Apple betrayed us all... - Aug. 17, 2022

[RILEYISMYNAME]

 

NEWS SOURCES:

 

WHAT HAPPENS ON YOUR IPHONE, WE USE FOR ADS

Apple putting more ads in iPhone apps

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-aapl-set-to-expand-advertising-bringing-ads-to-maps-tv-and-books-apps-l6tdqqmg?sref=gni836kR

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/15/apple-reportedly-plans-to-put-ads-in-more-apps-on-your-iphone.html

https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/apple-adding-ads-to-maps-could-upend-this-11-billion-industry.html

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/iphones-are-reportedly-getting-a-lot-more-ads-and-thats-a-terrible-idea

VPNs on iOS are “broken”

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/08/ios-vpns-still-leak-traffic-more-than-2-years-later-researcher-claims/

https://www.michaelhorowitz.com/VPNs.on.iOS.are.scam.php

 

DX NEIN

Intel drops DX9 support on 12^th gen CPUs, Arc GPUs, will emulate through DX12

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1449569-intel-drops-native-dx9-support-on-12th-gen-and-all-arc-discrete-gpu/

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000091238/graphics.html

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/open-sourcing-direct3d-9-on-12-and-the-release-of-the-dxbc-signer-nuget-package/

OMG Newegg listed the Arc A380 for $139

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-arc-a380-gpu-appears-on-newegg

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-arc-a380-a380-cli-6g/p/N82E16814930076?nm_mc=AFC-RAN-COM&cm_mmc=AFC-RAN-COM

 

PUT A DOOM ON IT

John Deere DOOM hack showed off at Defcon

https://appuals.com/hacker-runs-doom-on-tractor/

https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-tractor-jailbreak-defcon-2022/

https://www.gamesradar.com/doom-running-on-a-tractor-isnt-just-a-cool-hack-its-a-political-statement/

https://gizmodo.com/john-deere-hacking-right-to-repair-1849412256

dangerous? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14075867

 

QUICK BITS

 

THEY’RE STILL COOKIN’

RTX 4000 cards delayed

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1449748-nvidia-rtx-4080-and-rtx-4070-reportedly-delayed-until-2023-rtx-4090-only-4000-series-gpu-to-land-in-2022/

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/nvidia-rtx-4080-reportedly-delayed-to-2023-rtx-4090-only-40-series-gpu-to-land-in-2022-rumor/

https://twitter.com/BitsAndChipsEng/status/1559249802814177292

https://twitter.com/BitsAndChipsEng/status/1559253020155813889

 

NEED AT LEAST 13 REASONS

Once you go Android 13, you never go back

https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-downgrade-protection-pixel-6-series/

https://lmg.gg/Nl4hT

https://www.androidpolice.com/pixel-6-6a-no-android-13-downgrade-why/

https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1559537708959154177

 

THE LATEST IN PARTY-POOPERY

Airbnb testing “anti-party technology”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/17/airbnb-to-use-anti-party-technology-to-crack-down-on-rowdy-guests

https://news.airbnb.com/airbnb-introduces-new-anti-party-technology-in-us-and-canada/

 

ANYONE CAN BE SPIDER-MAN

Files for “Playstation launcher” discovered in Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on PC

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/now-reference-to-a-playstation-pc-launcher-has-been-discovered-in-spider-man-pc/

https://www.engadget.com/sony-pc-launcher-214707308.html

broll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E051WtpyWg

 

FOLD THE PLANET!!

Folding monitor

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/16/23308009/geminos-folding-monitor-kickstarter-mobile-pixels

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/747287659/geminos-stacked-screens-for-enhanced-productivity/description

 

[Needfuldoer]

I liked Apple better when they were doomed.

[Middcore]

24 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

I liked Apple better when they were doomed.

 

A lot of Apple's products from the 90's when they were a dysfunctional basketcase of a company, through the first few return-of-Jobs years (pre-iPod), are extremely interesting.

[Chiyawa]

Big companies are going to milk you one way or the other. Welcome to the world of Capitalist.

