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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • In October the Gaza Health Ministry claimed 471 people were killed by an Israeli missile strike on a hospital. Widespread credible (independent) evidence proves a small Hamas rocket missfired and hit a carpark near the hospital, causing relatively minor damage (there was a large fireball, but it was mostly rocket fuel - which is far less damaging than an explosive payload intended to kill).

    None of the credible evidence was able to put a number to the deaths in that accident but it’s highly improbable that 471 people were in the carpark. And it definitely wasn’t an Israeli rocket.

    In other words - Gaza’s health ministry is not a reliable source. Some of the things they report are probably accurate but they have been proven to be unreliable. Don’t trust anything they say unless it’s been backed by someone more reliable (in which case, you might as well refer to the other source instead).

    At best, the ministry failed verify facts (e.g. was a large missile even fired at all?) before reporting what happened. But I think that’s being too charitable. For example where did they get the 471 number from? I think they made it up. I don’t have proof but it’s the only believable explanation.

    Worse though - they haven’t retracted the claim. Mistakes are understandable… but failing to admit someone in your organisation made a mistake is unacceptable.


  • Signal Just Works™️

    Until you drop your phone in the swimming pool, and every message/photo you’ve ever received is just… gone. Forever.

    Sorry but I don’t buy any claim that Signal “just works”. It’s pretty clear they care about security more than anything else even when that means making decisions that are user hostile. And that’s fine - if you feel like you need that level of security I’m glad Signal exists. But it doesn’t really align with the general public and Signal is never going to be a mass market messaging service unless something changes (Signal or the general public).

    What’s weird to me is an app that excludes itself from phone backups considers SMS a valid form of authentication when a user links a device to a phone number - especially when you can necessarily link a device to a number that is already tied to someone else’s device. Like how is that ever going to be secure? Spoiler: it’s not. It’d make a lot more sense to me if users simply crated a username and shared it with other people instead of a phone number… and if they forget their password… come up with new username.


  • The feature does require confirmation.

    It also requires accessing your contacts database, which is encrypted on iPhones…

    Because it’s encrypted, it’s impossible to share contact details unless someone enters the device passcode (or else does a biometric unlock - which effectively stores your passcode temporarily in a secure location that is wiped whenever the device is powered off or left unused for several hours).


  • It’s a tough call. Many forums have a rule against changing the title at all.

    Those forums are wrong. A title should accurately reflect the content. We can’t choose the title other websites choose… but we can choose a title for our posts and we should take advantage of that.

    Also - if you find yourself posting on a forum with that rule, just ignore it. And then tell them the title you typed out yourself was copy/pasted. They’ll have no way of knowing since so many news services A/B test titles anyway.

    Here’s the tile I would’ve used: “Police Alert Parents to iPhone’s Automatic Contact Sharing Feature” — I think we can agree it’s more accurate than the deliberately unclear title this post currently has.











  • Ah - that’s got nothing to do with supported features. Apple has always been a major backer of web based video distribution - a lot of the tech (from video formats to delivery platforms like HTTP Live Streaming to the tag were partially or even fully invented by Apple.

    Your video wasn’t working because the by default Safari assumes (correctly) that most video on the web is an ad. Safari generally only tolerates text/image ads* and to get video to work, you need to make it clear to Safari that the video is a real video the user wants to see.

    Safari also silently blocks something like 99% of cookies… only cookies that behave like login/session/etc cookies are allowed. That’s a lot more problematic than blocking video… since there’s often just no way around it.

    (* even text/image ads are barely tolerated… as far as I know, Safari is the only major browser that includes explicit support for ad blockers - Chrome/FireFox/etc allow extensions to arbitrarily manipulate the page, but safari actually has an ad blocking API - though they call it “content blocking”).