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The TTS voice in the demo clip sounds remarkably like Ellen McLain (Valve voice actor).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_McLain


Sounds like it's trained on LJ Speech dataset, which is one of the best datasets and very commonly used

Is the goal here to act as some sort of honeypot for security researchers?


This is a perfect reason to install uBlock Origin.

Seriously. If you have enough time and self actualization to complain about the content of online ads, then you have more than enough time to install an ad blocker and be done with that particular form of malware.

Sidenote: your site's SCSS file 404s - https://lorendb.dev/css/main.scss (Firefox, macOS)

Thanks, I've fixed it.

> This is a perfect reason to install uBlock Origin.

For anyone who isn’t running Chrome, that is.


And anyone not on iOS stuck with webkit.

Add the AdGuard DNS configuration profile to your iDevice as a whole (no need for any separate app), and ads are blocked for everything except apps whose ads are drawn from the same source as their content.

https://adguard-dns.io/en/blog/encrypted-dns-ios-14.html

So yeah. While it won’t kill ads in apps like YouTube or Pinterest, it will kill nearly all ads in web pages and apps that source their ads from external providers.


They knew what they were getting into, it's never been a secret that iOS is advertising hell.

This might be a fine solution for individuals, but of course won't help the ads/publishing industry recover from its current death spiral.

It's not intended to help anyone who runs ads.

What is your suggested economic model for internet content? Do you prefer paywalls?

Somehow, TV and newspapers survived and thrived on non- targeted, not-filthy ads for decades.

I'd have little problem with static ads in webpages that looked like the ones in magazines I grew up with.


Yes, involving a third party with interests contrary to the producer or consumer of the material just adds poor incentives that inevitably lead to poor outcomes.

Is it our job to figure out someone else’s business model?

Not per se. But I think you should in general think about the consequences of your actions. I am concerned about the future of journalism.

To be clear, I also use an adblocker and I don't have any good answers.


What’s the economic model for hacker news commenters?

Commenting on Hacker News is fun. But I'm really glad the internet has professional journalists as well.

I tend to pay for quality content, yes.

Who needs more Internet content?

Yes

By "help" I'm assuming you mean the same thing as what I would mean, that is: the acceleration of said death spiral.


I'm genuinely shocked. I assumed that Apple would have foreseen this possibility and locked the Persona's eyes somewhere as long as the user was typing, at least for passwords.

Whole point of the digital face is to look real though, and freezing the gaze would look unnervingly fake.

I'm confident they could come up with a filler eye animation algorithm that was convincing enough to pass muster for short periods of time. Even if hand coding something didn't quite work out, they certainly have tons of eye tracking data internally they could use to train a small model, or optimize parameters.

The complexity of this solution just shot up from "2 minute hack" to "2 month research project, minimum". It's understandable why they didn't do this.

I don't think anyone was suggesting to go for the 'parameterized model' from the start. They could just hide the eyes while typing, as a good starting point.

Yeah. Make them appear closed, done

No way this takes two months to get to a convincing proof of concept.

But you could at least dampen out or randomize eye travel while looking at the keyboard. Fully reproducing eye output is a recipe for disaster, and that should have been obvious.

It's about tradeoffs, the device is barely 7 months old at this point. Thankfully the fix is fairly obvious too.

OTOH once you as an outsider know that sometimes the AVP is lying to you about where the wearer is looking why would you ever trust it?

For example, you could then use the AVP to stare at people and then claim afterwards you were doing no such thing.


Add a faint glow to indicate they're typing and the continued face animation is a stand-in.

Throw people for a loop and switch your headset keyboard to DVORAK. When they scan your eye movements and apply to QWERTY, they'll be confused AF!

Well, you still only have to try one other password. If you get locked out after one password attempt and nobody knows that you use dvorak, your defense works, but if you have three attempts, you can also add colemak to your list of things to try ;)

add sunglasses to the avatar while typing

Someone hire this person please.

Just have them close their eyes? That's what I do when I have to recall my password anyway.

Just do the same thing the external display does and do a 'cloudy eyes' version when they user is interacting w/ the keyboard.

If I were implementing it and wanted to obscure, I'd blur the whole screen momentarily, probably with a small message. I really doubt that's ideal for a commercial offering, though. I'm not really worried about unnerving people if I'm using an avatar, that comes with the territory as it is.

Why? Most people are capable of fixating at a single point with basically no perceptible eye movement.

It would, wouldn't it?

I'd suggest blurring the face in a "password input context" (like password fields on the web with their redacted display text), but I suspect that that'd go against what Apple wants the Vision Pro experience to look like.


Then it shouldn't be used for secure input.

> I assumed

Oh man, this is my favorite part of the Apple Design Cycle!

1. Apple announces a new feature that is suspiciously invasive and only marginally useful (eg. iCloud Screening, Find My, OCSP, etc.)

