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What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?
- mrbluecoat 11mo agoExecutive Summary: run Linux
- matheusmoreira 11mo agoWon't matter. Remote hardware attestation means they will know you're trying to bypass their control. You'll be denied service at every turn. Can't even log into your bank account.
- candiddevmike 11mo agoIMO, I don't see how remote hardware attestation avoids being spoofed. Yes, TPM is involved, but the end of the day, it's an API request/response. There are so many ways the request could be spoofed, and the attestation likely requires coordination with hardware vendors that have proven to be Highly Secure TM with the history of secure boot leaks.
- matheusmoreira 11mo ago> I don't see how remote hardware attestation avoids being spoofed Hardware cryptoprocessor. Keys are held in a tamper resistant secure element. You're not gonna get at those keys without pouring some serious resources into the task. The keys are owned by the corporation and used to establish a root of trust from boot. If you change anything at all to suit your interests, verification fails, your machine is identified as "tampered with" and designated as untrusted.
- iamnothere 11mo agoHistory tells us there will always be a “low cost” vendor with exploitable hardware, or if production becomes more tightly controlled, inevitable cost cutting and declining standards will provide a way in. Not that we shouldn’t oppose locked down hardware, but locking things down creates pressure and motivation for the people who like things to be unlocked.
- matheusmoreira 11mo agoI hope you're right. Truly.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 11mo agoEverything seems directed into making that "low cost vendor" illegal and consolidating the market into a handful of players. And yeah, it's a politics problem, not an economic one. If corporations could simply push Trusted Computing without a corrupt police (and military) backing them, we would be there since the 90s already.
- matheusmoreira 11mo agoIt's already been made illegal via DMCA. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-business-model-lexmarks-anti-competitive-legacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...
- donmcronald 11mo agoYour untampered device will be enrolled with a verified ID provider and they’ll be part of the attestation. The tamper resistance hardware benefits from decades of hacking. Plus you’re not talking about things like compromising a single long lived key or similar like you could with physical media or players. We’ll probably get to the point where you need a verified id to buy a phone that does attestation. Tamper with it and go to jail. Who’s going to hack that?
- iamnothere 11mo agoEven if things get that locked down, I suspect that leaked attestation keys and fake/stolen ID verification will always be a problem. There’s a lot of money to be made in this, and someone will inevitably decide not to leave that money on the table, legality be damned. This risk only goes up with manufacturing that crosses borders, and despite the push to renationalize production, it’s going to be a long time before that is feasible at a mass scale. A small, hardly exclusive list of things we have been unable to protect through technology: - DVD/Blu Ray/HDMI copy protection - Windows product registration - Device jailbreaking (manufacturers are constantly running to keep ahead of this but old versions are frequently unlocked even with iOS) - Classified diplomatic documents - Classified details of warfighting equipment - Identities of federal employees (and even covert agents) - Nuclear secrets Technical measures aren’t always the weak point—bribery works just as well. As the US tech stack continues to decouple from China, they will also have the motivation to break our systems.
- coldpie 11mo ago> I don't see how remote hardware attestation avoids being spoofed I don't disagree, but is that really a game you want to be playing with your government and your bank?
- lbschenkel 11mo agoCheck how Play Integrity works today (DEVICE and STRONG integrities) and how it uses a non-extractable hardware key fused into the chip or security processor. Or read the GrapheneOS attestation guide and their example code. It's un-spoofable hardware attestation. The fact that you can make it pass in some cases using Magisk and so on is because it's spoofing an older device (launched before Android 8) without hardware-bound keys and Google is deliberately allowing that in order not to blacklist the genuine users. However, once Google decides that the collateral damage is tolerable and those devices should no longer pass Play Integrity, then it's game over. You can't spoof any newer stuff, as you can't produce the desired signature -- only the hardware can do it and the hardware won't do it. The only way would be if the manufacturer screwed up and it's possible to run unsigned code (or signed by a different key) and maintain a pristine bootloader, or if the hardware key leaks somehow. In either case, the key is per device so Google is always free to blacklist that device if it really wants to. (Verification of the signatures is always done off-device, through Google's servers.)
- lotsofpulp 11mo agoIf you have the right to run what you want on your machine, then they do too. So then the problem gets moved up to why are you (or group of you) not powerful enough to negotiate being able to run what you want and either not need “them” or be important enough that “they” need you. And the answer will come down to the fact that 90% of people don’t care about running whatever they want on their machine, and they want the cheapest, quickest, easiest solution.
