u/Rich_Arachnid_5262

Yes, this means you, dear reader. I have been enrolled for a while, but I came to the realization while setting up my 17 Pro recently that your wonderful ultra-secure encrypted iPhone has damn near a full clone sitting on Apple’s servers. Sure standard encryption will protect you against pickpockets etc., but as for everything else, that clone of your phone is (for all practical intents and purposes) totally cleartext.

“But I’m not important enough to surveil!” Yeah, AI has demolished that “needle in a haystack” argument, forever. There’s a lot of issues I take with AI, but one thing AI does really really well is comb through massive amounts of data and picks out patterns. One off-color joke to a friend and congratulations, you’re now being covertly surveilled. In an AI world, your first and only defense is encryption. Period.

So yeah, I can’t believe I’m out here promoting a free setting that Apple provides, but if you’re here reading this, you should go enable it, like right now. And to our British friends, I’m sorry. Write your MPs or something.

DISCLAIMER: If you lose all your Apple devices AND your recovery key, Apple will not be able to help you recover your data, as they lose access to it the moment you enroll in ADP.

Currently dining inside a Hyatt property (won’t name which one so as not to get them in trouble) in Chicagoland of all places, which is basically Pepsi city USA. Like I can’t find Coke anywhere in this city except chain fast food and 7-11, and especially not a Hyatt as they have long had exclusivity with Pepsi in the United States.

So imagine my shock when I glance over at a table of well-dressed foreign businessmen, and they are being served cans of Coke Classic and glasses of ice from a tray. Being desperate to fuel my addiction, I order one, and 2 mins later, one appears in front of me. I’m shocked and amazed!

Now I have had this experience internationally to be sure, but never in a US Hyatt have I ever seen a Coca Cola product being sold. I know Marriott and Costco have notably switched in the past year, did Hyatt quietly follow the trend?

For long-haul day flights, there are always people who just NEED to see out. However, even one person opening their window shade floods the light with cabin, so this has been an ongoing debate for years.

And the “just wear an eye mask crowd” misses the point. The eye mask blocks light for YOU. But the flood of light in the cabin has another impact: it psychologically signals to everyone else in the cabin (esp. small children) that this is now active time. Now every baby and small child has to scream at the top of their lungs and horseplay/treat the ac as a flying jungle gym vs. being subtly invited to take a nap. Families and friends start having conversations at full volume. These are noises that are outside the range and ability for ANC headphones to suppress - they are intended to suppress sustained low-pitched noises like a jet engine, not a conversation or screaming kid. Even adults have to get up and pace the aisles or stand (usually right in that zone where you can feel their presence without seeing) for protracted amounts of time, or access the overhead bin for the 38th time of the flight to dig in their bag some more.

Point being - even if YOU bring the tools to sleep, the light immediately makes the cabin come alive as a hive of activity, movement, and noise. So I am proposing a compromise:

Boarding to conclusion of first meal service: do what you want, unless exit row which requires open for taxi/takeoff

Conclusion of initial meal service to beginning of pre-landing service (when crew dim cabin lights): this is your signal that it’s sleepy time. Close the window shade as a courtesy to your fellow passengers. There is likely nothing to see at this point.

Beginning of final meal service to deplaning: do what you want, unless exit row which requires open for landing/taxi which if you are at O’Hare is like a whole other flight worth of time.

Again, it’s not about the light, it’s about the second-order effects of that light. I always find eastbound night flights to Europe so peaceful, and westbound flights back to the USA so chaotic and loud for this reason. Let’s respect our neighbors and all get where we’re going well-rested!

It seems Apple has had exactly the intended effect by raising MSRP on their iPads: they created a “run on the bank” and artificially induced shortages by everyone trying to lock in the old price from retailers who hadn’t yet adjusted theirs. And it appears the market has fundamentally shifted now.

Just 2 weeks ago, you could walk into damn near any big box store in the country and buy an iPad for a reasonable price. They were so commodified that schools heavily deployed them for 1:1 initiatives. Now, they appear really scarce, you’ve gotta wait for retailers to get them in, and when they do, you are going to be charged well above MSRP; Best Buy was selling the base model 128gb Wi-Fi only model for $579.99. That’s over $600 after tax for a base model iPad!!

And even if you do find someplace with some “in stock” and pay an absolute premium for a basic iPad, you’ve gotta wait well north of a week in many cases to physically receive it. We are having to order a service stock of iPads to hedge against shortages, because we use Apple Business Manager and have to purchase through pre-approved channel; retail iPads can never be enrolled in ABM.

