Fortnite (by Epic) is a bit weird with that... the game is free and nothing you buy will give you any game advantage, they only sell cosmetic changes. I was surprised they sell character skins for $20 (and skining the mining weapon can be an extra $20) ... but now I understand that people are paying to have a custom appearance, and the price means you're not likely to come across another player with the same one. It's almost like having an exclusive skin.

... Other than that they sell the Battlepass for $10, which is a 2-month+ package of weekly challenges (achievements) and unlockable content (all cosmetic as well). But if you play even casually (that's what I do) you'll unlock enough in-game currency to get the next battlepass for free (you get in-game $10 around tier 51 of 100 ... I got that in just one month by playing 5-10 hours a week). So the game ends up being very cheap if you play it.

Music apps are relatively popular in iOS... even Apple has one (Garage Band) and there are even MIDI interfaces that allow connecting instruments to an iPhone. ... But you can't really use Bluetooth for music (and I say that as the happy owner of a couple of Apple Airpods) because it has too much latency (noticeable / annoying delay between touching something on screen and hearing the sound).

This is real. Whenever I travel from Brazil to Europe shades MUST be up during takeoff and MUST be down before sunrise (flight crew check and enforce it). I don't know if it's a regulation or an internal thing from the airline. ... But then you have the planes where windows don't have shades and it's all controlled digitally, which is easier for this case.

I carry my phone without a case, for the same reason I'd carry a baby without one... don't drop it.

Google already detects phishing emails and will most likely detect any pretending to be one of its own. But I have news from the year 2018... I get emails with links ALL THE TIME: Amazon suggestions and offers, gift cards, social network notifications, security advisories, updates from services I'm a customer of, etc. So if you want to prevent users from clicking on links received by email you already lost that battle.

... and phishing with emails pretending to be from the bank, FedEx, a social network or Microsoft are older than GMail and this adds nothing new but a new case that's the easiest to detect.

Nonsense. I have a Time Capsule... and when I go on trips I add a regular WD external drive as a Time Machine destination very easily from the control panel. It could as well be any NAS. No lock in. A new backup from zero doesn't take that much over a wired connection.

... The only issue I'll have when I change routers is that I'll need one that has a good updating mechanism and which I can plug a regular printer into via USB (that's the other thing I'm using the TC for).

Yes, the patch is a bit "heavy handed" just doing coarse query string filtering... but on the other hand that may have helped delay attacks a bit, by not pinpointing the specific mechanism of exploitation.

The original bug was a way to compose query string parameters (the part of the URL after the ?) that permitted injecting executable code in a form. The new bug is a variation where the malicious query string is part of a redirect URL passed through the query string, so it doesn't get filtered with the previous patch, because it has escaped characters. So it's not really a new bug, but rather plugging an oversight on the original patch.

On the positive side: Drupal has security audits of its core and 3rd party components, you get emails with any security updates and the patches are available through a centralized mechanism... so it's ahead of Wordpress and other platforms with no centralized module library. Release of the patches was announced ahead of time so we could prepare for them. I

On the negative side: Drupal has fundamental architectural problems of (almost) not having boundaries between data and code. It's form API (which had the original bug) is very practical and implements a lot of great security features, but it's an unfathomable mess... VERY hard to track what it does and very hard to properly use (for 3rd party module developers), since its internal workings are not properly documented. Also, Drupal has a very very extensible architecture allowing for all sort of pluggable behavior, which also means it's very very hard to track the flow of data... this was a bug present at least since Drupal 6 (released in 2008) because it was not easy to see how data could move from the query string into the PHP structures used to define forms without proper filtering. The new-ish Drupal 8 has a more mature OO architecture, probably cleaner, but even harder to follow without actually running the code with a debugger.

I use my ear pods at home with my phone cradled or charging. I also use my regular Sennheiser earphones... or my bluetooth speaker... or my actual speakers with a real receiver/amplifier. It all depends on what's more convenient at the time... Sometimes I just want to listen to a podcast (or even some music I don't care that much about) while I cook or do other chores and activities where the cable gets in the way and might actually be dangerous... either in the kitchen or at night while my girlfriend is sleeping. I found not being tied to a cable much more liberating than I thought.

