Aaron44126

This is true, but I don't think that is enough to win a case here. It would be enough if they were just reverse engineering a standalone piece of software. They make grand claims about wanting to improve message security for everyone... But, in addition to "reverse engineering", Beeper is accessing Apple's network/server infrastructure without permission, and trying to derive a profit from it (Beeper Mini is supposed to be a subscription app, if they can get it working properly again). Can you think of any other case where a company has made a successful business model out of piggybacking off of another company's digital infrastructure without permission ...? I imagine that Apple is evaluating their legal options and we'll be hearing something on that front in the next few weeks. ("Unauthorized access to a computer network" is a crime in and of itself.) Don't forget that they are also open-sourcing everything that they make relating to iMessage interoperability. Again, they make claims that they are doing this so that everyone can "audit" the security of their integration, but their argument is blatantly incomplete. This is opening the door for less scrupulous or even malicious clients and bots to be created, and that is definitely not improving security. I don't see a situation where Apple would stand for this. Short-term, they'll employ technical measures to block Beeper's access to the iMessage network (as we see already). Medium-term, if Beeper doesn't take the hint, they'll take legal action against Beeper to get them to stop trying. And long-term, they will make architectural changes to iMessage to make it more resilient against this sort of thing. Even if Beeper could eventually prevail in court, if Apple decides to take legal action then the cost of litigation alone could basically kill them. Apple has a top-notch team of lawyers and Beeper doesn't really have any revenue stream. We'll see what happens, but I'm pretty sure that if Apple wants this unsanctioned integration effort to be dead, it is going to end up dead. Finally, even if the EU forces Apple to open up iMessage for interoperability, you can bet that it will be done on Apple's terms and that will mean going through their designated API endpoints and not just allowing anyone pretending to be a legitimate Apple device to get in. The one thing that Beeper can do that Apple wouldn't be able to do much about is what people (including Beeper) have been doing for years. Route the messages through a real Mac, using an iMessage bridge. There are other projects like BlueBubbles and AirMessage that do this. Can't really complain about what people do with their own computers, and it is entirely Apple software running the iMessage traffic. Apple could still probably (both technically and legally) block mass deployments of this technique i.e. in a Beeper data center, but if individuals want to run a bridge on their own system then what can you do?

Beeper's latest "fix" requires that you have access to a real Mac, be it yours or your friend's or your uncle's or whatever. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/19/24007919/beeper-mini-cloud-android-imessage-fix They're not routing messages through the Mac (as was their old solution), but they do use it to generate "registration data" that can be handed to either Beeper app and use that to access the iMessage network. The "registration data" must be periodically refreshed, so you've got to keep your Mac powered on. Seems like they were using their "fleet" of Mac servers to provide this registration data before, but Apple has keyed in on a single Mac being used for hundreds or thousands of iMessage connections and is blocking those. This new method might work as long as Beeper's implementation of the protocol is close enough to a real Mac's so that there is nothing in the traffic that could serve as something for Apple to use as a block flag. However, it is a bit more cumbersome than what they were promoting a few weeks ago and I don't think it will see nearly as much adoption as what they could see if a physical Mac was not required.

If turning off the setting to "turn off the monitor" fixes this, I wonder if there is something going on with the GPU driver that is causing it die or fail to wake back up when the monitor goes to sleep. I could suggest things like... Make sure that you are using the current Intel GPU and NVIDIA GPU drivers (I'd start with the ones from Dell, not the ones from upstream). In the BIOS setup, turn switchable graphics off if it is on or vice versa, to see if the behavior changes.

Lots of times, the shipping status that you get (by checking the tracking number) will just show it shipping out of California or Illinois. What is "hidden" is the transit time from China to their local shipping depots in the U.S.; unless they ship the package out of China individually directly to you via UPS (which they do sometimes), you will not see this. They more often send a bulk package containing many systems from China to the U.S. via air freight, it is broken down into individual packages once it gets here with each one being handed off to FedEx, and only then is it marked "shipped" and you get your local tracking number. (You can get in touch with customer service and they will sometimes be able to get you the air freight tracking info for your system, before it is actually marked "shipped" in the order status.) I would assume that it works pretty much the same for any PC manufacturer that is offering build-to-order systems, but I only really have experience ordering from Dell.

