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When I was in high school we chatted exchanging notes/txt files between Nokias, LGs, Samsungs and Sony Ericsson feature phones and Windows Mobile (I had an HP one) and Symbian (two friends who had a N95) smartphones.

This was just as broadband was getting popular, so those who had it usually downloaded MP3s and then distributed them at school through Bluetooth. I remember one friend using her phone as a bridge to copy files from me using Bluetooth and sending to another friend's phone using IR.

This was across all the classroom, this definitely wasn't restricted to the nerdy clique. We found out that chatting through notes exchange worked pretty well and then it spread like wildfire. SMSes were expensive in my country!

This was like 20 years ago. Maybe 2006-2007. Twenty years later we're commemorating that Bluetooth File Exchange over WiFi is now interoperable between the only two major mobile OS as if it were a revolutionary technology. How backwards it is.


I remember reading somewhere Apple had/has to make AirDrop interoperable due to EU's DMA.

How long until Apple disables it outside of the EU?

They won't, they'll just do another Green-Bubble/Blue-Bubble shenanigan to signal when Apple royalty is transferring a file with an unwashed Android peasant via a gimped experience.

There's teams of people having meetings about how they can degrade people's experience right now.

Well since absolutely no one buys Pixeld to a first approximation and mostly in the US. Looking at different sites it’s from 3-6% marketshare.

I doubt this was done for the DMA.


> Developers will be able to integrate alternative solutions to Apple’s AirDrop and AirPlay services on the iPhone. As a result, iPhone users will be able to choose from different and innovative services to share files with other users and cast media content from their iPhones to TVs.

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/questions-and-answe...


You realize that doesn’t say what you think it says in your own quote of the citation?

Apple has to allow alternate solutions on the iPhone - not that they have to allow AirDrop interoperability.


Feel free to click on a PDF directly below that quote, I don't have to serve you everything on a silver platter.

I promise you you will find what you're looking for right there.


So you posted a citation supposedly refuting my comment then when you are called out about it instead of admitting you misinterpreted your own citation, you say “look somewhere else”…

So instead of admitting you were wrong and that DMA did indeed strongarm Apple into doing this, you're doing what? Arguing I should've given you a different quote with that info instead of a primary source I've already linked to you?

Weird man, weird.


Well first you were wrong - and your quote shows that you didn’t understand what you were quoting. The EU never forced Apple to have interoperability with AirDrop. It had to support the standard WiFI protocol to allow other apps to be installed on the iPhone that could duplicate its functionally. It’s “weird” that you don’t see the difference.

It’s also weird that you could take the time to deflect and respond twice and not find the quote that backs up your (false) assertion.


That's a different thing, but the EU did force Apple to implement Wi-Fi Aware which is what allows Google to do this.

But this works with the existing airdrop client on the iOS side right? Did Apple change airdrop to use wifi aware, and now Google can build the airdrop protocol on Android?

So is Airdrop now less secure or private? I don't trust any standard Google had their hands in.

First time I hear about Google tech being insecure or not private. Sure they siphon all the info THEMSELVES, but never have I heard about them implementing insecure protocols.

> but never have I heard about them implementing insecure protocols.

That's because they don't. Google takes security seriously. There's a reason GrapheneOS is only supported on Pixel devices currently as well, because of certain hardware security features.

Nothing you do with Google is private from Google but it's certainly designed to belong only to Google, your data is one of their most important assets. Of course they are going to secure it and prevent others besides themselves from getting or using it.

It's the most common misconception with Google, that they "sell your information." They don't, they never have. They use your info, aggregated with all other Google users, to sell targeting for ads. They don't sell the actual data.


> Nothing you do with Google is private from Google but it's certainly designed to belong only to Google

The same also goes for Apple, although Apple doesn't monetize your data as much so they collect less. They'll suck up all kinds of data out of your devices but will strictly protect that data from third party applications any way they can. They're also willing to use that protection to prevent interoperability or integration with third-party devices.


Yeah, Apple collects a lot of the same stuff.

The difference for me is in the business model, and the fact that Apple offers true E2E encryption for photos while Google doesn't. If Google ever made their own version of Advanced Data Protection for Pixel phones, it'd be a wash.


Apple does pose more private defaults, though they will easily steer your towards "make backups encrypted with a key we also know in case you lose your password", which isn't much more private than Google's proposition.

