
Cracking the Code: A Toddler, an iPad, and a Tweet - tysone
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/cracking-the-code-a-toddler-an-ipad-and-a-tweet
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michelledepeil
...and the same thing continues in these comments: something totally mundane
posted on the internet being dissected to within an inch of its life. The
whole point of the article is that random stuff on the internet becomes world
news, but that seems lost on the HN crowd, who focusses more on the iPad bug.
Actually, maybe I'm not surprised that has become the focus here.

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vlunkr
I’ve seen this story circulating and the explanation is totally wrong. It
won’t let you attempt that many times. The clock got set to the unix epoch
somehow, and it’s waiting until sometime close to the present to allow
unlocking. The math adds up. This happened to an old phone I had that sat
around with a dead battery for a long time, and I found forums where plenty of
other people have had the problem.

~~~
pronoiac
Ah, then, won't syncing it up to a computer reset the clock, and the lockout
lessen?

~~~
Thorrez
Yes, the article says that was the solution on how to unlock it.

~~~
saagarjha
They didn’t sync the iPad, they reset it through DFU.

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js2
I recently turned on a first gen iPad mini that had been off for maybe a year
and its battery had run down. I unlocked it but got repeated prompts to sign
into iCloud with an error when I attempted to do so.

I finally thought to check the time and it was set to 2017. Apparently if its
too far from the current date, automatic time setting does not work. I had to
manually set it to the current date/time, wait a minute or two, then I could
toggle on automatic time setting.

It’s been a while but I seem to recall ntpd behaving the same way on
Unix/Linux and having to manually use ntpdate if the system clock is too far
off.

~~~
hug
1000 seconds, I believe, is the max that ntpd will correct without manual
intervention.

It also usually corrects by slewing time, so that the time correction doesn’t
upset timers so much. I believe it can take several weeks to correct for a
large offset.

That information is true for most linuxes, and may not have any direct bearing
on iOS.

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ceocoder
This article made me really happy. Our 3 year old is bound by the same rule -
iPad is allowed when flying somewhere but not at home. Fortunately she has
made peace with it... mostly. Every night we play Laurie Berkner toothbrushing
song for her so she’ll spend full 2 minutes brushing her teeth. iPad is locked
right after; every now and then she’ll try to grab it and enter some digits,
and I think she is getting good at it. She knows first two digits already. At
some point I’ll be forced to upgrade to touchID/faceId iPad for her as well.

~~~
Waterluvian
I have a problem where I feel judged as a parent when others talk about their
strict rules. It's not you, it's me. But it inclines me to share my story.
Because I was so strictly regulated away from the computer as a kid, I decided
to just relax and enjoy life on my own terms and not be so strict with my
kids. So my 2 year old has unlimited iPad time.

So far the observations are:

\- on days he uses it, it's between 1-2 hours total.

\- he knows his alphabet and will sing the song while typing in each letter.
So he kind of knows qwerty.

\- he has complete access and basically goes into Netflix kids and YouTube.
Ive never seen him find or watch anything inappropriate. This surprises me the
most.

\- some days it can be like crack. Grab it from his hands and he goes nuclear

\- he gets bored and hands it back to you after 1-2 hours.

\- he ignores it for days.

\- he prefers going to the park or back yard over iPad time.

\- I think he loves having control. He picks what the tablet does. He picks
what video is on. A lot of his day is decided by what mom and dad need to do.

\- some days we need to hide it because he's particularly fixated and getting
him to bed time becomes difficult.

\- he has an interesting obsession with a few videos that count in many
languages. He can comfortably count to 20 in English, French, and Spanish.
Mom, dad, and a Spanish speaking grandmother supported this and I think the
iPad time helped reinforce the learning on his terms at his place

Overall I think it's a big win. But I expect this to change as he gets older.
I expect we will have to start regulating it when he becomes capable of doing
more complex activities on it.

~~~
caprese
Your 2 year old can read, type and count? Is this common?

~~~
entropy_
My son could read the alphabet and recite it at 18 months. He learned this on
his own because someone gave him a kid's alphabet book and he kept pointing to
things in it and we'd tell him what they were. I think kids are perfectly able
to do this stuff by 2, they just need to be exposed to it. For the record, we
didn't encourage this behavior or try to push for it, he just really obsessed
over that book for ~1 month for some reason.

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tedunangst
I like that the internet detectives have determined all iPads have retina
screens.

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chevman
Had a similar problem with an old iPod touch. I think once the system time
gets screwed up iOS won’t connect to any website due to certificate security
errors - ie iOS thinks its 1999 but all the website certs aren’t effective
until 2019 for some reason.

~~~
hug
All x509 certificates have a “NotBeforeDate” value.

It does help with trust: if you know there was a specific date on which there
was a cutoff of a vendor producing a certain type of weak certificate, for
example, you can choose only to trust certificates from that provider after a
certain NotBeforeDate.

All browsers will fail a certificate as invalid if your date is prior to the
NotBeforeDate.

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jschuur
Here's the real question: Did the kid think he was being persistent and that
eventually he'd be able to play his games again, or did he think guessing the
password _was_ the game?

~~~
nkrisc
My kid's 18 months and "action/result" is his favorite game. He does one
thing, and something else happens. Do it again! And again... and again......

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gambiting
"In the end, why did anybody care? Was it just a pleasing respite from
gruelling news? Like so much of our lives with technology, the episode could
be read as a reason for either optimism or gloom. In an instant, people had
raged and imagined conspiracies; most did not. Many helped. "

I wonder sometimes how much time is wasted on stuff like this.

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thunderbong
The last paragraph of the article -

In the end, why did anybody care? Was it just a pleasing respite from
gruelling news? Like so much of our lives with technology, the episode could
be read as a reason for either optimism or gloom. In an instant, people had
raged and imagined conspiracies; most did not. Many helped. Above all, the
scenario, in all its ridiculousness, seemed to satisfy the low-grade anxieties
that have become our universal predicament, the feeling that we’re rarely more
than a few clicks away from becoming captive to the tech we love. And, when it
came time to share that angst, we did it online, of course. By the end of the
week, the tweets were slowing down. The Internet had moved on. And the iPad
was on a high shelf.

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KiDD
So dumb. She restored the device as recommended by Apple, whom she didn't
bother contacting... or even googling an answer.

