This really bothered me. They absolutely bury the lede that you need a Visa card selected as your Express Transit card. The whole thing is cool, from a hacking perspective, but also feels like they’re being dishonest to make an outrageous video.
You expect me to believe MKBHD keeps a Visa card with $10,000 ready to go as his Express Transit card? I mean, sure, maybe, he is doing extremely well. But he also seems like the kind of informed tech guy that would put two and two together, i.e. “I pay for things so often using my phone I can’t be bothered to authenticate with Face ID, I’ll just put my phone in my pocket and hope no hacker comes by and holds a reader near my phone.”
> You expect me to believe MKBHD keeps a Visa card with $10,000 ready to go as his Express Transit card?
Why wouldn't he? $10k is not a particularly high credit limit in the US, all things considered, and roughly every other card is a Visa card.
Sure, commuter benefit cards probably have a much lower limit, but not everyone has these. Tourists use express transit too; Apple explicitly nudges you to set it up when you arrive in some cities/countries! So I'd bet you can find more than one person with a >$10k limit and express transit enabled per NY subway train on average.
And since the attack works for lower values too, actual attackers would probably just pick a lower value that will sail through the victim's bank's fraud prevention system, but can still cause a lot of headaches for everyone involved.
Get a broken 27" iMac, rip out the guts, and slap in a converter board that adds a bunch of inputs. It's not nearly as difficult to build as most of the blogs make it out to be.
Mine's not even broken, but it is corp, so sticking an Aliexpress board in there is ill-advised. Hence, in the market for a 5k when I've had a perfectly good one on my desk since 2017.
I sit right between design and development. I've held web development positions as well as design-based roles. I've worked at huge companies and startups. At the end of the day I just want to use computers to help people and solve problems.
I sit right between design and development. I've held web development positions as well as design-based roles. I've worked at huge companies and startups. At the end of the day I just want to use computers to help people and solve problems.
I sit right between design and development. I've held web development positions as well as design-based roles. I've worked at huge companies and startups. At the end of the day I just want to use computers to help people and solve problems.
A “soul mirror” is an interesting idea. Do you mean the modern smartphone is a mirror of ones soul because you just see what you want to see, you see what your soul is interested in?
I'm going to go with what your soul yearns for. Obviously this isn't a perfect analogy, because it implies mystic, Machiavellian, or omnipotent beings.
Its more like "the mirror of erised" from harry potter, perhaps better is the mirror from "The Snow Queen":
> which had this peculiarity, that everything good and beautiful that was reflected in it shrank… but that whatever was worthless or ugly became prominent.
But I would say its not the smartphone thats the problem, its specifically "broadcast" social media thats the problem. That is services were thirdparties, who you don't know personally, can produce content for your consumption. Those services are driven by pure engagement, rather than any other metric.
Anything that just constantly A/B tests what you engage with the most, and blindly optimises for whichever category you click on, is going to be bad for you, unless you have been given the tools and education to manage those categories. Even then, it might not be possible.
I still think kids need 1:1 and group chats, within reason, and with time limits so that they actually got to sleep, and stay asleep at night. So I'd say kids should probably still have smartphones, just not social media.
You expect me to believe MKBHD keeps a Visa card with $10,000 ready to go as his Express Transit card? I mean, sure, maybe, he is doing extremely well. But he also seems like the kind of informed tech guy that would put two and two together, i.e. “I pay for things so often using my phone I can’t be bothered to authenticate with Face ID, I’ll just put my phone in my pocket and hope no hacker comes by and holds a reader near my phone.”
/rant