- matheusmoreira 11mo ago> So then the problem gets moved up to why are you (or group of you) not powerful enough to negotiate being able to run what you want and either not need “them” or be important enough that “they” need you. How tiresome. You're right, we gotta become more powerful. Via radicalization. They seek to marginalize us. To turn us into second class citizens. To destroy free computing as we know it, destroy everything the word hacker ever stood for. If you're on this site and this doesn't radicalize you, then I don't know what to say to you. Gotta start lobbying governments to make it a literal crime for them to discriminate against us in this manner. Just like racism.
- Klonoar 11mo ago> if you’re on this site My brother in <deity of your choice>, you are not on a Hacker site. This site exists as the community arm of one of the most capitalistic venture capital ecosystems on the planet. When are you all going to stop expecting HN to be what it’s not?
- parliament32 11mo agoGiven my bank hasn't even moved on from optional SMS-based MFA yet, I expect this to start becoming a problem in maybe half a century.
- egorfine 11mo agoUntil EU forbids you to like they plan in 2027.
- fghorow 11mo agoThe one word answer to this? Linux.
- jwrallie 11mo agoAs long as common PCs can boot an iso we should be good to go.
- dns_snek 11mo agoOnly as long as Google doesn't force Web Environment Integrity through. Running a custom OS won't help if important websites refuse to load unless they're running in an approved browser with a set of approved extensions, on an approved OS, on top of approved hardware.
- Seattle3503 11mo agoI've been beating the drum that we need mobile drivers licenses and pairwise pseudonyms. It is a path to beating spam and bots in a way that doesn't hand control over to private entities. Some folks don't like digital identity controlled by government, but it seems like the alternative is digital identity controlled by oligopoly.
- lou1306 11mo agoThe article is largely about phones, where the barrier to install a truly open Linux system are high and getting higher.
- jeroenhd 11mo agoThere are plenty of smartphone companies locking down their bootloaders, but there are others that will let you unlock your bootloader by just running the basic command. A much bigger problem for running Linux on phones is that standard Linux runs like crap on phones. It doesn't have the mainline driver support amd64 computers have, and the battery life optimizations that make Android usable need to be reimplemented on top of Linux to get a day's worth of use out of your phone. Unfortunately, most Linux applications are written for desktops where they expect the CPU to be running all the time, the WiFi to be accessible whenever they want, and for sleep/suspend to be extremely incidental rather than every two minutes.
- ToucanLoucan 11mo ago> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the whole system and other apps at risk. But inch by inch, it gets harder to run what you want on the device you paid for. As much as I want to agree with this author (and do, to an extent) they are also providing the exact and honestly-pretty-good reasons for why this is happening: computers have breached containment, and they did it a long time ago. Computers are not just for us weird nerds anymore and they haven't been for some time; they're tools for a larger, more complicated, more diverse userbase, many of whom are simply not interested in learning how to computer. They just want shit to work, reliably. Random software on the Internet is not a path to reliability if you also don't know how your thing actually works. I mourn this too but let's not pretend it's simply what happened because corporations are evil (though they are for sure that).
- vmaurin 11mo agoThe security argument is the best one to shove all this monopoly practices, but I doubt there are real proof of that somewhere. These days, I think I have most trust in a small app developed by a folk in a garage than something produces by Meta or Google
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- rk06 11mo agothe existence of shady and criminal apps on both apple and android app store proves that their policies are definitely not sufficient and should be focused on first.
- cjs_ac 11mo agoExactly: smartphones and tablets are designated safe spaces for 'normies'. If you want to do serious computing, serious machines (laptops, desktops, servers) are still available.
- khalic 11mo agoI was there, 3000 years ago, when we started ringing the bell about “trusted computing”. Honestly it’s not as bad as I expected
- photios 11mo ago> it’s not as bad as I expected yet :D
- khalic 11mo agoNever underestimate how much things could get worse, touché
- api 11mo agoMobile is where it’s bad. It never took hold fully on desktop since desktop is used for development and too many other things.
- renegat0x0 11mo agoMobile is where it is all going. PCs will be like android in the near future.
- sumtechguy 11mo agowhat? windows 11 was just for new features right? ... right?
- pjmlp 11mo agoRight, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secauthz/app-isolation-overview https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/secauthz/app... https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-security/pluton/microsoft-pluton-security-processor https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/hardware-...
- fuzzy2 11mo ago
- 7e 11mo agoReal world parallels to this abound. You cannot build whatever house you want on your own property, for example; it must meet strict building codes and be verifiably structurally sound. What ever happened to building what you wanted on your own land?
