USPS’ website does this, sort of.

If their text service is down it’ll let you know and just skip the 2FA process even though normally they offer an option to get the code via email.

The fact that they do this is bad enough, the fact that this happens so often that I’ve seen this at least a dozen times is even worse.

You’re right that a lot of Terms of Service documents and similar agreement documents have language that reserves the right to modify those terms.

At the same time just because something is in the terms doesn’t mean it can stand the test of adjudication and terms as well as changes are often challenged in court with success.

Unity is in a particular tricky situation because the clause that governed modifications in their last ToS explicitly gives the user the option to pass on modifications that adversely affects them and stick with the old terms:

Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity Software Additional Terms.md

You can still do this if you use https://www.shodan.io/

It’ll let you find IoT devices and cameras connected to the internet if you know what to search for and an alarming amount of them are locked behind an admin/admin login.

I advise against nosying around because there’s a near 100% chance that it’s illegal to do so in your jurisdiction.

Oh wow, they really closed it down huh?

Not too long ago you were able to change it.

This dumbing things down to prevent customers from fucking themselves over and using up CS resources is getting ridiculous.

Say you need to change some settings but your modem/router isn’t online then you’re SOOL.

Cox, who uses the same gateway, is even worse. They won’t even allow you to enable legacy mode (802.11b) for IoT devices that cheaped out on WiFi cards, not even on a separate network and their customer service can’t enable it either.

I dread moving into a Cox region where there’s no fiber competitor available.

Instead of cracking jokes he should improve the piss poor optimization.

Can’t even render 50fps consistently on a Strix 3090OC at 1620p (accounting for resolution scale), what a joke.

Edit: Scratch that, it’s even worse, averaging around 40 fps with HUB Quality settings, so not even on Ultra and my 12900K is nowhere near bottlenecking.

What a joke.

Most doxxers don’t technically release the information, rather they’ve acquired it and point others to where they’ve acquired it or simply disseminate it further.

That’s what I’m saying. In most cases the doxxer isn’t the one who originally provided the info, but rather someone who has found the information online via a Google search or something similar.

Only if there’s a risk at incriminating yourself, and if it’s not immediately apparent how you’d run that risk (e.g. you’re a witness that doesn’t have a direct relation to the crime at hand) you’d have to motivate how it could be incriminating.

Isn’t that a little bit of circular reasoning?

If I doxx someone online then it gets indexed by Google, if someone then Google’s the information it stops being doxxing?

I’d assume most doxxing isn’t done by someone who has unique firsthand knowledge (e.g. “Oh I know John, he lives on so and so road”) and instead is done by finding the information online whether via Google or a different public source.

At least in the US, where a ridiculous amount of private information is deemed “public”.

Typically low level attacks such as these is where it starts because they grant access to parts that can be used to learn more about the system as a whole.

This understanding then can be used to find easier to exploit avenues.

A good example of this is the history of exploits on Nintendo hardware.

They almost all started with finding an exploit at the hardware level, which then subsequently lead to finding software exploits and ways to leverage them in an easy way for end users.

You don’t know Some Software Corp and their world famous website somesoftwarecorp.com?

The proposal is bad enough as it is, but it’s the duplicitous gaslighting BS that really pisses people off.

If they came out and said “We came up with this thing to prevent loss of revenue on ads and prevent LLMs from capturing data” then people would still be against it, but at least it would feel like an honest discussion.

Instead it’s just another page out of Google’s playbook we’ve seen many times already.

1. Make up some thinly veiled use cases that supposedly highlight how this would benefit users, while significantly stretching the definition of “users”
2. Gaslight every one by pretending that people simply misunderstand what you’re proposing and what you’re trying to achieve
3. Pretend that nobody provides reasonable feedback because everyone is telling you not to commit murder in the first place instead of giving you tips on how to hide the body
4. Latch onto the few, inevitable, cases of people going too far to paint everyone opposing it in a negative light
5. Use that premise to explain why you had to unilaterally shut down any and all avenues for people to provide comment
6. Make the announcement that you hear people and that you’re working on it and that all will be well
7. Just do what you want anyways with minimal concessions if any and rinse repeat

For what it’s worth I blame W3C as well.
Their relatively young “Anti-Fraud Community Group” has essentially green lit this thing during meetings as can be seen here:

https://github.com/antifraudcg/meetings/blob/main/2023/05-26.md

https://github.com/antifraudcg/meetings/blob/main/2023/07-07-wei-side-meeting.md

WEI can potentially be used to impose restrictions on unlawful activities on the internet, such as downloading YouTube videos and other content, ad blocking, web scraping, etc.

Did the author of the article come from some dystopian parallel universe?

Well that explains why they did a 180 on their “no AI” rule, which has the mods in a tizzy.

Who knows, maybe it’ll cut back on the toxicity in the sense that you don’t have to interact with toxic people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But for iOS you’re forced to use Xcode for implementing certain things like permissions, build and upload.

You can do all that via VSCode as well if you so desire.

Permissions, configurations, etc. are essentially all just XML files and can be edited as such, building, running in simulator and uploading can all be done via CLI.

And if you’re not comfortable doing it via the terminal in VSCode, you can also find some extensions.

Personally as a native dev I don’t know why you’d want to of course, but to each their own.

