Proprietary Software Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 18, 2022

• Thoughts on the Apple Event

  I was planning on writing in detail my thoughts on the Apple event, and the products that were announced. However, after I started writing an outline, I noticed a trend. These products aren’t for me, I’m not in the market for them, and they don’t provide enough additional value for me to replace what I currently have.

  I didn’t want to create a big negative post about the event, simply because it didn’t cause me to spend my money, but I'll offer a few short opinions on what was announced.

• Teslas Hackers Have Found Another Unauthorized Access Vulnerability

  Now, researchers seem to have cracked the code. By reverse-engineering the communications between a Tesla Model Y and its credit card key, they were able to properly execute a range-extending relay attack against the crossover. While this specific use case focuses on Tesla, it’s a proof of concept — NFC handshakes can, and eventually will, be reverse-engineered.

• Adobe/Figma

  The markets aren't excited about the acquisition – $ADBE is down 17% today.

• My Firefox addons as of Firefox 104 (they haven't changed in a while)

  The short list is that I (still) use Foxy Gestures, uBlock Origin, uMatrix (which is still not quite dead), Cookie AutoDelete, Stylus, Textern, Cookie Quick Manager, Certainly Something, HTTP/2 Indicator, ClearURLs, and Open in Browser, although I'm not sure that's doing anything for me. I'm still using HTTPS Everywhere in some of my browser instances, although I've started to turn it off since the EFF is deprecating it. These addons are all stable enough that I can have Firefox running for days at a time without visible memory leaks or performance issues.

• Some new HTTP verbs

  What would be some interesting or useful verbs to add to HTTP's vocabulary?

• How to install non-Google Play Store apps on your Chromebook without switching to developer mode

  Sometimes, an Android app that you want to install on your Chromebook may simply not be available on the Google Play Store. This could be either because it’s incompatible, or because the app’s developer has tagged it as such due to the experience on your device not being exactly how they prefer to present it.

  While admirable, you may just want the darn thing to be installed so you can use it – bugs and all. Today, I’m going to show you how you can install apps from outside of the Play Store on your Chromebook without needing to switch into developer mode.

• Why Don’t We Have a Smartphone for Teenagers?

  But there’s a quandary here. On the one hand, I don’t want my son to have a smartphone and access to all the things that entails. But I also don’t want him to be that weird kid who doesn’t have a phone.

  Kids are cruel, we all know that, and the smallest thing can hold a lot of weight with them. My oldest son is a sensitive soul and I would prefer he wasn’t the butt of other kids’ jokes, just because we as parents don’t agree with kids having a smartphone.

  Which (finally) brings me to the point of this post, dear reader…