- bombcar 11mo agoThat is not universally true; even today in some states there are areas (and perhaps even entire states) where building codes do not apply, sometimes even to the main structure. Often you only need to comply over a certain size, for human habitation, or to connect to utilities. The best argument “for” building codes is the same as “for” secure platforms; that people should be able to expect a certain level of competence when buying a structure or phone. But if you want to do it yourself, there should be a path.
- pjmlp 11mo agoRegulations are at least as old as Code of Hammurabi, naturally they have become less drastic throughout the centuries.
- Bender 11mo agoThe codes exist but I think what they are saying is that in some places codes are not enforced or even checked. I live in somewhat of a "middle ground" where codes do exist and electrical is checked on a brand new build. They will also nag about septic inspections but will never actually get off their butts and do the inspection. Many such places do exist but they are usually places I would never want to reside. I know of places that I can literally build anything and never once be nagged by inspectors or state/county governments. They are happy enough and lazy enough to receive the property tax revenue. I have mixed feelings about unenforced regulations. Having unenforced regulations opens up the possibility of targeted abuse of any individuals that are not a cultural fit in the eyes of the government offices and being very relaxed regarding anyone that fits in. This also drives the need for very detailed and expensive inspections prior to purchasing a home and that is a loaded topic all by itself.
- cbdevidal 11mo agoWill LineageOS and other similar ROMs have this limitation as well, or will it be baked into the hardware?
- immibis 11mo agoThey will not, but the hardware will (as it already does) do its best to stop you from installing LineageOS and other similar ROMs.
- mnmalst 11mo agoIn my opinion, the biggest problem that comes with this, is the fact that google play independent apps will become A LOT less popular. To a point where alternative roms are even less interesting to people which in return makes developing apps for them even less interesting.
- immibis 11mo agoSome people even sideload on iOS, which doesn't allow sideloading. They do this by getting an apple developer account, installing Xcode, compiling the apps themselves and refreshing them on their phones every week. And this seems about as popular as Android sideloading where you just download an app and install it...
- netdevphoenix 11mo agoRoms face a different problem: bootloader locking. But the more Android changes drastically, the harder it is to integrate the AOSP changes into the different open projects
- Semaphor 11mo ago> Roms face a different problem: bootloader locking. Is that a problem these days? It was over a decade ago that I last needed to jailbreak a phone, nowadays it’s just "I’d like to unlock" "Ok".
- Gigachad 11mo agoWhat happened was people ended up putting a lot of money and sensitive data on their computers and desired a system which wouldn’t expose that just because they ran the wrong software.
- api 11mo agoThe better answer is to build better OSes with better security models. I should be able to run a crypto wallet I downloaded from a Kim Jong Un fan site while high and it shouldn’t be able to do anything I don’t give it permission to do. It’s totally possible. Tabs in a web browser are basically this. I can do it with VMs but that’s lots of extra steps.
- fuzzehchat 11mo agoIsn't that what Qubes is all about?
- api 11mo agoYes but IMHO that approach is a hack. “Fix our 1970s OS by putting it in a box in our 1970s OS.”
- netdevphoenix 11mo agoWeb pages have a lot of restrictions even if you consider the gradual adoption of the project Fugu APIs
- colonial 11mo agomacOS kinda gets there. I've (grudgingly) come to admit that it has by far the best security story of any desktop operating system. Apps require explicit user consent to access the filesystem, peripherals, and other sensitive data (e.x. Discord requests "Input Monitoring" access to determine if you're "actively online" even when unfocused.) The only place it seems to fall flat is network I/O - LAN access requires permission, but dialing out to the wider Internet does not. Compare Windows, which has jack (except for bloated anti-malware hooks in NTFS.) Linux is _trying_ to replicate macOS with Flatpak/XDG portals, but those still need more time in the oven. Source: I use both a MacBook and a Linux desktop daily.
- everyone 11mo agoPart of the cycle .. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switch https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8201080-the-master-switc...
- dandanua 11mo agoIt is just a prequel to "what thoughts you can or cannot think in your mind", which is a future of technofascism.
- fithisux 11mo agoReactOS needs donations NetBSD is running a new round of donations F-Droid needs donations There are more AROS, GNU-HURD and more you can always contribute code, maintain an app, report a bug You can buy HW to run AOSP, like Raspberry-PI or RISC-V We are the consumers, we have the wallet.
- buyucu 11mo agoAnswer: companies realized that they can milk you for more money by restricting your options and alternatives.
- amelius 11mo agoYes, this is the main idea behind iOS and the App Store. I don't get why smart people are falling for this.
