Citing Health, Aesthetics, and FCC Bullying

Your comments contain fundamental errors.

I won't go into great detail, why Three failed to acquire 4G spectrum and how it was subsequently awarded significantly valuable frequency from EE in the process. However, there is a lot more to how Three (Broadband) came to acquire frequency in the 3.4─3.8GHz spectrum. There was no auction neither were there any wars. It was via the acquisition of UK Broadband & Relish, which was already a part of PCCW. It was originally awarded the spectrum, contingent upon certain stipulations ie. building, maintaining and continued investment in telecoms infrastructure.

The current 5G product might bear the moniker, but it is still using the infrastructure put in place by UKBG Relish in parts of Central & Greater London. The speeds are also dependent upon relevant upgrades to the masts, operator equipment, backhaul etc., more importantly the UE has to be up-to-date to take advantage of any speed boosts. It will still not count as real 5G for sometime yet, as there are standards which are still being ratified and other players have yet to join the game.

It would be naive to assume that Vodafone, the biggest operator by spectrum holdings, followed by BT/EE, will just defer their incumbent position, without bidding next year!

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2019/08/three-uk-aim-f...

https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3659839/Three-UK-agre...

johnnycabon When the Public Feared That Library Books Could Spread Deadly Diseases

I would have thought that the headline alone would be sufficient enough to provide that answer. In order to remove any further doubt, millions of books are still in circulation, after more than a century since the scare/panic. This should be considered as a fact that books are not infectious ─ not in the medical sense, at least.

A Kindle is probably likely to harbour more germs than an average book. Furthermore, the chemistry of books possibly does not allow harmful organisms to survive for too long.

https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/why-do-books-smell-so-good...

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/07/the-smell-of-o...

johnnycabon Ask HN: What's the best setup for ad blocking and tracker blocking?

It is a fairly good cross-platform list; would definitely recommend O&O Shutup 10 (Windows) - disables Telemetry and other intrusive features. Also, changing to DoH (Cloudflare) and enabling ESNI in Firefox is a good measure. I did not know about Buster, tried it with the reCAPTCHA demo; it works intermittently, which is better than nothing at all. Although I have a add-on for WebRTC, it would seem that the latest version of Firefox sets the attribute to false by default.

  media.peerconnection.enabled

johnnycabon A Telegram bug that disclose phone numbers of any users in public groups

This appears to be a similar attack vector, to the one which might have been used for scamming Swiss Revolut customers, by determining legitimate users via the phone number range, in order to deliver fraudulent SMS messages.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Revolut/comments/cu07cv/revolut_sca...

johnnycabon A Look at HS2's Old Oak Common Station

>Everything is in London because everything is in London. HS2 is an attempt to break out of that. By developing better rail links across England we allow companies to start moving out of London.

Despite the topic being divisive, this is an ill-informed comment and does not relect the real purpose of HS2 ─ which is to increase capacity and improve links in the North of England to stimulate local economy and reduce the burden on over crowded services.

I will leave you with a couple of articles, which do a good job at explaining some of the reasons behind the HS2 project; which also serves as a springboard for the Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR).

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/hs2-logistic...

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2019/08/just-when-y...

johnnycabon Google DeepMind Co-Founder Placed on Leave from AI Lab

>"a man was placed on leave, must be a sex scandal!" Is this seriously the society we live in?

- Maybe there is a precedent for this insinuation

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/essential-ceo-andy-r...

According to the article, he was already relegated to a different role in a smaller group within the company. Whichever coded version of a 'leave' or a reason you want to use, if it was either routine or trivial, there would be no need for this article containing selective information to be issued, by a respected source, no less.

johnnycabon Apple Card launches today for all US customers

>Very occasionally an inspector just holds a hand terminal to your card to check you paid.

For a ticket inspector, there is hardly any information to discern if a journey has been made when using a Contactless card. Furthermore, anybody who uses this method knows that it can be several days before a journey shows up on the list of transactions. Although, it is largely to do with how the TfL payment system was implemented, with Contactless being more of a hindsight. However, it is significantly better than nothing at all.

johnnycabon The worst sales promotion in history: Hoover's free flight fiasco

I am not an active patron, but it impresses me how creative some people are at discovering these tricks. It appears that McD doesn't seem to mind, rather they leave the door slightly ajar for some tomfoolery, making the user believe they have outsmarted them; usually they are just open-secrets eg. surveys on receipts for codes, can be a random number.

https://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2014/08/29/get-much-free-mcdona...

johnnycabon Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

https://t.me/hackernewslive

johnnycabon Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting too often in a group

Telegram is a great way to read HN articles, by subscribing to the channel, especially if you can't onboard enough people in your circle, to use it as a primary messenger. It also fires up on iPad, unlike WhatsApp.