I think you might be misunderstanding what this does.

You did a search for symbol references that contain “User” ignoring cases.

When you do a search for symbol references this way, Xcode will return two things:

1. A declaration of all the symbols containing “User” and/or some context surrounding the symbol (ignoring Case)
2. Show any places where your code references the symbol

And it did just that.

The first three .swift files show references to symbols that contain “User”.
The forth one, User.swift, is in and of itself a symbol that matches the query and has symbols inside itself.
The last one UserViewModel.swift is in itself a symbol as well and all the parts that are nested within that you’ve annotated with underscores and question marks, serve to give you context about the symbol “UserViewModel”, hence the ellipses.

It’s essentially telling you “Hey I’ve found this symbol UserViewModel, it starts with a var named username, has a bunch of stuff following that (i.e. …) then has an extension, then some more stuff (i.e. …) and then ends”.

Without knowing what’s inside UserViewModel.swift I can’t tell if it goofed with giving you a typical declaration, but that doesn’t change the fact that its trying to give you context about a valid search result, the symbol UserViewModel, so that you can figure out if that’s the one you’re looking for.

Keep in mind that variables are considered symbols as well, but in this instance I don’t think that’s what happened here, otherwise it would’ve been marked with a P instead of a C.

If this is not desired behavior then I suggest you switch from “Containing” to “Matching Word” or instead consider using the search bar at the bottom of the Symbol Navigator. Another option, if you’re searching while going through code, is to right click on the symbol in your code and click Find > Find Selected Symbol in Workspace.

Lastly it might be an idea to go over the Xcode documentation as a refresher. This would be a good starting point.

That said, Apple clearly feels that things can be improved by clarifying, because in the current Xcode beta they’ve changed the option label from References to Symbols (and added a few more options).

Most likely different incentives and platform culture.

Customization isn’t that big on iOS, other than the occasional viral fad, so there’s less interest for custom keyboards and in return less development spent on it.

Monetization of custom keyboards is also really hard and due to limitations on tracking and collecting data the incentives that Android has don’t really exists on iOS.

So what you end up with is a handful of custom keyboards often by big players that have bags of money to throw at it or as a companion to a regular app (e.g. Grammarly, GIF apps) to fulfill a specific function.

They’re right about browsers, but jumped the shark on keyboards.

Custom keyboards come with some rules and limitations for obvious reasons, but they’re by no means the system keyboard in disguise like how browsers are all WebKit under the hood.

Here’s documentation on custom keyboards: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/CustomKeyboard.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014214-CH16

The point is that “6 months free ink” is misleading whichever way you look at it because it’s ambiguous since ink isn’t measured in months.

Even if your reading of it would be the intended reading, then it’s still misleading because it’s just a 6 month trial for a per page subscription. Or put differently: if you surpass the monthly allocation of pages, you would have to pay, making it not free.

Given that neither the trial component nor the per page component is mentioned in the image and given the fact that the offer is ambiguous, there isn’t much to like or dislike about the deal because the deal as presented is false and non-existent.

Moreover, you conveniently sidestep all the other issues I’ve mentioned.

Like the fact that people receive cartridges with their printer that will be rendered useless with no clear warning on the box that this will happen or how to prevent this, instead they’re listed on the box in the same fashion other printer manufacturers list their cartridges that don’t get rendered useless.

Can’t speak for the article because all it leads me to is a photo disguised as a video without much context and pop-up galore.

That said, it’s a bit more nuanced that you make it out to be. HP uses some very shitty dark patterns.

Used to be that printers came with a set of starter ink cartridges.

HP nowadays uses Schrödinger’s ink called “HP Instant Ink Ready” cartridges.
If you never sign up for the HP Instant Ink subscription (incl. trials), then the cartridges that in the box will just be like the starter cartridges you’re used to.

If you however sign up for the subscription **or its ** trial, then the cartridges are changed into Instant Ink cartridges and will refuse to work once the trial is up and/or cancel the subscription.

I can see how people would expect to be able to use the cartridges that came with the printer like they always have been able to before HP pulled this nonsense.

It’s bad enough that this isn’t clearly and explicitly communicated with the customers.

What’s worse is that during setup of the printer (and in the marketing materials for the printer) customers are offered and asked if they want X months ink for free, without much indication that this is a trial for a subscription service.

Even worse that is not ink based, but per pages printed. Or to put it more bluntly: it’s a subscription that, depending on the tier chosen, gives you X amount of pages to print per month (paper needs to be provided by yourself) and HP will automatically send you ink to ensure you can print that amount of pages.

However, in all the marketing HP emphasizes ink and ink subscriptions (or “free” ink), and only after spending time looking into details can you figure out that you don’t pay for the ink, but for pages.

Here’s an example of how they market it as “6 months free ink”:

That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.

Of course they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription

Is that so self-evident?
Classically (and HP also still has this as an option somewhere hidden away I believe) these kind of subscriptions used to be supply subscriptions.

For X amount a month we’ll send you Y amount of supply and it was yours to keep and do as you see fit, nowadays it’s often marketed as “auto-ship” across many web shops and comes with a marginal discount, but there are also plenty of examples that just call it a subscription (e.g. razor blade subscriptions).