Built Detect Thoughts for web developers to test their own code from an iPhone. This is a free app in its compiled form but it’s also meant to easily be dropped into other Swift projects to add (as an example) a developer mode. The source is at https://github.com/krypted/DevModeCuRL and the compiled version has now been posted to the App Store at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/detect-thoughts/id1635176129. Detect Thoughts takes the logic from a curl command and makes it simple to send a query to a standard REST endpoint on a web server. It supports GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE methods. It also supports Bearer token authentication, basic auth, and OAuth 2 (although that might be considered a…
-
-
The Evolution Of Unix, Mac, and Chrome OS Shells
-
LSAppInfo can’t hide processes but it’s still useful
Once upon a time we could hide a process from users: lsappinfo setinfo -app BackgroundRootkitOfDoom ApplicationType=UIElement 1 I’m not sure when that got removed but it’s probably for the best. There were was to hide everything, like users and groups (UID below 500 or insert an _ in front of the username), objects on the file system, etc. Then people abused what admins used for various workflows and much of that has since been removed. The lsappinfo binary is still pretty useful, though. The simplest incantation would be to just list what’s running: lsappinfo list The output has the bundleID and the bundle, the executable, pid and some other metadata.…
-
How Signing and Privacy Xcode Options For Developers Translate to MacAdmins
We had Greg Neagle on the MacAdmins Podcast last night and I found myself struggling with a few words because in some cases what we see in Xcode doesn’t match the terminology we use in device management. Insert a little stammering around to try and phrase things properly… A few minor details about the structure of an Xcode project. The name of the project is the top level of the hierarchy on the left. A lot of what matters in device management is how a project is signed and the making sure we can provide the ability to run a project and the capabilities the project needs with the least…
-
Virtual Currency Laws Per US State
Virtual Currency is often decentralized (unless a given currency or blockchain is wholly owned by a given institution). Many seem to think this means there are no laws in the space. Sure, John Perry Barlow could tell governments of the world that they have no control over the internet in his “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” and proponents of web3 or DEFI have room to experiment with a new currency. Decentralized is not the same as unregulated. Turns out we’ve been electronically sending funds (or objects with a monetary value) for a time, so each state as either created a statute or provided interpretation of existing statutes. These…
-
Hieracosphinx .stl
Just posted a Hieracosphinx .stl to print the last creature in the Monster Manual project I’ve been working on at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5426945. To access the full project check out https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nAJ4y2JxQU2lb6jWOzqU9GdQtHIS4Z3P3NDHgOMEE9I/edit#gid=0. I only posted some of them on Thingiverse, and most of mine pale in comparison to the amazing work I’ve managed to print and paint that was done by others. I have benefited so much from things other people put out there so post all of mine free of copyright. Heck, I know the license they apply says to attribute the work but I don’t need that. I wouldn’t mind seeing how much better others paint these, though! <3
-
3D Print A Dinosaur!
It’s not an Ankylosaurus, it’s a Paleoscincus. It’s on Thingiverse at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5424027 This is part of the Monster Manual project I’ve been working on. Hope you enjoy! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nAJ4y2JxQU2lb6jWOzqU9GdQtHIS4Z3P3NDHgOMEE9I/edit?usp=sharing
-
Apple Design Resources
One of my favorite things about swiftui is how easy it is to pull in clean and beautiful iconography. I’m happy to go screw it up by crowding interfaces and building crap UI. Apple can’t make me a good designer. But they can arm me with plenty of tools to get there. One of the most impactful for me is the SF Symbols font, which can be downloaded at https://developer.apple.com/sf-symbols/. There are others to manipulate svg files and other formats, but the beauty of SF Symbols is that it’s simple to change size, color, placement, and even multiple colors concurrently (some fonts are multi-colored). For example, let’s say I want…
-
Disable Disk Image Verification On Mac
Sometimes you have to mount a whole lot of disk images (like a script that fires up 9,999 and proceeds to sing the bottles of beer on the wall song but instead transposes those lyrics with “disks images to verify” and we can all understand how excruciating it would be to get down to 0) and just don’t want the Mac to verify each one. To disable that, send skip-verify key with a value of true(so a Boole) into com.apple.frameworks.diskimages as follows: defaults write com.apple.frameworks.diskimages skip-verify -bool true Or course, interacting with corrupt objects is bad if any corruption occurs so run it again with a false to disable that…
-
Secure Keyboard Entry on macOS
The Secure Keyboard Entry option has been in Terminal going back almost a decade. Secure Keyboard Entry was added as EnableSecureEventInput way back in Mac OS X 10.3 and was developed to protect the more sensitive inputs people provided, so also made into a public API. It was meant to protect the more sensitive types of data so if we had a login screen with a password field or something else, we’d protect those with it. The purpose was to lock what other processes could use the GetKeys function (once used to write keystroke loggers), tap the IOHIDDeviceInterace and IOHIDOptionsTypeSeizeDevice processes or tap any events that involved any HID system…