When Google announced their AI hardware features, I was hoping they they'd implement the same offline/encrypted photo indexing that iOS does, rather than shoving everything through the cloud. Unfortunately, Google Photos seems as bad as ever.

On the other hand, setting up automatic backups and photo sync towards a self-hosted Immich/Photoprism instance is a lot easier on Android than on iOS in my experience, despite Google's reluctance to grant storage permissions to apps.

Google does actually have a kind of extended protection (https://developer.android.com/privacy-and-security/advanced-...), but that feeds more data to Google rather than less: it basically has you trust Google to protect you, by having Google pre-scan your browsing and locking down your account. If you're American, that may be worth it if you trust Google enough. It's a combination of Lockdown Mode and Advanced Protection Mode on iOS.


It is more precise to say, that they sell the idea, that they know better due to the fact that they have the data about you.

Yeah. They sell access to you, so an advertiser can tell Google "I want this shown to a mid-thirties tech worker living in SF who likes x,y,z and frequents traveling to q" and Google will show you their ad.

On every Apple interoperability thread this argument comes up and at this point I'm convinced it's part of some coordinated effort; surely no one can be that clueless to actually believe this, especially on a technical forum?

AirDrop is a peer-to-peer protocol, both the recipient and initiator need to explicitly take action, and even in Apple's implementation provides no authentication (recipient device is chosen by name, which anyone can change in their settings app). There is no way the existence of this Android client would reduce Airdrop security on iOS.

Do you also believe that TLS between an Apple device and a Windows device not secure either, since the Windows device uses a different, non-Apple-sanctioned TLS implementation, and the mere existence of which would somehow weaken Apple's TLS stack?


I don't think it's possible for it to get less secure or private.

The walled garden is breached, run for the hills!

Did you read the security analysis that was done on this implementation?

Eh... there is an open source AirDrop implementation, it's 6 years old now.

https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop


From my experience vibe coding, you spend a lot of time preparing documentation and baseline context for the LLM.

On one of my projects, I downloaded a library’s source code locally, and asked Claude to write up a markdown file explaining documenting how to use it with examples, etc.

Like, taking your example for solitaire, I’d ask a LLM to write the rules into a markdown file and tell the coding one to refer to those rules.

I understand it to be a bit like mise en place for cooking.


It's kind of what Kiro does.

You tell it what you want and it gives you a list of requirements, which are in that case mostly the rules for Solitaire.

You adjust those until you're happy, then you let it generate tasks, which are essentially epics with smaller tickets in order of dependency.

You approve those and then it starts developing task by task where you can intervene at any time if it starts going off track.

The requirements and tasks, it does really well, but the connection of the epics/larger tasks is where it crumbles mostly. I could have made it work with some more messing around but I've noticed over a couple projects that, at least in my tries, it always crumbles either at the connection of the epics/large tasks or when you ask it to do a small modification later down the line and it causes a lot of smaller, subtle changes all over the place. (could say skill issue since I oversaw something in the requirements, but that's kind of how real projects go, so..)

It also eats tokens like crazy for private usage but that's more so a 'playing around' problem. As it stands I'll probably blow 100$ a day if I connect it to an actual commercial repo and start experimenting. Still viable with my salary, but still..


Still, they are paying for the computing resources needed to run the AI/agents etc.


> And also well beyond the limits of route53.

One thing is the internal limit, another thing is the customer-facing limit.

Some hard limits are softer than they appear.


That would be the best outcome!

We would be back to the real days of computing.


Which is absolutely not a problem on the A320. I have boarded plenty of narrow-body Airbuses using the stairs.


As a person who regularly flies international with just a carry-on bag, I very much prefer to get out of the airport with my bag in 20 minutes after I leave the plane vs waiting who knows how long for it to arrive and hope that somebody didn't break it/into it.

Newer planes/retrofitted ones with larger overhead bins with space for everybody are the solution.


Yeah, and while 3D printing a gun is cool and all, you can’t print bullets, so the person who is interested in printing guns is at the intersection of two hobbies: 3D printing and gun ownership. It’s a niche.

Everybody else who needs a gun for lawful purposes (i.e. self defense) is simply going to purchase one from a reputable manufacturer.


Now compare this to Windows. You can run a Win32 program built in the 1990s, and it would work fine.


I wish that were true.

Modern windows won't even play crysis without a binary patch.


Half the 90s was DOS and Win16 which got dropped a while back. Still, I salute them for supporting backward compatibly much longer than most.


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