Gaby

rob53 said:

EU is a dictatorship, plain and simple. At this point Apple needs to seriously tell the EU to GTH. The US needs to triple import duties on EU goods effectively shutting the EU down. The US should also reduce exports to the EU and cut off any financial support. 

I live in Europe (UK) and I completely agree with you. Why they want to homogenise everything makes no sense to me. Companies should have every right to differentiate. Being as ideas in themselves cannot be patented and more and more frequently tech companies  as an example copy one another any way they can, differentiating through developing specific hardware and implementations is one of the only protections left. Granted there are huge problems with concentrated wealth but this is not the way to solve this issue in my opinion 

@rrabu  I’m assuming that she has some sort of cognitive impairment/disability. Though I could be  wrong and perhaps she is just plain stupid…
 I think Apple in the case of these sort of apps is just being greedy; there are so many cases of uninformed parents allowing kids to make purchases without understanding that there are millions of these predatory apps out there, ( though personally I think parents should be more proactive and educate their children as a lot of problems are down to lazy parenting.)  moreover you have vulnerable people who don’t understand that they’re spending real money. Not to mention those with addiction issues. The money that must get wasted annually I’m sure is staggering. I feel Apple should just ban these sort of apps. There’s no excuse for charging 99.99 for a box of coins or a stupid costume etc. They’re laughing all the way to the bank. Apple has so many streams of revenue that they would be just fine without in game IAP. They’d also be setting a great example and potentially lead other companies to end the practice entirely - Much to the chagrin of devs everywhere I’m sure…

For anyone that’s interested, after first charge and use I got 48% charge on my 12 pro max from zero.  I’ll update if there’s any further increase after a couple of uses if anyone wishes. 

GeorgeBMac said:

AppleInsider said:

The Microsoft Exchange hack and many other attacks were caused by gangs working with the Chinese government, the Biden administration and NATO claim.

Actually, NATO didn't claim that.   Aside from the usual crowd of the U.S., Britain and Canada, others are saying that Chinese hackers did some bad things -- but they are not attributing it to the Chinese government.

From Reuters:

"While a flurry of statements from Western powers represent a broad alliance, cyber experts said the lack of consequences for China beyond the U.S. indictment was conspicuous. Just a month ago, summit statements by G7 and NATO warned China and said it posed threats to the international order.

Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, called Monday's announcement a "successful effort to get friends and allies to attribute the action to Beijing, but not very useful without any concrete follow-up."

Some of Monday's statements even seemed to pull their punches. While Washington and its close allies such as the United Kingdom and Canada held the Chinese state directly responsible for the hacking, others were more circumspect.

NATO merely said that its members "acknowledge" the allegations being leveled against Beijing by the U.S., Canada, and the UK. The European Union said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in "malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory" - a statement that left open the possibility that the Chinese government was itself innocent of directing the espionage."

With the U.S. in full attack mode on China, it puts their allegations / assumptions into question.

Apparently there was a hack and also a release of information to others on how to exploit it.  But there does not seem to be a consensus that it was initiated and supported by the Chinese government.

But, regardless, if the hackers were operating independently in China, it is up to China to shut them down -- at least.
Or, as the EU put it:
"The European Union said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in "malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory""

The fact remains that in such a country as China that is so authoritarian, and with such strong firewall and censorship capabilities these cyberattacks are unlikely. When you consider that every byte incoming/outgoing is monitored, and that people are rounded up and arrested for so much as sneezing in the wrong direction, let alone for a crime so grave as expressing an opinion that doesn’t toe the party line.  It is almost impossible for even an individual to commit these crimes and harvest so much data, let alone for innumerable groups to engage in these activities and remain unknown. Which is why it’s dubious that anyone could manage without the state being actively involved. Not to mention the type of IP and tech they’re stealing is clearly beneficial to the government.  As for other countries not calling them out specifically, for one it’s called diplomacy, and secondly they’re scared shitless of being on the receiving end of china’s ire themselves. And reading between the lines of what nato and the E.U said, it’s fairly obvious that they acknowledge the Chinese state to be involved. If this were anywhere other than China or Russia, it would have been declared an act of war and they’d have gone in guns blazing. In truth sadly, I think that’s the only language they’ll understand. Because they keep nipping at people to see how far they can push and it’s not going to stop. 

Well you’d have to be pretty stupid to use a google VPN. Though in truth I’m dubious about all modern VPNs. There was one that came with Ironkey’s more premium device years ago that I used when necessary. Of course they have their uses but I’d advise anyone only to activate for the bare essentials. If it’s browsing related, Tor is the more secure option. It’s certainly one way of them solving the problem of all the valuable data they have been losing over the last couple of years, and smart/sly to boot. They ensure that one way or another they’re creating detailed profiles on vast swathes of the population - again relying on the average person’s lack of understanding. Of course with schemes such as these they can perpetuate the notion that they are becoming more privacy focused by slowly deprecating cookies etc thus increasing user trust in them.