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The Trivial-to-Bypass Edition Monday, April 28, 2025

iOS And Android Juice Jacking Defenses Have Been Trivial To Bypass For Years, by Dan Goodin, Ars Technica

About a decade ago, Apple and Google started updating iOS and Android, respectively, to make them less susceptible to “juice jacking,” a form of attack that could surreptitiously steal data or execute malicious code when users plug their phones into special-purpose charging hardware. Now, researchers are revealing that, for years, the mitigations have suffered from a fundamental defect that has made them trivial to bypass.

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In response to the findings, Apple updated the confirmation dialogs in last month’s release of iOS/iPadOS 18.4 to require a user authentication in the form of a PIN or password.

Stuff

Beats Pill Debuts In New Navy Blue And Blush Pink Colors, by Eric Slivka, MacRumors

Apple's Beats brand is launching its Beats Pill speaker in two new colors today: Navy Blue and Blush Pink. The colors join the original Matte Black, Statement Red, and Champagne Gold colors that debuted last June.

Develop

AI Coding Assistants Provide Little Value Because A Programmer's Job Is To Think, by David Oliver

Writing code is easy, but programming well is hard, and it's a thinker's game.

Notes

My Life’s A Mess. Will Turning It Into A Game Make Everything Better?, by Chloë Hamilton, The Guardian

On reflection, too, I found the pressure of gamification to be in conflict with the whole idea of self-care: it just made me more stressed.

This, it transpires, isn’t uncommon. Dr Frankie Harrison, a clinical psychologist, says: “There’s a fine line between using these apps as a helpful tool and turning self-care into another task to complete. For some people, especially those dealing with anxiety or trauma, tracking habits or emotions too rigidly can actually add pressure rather than relieve it.”

Gen Z And Boomers Are Both FaceTiming In Public — But For Different Reasons, by Amanda Hoover, Business Insider

Pamela Rutledge, the director of the Media Psychology Research Center, says FaceTiming and talking on speakerphone in public are symptoms of broader shifts in social norms over the past two decades. It's common to check your phone at the dinner table or seclude yourself from public interactions with headphones. When people start a video call with someone, even in a crowded area, "our brains create that sense of social presence, which takes us someplace else," she says. We're taken out of the environment and are less likely to be aware of the annoyed people around us. Despite the ire, people continue to take these video calls because the benefits, like reading social cues from the person they're calling, "are greater than the violation of privacy that they apparently are not feeling," she says.

Bottom of the Page

Are we still expecting an iPhone with no ports -- and no any possibilities of juice jacking whatsover?

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Thanks for reading.