Spencer314

stevebobs said:

Xed said:

stevebobs said:

We have got ourselves some apple lovers here. While I agree that the media probably wants to make a story of this more than investigate the matter, this device apple made is dangerous. It leverages the entire apple ecosystem! You know, those 1 billion devices. What other device can tap into that? It's $30. Discreet. It has been shown that it's firmware can be hacked. Apple has released several new security measures since it came out. Why?? Cause it's so freaking easy to use it to track people. All I gotta do is go to Target. Yah it's tied to my ID but if I'm a stalker I don't care. Don't blame this on law enforcement. They were blindsided by a tracker expertly crafted by one the world's most capable companies. Wtf, mate? 

Apple includes an anti-stalking feature to their AirTags = Apple bad
No one else has this feature despite cheap and simple easy to track people without their knowledge has existed for long time = It's still Apple's fault

🙄

I mean I'm not super passionate about this argument. I don't know if actual criminals will ever figure out a way to gainfully jailbreak airtags.

But one thing to consider, I have no idea how or where I could buy a good stalking device. Like I know tile is an alternative but I think we airtags and the kind of devices this thread is referring to are much more capable. 

But buying an airtag is easy. Yah dedicated criminals had access to these tools for a long time. But your regular dumb, jealous, angry, or resentful average person wants convenience. Airtags give them incredible convenience. Yah anybody can make em. But only apple has the ubiqituous network that enables such accurate tracking. 

Google "GPS Trackers" and they come up right away, with images and where to buy them. Heck, you get pretty much the same result by simply searching for "trackers". 

The only issue is that most of them don't last very long. The better ones can track people for about a ten days before their batteries run out, but they are certainly small enough to hide in a car, and a few days is more than enough for plenty of nasty purposes. A few days is longer than an AirTag will sit idle before alerting people nearby to its presence. 

Apple has made very clear that they will work with law enforcement to track down stalkers, and with their anti-stalking features, there is a decent chance that someone being stalked will find an AirTag, while there is very little chance they will find one of these: https://spytec.com/collections/all-gps-trackers

GeysonAlvarenga said:

I recently got my Sony A7SIII (I use CF-Express A cards) which usually contain gigantic 4K 120fps HLG files, and this truly doesn’t ring “Pro” as they target creators. Time is money! 

P.S Im grateful for the upgrades. But this should’ve been a no brainer for them.

Given that Sony is the only camera maker supporting CF-Express type A cards for now, that would be a narrow market. Other vendors are using the larger CF-Express type B cards. Also, the laptop designs were probably finalized over a year ago, when literally the only camera supporting Type A was the Sony A7SIII. I can't imagine Apple supporting type B, as that would have required a separate slot from the SD Card slot. 

Also, the fast CF-Express readers generate quite a lot of heat making them a significant heat management problem even if Apple had a reason to consider them. 

As for UHS-III, B&H Photo doesn't appear to list any UHS-III SD cards, there are no devices that support writing them, and several Google searches got no hits on external UHS-III readers. As a future proofing step, it would have been nice, and Apple does have some history of being ahead of technology curves, but UHS-III would be a lot to ask for a laptop shipping in 2021. 

Maybe it was staged. This can happen, and this likely will happen. That's what the notifications are for. 

This is definitely dual-use technology. As someone who would be concerned about someone stealing, say, my camera bag, I would rather it be harder for a thief to detect or disable my AirTag. But, the better AirTags are for that use case, the better they are for stalkers. But even better for stalkers would be throwing any still functioning iPhone into a car. Those won't beep and will connect to cell phone networks themselves. Since it won't use the screen and the only thing you need it to do is ping the Find My network, you can run it in low power mode with the screen off and it will probably run for two days. Admittedly, an AirTag is only $25 and is a lot smaller, but if you are really going to stalk somebody using tech, you can get an older iPhone for $150 and do so perfectly well, particularly if you are willing to stalk their car rather than, say, their purse. 

jasonfj said:

Exhibits two and three, your honour. 

And is that a "Nevermind" logo tattoo'd across his chest?

Even if he has been suffering from this, the many times he has referred to (and reproduce) the iconic image for humor value is going to be a pretty large barrier to jump over, coupled with his parents being paid for the shoot and further coupled with the fact that pictures of naked babies are hardly unusual. 

KaseyKeiser said:

I believe Apple has a hidden agenda for doing this and it has nothing to do with protecting children or child trafficking. For all the bad press and blowback from the public, and the fact that this seems to contradict their own security ideals, there is more to this than meets the eye! 

Apple's agenda is to do what they can to stave off government intrusions on their privacy-focused business model. This presumably gives them some breathing room for that by doing the minimum they think they can get away with while still "thinking of the children." Getting lawmakers to pass laws destroying privacy is just too easy if you can make it about stopping child porn. 

This is literally just scanning for CSAM images, an extremely restricted dataset. It's hard to imagine what the hidden agenda for doing that might be. They don't need this excuse to do phone-side image fingerprints. And it's weird that everyone is so much more focused on the CSAM stuff rather than the ability for parents to have their kids' messages scanned by AI algorithms looking out for sexting.