[hishnash]

One thing you need to consider here is apple is a large company of many people.  The fact that this `leaked` means there is someone (who knows about it so high level staff member) show does not like it... I have a feeling this is one of the C-level or just below that is pushing to make there job more important (wanting it maybe to become a dedicated c-level role) and thus is pushing for ads in more placed, most people who work at apple would be opposed to this... I very much hope that the rest of the management push back at this and understand that while you can gain another small % of revenue from users this way long term this is not good for them as it will degrade the product and user-trust. 

[williamcll]

At least on android it's easier to install systemwide adblockers.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, hishnash said:

One thing you need to consider here is apple is a large company of many people.  The fact that this `leaked` means there is someone (who knows about it so high level staff member) show does not like it... I have a feeling this is one of the C-level or just below that is pushing to make there job more important (wanting it maybe to become a dedicated c-level role) and thus is pushing for ads in more placed, most people who work at apple would be opposed to this... I very much hope that the rest of the management push back at this and understand that while you can gain another small % of revenue from users this way long term this is not good for them as it will degrade the product and user-trust. 

Apple has been progressing like this for a long time though.  Like when they started adding hurdles for Google and Facebook to do tracking, with the whole concept of security/privacy...while conveniently allowing themselves to still grab the data...because they know what they are collecting and how to use it.  Then introducing more things that hurts advertisers on Google, but bolsters their advertising division

 

So it comes as no surprise that they would be eventually try exploiting it.

[saltycaramel]

Apple never “crippled” the ability to collect first party data, stats and analytics within a given company’s app/service. Not within the Amazon app, not within the Netflix app, not within Gmail, not within FB’s blue app, not the internal server-side analytics within the Floatplane app. 
 

First party data was always fair game, so it’s fair game for Apple itself as well, even better if said first party data is aggregated and/or anonymized and/or local. (of course even as a first party Apple is in a kinda “unfair” position to begin with, but that’s because they earned that position by enticing users with great hardware products, that’s capitalism for you, any company would do the same and leverage this advantage, that’s why Microsoft tried to sell you WM smartphones as well in the past, and that’s why Facebook in the years tried to sell you a phone, VR headsets and was planning a watch, any company would sell their mother and firstborn to have control over an hw/sw ecosystem)

 

What Appe did “cripple” (if by cripple we mean, god forbid, asking the user for permission) is the ability for third party data to follow you around and stick to you across your whole digital life till the end of times.

 

It’s more nuanced but it doesn’t make for a clickbaity video title/thesis, I guess.

[Kisai]

15 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Apple has been progressing like this for a long time though.  Like when they started adding hurdles for Google and Facebook to do tracking, with the whole concept of security/privacy...while conveniently allowing themselves to still grab the data...because they know what they are collecting and how to use it.  Then introducing more things that hurts advertisers on Google, but bolsters their advertising division

 

So it comes as no surprise that they would be eventually try exploiting it.

Nah. It's more likely that there hasn't be sufficient push back from Apple users. Preventing tracking from third parties is a good thing because that tracking goes to thousands of companies. Go ahead, type in "ads.txt" on any site with ads on it and see how many companies they are sending your data too. I'll wait.

 

for example: 

https://www.ebay.com/ads.txt

 

You'll note that both amazon and facebook have nothing listed because they do not permit third parties, all ads must be purchased directly on their platforms. However, go to your typical garbage laden website:

 

https://www.fandom.com/ads.txt

 

Yes, that's 2007 "accounts" of resellers.

 

So the kerfuffle about facebook ads on iOS, is literately this. It's the preventing of third parties from doing exactly this kind of crap to you.

 

So what about first party ads? Well that depends. If ads are properly vetted, there should not be a problem, there should be no tracking cookies or other tracking data, and the ads should be literately "text/image only". Video ads however are not that. Video ads are the bane of mobile users existence because of how quickly they drain batteries. A text or image ad, only uses as much processing time as any other text/image asset, but a video ad, may directly invoke a software decoder somewhere if it's not a video that works on the native decoder.