johnnycabon Cassettes Are Back, and It’s Not About the Music

You seem to have gone off on a tangent, with regards to emulating the 'sound' via plugins and distortion filters for music production, without actually having to invest in the physical medium. Whereas, I was commenting on the banality of resuscitating a flawed format based upon nostalgia.

johnnycabon Cassettes Are Back, and It’s Not About the Music

One even reads nice things about the way cassettes sound, like in this Medium post from Aubrey Norwood: “The sound tape gives is warm. Saturated. It promotes a degree of imperfection, and creates an underflow of infamous tape hiss that leaves the format feeling nakedly honest, which is gold dust for the sincere-inclined musician.”

I hope this kind of sickly-sweet format necrophilia gains further ascendancy, making it easier to offload some of the defunct media on the bay to unsuspecting users; who want to justify this kind of 'authentic' experience.

johnnycabon The Lost Art of Lacing Cable (2018)

This is a case of 'genericisation'.

A Very Short Introduction” of a man in 1990 who filed for a trademark on his red, white and blue assortment of “Stealth Condoms”, with the tag-phrase “They’ll never see you coming.” Northrop, the maker of the B-2 “stealth bomber”, sued to stop him, claiming that the man had purloined and even harmed the reputation of their trademark. He went bust.

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2017/09/09/why-comp...

johnnycabon Amazon Accidentally Sold $13k Camera Gear for $100 on Prime Day

There might be some added benefits or preferences e.g. extended warranty, insurance, physical location, loyalty towards a brand or accrued in kind via a scheme or membership etc.

johnnycabon How many kinds of USB-C to USB-C cables are there?

>As for EU involvement, it seems to have worked out for the best with forcing phone manufacturers to use USB for charging - I still remember the days of feature phones, where we were all drowning in phone chargers and (separate) data cables, as each brand and each model generation within the brand used different ports and voltages. It was ridiculous levels of plastic and electronics waste for the sake of business shenanigans.

You are romanticising the notion of Apple and EU being the standard rod-bearers. Despite using electrical waste and dubious business practices as a reason for EU involvement, it would seem that you are unaware of the saga of the 'common charger' and the villainous role played by Apple.

A key take-away:

The EU's failure to regulate, in essence, provides Apple with an argument to keep their own solution.

For Apple, the common charger is a success story – of regulation avoided.

https://euobserver.com/news/144538

johnnycabon How many kinds of USB-C to USB-C cables are there?

>Apple would be actually courageous for switching to USB-C and forcing everyone's hand.

Last time Apple was courageous ─ the headphone jack got killed. The word 'courage' was used to onboard Airpods and move the general trend towards sealing off most ingress points on a device; contemporaneously selling an adapter for a pretty penny.

Whilst I agree that some manufacturers followed the above-mentioned trend. They were not pushed, but rather jumped willingly, as it made financial and commercial sense by applying the maxim - where Apple leads, others must usually follow. There were also unsubstantiated rumours of Apple abandoning their role in development of USB-C implementation, perhaps due to the lack of a moat[0]. Nevertheless, I don't expect them to be altruistic in their motives and fully expect them to monetise the USB-C standard via a plethora of cables and dongles, possibly under the umbrella of MFi program, especially targeting the lack of certification and/or the vacuum/ambiguity created by USB-IF, leaving the rest of the field to carry on dealing with the existing issues.

Also, I would much rather put up with the current botched up state of affairs, than have EU involved in meddling with it and make things even worse.

[0] https://9to5mac.com/2015/03/14/apple-invent-usb-type-c/

johnnycabon Facebook is embedding tracking data inside the photos you download

I disagree; extrapolating the Pareto principle and arbitrarily defining needs/wants ratio on privacy, by drawing a relation between either being savvy or ambivalent and justifying the value of free content, is a non-sequitur. There are absolutely no excuses for any of these ultra shady practices to exist and equally, had the incumbents been stopped from weaponising and/or deploying their aggressive and insidious plans in the first instance, it would have dissuaded others to use their platform for similar purposes.

These practices are going to take an even more twisted turn with deep-nudes/fakes, GPT2 etc. and related trends. If we are to learn from our experiences, it is now important to fight and push back, rather than just roll-over and pretend to be dead or to accept current practices and seek a (non-existent) compromise, as you suggest.

johnnycabon Facebook is embedding tracking data inside the photos you download

>Isn't it the same as printers watermarking printouts? I don't see this as a necessarily bad thing.

I can't see how you can adopt a stance, which places accountability above blanket surveillance by condoning behaviour, which makes an assumption that a crime has been committed by default.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/printer-tracking-dots-...

https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...