• 4 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: April 21st, 2024

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  • tudor@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldJust apple things
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    4 days ago

    When you select text, you get options like Cut/Copy/Paste, Look Up, etc. Text things.

    Apps can add their own actions next to these, such as the ChatGPT app adding the Ask ChatGPT action.

    The thing is, iOS does not allow custom actions to be used outside the app which added them. So the Ask ChatGPT action only appears in the ChatGPT app and nowhere else where one would benefit from a quick shortcut like that.

    The action is now mostly useless if it can’t serve the purpose of being a shortcut to ChatGPT from any text selection anywhere, because once you’re in the ChatGPT app, you could just ask - shortcut not needed.


  • Technical explanation:

    iOS apps cannot add systemwide actions in context menus, like for text selection. At best, they can create a sharing extension to have their app shown in the share sheet (page where you select who you send something to) and potentially add an action for easier discovery.

    The only place they can add a systemwide actions is in their own app, hence why only the ChatGPT app has the Ask ChatGPT action.


  • Technical explanation:

    iOS apps cannot add systemwide actions in context menus, like for text selection. At best, they can create a sharing extension to have their app shown in the share sheet (page where you select who you send something to) and potentially add an action for easier discovery.

    The only place they can add a systemwide actions is in their own app, hence why only the ChatGPT app has the Ask ChatGPT action.



  • There is so much content going online, and so much traffic, plus heightened security measures, that make it very hard to identify dissidents on a large scale, at least with the tech we have, without using searches and seizure of one’s devices or other methods unrelated to the Internet itself.

    In other words, very hard to impossible.


  • Great example of the paradox of tolerance.

    It’s good that Romania is defending its democracy - Georgescu is a fraud as much as he is a clown, clearly unfit for office as he will not uphold the rule of law and will abuse his power.

    With that said, where do you draw the line when barring people from running? Some will see this as an attack of democracy itself, in which anyone is allowed to run for office and is elected by the people. Blocking adversaries from running isn’t exactly the definition of democracy.

    Unless the secret service declassifies its evidence that Georgescu is in any way affiliated or promoted by Russia, I see this going downward, with him and his ideology getting even more supporters due to this paradox of tolerance.










  • I tried fooling it myself several times with the aim of getting satellite connectivity in my unsupported country, to no avail.

    Used a German SIM card (where this feature is supported), went in my basement where there’s no cell service so that it can’t read MNC or MCC from any networks nor can it read GPS precisely (the circle spanned almost all of Western Europe, that imprecise I mean), used a Raspberry Pi as a router with country code as DE, disabled Wi-Fi, used VPN, used the Xcode debugging tools to simulate iPhone location to Germany (this usually fools all apps into thinking I’m in Germany, including Apple’s own Find My), all to no avail. And there’s no way to feed countryd any custom data.

    It’s insane.


  • As a developer, you don’t really get access to any of that.

    Mainly, you can’t access any history of calls and messages at all, nor can you automate sending one. All interactions with calling or texting has to be done with user interaction. Namely, calling requires the user to confirm the call, and sending a message requires the user to confirm, and they can also edit the message beforehand.

    I don’t think that’s bad, given that messages are some of the most private things on our devices, and personally, I never had to use any of these or required more access. But more choice is always appreciated.


  • An European iPhone, aka an iPhone which will get these features, is identified by a background process named countryd, introduced in iOS 16. Its only purpose is to compute and predict the most likely location of the user (as in country/region) and lock down features accordingly.

    These are only some of the factors taken into the equation:

    • GPS location
    • Wi-Fi location
    • Wi-Fi hotspot country codes
    • Cellular/GSM country codes
    • IP address
    • Home and roaming operator regions
    • Apple Account region
    • Device region
    • Satellite reachability

    countryd takes in all of these and more as input to provide the most likely country of the user. If that country is in the EU, then 💥 Sideloading, Default Apps, etc etc etc goodies