Is this going to be the new normal? Are we forever going to live in a world where instead of a largely transactional case of walking into Costco, spending a pre-defined MSRP or less, and walking out immediately with a new iPad, you’re going to have to scour 20 different sites, follow rumors on social media, and pay “market price” at some sketchy site that may well be selling you a refurb/cheap counterfeit running Android? Are iPads going to be a status symbol for only the elite again? Is the purchasing process going to forever feel like trying to procure tickets for a Tay Tay concert? Or is this a temporary disruption and eventually we’ll see $449 with ample stock again?

Location: Oklahoma

Brought my car in for an oil change today, usually a $70-80 service. During the course of the time they had possession of my car for service, the dealership’s computer system went down. It sounds like they perhaps got hit by ransomware and there is no ETA for getting their systems fixed - could be days, weeks, or even months. I have more than enough money to pay them for services rendered, but as a cashless service department, they cannot accept cash or check, and because the system is down, they cannot accept any of my major credit or debit cards. They also cannot give me a loaner, as that requires access to their system, which they don’t currently have.

It’s the most frustrating thing in the world. At this point they have my car at least overnight when this should have been a 1-2 hour service, tops. They refuse to release the keys back to me as I have not paid for the ~$80 service. In any other world that would seem reasonable, but it’s not that I don’t have the money or that I’m unwilling to pay. It’s that they will not accept any form of payment I offer them at this time, and this is indefinite until their MSP or whoever they use for IT can get things figured out. It was basically suggested that I Uber everywhere and “maybe save the receipts in case management can work something out, but they’ve already left for the day.” So I am Ubering everywhere and saving the receipts, but the dude’s answer didn’t inspire a lot of confidence I would actually be reimbursed. It’s adding up very quickly.

What legal remedies do I have here, particularly any that may be relatively quick? All I want is to pay the $80 and get my car back (by tomorrow morning I’ll have likely spent more than that on Uber), but if the legal process drags out for months, there’s a good chance the systems will be restored by then anyways and it’ll all be a moot point. Is there some way I can compel them to accept a cashier’s check and release the keys immediately? Or can I rent a car on my own and sue them in small claims court later for that + day one Uber charges?

I’m fully expecting the answer is I should adjust my expectations in a post-COVID world and that once I drop my car off with a service provider, they can pretty much keep it as long as they damn well please. But figured I’d check.

I think most of us here would agree that DFW is an absolutely GOATed hub airport. It’s less like an airport, and more like a resort/shopping mall featuring airplanes. It’s extremely efficient, and while the terminal layouts are inherently better for high volume O&D than a hub, the Skylink more than mitigates this issue and gives us the best of both worlds (hard to design an airport that’s great for both connecting and O&D at the same time but DFW has managed this feat).

But getting off the plane at DFW, it always amuses me the absolute bimodal distribution of faces people make being presented with the terminals there. If you’re here reading this, you’re prob among the group that feels right at home there, knows exactly what you’re doing, and knows as long as it isn’t storming or icing outside, everything is likely gonna be A-OK. Worst case we go to Pappasito’s. Even before I became a member of the AC, I knew there were many nooks and crannies to hide out at DFW and find a little peace and quiet - something simpler airports don’t usually have.

But then there’s the group that makes the most absolutely bewildered and dumbfounded faces. Like they’ve just been airdropped into the most confusing maze ever, and they’d just assume give up, get right back on that aircraft and return to their point of origin than figure this out. What do you mean it goes to B, then A, and THEN C? This makes no sense. I want my mommy. (Spoiler: quit missing the forest for the trees; zoom out and look at a map and it all makes sense)

So I’ve come to this conclusion: DFW is not user-friendly, but is incredible to the ones who have taken the time to get to know it and learn how to use DFW. It’s the DVORAK keyboard of airports; it is designed to actually be the best, versus to fit the optics of what the average Joe thinks a good airport should look like (which mostly likely means the overcrowded yet simple mess that is Love Field… it sucks, but it’s simple).

And all that to say, if you want a real idea of how experienced of a flier someone really is? Ask their opinion on DFW.

Not only have ads on smartphone apps and websites (including but certainly not limited to Reddit) gotten more numerous, invasive, and “personalized” (via collecting your data), nobody seems to be talking about the fact they seem to be so much easier to “accidentally” click than ever before. Why is it that it seems most buttons and links on modern smartphones take a reasonable amount of precision tapping to activate, yet for ads, even breathing in their general direction is enough to activate them? Or the developer will load their stuff immediately, but load the ads on a 2-10 second delay so it pops right over the button you intend to press, precisely as you intend to press it.

This is a nuisance at best, but as often as WebKit vulnerabilities get discovered, I really don’t like being forced against my will to navigate to unknown and (if they’re using these tactics) seedy/sketchy websites. I wish Apple would introduce a standard for all App Store apps for the duration and precision of screen press to open in-app ads.

Tl;dr: Breathe in general direction of advertisement and it opens the full website.