It's fairly easy to "farm" real ID NFC data since majority of documents are not intended to be actual digital signing key. And on top of that AI is getting pretty good at generating face / video details to the point where simple biometric data verification is also quite useless.
For most of their history Macbooks were good looking, but overheating and throttling devices with some specifically unlucky generations being pure garbage due to design problems like butterfly keyboard and flexgate. Apple also have a long history of not admitting these design flaws.
Macbooks only became a really good option in last 5 years after switch to ARM and overall industry degradation towards not upgradable and not repairable hardware.
Also even though more than decade under Lenovo thinkapds became much more fragile, but they are still much better suited to survive water, dust and physical damage. This doesn't matter if you work in comfy home, cafe, office or co-working, but there are many people who have to use their laptops in moist or dusty environments.
PS: Written from M1 Air that I bought back in 2020.
The 2016 redesign stumbled with the terrible "butterfly" keyboard, the unpopular touchbar (which removed a physical esc key), etc., but it also had 4 thunderbolt ports and could drive an external 5K monitor (same panel as 27" "Retina" iMac), and it was significantly thinner than its successor design, the M1 MacBook Pro. Although the ARM models run very cool, the x86 models still had good thermals, better than ThinkPads I am familiar with.
Non-upgradable RAM is the downside of "unified" RAM inside the Apple Silicon SiP (upside is good memory bandwidth and eliminating data copies between CPU and GPU.)
Non-upgradable SSD is the downside of Apple using raw flash modules (which macOS manages directly I believe) and soldering them to the board (upside may be more flexible and efficient flash management and possibly thinner with more reliable connections.)
Business upside is Apple getting more money out of us as we are upsold to the next RAM and storage tiers. ;-/
My strategy with Apple laptops to get the max RAM and flash storage you can afford, and a low-profile SD card for offload if necessary (wish Apple supported MicroSD Express like Nintendo does with Switch 2.)
People also wanting to believe there was even a need for sophisticated cybersecurity attack in the first place. In a country where average household income is around $230 per month. In much wealthier country like Russia you can literally buy dump of all possible leaked data on any person for $1 and for $100 you can get all information government have about a person including camera and mobile phone tracking, etc.
And Venezuela is very very corrupt country. No cyberattack needed when you can pay $10,000 - $100,000 for a dude to pull the lever or to forget to pull the lever and literally 99.99% of people in a country do it.
Though these theories are easy to explain because people in mostly US community like HN have no understanding of what total corruption look like in a shit hole countries.
It's not like consumer electronics contain top secret tech like EUV machines. All supply chain for firmware / software of 99.99% devices is very boring, contains absolutely nothing secret and the only reason why it's "difficult" is because IP owners was not bothered.
Once single EU / US legislation introduced that force manufacturers into opening end-of-life products all IP right owners will either immediately make it possible or go out of business.
Since everyone will be forced to do the same no one will gain any advantages.
I’m more thinking of patents and licensed third-party technology and firmware. There are standard tech stacks controlled by industry associations that you simply can’t open source because the association would sue you and kick you out.
These associations do not just exist in vacuum. They have licenses like this because law allow it and it's beneficial to them. Once there are regulation that demand something else they'll just follow the law.
Also it's not like every single bit of firmware / software must be open sourced - it's could very much be trade off where devices just need to be unlocked for modification and documentation made available.
> The alternative would have been "do nothing", skip the reputational hit and have yet another hellhole in the region.
This. Your logic could at least make sense with other US president, but not wanna-be dictator one doing lip service for all the authoritarians and dictators in the world. Not a good fit to fight for democracy.
There is no left or right here. There is ultra right and right. Trump is a ultra right authoritarian ruler, and the Democratic party is just another right wing party. The left vs right is just a way for powerful people to have someone to blame. Please stop using these propaganda terms.
I don't like using these terms without qualifications, just like socialism means three different things in three different contexts.
But saying the Democratic party, with AOC, Bernie Sanders and two decades of progressism is "right"... you might as well say the sky is green. That's just ignoring any meaning of the words, not trying to find a more precise one.
> How does this differ from Russia invading Ukraine?
Cynically it's different in that Trump hopefully will not going to kill 220,000+ and leave 500,000+ war invalids of US military personnel in process. Though you never know...
reply