2. Self-conscious, Apple releases a security whitepaper that explains how things should work but doesn't let anyone audit their system

3. Users assume that things are okay because the marketing tells them it is okay, and do not ever consider the potential for an exploit

4. The data leaks, either to advertisers, Apple employees, warrantless government allies, government adversaries or OEM contractors

5. Apple customers attempt to absolve themselves of responsibility ("How was I supposed to know?")

I've seen this process so many times at this point that I'm just apathetic to it all. Maybe one day people will learn to stop assuming the best when there is literally no evidence corroborating it.


What data leaks? What are you talking about?

https://www.ifixit.com/News/33801/apple-genius-caught-steali...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/445122/is-icloud-p...

Various oversight issues of that nature. Note: we could know about all of these exploits before-hand if Apple's supposedly-private infrastructure was meaningfully accountable.


Please note this is fixed:

> The researchers alerted Apple to the vulnerability in April, and the company issued a patch to stop the potential for data to leak at the end of July


They released airtags without thinking about stalking, so I'm not that shocked.

This has to be a lie made on purpose since it is so easily proven wrong.

Here is the keynote: https://www.youtube.com/live/JdBYVNuky1M?si=46vw7FG3SjWWBezn

9.25 is when they talk about unwanted tracking.


Ok, if you want me to be more specific. (Given that we are talking about keynotes, which are, by design, marketing mistruths. )

They thought a bit about stalking, but not enough to alter the experience, or release tools for non-apple owners to avoid being tracked.

Sure, there are some "industry leading features" but no-one else in industry decided to co-opt a network of ~1 billion devices to provide location updates.

Sure Apple made it very difficult to track an airtag on a person, for the owner's privacy. But that also means that the non-owner is less able to find it.

It takes about 3-5 days (although its been up to two weeks in some cases) before my various iphones twig that an errant airtag is with me.

Now you might see me as someone who is anti apple, or has an agenda against apple. Thats not the case.

The issue is, when you create a device like this, and marry it to such a capable platform, you have to own the side effects. It took something like _6 months_ to release an android airtag detector. Which means it was very much an after thought. Had they talked to any Domestic Violence support groups, they would have told them very clearly how these devices would be used. (I suspect they did, but that would destroy the product vision too much, so it was downgraded. )


What?? It had much better anti-stalking features at launch than its competitors like Tile.

I wasn't aware that tile blocked an entire phone operating system from detecting their product.

Tile also has the advantage of not being able to provide any useful location data less than a few hundred meters (unless you use the beeper)

The spatial resolution that airtags are capable of, because of the network of iOS devices that were auto enrolled is far far greater than the shit that tile could hope to dream of.


Did Tile (or any similar product) have infrastructure that allowed non-suspecting people to know that they were being tracked? AirTags had that

only if you had an iphone. (that has now changed, belatedly.)

just because tile is a fly by night type organisation, doesn't mean apple can get away with being so lacklustre about safety.

They _knew_ that this was a risk, but didn't choose to mitigate it until much later on. Had they bothered to listen to the nagging voices, they wouldn't have been surprised.


Actually, well put. I agree

If I can't find an RSS link directly, I generally copy the root URL into archive.org and search for all URLs matching "xml", which includes content type, not just URL names.

Or you could have done the same for free by setting the packet TTL on all client devices to 65. Carriers check if a device is using hotspot by looking at packet TTLs. Anything coming from your phone directly has a TTL of 64, but anything connected via hotspot loses one TTL hopping through your phone, so it comes through as 63 (or 127 for Windows devices). Overriding your client TTL to 65 means that carriers will receive the packet with a TTL of 64.

It can't be that simple? Doesn't the phone switch APN's when tethering is active? Or bridge the hotspot to a different APN?

It is that simple. I have successfully used this to continue using hotspot after exceeding my monthly allowance as recently as a few months ago.

Yeah that's probably how it works, except I don't know how to actually implement all of that myself, and it was a one time payment for use on all my devices. The only downside is connection is through usb or bluetooth. If you are aware of a way to put my un-rootable phone in hotspot mode that sidesteps the up-charge, please advise. When I had a pixel with Graphene installed this was possible.

I am infuriated that practically every (US) carrier claims an unlimited data plan, but then proceeds to limit your hotspot usage. It's just data. Let me use it.

Yes, I know about (and sometimes use) the ttl=65 loophole, but I'd like to see a major carrier launch a truly unlimited plan.


Since you mentioned it, on MacOS when tethering:

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.ttl=65

When done, switch it back:

sudo sysctl -w net.inet.ip.ttl=64

I went from 0.3Mbps on T-Mobile to 50+ Mbps with this; on providers that limit hotspot speed by examining TTL, this can be an effective way to get around it.