Back in the day OS/2 was THE way to have a modern OS with real and sort of stable multitasking on a regular PC. It could run DOS and Windows apps but it also had native apps and for some applications that was all you needed. I had a BBS/FidoNet system back then and OS/2 was the best way to run all the services and parallel processing tasks... the alternative that some used was DESQview, a multitasking OS/Hack running on top of DOS. People on the argentine FidoNET scene stopped using OS/2 mostly because of:

- Linux, which was quickly gaining popularity
- Windows 95, which had preemptive multitasking

1 - I don't have any experience with other BT headsets. They get interference sometimes in the street... some particular street intersections more often apparently.... none in my home, place of work, etc.

2 - Not exactly the same. They have a slightly tighter fit than the regular earpods in my experience... I used the wired ones a lot and they would fall of kind of easily, but it's hard to compare because those had a heavy wire pulling them down.

3 - No. They sound better than the regular earpods though... have a slightly richer sound and bass. You should consider the Beats X, which were built in the "Apple era" of Beats so sound better and have the same BT chip but are in-ear.

The argentine tax collecting agency still has critical parts of their web site (particularly the one where small business and independent professionals declare their gross income) that only work under IE6 due to use of MS-only javascript API. The "funny" thing is that with newer versions of IE you have to use the site in "compatibility mode" which with the latest versions has to be activated through the developer tools panel. The tax collection agency gives instructions on how to do this instead of fixing the site... while some enterprising folks have developed browser extensions that inject fixed versions of the scripts in the page. I use a mac and have to boot a VM with Windows every 3 months for this purpose.

(The quality of argentine web sites is quite good by international standards... this site is just the worst shitstorm possible).

The tip about PassSource is very good... I live in Argentina so very few things have Wallet integration and I don't pay it much mind except when travelling... but with that I can create my own :-)

I have an Apple Watch and love it, but won't try to convince anyone here that it's the best (which I wouldn't know) but rather want to share how I use it:

- I bought it because I work at cafes and was tired of taking my phone out of my pocket to check notifications. It serves that purpose rather well.
- I use it a lot to set reminders with Siri. "Hey Siri, remind me to hang the clothes to dry in two hours", etc. I now try to avoid having to keep track of small things doing it "the cyborg way". In fact I just used it to set a timer for my tea. Siri supports some more surprising things (while listening to a podcast interview I said "Hey Siri, show me pictures of X (the person being interviewed)" and the face appeared on the watch) but I don't always realize I can use it for those.
- I often use voice dictation to reply to messages when walking around. I even picked up phone calls Dick Tracy style a couple of times when the phone was a couple of meters away.
- I use it to navigate with the maps when walking. I don't drive, but it's possibly useful that way as well. When walking long distances it's better to have the notification to turn around the corner on the wrist than on the phone in your pocket.
- I use it to track my hearbeat during trainings. It has a podometer function as well that stores the distance walked in the health app on iOS.
- I have the current temperature on the watch's face and tapping on that opens the forecast. I use that a lot.
- I didn't expect this feature, but it suggests standing up and moving around a bit for at least a minute every hour... and I love it. It's a very small thing, but helpful for us who work sitting down.
- When you charge it and set it on its side it becomes a bedside clock. I use that to wake up in the morning.
- The flashiest thing it does is acting as a remote of the iPhone camera, with a live video feed and all... it's handy to get group shots without setting the timer and running away into place.

The problem with hosting companies compared to cloud services is that you're more likely to have larger downtime if there are any problems, and you might not be protected with recent enough backups in case of hdd corruption / failure. These kind of problems are rare, but they do occur and can be catastrophic. B2B cloud services like Amazon S3 have excellent uptime track record and might able to give some guarantees, plus they provide and/or offer redundancy. Services like Dropbox are hosted in that sort of hosting and might specify certain levels of security for your data. You can have your own backup/redundancy strategy in a 10$ hosting but it's often not easy if you are hosting several gigabytes, it requires more time and knowledge, and you might have to deal with a huge downtime to restore anyway.