jrg_uk

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jrg_uk
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  • Britain's NHS rejects the Apple & Google COVID-19 exposure notification technology

    jrg_ukjrg_uk
    larryjw said:
    PS: If you want privacy, don't use cell phones. Bluetooth is perfect for tracking. 

    A couple years ago, bluetooth sensors were installed allow transportation corridors to track vehicle traffic, reading signals from Bluetooth devices, so transportation planners could "see" traffic patterns, where people entered the corridor, where they exited the corridor, average speeds, etc. 

    There are certainly ways to do that: iBeacon APIs let an installed App with Bluetooth access register the “family” of beacons to listen out for, and then when they are heard some app code gets run to do something. Typical, of the third party beacon APIs, is to do a network connection and look up data (which can pass on info like the beacon details but also - if it has permission - where you are, trigger a local notification, that sort of thing). Some of those third party beacon APIs were also listening out for their own beacon families, and frankly it was all a bit of a mess.

    I can see how an app developer working on this NHSX project might want to, in the background, emulate a beacon but also listen out for others (I’m not sure if you can do *that* without background execution, and for that if you’re not one of the valid AppStore use cases you would indeed need a dispensation). A smart designer would also, as the Apple/Google design does, realise that you need to change your Transmitted beacon ID regularly, because otherwise someone else (those pesky business football companies) will start listening too.

    Here in London we had advertising companies installing Wi-Fi base stations on rubbish bins, just to listen out for phones as they passed by and collect their MAC addresses. So Apple and Google started using random MAC addresses when probing for Wi-Fi networks that they knew. 

    So the advertisers upped their game offering free Wi-Fi hotspots. Why? Because if you connected to their network and left it as auto-join then your phone would connect as you passed and disclose its real MAC address. 

    Indeed, the London Underground (to come back to the transportation subject that I’m replying to), who legitimately and usefully provide Wi-Fi on sub-surface stations, use this to then track phones as they move through the station tunnels and platforms, to model passenger movement. 

    Mine’s the phone with auto-join disabled on public Wi-Fi networks,
    rossb2gatorguy

  • Apple yanks watchOS 3.1.1 update following user complaints

    jrg_ukjrg_uk
    twa440 said:
    I can't recall any products being bricked when Steve was around but, maybe so. I know I've never seen six updates in two years that caused products to be bricked.
    There was one early update to OS X 10.0 that deleted the entire hard drive of anyone who'd named it with a leading space (a common "trick", back in the day). That wasn't exactly bricking (you could boot off CD) but it didn't do much for your data.


    elijahg

  • Big Tech-funded TV facing a 'schism' in production styles claims Jon Stewart

    jrg_ukjrg_uk
    These companies don't believe in institutional knowledge that allows people to grow and get better and create more," Steward said. "What they believe now is the auteur system, which has always sort of existed within film and TV ... and this idea of ruthlessly efficient content factories, where what matters is the real estate and not the individual creative,"

    Which I find interesting, because that’s definitely not how it works in the Software biz, or really in any company. Companies are definitely the sums of their parts, and even if you have an occasional “rockstar” or “10x” developer or auteur, even if such people actually do exist, they can’t possibly do all the work by themselves and rely upon a wide team of people to get the actual work done.

    chasmbala1234StrangeDays

  • Alternative App Store payment service in holding pattern, waiting for Apple to change

    jrg_ukjrg_uk
    It’s like they don’t remember as far back as the mid ‘00s when companies were still charging for software updates, because “accounting rules” required allocating the development cost to, well, some revenue. Clearly one of the solutions is to fund it from income from running the App Store.

    Not to mention apparently assuming that because development tools, SDKs, simulators, etc are “free” (the yearly developer registration fee is only going to go so far…) that they must cost nothing to develop.
    watto_cobraDetnator

  • Valve kills CS:GO on macOS, won't launch Mac Counter-Strike 2 either

    jrg_ukjrg_uk
    There’s a sentiment in transport, “Why build a bridge? No one is swimming across the gap”, that seems quite appropriate here.
    watto_cobra