scintill76 (u/scintill76)

scintill76 commented on iOS Elegantbouncer: When you can't get samples but still need to catch threats msuiche.com/posts/elegant... · Posted by u/transpute

tikimcfee · 7 months ago

This might seem a bit silly, but this is probably the first easily accessible and open iOS backup format extraction tool I've seen in many years. Maybe I've missed the good ones, or the hidden ones. But I find it quite fun that I can backup my device and run its output through this exploit analyzer to (a) determine if I have something to worry about and (b) stop fiddling with 3rd party hackaround software for file backup viewing. Cheers to the authors and the team that put this together, helping keep a rather closed OS at least somewhat safer, and sharing the tools to do so.

scintill76 · 7 months ago

If I can hijack the thread a bit for a related question -- does anyone know of an easy selfhosted non-macOS server that will periodically pull full backups from iOS devices over Wifi (with the user's authorization on-device)? I think there's a lot of FOSS ground work for doing it on Linux, but hard to find good information about how to put it all together into a reliable automated solution, and sadly I don't really have the energy right now or dozens of hours to put into it.

I might even pay ~$100. I want it on Linux, but if it's under my control and reliable, maybe I could do Windows or macOS. Maybe I should just install iTunes on Windows in a VM...

scintill76 commented on Utah becomes first US state to ban fluoride in its water bbc.com/news/articles/c4g... · Posted by u/Jimmc414

adrian_b · a year ago

The risk of cavities is reduced by using toothpaste or mouth washes with fluoride, not by drinking fluoridated water.

Almost all fluoride from the drinking water does not have any effect on tooth enamel, because it has contact with it only for a few seconds, except for an infinitesimal fraction that may exit again the body in saliva.

On the other hand, the harmful effects of fluoride in drinking water are certain and it cannot be predicted exactly how much water will be ingested by someone, i.e. which will be the harmful dose of ingested fluoride.

The only argument of those who support water fluoridation is that most people must be morons who cannot be taught to wash their teeth. I do not believe that this theory can be right.

scintill76 · a year ago

> Almost all fluoride from the drinking water does not have any effect on tooth enamel, because it has contact with it only for a few seconds

The contact via toothpaste or mouth wash isn’t all that much longer, so why would they be effective if fluoridated water isn’t? People intentionally wash out toothpaste and mouthwash after this short contact.

scintill76 commented on War heroes are among 26K images flagged for removal in Pentagon purge apnews.com/article/dei-pu... · Posted by u/geox

scintill76 · a year ago

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the party of government efficiency, spending our money to scrub “Enola Gay” from the web.

scintill76 commented on Dear Apple: Add "Disappearing Messages" to iMessage blog.cryptographyengineer... · Posted by u/donohoe

thisislife2 · a year ago

> it puts someone else (the other party), in control of what should be your message.

Is it your message though? Doesn't the copyright belong to who wrote it (the sender)?

scintill76 · a year ago

It's your copy of the message. I'm not a lawyer, but I think if a copyright owner gives you a copy of their work, the law doesn't entitle them to take it back or rewrite it. A license agreement might, but nobody writes or signs those to cover text messages.

scintill76 commented on Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees techcrunch.com/2025/03/01... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

robomartin · a year ago

The straw man is pushing the idea that nothing should ever be touched because all of it is essential. Somewhere between don't touch anything and destroy it all is the truth. Finding and fixing problems of this type, whether it is in the private or public domains is difficult and ugly. It never looks good. It never feels good. That's just reality.

BTW, I keep reading and hearing derogative terms like "script kiddies" and "20 year olds". What's happened to diversity and inclusion? So, they have to be of a certain age? What's the magical age? And, do they have to come from the same place that created the problems as well? This isn't sensible at all.

Here's a reality: The US has been on a self-destructive path for decades. You could argue the number is somewhere between 25 and 50 years. Staying on the same path isn't going to make things better. Changing paths is not fun. It's dirty, messy and painful. Welcome to reality.

I remember having discussions here on HN many years back, when the national debt was in the $20 trillion range and annual deficits below a trillion dollars. I remember asking a simple question: Where is the limit? $25 TN, $30 TN, $35 TN ... $50 TN? Where? Where is the limit on annual deficits? 2, 4, 8? Where?

