• 0 Posts
  • 122 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

help-circle



  • The distinction there is just that your statement about the eu NOT wanting to regulate this is incorrect. This is something the members of the eu have wanted regulation on for some time. And not because of Apple, but because of most major manufacturers.

    Again, no. It’s not because Apple didn’t change their plug for their mobile devices. It’s because of every device using different chargers. Again, laptops are much worse than a single cable that hasn’t changed in a decade.

    By blaming one corporation alone, you are giving every single bad actor a pass. This is how they get away with shit like this.

    I’d argue notebook chargers are even MORE awful at this because they’re usually at least $50 for an off-brand and significantly more from the manufacturer.


  • Looks like you are correct mostly. It looks like it was actually the character and persona from the Colbert report that he can’t use. It would be like taking the show to a different network I guess would be the argument which usually involves the show being bought. It’s also weird because the company was basically suing itself.

    It also led to Colbert mentioning that he didn’t know how to act as the normal him, so I think it’s cool he at least got something positive out of it, even if it’s a huge blow for sure.

    It’s weird, because if the character was named like Sean Spencer, it would be expected that you couldn’t just use the same character. I’m surprised he didn’t have a legal leg to stand on given the character has his name, and he could argue that it’s simply his own personality, but if he and his lawyers didn’t expect it to be winnable I’ll take their word on it.

    Either way, it’s interesting information. Thanks for the correction.


  • That’s not quite accurate. The EU doesn’t want anything, but the people involved in this decision absolutely wanted to regulate this. It’s been an issue for decades at this point.

    It’s also not because of “well, Apple”. This law doesn’t apply to phones alone, it’s pretty much any mobile device.

    It also, and this is one of the big and important parts, requires manufacturers to offer the option to NOT have chargers included. The goal here is to reduce the MASSIVE amount of e waste generated by tablets, phones, cameras, and even (especially in my mind, as these are often not compatible even amongst single manufacturers) laptop chargers. That’s an awesome part of the rule, even if it has a larger compliance window.

    Lastly, while the law itself doesn’t require USB C, the legal annex absolutely and quite explicitly DOES state that manufacturers must use USB C. There is a provision that reports must be made every 5 years or so, and consideration will be made concerning the required standards (wireless is mentioned as not being able to effectively be regulated in this way as of yet).

    This is a huge win in terms of the reduction in e waste, and the option to not receive a charger is, in my opinion, one of the best parts. I have way too many USB C cables that I can’t find a place to use them all, and I’ve got them in every room.




  • Not quite. It’s different than movies, because one person can purchase assets. Typically most talented developers aren’t also incredibly talented artists, animators, and composers. There are certainly people out there that could do that, but the same could be said for indie films made by a group of friends in their spare time with licensed music and improvised sound effects.

    You can’t just compare a solo indie dev to a feature film like it’s not apples to bananas. Comparing an indie film would be more apt.

    I’d say that solo indie dev games would be similar to that one web serial in the early days of YouTube, Marble Hornets, I think it was. It was interesting enough (I only saw bits and pieces personally) that it had a very dedicated fan base, but was made by like… three friends or something.

    Game studios making triple a titles are more comparable to a triple a movie (that’s where AAA comes from - A list actors, A list studio, and A list something else. Triple A games have massive budgets for the same reason movies do. Marketing, voice actors, sound design, composers, animators, developers, project managers, interns, assistants, game designers, etc.

    Triple A games also amusingly have directors and producers just like a Hollywood film does. In all honestly, video games are like interactive movies. We’re seeing now the end stages of that imitation with so many blockbuster sqls and nostalgia grabs in both industries.


  • I don’t have any skin in this game. I just wanted to point out that you went from “given how privacy invasive this particular entity is”

    To

    “… assuming… how little we know… could potentially”

    That’s a pretty big leap from a bold and confident assertion that an entity is doing something all the way to saying that entity maybe could be doing something but we don’t know. It’s just a weird logical leap to me, and I felt compelled to mention it.











  • The public key doesn’t decrypt the information. The public key is used only for encryption. The private key is what is used for the decryption. Since the private key is on-device, there’s no way to get access to the decryption. It’s actually a bit more complicated than I wanted to go into for an already ridiculously long comment, but I’ll explain a bit more here.

    With a hard drive, you have one key. This kind of encryption is called symmetric encryption. It uses a single private key, and that key can be used to decrypt at any time.

    E2E encryption uses what is called asymmetric encryption. The key used to encrypt the information is actually the recipients public key. This is where some information is exposed to Apple (or anybody else who uses a directory lookup to find a public key). That lookup tells Apple who and how often you are messaging. This they will absolutely give to law enforcement with a warrant. It doesn’t tell a lot, but it does give information about your correspondence.

    Once the information is encrypted, the matching private key is the only thing that can decrypt the content. This also places a vulnerability because if somebody sends a different public key, now the message is decryptable by the bad actor.

    So because of the two key system, the private key for each individual is inaccessible to anyone except the individual. It’s actually a really cool concept. This is how HTTPS functions as well. TLS (it’s just the cryptographic protocol HTTPS uses) creates a secure connection using asymmetric encryption. The information it sends then uses symmetric encryption.

    I’m a developer, and not an information security expert, so some of this may not be completely accurate, but it should be accurate for the most part. If you’re interested at all I would definitely suggest looking into it because I think it’s super neat.

    Of course if you have any more questions I’m willing to talk as well.