Hacker News: grahamj

New comment by grahamj in "A proposal to restrict sites from accessing a users’ local network"

grahamj — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 18:03:40 +0000

I don’t see this mentioned anywhere but Safari on iOS already does this. If you try to access a local network endpoint you’ll be asked to allow it by Safari, and the permission is per-site.

New comment by grahamj in "Vibe marketing prompts for OpenAI's new model"

grahamj — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:09:34 +0000

Marketing is the manipulation of people for gain. Sounds like a great fit for AI.

New comment by grahamj in "The Website Hacker News Is Afraid to Discuss"

grahamj — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 17:41:47 +0000

yep. This is HN’s biggest flaw.

New comment by grahamj in "Show HN: Psychedelic animation generator; (p)art of your next trip"

grahamj — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 20:40:00 +0000

ah this takes me back. Thanks ;)

New comment by grahamj in "The gem Apple discontinued: the 11-inch MacBook Air (2019)"

grahamj — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 15:14:45 +0000

I dunno about lying; it used to be true in the Intel age so it might simply be a matter of their information being out of date.

New comment by grahamj in "The gem Apple discontinued: the 11-inch MacBook Air (2019)"

grahamj — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 15:07:12 +0000

imo the perfect small laptop has to have full-size keys and thus be at least ~11x5".

That rules out all iPads below the 12.9" due to their tall aspect (even in landscape).

The 11" MBA was ~12x8" and so darn near the minimum you could make it. ~11x7" should be doable but 2" is a pretty small trackpad.

imo the latest MBAs are more or less perfect: a great tradeoff of overall size vs. trackpad size. Although I actually preferred the tapered design of the M1.

New comment by grahamj in "Mysterious tunnels sketched by Leonardo may have been found"

grahamj — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 05:23:57 +0000

From the title I wasn't sure if they were even found

New comment by grahamj in "Apple Exclaves"

grahamj — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 04:36:32 +0000

The article mentions the display controller runs an Apple OS so I could see there being a secure way for an exclave to call into it for the onscreen indicators.

I would expect that to mean they're not included in screenshots so I'm curious now whether that's true for the iPhone 16.

New comment by grahamj in "Sublogic Flight Simulator"

grahamj — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:14:50 +0000

heh my friend and I (young teens at the time) used to wire photoresistors into the analog in pins on the joy port. We put the sensors in toilet paper tubes on one side of a hallway with small lights across from them and wrote BASIC code that would turn on a light via the annunciator outputs when change was detected.

Then we’d see if we could sneak down the hall undetected, Mission Impossible style. I never noticed the detection speed varying with light level but I guess it did!

New comment by grahamj in "Kagi Is Bringing Orion Web Browser to Linux"

grahamj — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 21:32:19 +0000

I’ve been full-timing it on iOS lately and yeah, pretty buggy. It comes with uBlock but doesn’t seem to work, and neither does bookmark/fave syncing.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US"

grahamj — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:45:04 +0000

Apple software is already largely written my Americans.

Somehow I don't think fealty will change its quality.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US"

grahamj — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:40:47 +0000

My first thought was payment to avoid sanctions for being "woke" (read: anti-discrimination)

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 23:30:25 +0000

Yes Apple controls the device so you're right, you can never be sure what it's doing. My thinking is that an encryption backdoor means the key generation algo is compromised. In that case you want to bypass that by generating the key yourself.

If the backdoor is some other method of getting your key off the device then all bets are off.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 23:27:35 +0000

I don't believe it's the SE itself that encrypts user data so it must already be the case that the key is generated outside the SE, sent to it for storage, and is retrieved if the user is authenticated.

So the difference between Apple generating the key on device and storing it in the SE and the user generating it and storing it in the SE is that the user can use a known-secure key generation algo. If Apple generates the key you can't be sure it's cryptographically secure and doesn't have a backdoor.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 01:54:27 +0000

It depends what kind of backdoor the UK is asking for but "encryption backdoor" sounds like cryptographic compromise. I don't know if that's what it means but either way the only way to be sure your keys are secure is to generate them yourself.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 01:47:48 +0000

Depends what kind of security. Local doesn't help if your house burns down or is robbed.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:03:25 +0000

Apple should start prompting users to enable it.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:59:47 +0000

It only works when the gun nuts aren’t on the side of the oppressors.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:55:11 +0000

> They undermined their own "worldwide" claim, as ADP still works everywhere else, and the UK has no access.

Disagree. There is a difference between ADP being unavailable in one country and it working differently in that country. Implementing a backdoor would mean changing the way ADP works.

New comment by grahamj in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

grahamj — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 17:39:05 +0000

IMO the only thing you can have a high level of trust in is your own *nix server. Backup those devices to it then encrypt there before being sent to the cloud.