NordVPN calls out when a location is virtual, so unless ipinfo is claiming they have virtual locations that are not labelled as such, they are at least transparent about it. They did document the physical server locations of their virtual locations at launch, but I'm not sure if there's a live doc for new locations. https://nordvpn.com/blog/new-nordvpn-virtual-servers/

The author was running a quantised version of GLM 4.5 _Air_, not the full fat version. API pricing for that is closer to $0.2/$1.1 at the top end from z.ai themselves, half the price from Novita/SiliconFlow.

You sort of can on Android, but it's a few steps:

1. Trigger Circle to Search with long holding the home button/bar

2. Select the image

3. Navigate to About this image on the Google search top bar all the way to the right - check if it says "Made by Google AI" - which means it detected the SynthID watermark.

Depending on which shared GCP project you get assigned to, mine had a global 300 million tokens per minute quota that was being hit regularly.

Bad news then, they've bumped 3.0 Pro pricing to $2/$12 ($4/$18 at long context).

So the Bigscreen Beyond 1 and 2? They've optimised entirely for weight at ~100 grams.

I can finally tear down my custom DERP server that I was using to get higher throughput between two NAT'd clients.

Not anymore, especially after other routers like Vercel's AI Gateway and proxies from LLM providers like Fal, DeepInfra, and AtlasCloud didn't get the memo of enforcing BYOK for ID verification required models after GPT-5's release.

As if the App Store had any sort of those guarantees. I know of people have been scammed via WebView wrappers that purported to be some benign app to pass app store review, which were then pointed at fake exchange websites afterwards. GitLab which was hosting their C&C mechanism took action faster than Apple or Google did to take down multiple scam apps across multiple different developer identities, but the scammers spun up new apps the next day.

WebView wrappers don't have any more ability to siphon data out of the phone than any other app. Scammers can always scam users if they can trick them into entering data into a website. There's nothing anyone can do about that (besides blocking web access).

The point is Apple isn't really helping with the problem because the weakest link is people. If you can get someone to install malicious software how much more difficult is it to have them willingly give it via phishing?

I don’t see how going back to the Wild West of the PC era is supposed to help these nontechnical users be safer. The App Store isn’t perfect but it’s far, far safer than that.

I have vivid memories of loads of relatives in the Windows XP era with browsers laden with toolbars that spy on everything they do and slow the computer to a crawl. Those users see something like the iPhone as a massive breath of fresh air. Nothing you install on the App Store can inject adware into the rest of the operating system like that.

> Nothing you install on the App Store can inject adware into the rest of the operating system like that.

That has literally fuck all to do with the app store. That's called sandboxing - the app store has nothing to do with sandboxing. They are different things.

Why are we being dishonest.

So... what's the point of all the onerous restrictions in the first place?

Victims would almost certainly have transferred funds to money mules, who would have then immediately broken digital audit trails to the ultimate destination by withdrawing as cash before passing it around.