Sure, but you’d have to find someone willing to talk about it. In fact you’d probably want to find at least 2-3 people who can all confirm the same story.

Plus if you can call it a scam right out of the gate (this article is a follow up to the original purchase article when the phone was first “released”) maybe you can limit the damage of the scam.

If you can spend $100 to rightfully call out a scam that would have made $1,000, is that a net win? That’s an honest question. I think so, but I understand that might not be the case.

Before Arch that role belonged to Gentoo.

To add, before the change the Gentoo wiki was a top resource when it came to Linux questions. Even if you didn’t use Gentoo you could find detailed information on how various parts of Linux worked.

One day the Gentoo wiki died. It got temporary mirrors quickly, but it took a long time to get up and working again. This left a huge opening for another wiki, the Arch wiki, to become the new top resource.

I suspect, for a number of reasons, Arch was always going to replace Gentoo as the “True Linux Explorer”, but the wiki outage accelerated it.

You also have to keep track the site and how you spell it. For example is it “Microsoft” or “microsoft”?

And keep track of the current name of the site vs the old name. For example am I signing into Microsoft or Live.com or Xbox?

And keep track of my username. Is it my email? Which email? Which username?

I understand the concept but I think if falls apart fast.

…because the author is an investigative journalist?

We all know it’s a scam, but it’s their job is to prove it. To prove it you have to (attempt to) buy it.

I agree any actual people trying to buy it are morons.

Correct, the program started in the early 90s, but the cost today is $1 million.

My favorite part,

Trump administration officials have suggested that the card will replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa programme, which grants permanent residency to immigrants who invest at least $1.05m in the US, or $800,000 in designated economically distressed areas.

So since the 90s anyone with $1 million has been able to buy/invest their way in.

This “new gold card” costs $5 million.

So it costs five times as much, it’s just a bribe and not an investment. I’m guessing putting together a business plan costs less than $4 million.

So the obvious question becomes… What type of person is willing to spend $5 million, but not $1 million. (And I’m guessing less oversight.)

I assume it’s done that way to prevent an IDN homograph attack.

For example if I sent you a link to “gооgle.com” you’d be like, sure. Except that isn’t a link to “google” it’s a link to “gооgle.com”.

David F. Sandberg aka “ponysmasher” comes to mind. He started doing largely horror films himself on no/low budgets. One of his own films got opportunity to become a feature film. That then gave him future opportunities, the largest of which was Shazam! (2019).

Additionally when YouTube Premium (YouTube Red at the time) first launched they also launched YouTube Originals. Many of those programs were created by YouTubers.

The “Originals” eventually stopped being made, but it’s not clear if the issue was the content, the service or a bit of both.

I completely forgot that existed! Double checking the technical article they do correctly label it as a browser in their testing matrix/grid.

I just got confused by the clear “Brave browser” call out. When I hear DuckDuckGo I definitely don’t think browser.

Good catch!

You’re not affected if (and only if)

You always used the Brave browser or the DuckDuckGo search engine on mobile

I found that odd, but reading the more technical write up (linked in the article) it seems Brave blocks localhost communication.

The Chrome proposal references a single use case. I’ve never seen a website that sets up my local devices, but is this a new thing?

Why did localhost not get blocked earlier? This seems like a huge hole browsers have ignored for years.

Also the DuckDuckGo exception doesn’t make sense to me. Does DuckDuckGo have Facebook trackers on it to begin with? Whatever site DuckDuckGo sends you to, if they have the trackers, you’ll get tracked.

This is Lemmy so…

BEANS!

Linux has two ways of drawing pictures, the old way (Xorg) and the new way (Wayland).

The old way is like a giant box of crayons with the crayon sharpener built in. The box is all marked up, the sharpener is full of gunk, and a few crayons are melted together. Nobody really wants to touch the old box of crayons, although it does work for the most part, it’s a familiar box.

The new way is like a smaller box of crayons. The clean sharpener isn’t built in but it is available nearby, although some people say it doesn’t work as good. A few crayons are missing, but are available in most cases, they’re just not in the box. Most people are working to improve the new box.

If you’re using Linux, the new box of crayons is generally the better choice. It’s ok to stop using the old box.

To extend this, that includes YOU giving your key to another application to decrypt those messages.

For example if you use an app or browser extension, that app or browser extension has access to that key. Additionally the browser itself or operating system had access to the key.

Now they may be fully audited. They may have a great reputation. You may trust them. But they are part of the decryption (and if sending encryption) process.

It’s a chain of trust, you have to trust the whole chain.

See but I would argue that five different version numbers across five different operating systems is broken. (Ok two of them do match up.)

Specifically the watchOS version is the important one that stands out. watchOS version 1 works with which version of macOS? Which version of iOS or iPadOS?

Also when it comes time to end support for devices, how do you keep track? If Apple provides 5 years of updates, do you know if your phone is still supported?

If my phone is running iOS 14, is that supported? Is that new? Is that old?

The key thing to keep in mind is that the entirety of this ecosystem is based on yearly releases.

Just for “fun” let’s look at Windows. The current version is 11. It was released in 2021. So I guess as long as I have Windows 11, I am up to date. But… That’s not true. Windows 11 does have a version number that’s not directly end user facing. That version is 24H2.

Now the “24” is the year, that’s useful. Now what’s stupid is the “H2”. Because sitting here in June 2025 I would expect “25H1” to be released anytime now. But Microsoft only used the H1 once, about five years ago. Now “Window 11 version 24H2” is better SEO vs “Window 11 version 24”, so maybe that’s why they kept it.

How would you prefer they handle it?

Just to look at macOS version history,

The first public release was “Mac OS X 10.0”, this continued until “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion”. The “big cat” became part of the marketing name because the OS & version were a mouthful and throwing numbers around wasn’t helpful.

We drop the “Mac” next year, then switch to mountains, but it’s not long before we reach, “OS X 10.10” aka “OS ten ten ten”.

Well it wasn’t long before we simplified further and just said “macOS”, but then took a while before we dropped the “10”. Now we just get “macOS 15 Sequoia”.

For nearly 18 years the Mac operating system had an unnecessary “10” that conveyed zero information.

It’s not a matter of biggest number, it’s a matter of consistency.

They have five operating systems, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS.

So currently we have macOS 15, iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11 & visionOS 2. That’s absolute confusion. Do I have the latest version? Dropping support for an older version, how many years ago was that?

A version number should convey useful information, and the year it was released is useful information. Especially when major updates come every year.

Edit: I forgot tvOS, also version 18. So six operating systems.

Oh I completely agree. The anime eyes did not add to the film. It also sucks because the actress who played Alita, Rose Salazar, did a great job, but it’s such an uncanny valley type look that I didn’t recognize her anywhere else.

It’s one thing when it’s Andy Serkis playing Gollum or something but she was just playing a robot girl, but she looks like a throwaway CGI character.

It’s funny I saw it completely randomly.

I was chatting with a coworker and just off handedly mentioned how bad Alita looked and they jumped on to defend the film and series harder than I’d ever seen anyone defend anything before. It was a true, “I’ve waited all my life for this moment” for them.

My evening was free and it was one of those $5 Tuesday type movie nights so I figured what the hell.

So there was at least another that convinced me, got to pay it forward.

Because no one saw the first one.

Now some very influential people who were involved in the first one want to make a second one, so maybe just maybe it will happen one day… But I doubt it.

Lex Luthor.

Sure, he wants to kill Superman, that’s not the best political stance, but other than that he’ll basically just focus on fixing everything else that slows society down in order to have a society that’s better at killing Superman.

Plus it’s not like he’s successful at killing Superman. So really it’s a win-win.