This has been normal practice for Dell as long as I have been buying laptops from them. Most of their systems ship from China. They ship some desktops from Mexico. The exception is if you get one of the premade ones (not customized at all) listed as available for immediate shipping... Those can be stocked and shipped right out of a U.S. warehouse. It makes sense, when the "factory" is in China, and people are buying build-to-order machines, of course they are going to ship from there. And as long as the parts/labor market is the way that it is and people are building electronics in places other than the U.S. to save money, that's the way that it's going to be. I did hear I think that Dell is looking to start building some of their systems in Vietnam. There are other countries getting in on this too, like Apple shifting some of their production to India. Still not quite what you're asking for...

Interesting drama here with a bipartisan group of lawmakers asking the DOJ to take a look at Apple's "anti-competitive behavior" as they crack down on Beeper trying to use iMessage. (Apparently, now approximately 60% of Beeper users can't use iMessage. Last Wednesday, it was just 5%.) https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/18/24006037/apple-beeper-doj-investigation-imessage-letter-android I highly doubt that the courts would be willing to force Apple to let Beeper utilize their messaging infrastructure without some sort of DMA-like law being passed here in the U.S., and something like that will never get through the current dysfunctional Congress. However, in the EU they are still trying to figure out if iMessage qualifies as a "core" service under the DMA, and if it does, Apple may be forced to allow interoperability. (I am wondering if that is the reason for their newfound willingness to implement RCS, to sort of head this off...)

There's a fan control oddity in these systems. Load on the PCH seems to cause the EC to want to spin up the fans in an effort to cool off the PCH, even though the fans don't actually do much or anything to cool off the PCH because of the physical design of the heatsink. So, it is pointless fan noise. This could affect anything going through Thunderbolt, which is connected through the PCH, but you can also reproduce this behavior just by connecting the system to a gigabit Ethernet network and running a high-speed transfer to another device on your LAN. It doesn't load the CPU very much, but it does cause a load on the PCH which causes the fans to ramp up. I have not tried a Thunderbolt dock with my Precision 7560 or Precision 7770, but I have observed the same fan-ramps-up-on-network-transfer behavior on both of them. I don't have high hopes that Precision 7680 or 7780 would be any different.

I was able to connect with FileZilla and pull the file down.

ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/misc/Software/OS/knoppix_v9.3_linuxmag_06_22.iso FTP links aren't supported by modern browsers so you might have to dust off an actual FTP client .....

Indeed. But what's the line? Companies are just people organized together to do some kind of work (more or less). "Mega corporations" and social media didn't exist when the Constitution and first amendment were framed. Will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court handles it, especially given its current composition. Lower court rulings have been mixed. (I think one of those state laws was blocked in the original court but then unblocked in the appeals court...?) But I personally suspect that efforts from governments to force more "lax" moderation policies will not fly. Might be getting a little politic-y but I'd really like to see ranked choice voting take off. That could end the system we have now of basically having to vote for someone on one extreme or the other, or what I find myself doing which is voting "strategically", shooting for the "least bad reasonably possible outcome" rather than actually voting for who I would actually want most for some positions. And, if more centrist/moderates got elected then we'd also avoid the lost progress that happens when there is a party switch at the top and the new people in power push really hard to move in a different direction. https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1214199019/ranked-choice-voting-explainer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlapbFzl_ZU

I think the free speech stuff started when Elon Musk made his original bid to take it over? It was definitely part of his opening message. (In the U.S., there isn't a requirement that "online communities" be bound to any notion of "free speech" by whoever posts there. Whoever runs the forum/site/community can operate or moderate it however they want, other than being required to take down "illegal" speech [threats of violence, piracy, etc.]. Actually, attempts by government entities to influence or control how online communities are moderated could be construed as a violation of the managing company's freedom of speech. There have been some attempts by certain state legislatures to force more loose moderation practices that are currently blocked by the courts, and will presumably soon be reviewed by the Supreme Court.)

