paws

> Kaplinksy’s claim to fame is that he’s the lawyer who figured out you could get rid of the ability of a consumer to go to court by using what’s called a pre-dispute arbitration provision in a contract.

I'm no expert but Kaplinsky sure sounds like a modern day super-villain.

What magical event happens to people at age 30 that led the legislators to ban catastrophic? Would love to see the actuarial data on that. I have no knowledge/evidence of the reasoning but to me it definitely smells like lobbying.

As far as I know login.gov is a viable solution, already in use at the SSA, that is government-run aka doesn't require users to kowtow to an EULA, capricious arbitration, etc. The problem is there was apparently interagency squabbling that messed up the original deployment schedule. So it's not available. I do hope that changes because the current situation, of mandatory id.me seems pretty terrible.

The macOS appocalypse was a really shocking moment -- it was so disappointing to learn that despite the privacy marketing shtick, macOS engineers chose to have Macs phone home sensitive data in an seemingly aggressive way, with no opt out. Now in 2023 the fact that "a preference for users to opt out of these security protections" never materialized, and the copy just disappeared from the website, is quite disappointing. Great write up here [0] - thanks @lapcat!

Anecdata: Ever since that day I've blackholed ocsp.apple.com/ocsp2.apple.com at the DNS level, and all my Mac apps have launched just fine since.

If anyone at Apple reads this, I want to be given the choice. Warn me, stuff the setting into whatever plist -- whatever, but give me the choice.

Frankly for a company with Apple's resources, it's hard to believe the OCSP test suite somehow didn't consider half-open TCP connections. If a global catastrophe like that can happen once, it can happen again - which is why, in addition to the clearly negative privacy implications, Apple should give users who care a clear opt-out.