So it's a cold war law which is still in place but not being enforced.
Same for conscription laws in the Netherlands, which are also still active. They just don't ask anyone to report for conscription. It was even expanded a couple of years before the Ukraine war to also include women.
> The new military service law requires all men under 45 to seek approval from the Bundeswehr to leave the country for longer than three months. It also obliges the military career center to issue it.
The main point was that they changed it so instead of being activated during crisis now it applies anytime, including in peacetime. Making it similar to the cold war provisions doesn't make it sounds better.
It's an important distinction because it prevents the defence of "oh it's just an old law, there are lots of old laws on the books that everyone knows aren't relevant, they can't be tidied up for political reasons".
It was suspended for the last 15 years! Surely it was easier to leave it suspended and unsuspending it is a conscious choice.
On top of that you would need something to secure DNS. Like DNSSEC or at the very least use DNS with TLS or DNS over HTTP. None of these are typically enabled by default.
Anything that uses system-resolved is probably doing DNSSEC validation by default. It's becoming much more common.
Additionally, as I mentioned, openssh itself has support for validating the DNSSEC signature even if your local resolver doesn't. I actually don't think it can use the standard resolver for SSHFP records at all, but I'm not sure.
If you can get someone to do all these steps, you can get someone to wait 24 hours as well.
We use Android based devices internally with apps which aren't signed. I've had way too much trouble with Google flagging an internal app as problematic and then getting no where with Google "support" when we still used Google play.
The 24 hour wait is especially problematic because we often simply factory reset a device and preload it of there is any form of trouble.
This is just a power grab to lock down the ecosystem more. And ironically this seems to because of the Epic lawsuit. Google is now aligning with the absolute minimum they saw Apple needed to implement.
While the Neo is a nice notebook, I think you are overestimating it's durability advantages.
> If you're a school IT department buying these in volume, you want something that actually lasts more than a year before pieces of plastic begin chipping off, hinges start wearing out, etc. And you want something that's easy to clean / sanitize sticky little kid fingerprints off of, and also to undo e.g. residue (from kids who thought it'd be a good idea to stick stickers on their take-home laptop) without worrying about either the adhesive or the thinner permanently damaging the chassis.
If you manage to break a plastic cover, that amount of force will certainly also dent, bent and/or dislodge the aluminum cover of the Neo.
I've never seen or heard about plastic chipping off due to normal use (i.e. just wear). In the EU chipping-off plastic due to wear (with normal use) would fall under warranty. I have seen aluminum covers on high-end HP notebooks being bent, dent, etc. For example when transported in a bag, with other things in it, aluminum is more likely to get damaged.
All major brands (Lenovo, HP, Apple, etc.) have at some point had issues with hinges. I think it's even fair to say that Apple isn't known for being particularly forth coming about acknowledging problems with hinges and issuing service advisories to repair those under warranty even when it's a known issue.
> good idea to stick stickers on their take-home laptop) without worrying about either the adhesive or the thinner permanently damaging the chassis.
Getting stickers off plastic covers vs getting stickers of macbook covers doesn't really matter in difficulty. If it is problematic for plastic, it's probably going to problematic for aluminum as well. There are a lot of cleaning agents aluminum doesn't like, which cause white-ish stains in it. You can test that yourself by putting an aluminum breadbox in a dishwasher.
> Also, Apple can now promise that you can keep a pile of spares and spare parts, and swap parts between them easily, replace consumables like batteries, etc.
Right now the Apple self-repair program is, from a financial standpoint, pretty much a gimmick. The costs are so high, you are better of going to the Apple store. Also the swap-able battery is going to be mandatory in the EU so that's something all notebooks will have. Schools usually aren't that interested in starting a repair shop.
This guy [1] that posted about his series of plastic laptops over the years is a telling indictment of what the PC/chromebook value range is about. Hinges easily damage, bits and pieces falling off, can't go from closed to open with one finger, etc. In my region in Australia schools require parents to buy a laptop and the choice is between PC and Mac (Chromebook not allowed); before the Neo getting a Mac would be a budget constraint, especially for their children, but now it is such an easy sensible choice.
Yep. Anyone saying a MacBook of any kind is comparable to the average school Chromebook has clearly never touched a school Chromebook anywhere other than in a Best Buy.
$200 — or even $500 — plastic computers are different in kind (of parts and materials used) to $800+ computers. It's not anything you'd notice when the hardware is new — not the extreme "deck flex" or anything like that — but it becomes clear after 3–6 months of even light use.
Planned obsolescence is real. But, rather than being a result of malicious adulteration, it is the predictable result of aiming for an MSRP (and therefore COGS) where the only viable parts and materials the OEM can get their hands on to meet that price point, have engineering tolerances far below the use-case they’re applying them to. The makers of $500 Chromebooks know they'll break well before buyers expect them to. But with their middling purchasing power and economies of scale, this is the best they can do.
Apple, meanwhile, can hit the same MSRP not by cheaping out on parts, but rather through economies of scale and manufacturing consolidation. Obviously the A18. But also: buy enough high-quality aluminum in bulk, and stamp the same modular chassis parts out for every laptop you make — and those parts start to get cheap enough to use even in a $500 product.
> Economists aren’t necessarily worried by the total level of debt (in fact, government debt is a necessary foundation of global markets). Rather it’s the debt-to-GDP ratio, which measures a nation’s borrowing against its growth
I have a story about this; People had an HSM (in USB key form) which needed to be shared. The question came to create some elaborate piece of software for lending to prevent people from accidentally leaving it in their pockets and accidentally going home with it (which had happened a couple of times).
Instead I went to the hardware store across the street and bought the biggest (and cheapest) screwdriver I could find and attached it with some cord to the HSM. They never lost it afterwards.
In the Netherlands, before VISA, there already was a national debit card standard called PIN [1]. Sure, times have changed and it's probably not super easy, but it's also not going to be super hard.
Fun fact: until about a year ago it was not possible to pay using normal debit cards in most Dutch shops, you had to have a local card. I distinctly remember that AH, Vomar and Jumbo would typically reject foreign cards while Lidl and Dirk would typically accept them. Of course there were exceptions, but that was the rule of thumb.
Most Dutch people were unaware of the issue (because Dutch cards worked abroad), and those who were, were fully convinced that it's because Dutch system is objectively better (it wasn't, it was just a separate network). Then in like 2024/2025 Visa and Mastercard finally retired their special V-Pay and Maestro brands, and now most terminals in the Netherlands accept most normal cards.
> The system validating the authentication needs only to verify that the credentials are correct. If users want to use TPMs, HSMs,etc.. or none at all, that's up to them.
That's not up to the user in a corporate environment. If you use company supplied hardware keys for FIDO2 you don't want users using some software emulator on their phone because they think it's easier.
In the Netherlands Signal is getting traction. I talk to most people via Signal, about 85% of my messages are via Signal. Which includes my parents, and I didn't even put them on Signal.
Same for conscription laws in the Netherlands, which are also still active. They just don't ask anyone to report for conscription. It was even expanded a couple of years before the Ukraine war to also include women.
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