 

Here's a nightmare scenario. Video ads in AV1 format on devices that push AV1 through a software playback engine.

 

Anyway, I digress,

 

My guess here is that some corporate pill-pusher type of idiot floated the idea of pushing ads into more services, and the engineers who work on the software aren't having it, and want to rile up the customers to get it axed. People already pay a premium for the devices, do you really think they're going to go "oh well android also has garbage ads on it, let's switch from the one platform pushing garbage, to the other" :? No. If anything the less ad-laden garbage on iOS is one of the selling points of iOS.

 

Ads suck, especially when they aren't well vetted (like typical web ads) and when the site operates do not give enough of a care to manually approve every campaign and instead just allow every piece of crap anyone has ever made into an ad sit on their website and stink it up.

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Apple has been progressing like this for a long time though.  Like when they started adding hurdles for Google and Facebook to do tracking, with the whole concept of security/privacy...while conveniently allowing themselves to still grab the data...because they know what they are collecting and how to use it.  Then introducing more things that hurts advertisers on Google, but bolsters their advertising division

 

So the hurdles they put on Google Facebook etc are the same as the ones apple imposes on themselves.

Google and Facebook can to tracking but only within apps were the user expiclty logs in to the google or FB account. The rules against tracking are against the tracking were you a traced by FB or Google even through within the app you never login to FB or Google. Apple does not do any of that tracking, they do not track what you are doing within apps you have inthralled (apart from apps were you login to your Apple ID).

And search adds etc are really only based on the search terms and not on users demographic etc (this is well documented by devs that really want it to be based on demographic as we do not want to be paying for search add spots for users we have no interest in even if they search for a given term).   

So the adds that apple sell are not based on any data other than data presented by the user at the time (the search string), all we as devs can do is bid based on search terms there is no ability to controle any other parameters and from experimentation (looking at results that people get) it is clear that the only this apple do here is look at the term and how much the devs bin on the term.  (apples App Store search and thier ads system is very very basic, the quilayt of the search is also very basic its the sort of search you could do with a single line SQL query without even builded a dedicated search index... and the speed is about that as well ... ).

Apple do you usage data (within the tv app were you have signed in to Apple ID) to promote thier own products to you like TV shows in Apple TV+ but that is the limit of what the tracking is used for in the way of adds.

 

[hishnash]

3 hours ago, williamcll said:

At least on android it's easier to install systemwide adblockers.

The network tools apis on iOS are in fact more powerful than those on android as building and app that bypasses them is very difficult if not impossible.  The apis have existed for many years so you can build a ad-blocker that blocks all DNS and network traffic to known add networks on iOS. 

Getting that through the App Store is the harder part,  will however need to demonstrate you can be trusted since you are implicitly intercepting all network traffic on the device (even if you are not SSL man in the middle attacking it) so apple is unlikely to aprove an app like this if this is your first app on the store, or you have a history of scams.  There are not many apps out there using these apis (even most VPN apps use the other VPN configuration apis rather than the RAW network extension APIS for this reason). 

The reason apple are so sensitive about these apis is imagine how valuable the data about every single domain name (and app that attempted to connect to it + number of bytes and when) would be to some data brokers.   To date I have really only seen developer tool apps get approval to use these apis on iOS, apps that clearly market to a group of people who understand the consequences... 

[saltycaramel]

Listening to the latest WAN...

 

Linus: he's setting up a lab to measure all kinds of minutiae and go deep on specs, ripple currents and whatnot, but when it comes to privacy+advertising he can't wrap his head around the minutiae of first party vs third party data, local vs non local data, isolated vs sticky data, identifying vs aggregated data, transparency vs sleazy practices, etc. he just lumps everything in one big ball of incoherent rambling and attacks Apple like Apple ever said "advertising BAD, all of it, there can never be a respectful, granular and transparent way to serve personalized ads". Except Apple never said that.

 

Typical Linus. 

Deep dives on specific topics and broad strokes on other topics, especially when the lack of subtlety allows for some audience-pleasing Apple bashing.