Infosec consultant @WithSecure - Coding, Research + various other interests

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 18th, 2022

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  • From “About Search & Privacy…”:

    "Search and Privacy

    Search is designed to protect your information and enable you to choose what you share.

    To Make Search Results More Relevant, Some Information Is Sent to Apple and Not Associated with You

    When you use Look Up or Visual Look Up, when you type in Search, Safari search, #images search in Messages, or when you invoke Spotlight, limited information will be sent to Apple to provide up-to-date suggestions. Any information sent to Apple does not identify you, and is associated with a 15-minute random, rotating device-generated identifier. This information may include location, topics of interest (for example, cooking or basketball), your search queries, including visual search queries, contextual information related to your search queries, suggestions you have selected, apps you use, and related device usage data. This information does not include search results that show files or content on your device. If you subscribe to music or video subscription services, the names of these services and the type of subscription may be sent to Apple. Your account name, number, and password will not be sent to Apple.

    You can also search using Siri, such as by asking Siri to look up general knowledge or do things like get directions. When you use Siri, the transcript of your request and other data may be sent to Apple to process your request and may be stored. You can learn more about how Siri handles your data by going to Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri.

    Information sent to Apple related to your searches is used to process your request and to develop and improve search results, such as by using your search queries to fine-tune Search models. It is not linked to your Apple Account or email address.

    Aggregated information may be used to improve other Apple products and services. Apple may also send a limited, randomly sampled set of search queries to search tools for the purpose of evaluating and improving the performance and quality of Search.

    Search Engine Suggestions in Safari

    Safari has a single field for searches and web addresses so you can browse the web from one convenient place. When Search Engine Suggestions are enabled, Safari will ask your selected search engine for suggestions based on what you’ve typed.

    Preload Top Hit in Safari

    With Preload Top Hit enabled, as soon as Safari determines a Top Hit based on your bookmarks and browsing history, Safari will begin loading the webpage in the background. If you disable this option, the page will load normally.

    You Have Choice and Control

    If you do not want your search queries to be stored by Apple and used to improve Search, you can disable Improve Search by going to Settings > Search and tapping to turn off Improve Search. Searches you make through Siri will still be stored and used to improve Siri if you have enabled Improve Siri & Dictation. You can disable Improve Siri & Dictation by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements and tapping to turn off Improve Siri & Dictation.

    If you do not want web-based content and search results, you can disable “Show in Look Up” and “Show in Spotlight” by going to System Settings > Search and tapping to turn off those features.

    You can disable Safari Suggestions in Safari by going to Safari > Settings > Search and deselecting Include Safari Suggestions.

    You can disable Location Services for Search by going to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Privacy > Location Services, then clicking Details next to System Services and turning off Suggestions & Search. If you turn off Location Services on your device, your location will not be sent to Apple.

    Apple may process and store the information that is sent to Apple with trusted third-party service providers.

    By using Siri Suggestions in Search, you agree and consent to Apple’s and its subsidiaries’ and agents’ transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information. At all times, information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy."

    #apple #privacy










  • Some random notes after glancing over the G15D programmer’s reference manual:

    - Bendix G-15 doesn’t use hex, but sex: The notation is 0-9 u-z (sexadecimal).

    - Section 3.2.3 goes into details on how to optimize performance: You need to carefully plan the order of instructions and data on the drums for optimal speed. The most optimal code will overlay computation and memory accesses. This reminds me of “the story of Mel”. The optimization tricks done don’t differ much from handcrafting optimal assembly code on more modern systems where external memory accesses are very expensive vs computation within registers.

    - The addressing notation directly addresses line on the drum and offset of the word on that line. There are 20 lines with 108 29-bit words on each. Arithmetic operations operate on a separate short “register” lines that circulate much faster than the actual memory (27x speed vs memory drum).

    - Considering how slow it’s to process individual memory loads / stores, it makes perfect sense that the system has block copy instructions.

    - Each instruction has offset within the line to the next instructions to execute. That is, there’s always an explicit jump encoded in each instruction. Conditional code execution occurs by suppressing the jump when condition is met, in which case the jump is not taken and next instruction is executed instead. In modern architectures you generally execute next instructions address and there are dedicated branch instructions.

    - Code execution can happen from 7 long lines (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 19) and one short line (23). Some lines have reserved roles and offsets, at least when using the libraries provided by Bendix.

    - As there is no built-in stack register or stack a return address for subroutine calls must be handled manually. This is reminiscent to link register on some later platforms (such as PowerPC). It of course is entirely possible to manually maintain a stack on some line, dedicating some fixed address as stack pointer. All code must then agree on this decided calling convention.

    - Punched (paper) tape and magnetic tape is available for input, as well as typewriter (console). Output can be (IBM) punch cards, magnetic tape or typewriter (console). The typewriter also has some switches for control.

    #retrocomputing #programming #bendixg15