Asides

100 Days of SwiftUI – Day 5 – Functions

Variadic is a new term for me. The ability to pass many things into your function by using…

func square(numbers: Int…) {
for number in numbers {
print(“\(number) squared is \(number * number)”)
{
{

square(numbers: 1,2,3,4,5)

1 squared is 1
2 squared is 4
3 squared is 9
4 squared is 16
5 squared is 25

This is something I haven’t used before but I might in the future.

Project Consolidate

I am working on pulling all of my websites into one place. It will have a name that makes more sense than chipheadmike.com. The only reason that anyone knows what that means is because I told them.

This new website is more like a journal for me and less about someone reading about me on the web.

The new site will be based on my name. I have a database issue to contend with but once that is complete, I plan on having the new site up and running this weekend. If the database doesn’t cooperate, it could be a bit longer.

I am NOT transferring all of my books over to the new site manually.

More to come.

Microsoft Edge Being Forced on Users

Sad. But true. I can’t believe this is still happening in 2020. This article mentions that Microsoft had a bad experience with forcing users to use their product before. It is shocking that they would try to do this again. Especially when Apple is now doing the exact opposite.

And I’m not surprised that some angry Windows users are already railing against the fact that this came as part of a forced Windows update, which Microsoft has already had a damn hard time justifying without invading people’s desktops as well. It’s going to be harder to buy the argument that forced updates are necessary for security when they’re pulling double-duty as an intrusive marketing tool.

via The Verge

More on TikTok…

I found this on slashdot. If you don’t read slashdot, you are missing out. The comments have been known to make my coffee flow out of my nose. The original article was posted on reddit.

So I can personally weigh in on this. I reverse-engineered the app, and feel confident in stating that I have a very strong understanding for how the app operates (or at least operated as of a few months ago).

TikTok is a data collection service that is thinly-veiled as a social network. If there is an API to get information on you, your contacts, or your device… well, they’re using it. 

Phone hardware (cpu type, number of course, hardware ids, screen dimensions, dpi, memory usage, disk space, etc)

Other apps you have installed (I’ve even seen some I’ve deleted show up in their analytics payload – maybe using as cached value?)

Everything network-related (ip, local ip, router mac, your mac, wifi access point name)

Whether or not you’re rooted/jailbroken

Some variants of the app had GPS pinging enabled at the time, roughly once every 30 seconds – this is enabled by default if you ever location-tag a post IIRC

They set up a local proxy server on your device for “transcoding media”, but that can be abused very easily as it has zero authentication

If true, this is damning evidence.

Using Chinese applications can be dangerous. Android users have it worse than Apple users. Apple is actively working on security. They also care about it. In Android’s case, having a platform that is more open to do what you want on it may sound great. You also leave yourself wide open for security breaches.

iPad Appreciation

I usually manage this website using my laptop or my iMac. I needed to change the current book I am reading and thought it would be a good time to test the ability of the iPad Pro I use. It is not the latest one but it still packs a good punch when it comes to getting work done.

I am not using the traditional style keyboard to write this post. Just the touch screen keyboard. To properly post a new book, I need to grab some artwork for the book, load that via FTP to my website, and then add the book details to the plugin I use. This was all easily accomplished by just using my iPad.

Sometimes I forget just what a wondrous device this truly can be. Even the spell checking works really well and substitutes words effortlessly. My iPad Pro is a machine I use mostly for playing Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms but it is capable of so much more. You could draw pictures. You could, maybe. I cannot. I have the pencil but not the required skills to really draw anything. That is ok. I think I do much better at writing.