Nobody ever answers this question. Nobody. And yet reality is that this is a nation destroying itself from the inside while others around the world are taking advantage of our fiscal incompetence.

We can't make anything here any more. Not one thing (unless gov/mil and corner cases). This has been a slow-rolling tragedy building up over 50 years. And we absolutely cannot turn that clock back, ever. Some of this is cooked and done and can never be recovered. We can't build a friggin high speed train in CA with over $100 billion while, in China, they built them at a rapid pace during the same period of time.

So, I ask you, and others: When? When are you going to say "enough"? Is there a threshold or limit?

The same issue applies to this stupid Ukraine thing. When? What's the limit? A trillion dollars and ten more years? Sending our armed forces there? What the hell does "security guarantee" mean? I am blown away that no journalist at any media outlet seems to care to ask this term means in practice. Does it mean we, the US, commit to engaging with the full force of our military to protect Ukraine? Nuclear? Building a base in Ukraine? What the hell does it mean? Where are the limits?

Do I, as a US citizen, have to accept having my children go fight this war in Ukraine?

Fuck no.

Do I, as a US citizen, have to accept gifting Ukraine a trillion dollars, with no limits on time and spending? Money we do not have, we have to borrow and will add to the deficit. Money that could and should be spent internally to fix our many problems.

Fuck no.

You see, it is easy to take a side until you have to live with the consequences. Not one person who pushes for the ridiculous continuation of the Ukraine war would be willing to go there and fight for them or send their kids there. Not one. And nobody who is critical of the very necessary process to get our national finances in order would be willing to, today, right now, this moment, send a check for 20% more money to the federal government (which you can do, you don't need a law to donate money to the government). Nobody.

So, what we are talking about is hypocrisy. Talk is cheap. Write a check right now for $50K to the federal government to keep the employees being fired. I won't do that, because I believe there's waste that has to be fixed. If you, anyone, believe this not to be the case, start a GoFundMe and donate money to keep people employed, pay their substantial benefits and do so every year forever. But you won't do that. You'll come here and go on social media to comment on how wrong this is, because that's free and it does not affect you.

scintill76 · a year ago

> BTW, I keep reading and hearing derogative terms like "script kiddies" and "20 year olds". What's happened to diversity and inclusion? So, they have to be of a certain age? What's the magical age? And, do they have to come from the same place that created the problems as well? This isn't sensible at all.

I don't support DOGE, but I have also wondered if all the roasting them for being young is fair. For now I landed on yes, it's a fair criticism -- these people are too young to be put in control of massive agencies that have been running for decades. If you believe they can make the right choice because it's so obvious, it seems like we may as well just fire everyone, and then we can save the time and expense of even having DOGE. It is not logical IMO to say that some discretion is needed but also unelected 20-year-olds have enough discretion.

Re "script kiddies": the term is a bit rude maybe. But given it means an unskilled programmer who is only barely able to use programs written by others, then yes, it is fair to criticize these DOGE people, whose primary qualification was supposedly being really smart programmers, if they don't appear to meet the mark. (I'm not taking a position on whether it's factual that they are unskilled, but simply whether a "script kiddie" belongs at a helm of the government.)

Regarding DEI, it does seem like DOGE might be more diverse than some people portray it, and not everyone is a 20-year-old. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/27/us/politics/d...

Regarding what's the right age, I think of Constitutional age limits and Congressional confirmations -- those are the ways we normally have to make sure people are old enough to work in the government. But the side that's been harping about "unelected bureaucrats" is now making the most powerful bureaucrats ever, not subject to election, legal qualifications, or Congressional oversight. Hmm.

> do they have to come from the same place that created the problems as well? This isn't sensible at all.

Well, no, but I have the impression the place they are coming from is "likes right-wing tech leaders like Elon Musk and has worked for them before." I'm not going to dig into investigating or presenting that now, but if it's true, then it's not sensible either. Even under a more charitable characterization of who they are, I don't think engineers, PMs, or MBAs are going to rapidly fix agencies that have been operating in a different sphere and scale. If they went at a more careful pace than DOGE has been doing, I might have more trust they would solve problems.

scintill76 commented on Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees techcrunch.com/2025/03/01... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

dcow · a year ago

I feel like a lot of the discussion is beating around the bush or tangential.

