Honeypot.net

Apple announced their new iPad Pro and I couldn’t care less. The hardware itself is brilliant, yet Apple insists on artificially limiting what you can do with it for reasons I don’t understand. A “pro” device would let me run Mac-style apps like Nova and a real local terminal. It would let me compile and run the software I write when Shortcuts scripting isn’t good enough. It would be more like a hyper-portable MacBook for doing things that don’t require a heavier and more powerful computer, and less like a giant iPhone that gives me free rein of a walled garden.

I bought a 2018 iPad Pro 13" when they were released and used it constantly. It was overpowered for the software available to run on it, to the point that my kid in college still uses it for classwork today. The hardware was never the limiting factor in what I could do with it. I finally replaced it last summer with a MacBook Air that’s worse for my wants and needs in every way but one: Apple’s OS for Macs lets me do the professional things that the as-powerful iPad can’t do. Apple ran an ad when that iPad Pro came out, asking “what’s a computer?” I wish Apple would ask themselves, “what’s a professional?”

My vision for the iPad doesn’t align with Apple’s. That’s OK. They know their target market. They’ll still sell a gazillion of these.

Just not to me.

You know how sometimes you come to decide that an entire niche market is so filled with awful and overpriced alternatives that you’d rather just write your own and give it away for free?

My toes are on the precipice.

Gigi turns 15 today. We’re celebrating with lots of cuddles and ancient dog appropriate treats.

How to escape Honda’s privacy hell:

With sensors, microphones, and cameras, cars collect way more data than needed to operate the vehicle. They also share and sell that information to third parties, something many Americans don’t realize they’re opting into when they buy these cars. Companies are quick to flaunt their privacy policies, but those amount to pages upon pages of legalese that leave even professionals stumped about what exactly car companies collect and where that information might go.

So what can they collect?

“Pretty much everything,” said Misha Rykov, a research associate at the Mozilla Foundation, who worked on the car-privacy report. “Sex-life data, biometric data, demographic, race, sexual orientation, gender — everything.”

That’s despicable. Shame on you, Honda. Mozilla’s privacy report says their competitors are all pretty bad, too.

If you live in a state with a privacy law, you can and should write to your car’s manufacturer and demand that they show you all the information they collect about you, that they delete it all, that they not share it with anyone else, and that they limit how they use your data only to provide the services you’ve requested from them. These are your legal rights and manufacturers are legally obligated to respect them, even if it’s inconvenient and expensive for them. In fact, I think it’s our duty as citizens to make it cost companies more to process millions of our opt-out requests than they make selling our personal information.

Previous lock picking sets having been sneaked out of my possession by various household children, I’ve now bought my own nice meant-to-be-permanent set that I’ll keep safely tucked away.

Very fancy electronic badges at BSidesSF this year.

Conference tracks where more than a few people are wearing khaki:

• Defending your AI assets
• Defending your assets from AI
• Defending your assets with AI

Additional conference tracks where more than a few people have primary colored hair:

• Prompt injection for lolz and cash

While I dropped a friend off and helped him unload his stuff, I told him about the Oakland Ballers cap I was wearing and how I’m glad we have a new local baseball team. Not 10 seconds after we’d finished talking about it, a woman on the sidewalk yelled “Go Ballers!” to me, and that started a new conversation with her about opening day, season tickets, the new ballpark renovations, and all that.

I think I’ve convinced my buddy that he should get tickets, too. 100% of the time he’s heard of the Ballers, they were so popular that complete strangers entered the chat.

My credit union called this morning: “Did you just make a purchase from OnlyFans?” Nope. Thus ends my longest recent streak of not having my debit card compromised. The security department said it looks like I’ve been the victim of a “BIN stuffing” attack where a criminal tries random combinations of card numbers, expiration dates, and CVV numbers until they get lucky. One day I may have a debit card that reaches the expiration date printed on it. Not this time, though.

I got the first “your credit card was declined” email from one of my monthly bills a few minutes later. This will be an irksome week.

Keeva wants pets.