@bigzaphod@mastodon.social
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

bigzaphod

@bigzaphod@mastodon.social

You may know me from Twitterrific or Frenzic: Overtime or as the ex-galactic president. I'm just this guy, you know?

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

A picture of Teal'c from Stargate SG-1 saying, "Indeed."

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Nobody: ...
Absolutely no one: ...
eBay:

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Last night I was doing more scheming and planning for my next electronics project. I'm going to have some buttons/switches that will need debouncing. Possibly several. With the way I know to do it, I figured it would take around 14 components JUST to deal with all the inputs.

So.. got lazy... and searched around and found this company that makes chips for debouncing: https://logiswitch.com

Saw you can order direct from them. So I ordered a couple.

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

This morning I got an email from the CEO that was like, "Hey thanks for ordering, is this for a commercial or personal project?"

And maybe it's automated, but maybe it isn't, but I replied anyway because it seems kind of neat. I imagine most people just order from a place like DigiKey or something but I happened to find their website and they are happy to sell them individually - which was surprising.

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

It's one chip, Michael, how much could it cost? $5?

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

“Gowron’s Eyes” would be a good Klingon death metal band name.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Going to start a new conspiracy: The flat sun theory.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Which comes first… async or throws? try or await?

I always get these wrong no matter which order I attempt first.

It's like a USB-A plug!

Does this make Swift USB-compatible?

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

I got a real life loupe to use when trying to read some of the SUPER TINY print on integrated circuit packages, but after a quick test, I think it's too powerful. Or maybe the focus point is fixed in a bad spot for what I wanted to do because the chip has to be flat on the table with the loupe flat on the table over top of it to work.

So I'll probably have to get a less powerful one or maybe a basic magnifying glass or something like that.

But in the meantime I can see the pixels on my iPhone!

Extreme closeup of the Iconfactory logo with visible lines between columns of pixels.

bigzaphod, to Ds9
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Kai Winn was a real piece of work.

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

@ramiro @gedeonm @CStamp @steveshives amazingly, she was only in something like 14 episodes.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Is there an easy way to write a data file (like something internal in Application Support or something) that's encrypted or otherwise secured? I swear there was. Maybe not, though? CloudKit's CKRecord has the encryptedValues thing that makes it easy to do it in that context, but what about a local file?

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

I guess a better question is... we have a web access token. We could put it in the keychain (which syncs if iCloud keychain is enabled), but how does that differ from storing it in a CKRecord using encryptedValues? Or writing the key to a file on disk using the protection mode .completeFileProtectionUntilFirstUserAuthentication?

Twitterrific stored keys with Keychain flag kSecAttrAccessibleAfterFirstUnlock which seems comparable to . completeFileProtectionUntilFirstUserAuthentication on a file.

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

@_inside the goal is storing user access tokens. (https://mastodon.social/@bigzaphod/112441829691142034)

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

So one issue with this access token thing is, users can disable iCloud keychain but leave the rest of iCloud enabled. So if a Tapestry feed needs an auth key, the feed would sync to their other devices using CloudKit but the password for the feed might not be there due to keychain being disabled (or sync lag). That seems... unfortunate. Storing the key in CloudKit along with the feed record would be a lot easier. Is that as secure, though? I don't know.

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Even if it was, though, data needs to be stored on disk and not just in the cloud since iCloud could be disabled. It would make a lot of sense to store the key along with the feed record on disk. But is that secure? I suspect not.

Data protection doesn't say it restricts access to the file only to the app that wrote it. It talks about when the user has authenticated their device. That seems like a big difference. As long as the user is logged in, I think any app can read any of the files.

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

On iOS, with everything sandboxed, maybe that'd be harder to pull off. I think on macOS, though, it'd be easy for other apps to potentially read these the files as long as the user is logged in.

Keychain, on the other hand, has an additional layer - items are linked to the app/developer/app-group. So other apps cannot get items that aren't theirs. That seems better except for the issue where the user might have disabled only the keychain syncing. (Or if the sync is delayed for some reason.)

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

So anyway, probably the thing to do is put those keys in the keychain and, unfortunately have to deal with the fact that users can independently disable keychain sync while leaving iCloud sync on. Which means they might have to auth again on their other devices sometimes. For certain things. Which means the app has to handle that somehow. Meh.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

I have been waiting for this all day so far. I don't why this is being so slow. It is downloading - just at glacial dialup modem speeds. Meanwhile my speed tests and random web sites, etc. all seem as speedy as usual.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

My music box video (https://youtu.be/uECxNR_g7-0) is now my most viewed YouTube video of all time. I just noticed this morning that it has surpassed some old software demo videos I posted nearly 15 years ago that inexplicably managed to slowly accumulate thousands of views.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Tonight's movie night movie will be, "Deep Impact (1998)." We have to check out Armageddon's competition. 😛

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

Deep Impact was pretty good, but the general consensus here is that while Armageddon was a considerably dumber movie, it was more fun and memorable and therefore better. Deep Impact is definitely sadder, but maybe a fair bit more realistic. Also, Morgan Freeman was a presidential bad ass.

bigzaphod, to random
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

A day or two ago I was seeing a lot of mainstream news articles about the geomagnetic storm trying to drum up fear about how all our technology was going to collapse and cell phones would stop working and maybe there'd be blackouts and all sorts of other disasters. Did anything at all happen anywhere?

gruber, (edited ) to random
@gruber@mastodon.social avatar

Thoughts on Apple no longer including stickers with new devices to reduce waste:

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/05/09/no-more-stickers-with-new-ipads

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

@gruber I bet they aren't lowering the price by 25 cents to compensate, are they? 😛

bigzaphod,
@bigzaphod@mastodon.social avatar

@Fairaday @gruber I honestly haven't used them in years, either. I don't really care too much if they go away. What pisses me off is companies removing things and scaling things down, citing the environment, but then not lowering the prices to compensate. (Not that there'd be much lowering in this situation, but you know what I mean.)

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • provamag3
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • tacticalgear
  • magazineikmin
  • vwfavf
  • Youngstown
  • ngwrru68w68
  • ethstaker
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • mdbf
  • thenastyranch
  • PowerRangers
  • anitta
  • modclub
  • Durango
  • cubers
  • osvaldo12
  • GTA5RPClips
  • everett
  • khanakhh
  • InstantRegret
  • Leos
  • tester
  • normalnudes
  • cisconetworking
  • megavids
  • All magazines
    •