Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

naehrdine.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 267 posts

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#161

Post by josephg »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #142
trangus_1985 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do yearly updates, the 2022 doc will very likely have more information. Regardless, the 2021 doc has some key foundations of the technology that are worth knowing. The contract tracing docs _should_ be almost the same technology, and knowing how that works _should_ be a good start. At least, from my eyeing the OP's article as a lay person.

"They do yearly updates, the 2022 doc will very likely have more information." Sure you document such stuff before releasing it?

> Sure you document such stuff before releasing it?

Uuuhh so, bad news. Basically nobody ever does that. Since agile, everyone seems to just iterate like mad, release, then document after release if you have time.

I'm as guilty of this as everyone else.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#162

Post by snvzz »

esalman wrote: post #76
lapetitejort wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure you can power off your device! Just take out the batt-- oh...

Swappable battery is a trend that should return- to both phones and electric vehicles.

Won't happen w/o legislation.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#163

Post by ddingus »

imglorp wrote: post #52
EGreg wrote: post #3

Can a faraday cage backpack work well to block any of this stuffv

Some of it. There is still the ultrasonic channel: beacons are emitted by various tv's, stores, etc. which can be used to capture location and other data and exfiltrate from the phone with the right software running. And of course the regular microphone can capture conversations and media. If the bag is not opaque, there is still an optical channel. Plus there are still accelerometers and magnetometers which can do r…

Where can I read about these? Audio beacons, I mean.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#164

Post by malwrar »

This reminds me again how cool phones architecture is.

There’s a huge amount of patents around the idea that you don’t really need to have the power-hungry main AP on all the time. Instead, people get really creative around delegating behavior to cheaper chips to save power and sometimes reduce total BoM cost. For example, one that I worked on was around the idea that you could use a minimally featured yet cheap ble chip to detect when one of your paired devices was near the phone. It would then wake up the beefier chip with the full stack implemented, which saves a suprising amount of power.

Some of the things you can do when you break out of the software-only box are incredible!

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#165

Post by krrrh »

majormajor wrote: post #119
gremIin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asked what the real risk is then described several risks.

How many risks here are new in iOS 15 or exclusive to Apple products? Specifically, I believe the real risk seems to be that you have very few ways to know if your device is doing anything when it's on or off unless the manufacturer tells you. If you don't believe that everyone, including your government is corrupt, the only solution is through government regulation. Clearly the private companies are otherwise going…

In some cases. In other cases the government regulation is what puts people at risk in ways that the companies have no interest in doing.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#166

Post by judge2020 »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #150
judge2020 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. All mass surveillance request go straight to Google thanks to their unencrypted location tracking.

What unencrypted location tracking does this comment refer to?

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28553778

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#167

Post by csande17 »

nbzso wrote: post #132

Hmm. Feeling very good about dumping iPhone to simple flip. My last iPhone was old SE with home button and touch ID. Somehow I managed to remove smartphone habits of my life. It is a bliss. Highly recommend. It is a stellar investment in ones future, psychologically, technically and in general.

If you don't mind my asking, what model flip phone did you settle on? I had one I really liked, but carriers are dropping support for the 3G network it uses, and it seems like all the 4G-compatible options either run Android or have issues with basic functionality like receiving calls. (Or both!)

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#169

Post by judge2020 »

b9a2cab5 wrote: post #127
judge2020 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the NFC chip probably uses a tab bit more power, but it also uses battery after your phone dies to allow you to continue to pay for transit. "power reserve is available for up to five hours when your iPhone needs to be charged". https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209495#:~:text=power%20res... .

Your phone isn't actually "dead" when it shows out of battery though, since the display can still power on for another hour+. There's a reserve before you hit the true 0%.

I mean, true 0 would mean the battery couldn't ever charge again. My iPhones have consistently always turned off when the indicator is on 1%, which of course is probably 5% of the actual battery.

Re: Always-on Processor magic: How Find My works while iPhone is powered off

#170

Post by ekianjo »

heydabop wrote: post #141
harry8 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without disagreeing with anything you've said there, even if you /think/ you have nothing to hide now and happen to be correct in practice, it's a terrible assumption to think that you can count on that being true forever. Imagine you witness a murder in a restaurant, cold blooded and it's dirty cops working for a three letter institution that did it. You want to give evidence like a law abiding, upstanding citizen w…

You don't even have to get that radical with "nothing to hide". Next time someone says that ask if they use blinds in their house/apt, if you could setup a webcam in their living room, or if you could just read some texts between them and a significant other. Or ask for their passwords, date of birth, SSN, credit card numbers, pets' names, and parents' names. Simple things like this are why I talk to people via Signa…

Signal is centralized and is an obvious target for surveillance so I would not even remotely rely on it.
Post reply on HN