Actually, this second link that you posted seems to be full of people saying that 6 GHz doesn't even work on Windows 11 unless you are using a specific/old version of the Intel Wi-Fi driver. Did Intel just royally mess this up all around?

OK, maybe that is the case... I don't have any 6E routers to mess with yet.

Huh? Why is this? I have used AX210 on Windows 10 without issue... (I am aware that the driver does not work with Windows 7...)

Yeah, I did appreciate having iMessage, Facebook Messenger, and Discord all in one place. I use the latter two infrequently enough though so it is like “meh” and going with separate apps is fine, especially since they don’t really have to be apps, just browser tabs. (I did use Trillian back in the day for a multi-network chat client.) I’ve also been wondering if Beeper is opening themselves up to legal trouble with Apple. They claim that they’re safe because they’re using reverse engineering for interoperability, which is allowed… but they are also trying to make a profit off of someone else’s infrastructure, and if it was not clear before that Apple doesn’t want third parties trying to get in the mix with the iMessage network, it should be now.

Framework Laptop 16's liquid metal application. https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-16-deep-dive---liquid-metal

On that point...

I was using the "cloud" version of Beeper for a while, but I have not been using it since I got an actual Mac.

Tried this today. Works for me. Well, I didn't mess with DDU, I just checked Device Manager. It had two instances of "NVIDIA Platform Controllers and Framework". I removed them both and it rediscovered just one, which I left enabled. No BSOD at boot anymore.

Welcome to the club 😕 (I dumped my Precision 7770 for an M2 Max MacBook Pro 16" this past summer after ongoing frustrations. MacBook has its own idiosyncrasies but I am generally more happy with it and I think I am a permanent Mac convert.)

I'm not sure about the comparison between the two on this model, but... Because OLED panels feature individually-lit pixels, they draw more power when displaying "bright" images than they do when displaying "dark" images. If you can live mostly with "dark mode" applications and web sites then you can have longer battery life than if you are working with applications that use a lot of white backgrounds. (This as opposed to LCD panels which draw pretty much the same amount of power no matter what is shown on the screen; you can still adjust the power draw by changing the whole display backlight brightness level.)

Beeper Mini is back ... sort of. You can sign in and send messages with an Apple ID (email address), but not with a phone number. https://blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-mini-is-back I have mixed thoughts on their claim that they have made messaging "more secure" by releasing Beeper Mini. Obviously, offering end-to-end encryption between Android and iPhone users is "more secure" messaging, but by open sourcing the connection code (also the right call, I think), they have opened the door up to spammers, phishers, and other nefarious actors to more easily access the iMessage platform. You could also see Beeper Mini "copycat" apps spring up that use the same code to interact with iMessage but don't have the same degree of care for security and privacy that Beeper is claiming to have. I'm surprised that Beeper does not address this at all in their post along with their claims of security. They talk about how their app is secure, but despite repeatedly pointing out how their iMessage connection code is open source, they don't give any thought to the idea that it could be misused by others. Anyway, because of this risk, I fully expect Apple to continue to expend effort getting this blocked, and I will be surprised if they are not at least partly successful by the end of the week.

Basically, the product key is "burned" into the motherboard/BIOS and Windows 10/11 can "see" it for purposes of reactivation, if you ever do a reinstall. Other tools can pull the OEM stored product key out, too, like ProduKey. No idea why they would have trouble keeping Windows 11 Pro systems in stock but I guess I am not surprised. You could try going through a sales rep to place your order. Sometimes they have access to options that aren't available on the web site.

Let the cat-and-mouse begin … It is blocked. https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/8/23994089/apple-beeper-mini-android-blocked-imessage-app

I mean ... on my Precision 7560 here, there is definitely an "angle" similar to the one pictured here where you can see the keyboard backlight LEDs directly through gaps between the keys and the chiclet lattice. Is that what you are referring to? (Much harder to see anything like that on my MacBook Pro where the keys are more flush against the lattice.)