mpantone

DAalseth said:

Thanks for the reminder. I just checked to verify that the Share switch was off on all my devices. 

I review these settings every time I upgrade iOS, iPadOS, macOS or restore from a previous backup. It takes me at least an hour to review all of these when setting up a new device from scratch.

Same thing with Background Activity, Location Services (including precise location), Live Activities, Notifications and more. Lots of things to shut down.

foregoneconclusion said:

mpantone said: The rare earth mining element issue isn't China's only card in this trade war. They also hold about $770 billion in US Treasury bonds. That's a more dire concern for the US government. If China (or other countries) decide to dump Treasuries, there's a very real risk of serious economic downturn.

Unloading U.S. bonds would be the last thing that China would want to do re: tariffs. It would increase the exchange rate of their own currency which in turn would make their exports more expensive in the U.S. economy. It would compound their problems rather than providing a solution. 

That assumes that China is unwilling to take some short-term pain for longer-term strategic gains. And as China has proved for thousands of years, they are masters of the long game.

My guess is that weaponizing Treasury bonds would be one of China's late stage tactics in this trade war. But for sure they know that the US government knows that they have that card to play.

One thing we can count on is that China will not fold. They might give up a hand here or there but again they are playing for the big stakes whether it takes them 20, 50, 100, 500 years, it matters little to China. US companies are at the mercy of the quarterly earnings report and American politicians to frequent elections. The White House knows they have a narrow window before lawmakers' attention pivot back toward re-election activities. Chinese President Xi Jinping doesn't have to think about re-elections.

It's important to remember that China's Treasury bond position is not the only weapon in its arsenal. They will likely use a variety of methods rather than a quid pro quo back-and-forth tariff escalation. They've already said they are done with increasing tariffs. But dumping U.S. bonds will hurt the USA more than it will hurt China in the long-term. Both sides know that.

Also important is that China isn't the only one holding US debt. There's always the distinct possibility of other debt holding nations working together (possibly covertly) to release Treasuries to nudge the USA back into line. Is the dollar still a safe haven currency in April 2025? 

There's also the privacy aspect for people who aren't wearing the AR glasses.

Doesn't anyone remember when Google Glass was being sold? There was no clear way for any random person to know whether or not the Google Glass user was recording video or not. In a short span of time, people were being asked to remove their Google Glass or were outright refused entry into some location (businesses, offices, etc.). Worse, some of the Google Glass wearers took issue with others rightfully concerned about privacy and insisted to wear the Google Glass which gave rise to the unfortunate yet accurate moniker "Glassh-les."

After a while, it was clear that some people automatically assumed that Google Glass was recording video in situations where there was no other obvious reason to be wearing AR glasses.

Even today in 2025 in some situations carrying around a smartphone or even leaving it on a table screen side down is still considered to be impolite or a possible privacy issue (you can record audio, maybe even video covertly).

Even once Google Glass became relegated for enterprise tasks it still had serious privacy concerns. One of my family's physicians asked if he could use it to transcribe appointment notes years before the pandemic. I suggested to the family member to decline. The doctor was silently yet visibly annoyed at the refusal.

Apple Glass -- like Google Glass before it -- and other AR glasses have some towering challenges concerning acceptance from the general public.

Just because the temple has a little Apple logo isn't going to assuage anyone's suspicions. Far from it.

It's not just the technical challenges at play here, it's also societal acceptance. Early adopters will have to be very careful when and how to use AR glasses. We've already seen this before and many users exercised extremely poor judgment.

This whole article is based on the premise that Differential Privacy is 100% infallible all time time for every situation forever which is rather difficult to believe.

It's the same with really any analytics sharing whether it be opt-in or opt-out. How much data is really scrubbed? How does Joe Consumer truly know whether or not his personal data has been effectively removed? And if it doesn't what sort of recourse does he have?

A more sensible approach would be to just turn it off (opt out) and wait 5-10 years until the technology has been deployed to see how truly safe it is. Then the individual can decide whether or not sending in their "anonymized data" [sic] is worth the risk. No one sane would want to sign up for this.

Apple needs to turn this off by default if they really care about user privacy.

9secondkox2 said:

This is the way to go.  Apple should have never gone with a cliche headset. Even late to market, glasses would be big. 

AR glasses and VR HMDs have different goals and functions. There's really no way to get true immersion with a pair of AR glasses.

Also, the technological challenges of AR glasses are much higher in terms of power efficiency, weight, and performance. My prescription eyeglasses weigh 30 grams and I still take them off from time to time to give my eyes, temples, ears, and face a rest.

I also own an Oculus Rift S HMD which is way lighter than the Apple Vision Pro and yet I can't wear the Oculus more than 40-45 minutes per sitting.

At least in 2025, it is extremely doubtful that Apple has access to technology that can be distributed on a wide scale at an reasonable price (i.e., not $3500) that can be crammed into eyeglasses weighing in at 50 grams or less. With useful battery performance, not something that needs to be recharged every two hours.

Note that Apple has committed to protecting privacy and data security. To achieve that they can't just send everything to the cloud (and there's latency involved with that anyhow). These smart wearable devices create special challenges for a privacy-focused company like Apple. For Alphabet and Meta, no problem, Google Glass and Meta Glass can upload everything to their servers because they're going to sell your activity behavior: that's their business model.

Being first to market is useless. The device needs to work considerably better than what is already out in the market.