(They assume if they see TTL as one lower than expected, data is passing through a hotspot/phone instead of directly from the phone.)


There is no harm in keeping it at 65 permanently. Unless you think that TTL somehow helps to more uniquely identify you.

Good to know! I'm not a networking expert so figured leaving the default made sense just in case.

Linux uses a similar command:

sudo sysctl net.ipv4.ip_default_ttl=65

I assume there is an ipv6 version as well, but I haven't needed it.


net.ipv6.conf.all.hop_limit=65 + net.ipv6.conf.lo.hop_limit=65

You're the real mvp on this thread. Thanks I figured this was in place but never thought through the ttl bit.

Unlimited data is gym membership model, the businesses has to change its pricing if too many members actually used it. Phones before iPhone were much less efficient at wasting data, and therefore that distinction could "save" traffic for carriers by a lot.

I'm so surprised this is still a thing, I remember it was like 10 years ago, but now you just turn on hotspot and keep going .. at least I thought.

[dead]


You completely missed the point. There is no difference on the "shared medium" whether you use that data directly on your phone or on your PC through your phone.

Also, service providers shouldn't be allowed to make false advertisements. It is not the job of the consumer to think "clearly infinite data isn't realistic, I should have no expectation to actually get infinite data even though they advertise that". If it isn't technically feasible, it is the service provider's job to clearly state what they actually offer in practice.


The network doesn't necessarily[1] care that it is "phone" data or "hotspot" data, no.

But I, for one, certainly use more data doing stuff with a real computer (or a LAN full of real computers) than I do with my pocket computer by itself.

It's not something I normally pay much attention to, but I did check just now. My LAN at home uses an average of around 1TB of WAN data per month, with just me using it. Meanwhile, my pocket computer uses around 10GB of cellular data (including instances of tethering) in an normal month.

That's a rather gargantuan difference. And it'd be the same ~1TB at home whether it was over GPON, DOCSIS, or cellular tethering.

One may be inclined to say that something like "There's no difference -- it's just data!", but doing so seems to willfully ignore the usage patterns being a couple of orders of magnitude apart.

Meanwhile, advertising: The truthiness of advertising can always be improved, but that's a different discussion entirely.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41490252


Advertising "unlimited" leads to the need for limitations like that. A wireless provider probably can't provide 1TB of data for a monthly price that most customers are willing to pay.

Service with a fixed data limit, however should treat all data the same.


That's convoluted and difficult to describe, much less enforce.

Here's a better method: All advertising must be truthful, and all details must be spelled out plainly and visibly.

If the price seems great but there are gotchas, then: Keep the gotchas in plain sight so that a consumer can make an accurately-informed decision without having to go dig in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'

No fine print. No asterisks. No illegible footnotes. No man behind the curtain. Just truth in advertising.


Edge isn't the only major browser with tab sync. For example, Brave has it.

No, it's a totally different concept. Brave lets you check which tabs are open in another machine and open them on the current machine if you want.

Edge and Arc always keep your tabs in sync between devices and inside their respective workspaces. It's a seamless transition between devices.


> Edge and Arc always keep your tabs in sync between devices and inside their respective workspaces

Maybe try Vivaldi? https://vivaldi.com/

I’ve got about 5 different workspaces and can flip between any of them on windows/linux whether that’s desktop or laptop.

Has a ton of features I always wanted in Firefox, but never knew I needed (I think that statement makes sense?)

OSX app is a bit meh, but might be because I’ve got muscle memory with safari.

Edit — as a DevOps main I feel your documentation/research pain. Genuinely I feel like Vivaldi solved the 300+ tabs over multiple OSes/machines problem for me. (I think my record was 500ish tabs at one point).

Edit 2 — maybe it’s not a DevOps thing. Maybe I’m just a tabs weirdo. :shrugs:


Vivaldi still doesn't do what Arc and Edge do.

Vivaldi presents me the open tabs in another device in a window and I can choose which ones to open on the present device. Arc and Edge bypass that step. The open tabs in 1 device are always in sync with the open tabs in another device.

If you create a new tab in device 1, a tab will automatically open in device 2 with the contents of the tab. If you close the tab on device 2, it will automatically close on device 1.


I'm using Vivaldi mobile on my Android phone and it changed my life for the best. It has a builtin ad blocker (like every browser should have, unless there is a conflict of interests). No more cancer when casually browsing the web. It's priceless really, and it's free.

  > Has a ton of features I always wanted in Firefox, but never knew I needed
Like what? I might try it.

Really nice tab/windows side bar

Syncing between devices (does require creating a free Vivaldi account)

Built in mail client (I haven’t used thunderbird for months now)

Chromium, extensions and themes out the box

Bunch of UI customisation options like moving the address bar and stuff

Probably a bunch of others I don’t use or can’t remember being features.


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