2025-12-10 06:42:45
From Apple’s iMessage Security Overview:
Apple iMessage is a messaging service for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Relying on the Apple Push Notification service (APNs), iMessage lets users send texts and attachments like photos, contacts, locations, links, and emoji. Messages sync across all devices, enabling seamless conversations. Apple doesn’t store message content or attachments, which are all secured with end-to-end encryption so that no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple canʼt decrypt the data.
This thread on Mastodon, prompted by my wondering why Russia is blocking FaceTime but not iMessage, suggests that because iMessage messages are sent via APNs, a network (or entire nation) seeking to block iMessage can only do by blocking all push notifications for iOS. That’s why on airplanes with “free messaging” on in-flight Wi-Fi, you usually also get all incoming push notifications, even for services that aren’t available on the free Wi-Fi.
Here’s a support document from GFI Software, which makes network appliances for enterprises and schools:
The Exinda appliance gives administrators multiple options to stop or throttle applications that can use a lot of bandwidth in the network. An application that many would consider discardable or able to be easily limited in bandwidth is iMessage. When blocking or discarding iMessage traffic, users may experience an issue where all push notifications on iOS devices that have traffic going through the Exinda, i.e., on WiFi, will stop displaying.
Root Cause: Apple uses the Apple Push Notification Service (APNS) to allow application creators to push out information to iOS devices. This includes mail servers being able to push out notifications of calendar and email, or app creators to be able to push text-based messages straight to the device.
Apple might have architected iMessage this way to make iMessage veto-proof with cellular carriers, who, at the time of iMessage’s announcement in June 2011, were already promoting iPhone push notifications as a reason to upgrade from a dumb phone to an iPhone with a more expensive plan. The carriers might have been tempted to block iMessage over cell networks to keep people using SMS, but they couldn’t without blocking all push notifications, which wouldn’t be tenable. But this architecture also makes iMessage hard to block in authoritarian countries where iPhones are even vaguely popular. (Maybe this helps explain why iMessage isn’t blocked in China, too?)
Draw your own conclusions about cellular carriers and enterprise network administrators being similar to authoritarian governments.
2025-12-10 06:17:20
Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, back in 2009:
The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.
A related adage I heard, and internalized, recently: “We’re not thinking creatures who feel; we’re feeling creatures who think.” (Via Jason Kottke.)
2025-12-10 05:17:00
Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi, and Alex Mierjeski, reporting for ProPublica:
For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence. President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so “deceitful and potentially criminal.” He called another “CROOKED” on Truth Social and pushed the attorney general to take action.
But years earlier, Trump did the very thing he’s accusing his enemies of, records show.
In 1993, Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Just seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a seven-bedroom, marble-floored neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence.
In reality, Trump, then a New Yorker, does not appear to have ever lived in either home, let alone used them as a principal residence.
Frank Wilhoit’s axiom comes to mind: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
The difference between traditional conservatism — which hadn’t yet been washed away in 2018, when Wilhoit wrote it — and today’s MAGA Republican cult is that in Trumpism, the in-group is just Trump, and whoever he sees as serving allegiance to him personally. It’s not men, not white people, not rich people, and not even rich white men, as a class. It’s just Donald Trump and those who pay personal fealty to him. Especially rich white men who pay subservient fealty to him.
2025-12-10 04:59:19
Joe Flint, Brian Schwartz, and Natalie Andrews, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link, also in News+):
“Just tried calling you about new bid we have submitted,” Ellison texted Zaslav. “I heard you on all your concerns and believe we have addressed them in our new proposal. Please give me a call back when you can to discuss in detail.”
He didn’t hear back.
Sensing trouble, Ellison followed up, saying Paramount had offered a package that covered all the issues Warner had raised, including the need for “strong cash value” and “speed to close.”
“It would be the honor of a lifetime to be your partner and to be the owner of these iconic assets,” he texted, according to a regulatory filing.
Desperation is never a good look.
During a visit to Washington in recent days, David Ellison offered assurances to Trump administration officials that if he bought Warner, he’d make sweeping changes to CNN, a common target of President Trump’s ire, people familiar with the matter said. Trump has told people close to him that he wants new ownership of CNN as well as changes to CNN programming.
Lickspittling is never a good look, either. David Ellison cuts the figure of a pathetic little man, a mere shadow of his father. (I’ll bet he gets along well with Don Jr. and Eric.) And Trump is now already pissed that Ellison hasn’t turned 60 Minutes into Fox and Friends.
2025-12-10 04:28:21
The Guardian:
There on a plinth, with “Donald J Trump” emblazoned on it in capital letters, was the uncoveted trophy: a golden globe resting on five golden hands big enough to compensate any tiny-handed recipient feeling sore about the Nobel peace prize.
But wait, there was more. “There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” added Infantino, knowing that with Trump there is no such thing as too much.
Glowing oranger than usual under the stage lights, Trump eagerly put the medal around his neck without waiting for Infantino to do the honours. He told the audience of 2,000 people: “This is truly one of the great honours of my life.”
It’s just perfect that Trump put the medal around his own neck.
The jokes practically wrote themselves.
2025-12-10 03:58:52
Donald Trump, on his blog:
The only reason Marjorie “Traitor” Brown (Green turns Brown under stress!) went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States (Certainly not the first time she has been jilted!). Too much work, not enough time, and her ideas are, NOW, really BAD — She sort of reminds me of a Rotten Apple! Marjorie is not AMERICA FIRST or MAGA, because nobody could have changed her views so fast, and her new views are those of a very dumb person. That was proven last night when washed up, Trump hating, 60 Minutes “correspondent,” Lesley Stahl, who still owes me an apology from when she attacked me on the show (with serious conviction!), that Hunter Biden’s LAPTOP FROM HELL was produced by Russia, not Hunter himself (TOTALLY PROVEN WRONG!), interviewed a very poorly prepared Traitor, who in her confusion made many really stupid statements. My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen. P.S. I hereby demand a complete and total APOLOGY, though far too late to be meaningful, from Lesley Stahl and 60 Minutes for her incorrect and Libelous statements about Hunter’s Laptop!!! President DJT
Trump’s expectation isn’t that 60 Minutes, along with the entirety of CBS News, along with the entirety of CBS TV programming, would tilt in Trump’s direction after its acquisition (as part of Paramount) by David Ellison’s Skydance. Trump’s expectation is that all of CBS, every minute of the broadcast day, should appeal to and appease him.
