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Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

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441–450 of 493 posts

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If hashes are uploaded to devices, they can be extracted and images that clash against it can be created. Many organizations have the hashes, so they could leak nonetheless. Either way, I don't think that's a major problem. If the system interprets a picture of a pineapple as CSAM, you only need to produce the picture of a pineapple to defend yourself against any accusations. If clashes are too commonplace, the ent…

> If the system interprets a picture of a pineapple as CSAM, you only need to produce the picture of a pineapple to defend yourself against any accusations. If the system interprets a picture of a pineapple on your phone as CSAM, after Apple notifies the authorities they have identified child porn on your phone, after the police detain you with the courtesies afforded to all alleged pedophiles, after you cough up you…

> after Apple notifies the authorities they have identified child porn on your phone,

Apple has a team that will manually vet the matches, so no pineapple picture or a fuzzy forced hash collision picture will cause the authorities to be notified.

So if you're worried someone will secretly send fake CSAM hash collision images to your phone to trigger the process, the worst that will happen is that some poor sod at Apple will get mildly inconvenienced.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#443
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple hashes all of your photos offline [...] No, only the ones designated for upload to iCloud. > [...] it’s about governments forcing Apple to do things with this new weapon Governments can already force Apple to do any kind of scanning, "weapon" being built already or not.

> > Apple hashes all of your photos offline [...] > No, only the ones designated for upload to iCloud. How do you verify that?

If you turn off iCloud, the hash list will never get downloaded on your phone. No scanning will take place in that case.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#444
post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint there are a number of things I don't like: * I can only have Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs * They've removed all but one external indicator light (there used to be four), and its behavior is completely useless (there's no way for me to tell externally what the power state of my machine is) * They've killed the trackpoint * This is the second of this series I've owned where neither of the fingerprint re…

Well, some of those points are down to personal preference. I for instance always hated the trackpoint thing and I am fine with the new clean and simple keyboard approach. Don't even get me started on Apple. If removing the physical Esc key is not the biggest ever fuck you to pro users, then I don't know what is.

Didn't they add it back for some if not all models? I have a 2019 16" with a physical Esc.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#445
post #29

This seems like an over-reaction. I'm highly opposed to Apple's CSAM move but they are still much better and transparent than Google, Amazon, and most other services. Many of these already do something like this but they just don't actively tell you or document it. Also, and please correct me if I am mistaken, Apple's CSAM is limited to iCloud for Photos. It does not just work against your local photos. CSAM Detectio…

> I'm highly opposed to Apple's CSAM move but they are still much better and transparent than Google, Amazon, and most other services.

Is this actually true? Is there a way to see what information Apple has on you? I'm sure it's not the full extent of what they have, but for example I can see(and hear) past voice prompts I've given to Google Assistant and their results. I can also choose to delete this information(obviously no way to know this is actually deleted though).

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#446

Desktop - Ubuntu 20.04. Everything works and my requirements are quite advanced - bunch of games on Steam, pro level audio production studio just to mention a few things. Laptop - Dell Precision 7750, Xeon CPU, 64 GB RAM, bought with Ubuntu pre-installed. Beast of a laptop, superior thermals, wipes the floor with a mac. Phone - Google Pixel. I consider that a lesser evil choice to Apple's walled garden. It's rooted,…

Did you try/consider GrapheneOS for Pixel?

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#447
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, well they're likely doing it to save money. I work in data engineering and I can tell you calculating the hash of every iCloud upload wouldn't come cheap. Mystery solved?

You are completely missing the point. The answer to a privacy and security question shouldn't be, "it is easy for us to do things this way." You are inadvertently making the point that you are arguing against.

Going back to your original point, what makes you think checking for CP in images uploaded to iCloud is more private or secure when Apple's servers analyse the entire image, rather than having the client generate a hash of the image and having Apple's servers analyse that instead?

I work in data engineering and I can tell you what I'd rather do. Having Apple's servers check hashes rather than the entire image means you can segregate the original images from the CP-checker data processing pipelines. That's a much simpler and more secure security scenario.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#448
post #446

Desktop - Ubuntu 20.04. Everything works and my requirements are quite advanced - bunch of games on Steam, pro level audio production studio just to mention a few things. Laptop - Dell Precision 7750, Xeon CPU, 64 GB RAM, bought with Ubuntu pre-installed. Beast of a laptop, superior thermals, wipes the floor with a mac. Phone - Google Pixel. I consider that a lesser evil choice to Apple's walled garden. It's rooted,…

Did you try/consider GrapheneOS for Pixel?

No, for now I am fine with rooted stock Android. I keep an eye on Librem 5 and Pinephone and in the future I think I'm gonna get one of them as a secondary phone with hopes of eventually switching completely.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell Precision 7xxx line is easily the most advanced laptop with official linux support there is. Every person who bought it after I recommended this laptop was impressed. I've got Ubuntu 20.04 on mine and the only thing that doesn't work (yet) is the power button fingerprint reader which is a non-issue.

ThinkPad E series owner here. I find the default specifications worthwhile (including the keyboard). Dell was a contender but they priced the "business line" more expensive than ThinkPad. I got a sweet deal on Amazon and bought it in a heartbeat!

I did consider Thinkpad at the time too, but they did not have an option to select linux OS when buying, so I went with Dell, because they don't just pretend to support linux, they officially do.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#450
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think the most underrated “serious” notebook computer in the world is the Panasonic Letsnote SX/SV. Oh man, I kinda wish I felt different, but this thing gets a hard no just for its aesthetics. Notebooks are both way to omnipresent in my life and manifold to revisit something mid-90s. I do not want my home & life to feel like an old X-Files episode.

The great irony is, your 90s throwback nightmare is now the Gen Z dream. Everything is a cycle if you wait long enough!

>your 90s throwback nightmare is now the Gen Z dream

Only ironically. See: vaporwave.

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