The very simple cause of this wave of layoffs is in response to the “what did you do this week?” email. If you’ve been following closely, a week ago DOGE sent an email to many people, including suspected dead government workers, asking them to list in 5 bullets what they accomplished the prior week. Some people didn't respond after having the last week to do so. Some people protested with insubordinate responses. According to TFA the people let go were unable or unwilling to complete this simple task.

DOGE this DOGE that. At least in this instance it seems like a effective tactic was deployed and cuts were made based on observed performance.

scintill76 · a year ago

> suspected dead government workers

Suspected by Elon Musk, with no factual basis presented. Here's some real facts:

> ...22 of the 24 agencies covered by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 (CFO Act) had some data on instances of time and attendance misconduct—including potential fraud—from fiscal years 2015 through 2019... Most (19 of 24) agency Inspectors General (IG) reported that they substantiated five or fewer allegations of time and attendance misconduct or fraud over the 5-year period. In total, these IGs substantiated 100 allegations, ranging from zero substantiated allegations at six agencies to more than 10 at four agencies.

No mention of fake dead workers.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-20-640.pdf

Do they think there is somebody out there making millions on fake federal paychecks? They should go find and prosecute them! Hopefully such a criminal is not smart enough to monitor the email accounts and respond, or DOGE's brilliant plan will be foiled.

scintill76 commented on Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees techcrunch.com/2025/03/01... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

dcow · a year ago

> Those impacted in the wee hours of Saturday morning also received emails late Friday from DOGE with the subject line, “What did you do last week? Part II.”

They were asked first last last week. And then again on Friday.

——

> According to Politico, the emails — prompting employees to list their weekly accomplishments by Monday — were widely distributed across multiple agencies, including the State Department, the IRS, and the NIH.

I’m not making this shit up…

scintill76 · a year ago

These quotes support the existence of the emails, which people here aren't disputing. They say nothing about whether the only layoffs were those who didn't respond, which was implied by your original statement that "the people let go were unable or unwilling to send an email listing 5 things they accomplished in the last week."

scintill76 commented on Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees techcrunch.com/2025/03/01... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

dcow · a year ago

18F was let go yesterday morning, 1 March.

2nd “what did you do” email came Friday, 28, Feb.

1st “what did you do” email came Saturday 22 Feb.

scintill76 · a year ago

I was incorrect, and you are right about the order of events in this case, although I don't believe TFA says these 18F employees didn't reply to the email. I noted in an edit that I accidentally pulled a quote from a different article. I believe the gist of what I and others are saying here is still true.

Some other points:

* The second email came "late Friday" and the layoffs happened hours later at 1 am on Saturday, so it's not reasonable to count the second email as a warning or genuine attempt to find the "good" employees. I'm guessing it was just blasted out and happened to land in their inboxes before the firing notice did.

* Based on https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/01/general-services-ad... it appears the entire 18F unit was cut, so this doesn't seem targeted or predicated on email responses. Also, I'm not a leader, but if 100% of my organization didn't comply with an order, cutting them all is probably a much less effective decision than trying to meet them half-way. I guess if they've truly been doing nothing for years, there would be no loss, but that seems unlikely to be true in most cases including 18F's.

* Your initial comment appeared to be speaking generally on DOGE cuts, so it is fair for us to be responding accordingly. 18F seems to have been pretty small, but part of the reason this story is interesting is everything else DOGE is doing. As we've said, plenty of cuts happened before and independent of any email. Personally I'm doubtful that responding does much, but I'd be interested in any reporting on employee's experiences or what DOGE is saying about responses and how it affects their decisions.

Like I said above, I don't think TFA mentioned 18F's responses and there's not really a good reason to assume that the layoffs were due to no response.

scintill76 commented on Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees techcrunch.com/2025/03/01... · Posted by u/softwaredoug

dcow · a year ago

I don’t think you’re interpreting the article’s wording correctly.

scintill76 · a year ago

Well, why don’t you write your interpretation, and explain how that quote from TFA means that the email came before any layoffs.