- ryandrake 11mo agoLet me try to strawman a little: I personally accept this on my phone because I honestly don't consider my phone to be a computer, and I don't really care about "computing" on it. My phone is not really that important to me. It is a toy/appliance that I goof around with. What it's running and how "free" and "open" it is, is about as important to me as how free the firmware in my car is, or the software on my gaming console. I care about the free-ness and open-ness of my computer, because that's where I do all my work, my E-mail, my finances, and all my "serious computing." I feel that a different standard applies on a Real Computer because they are totally different devices, used for totally different purposes. So what I accept on phones, cars, and gaming consoles, I don't accept on my computer.
- amelius 11mo agoI suppose the reason for this is that this is how it has always been with mobile computing. People don't even bother to think about their smartphone as a computer anymore.
- lejalv 11mo agoWhile this is fine for you, I worry about a sociocultural divide. I believe the likelihood of a smartphone being the only form of computing (and access to the internet in particular) grows with diminishing income / cultural means. This is based on anecdotal observation, does anybody here know of relevant survey data?
- 11mo ago
- bob1029 11mo agoThe TPM and secure boot conversation for gaming has shifted my perspective a lot. This technology is having a positive impact on player experience. It has become quite clear to me that there are wheels that will squeak regardless of the amount of lubricant used. I've begun to consider the position of being able to run anything my way at any time on any machine as being a bit extremist. Especially, in a game theoretic setting with other participants expecting some degree of fair play. I am allowed to own multiple computers. Many do. I've got a Linux hand held, a windows desktop, an iPhone and a MacBook. All with varying degrees of freedom and function. I don't feel like I'm constrained right now. HDCP is an example of the other thing in my mind. It adds zero value to anyone's experience. Any potential value add is hypothetical. You can't survey a person after they watch an unprotected film and receive a meaningful signal. It's pure downside for the customer. There's no such thing as competitive Netflix lobbies. If I want to run arbitrary code, I'll do it on my windows box or fire up a Linux VM in the cloud somewhere. I don't need weird problems on my phone. If you are trying to touch all platforms at once, try using the goddamn web. I've been able to avoid Apple enterprise distribution hell with a little bit of SPA magic and InTune configuration for business customers. For B2C I just don't see it anymore. You need to follow the rules if you want to be in the curated environments.
- fsf4alltemp 11mo agoThat same box that lets me play Battlefield 6 is also the only box powerful enough to run the game that doesn't have enough accessibility options that requires me to use CheatEngine to fix.
- no_time 11mo agoEven if I try to steelman your argument that locking down general purpose computers has some benefits particularly to gaming, its very short term imo. How far away are we from hooking up a vision model to the display output of let’s say, Battlefield 6 and hooking in mouse+kb input from said vision model + an aimbot that perfectly replicates a top performing players mouse movements? I’d say not very far away. Much like how in online chess, no technical solution can attest that a move is really from a human brain and not a chess program running on his phone.
- fsf4alltemp 11mo agoThis idea that protecting users is worth the cost of giving up your ownership rights is fallacious. Protecting 1 million grannies is an entirely different risk class than the security implications of stopping everyone from using their devices as they see fit. Protecting 1 million grannies means everyone loses ability to install apps that: -allow encrypted chat -allow use of privacy respecting software -download art/games/entertainment that is deemed inappropriate to unelected parties -use software to organize protests and track agents of hostile governments -download software that opposes monopolistic holds of controlling parties Using Linux is also not a real choice. To access my bank and health services in my country, I require a mobile device that is remote attested by either Apple or Google which are American countries. Hell, it's becoming closer to reality that playing online video games requires remote attestation either to "prevent" cheating or for age verification. Thus the risk widens to the sovereign control a nation has over its own services. A US president could attempt to force Google and Apple to shutoff citizen access of banks and health services of an entire nation. Merely the threat could give them leverage in any sort of negotiations they might be in. For some nations in the future, the controlling nation may be China I imagine. I think the real regulatory solution here is to break up monopoly practices. While the EU's DMA is all well and good in some ways, the EU is also pushing Chat Control... In a more fragmented market it becomes impossible for a bank or health service to mandate specific devices for access (they lose potential customers) so you could theoretically move to a device that doesn't do draconian style remote attestation that breaks if you go off the ranch. We need more surgically precise regulatory tools than sweeping legislation that would keep using alternatives like Linux or FreeBSD or whatever actually viable. It also makes it much harder for that same legislative body to enforce insane ideas like Chat Control. The answer is not protect users from themselves. The answer is more freedom, with a legal framework that helps all users have more choices while helping victims acquire restitution.
- jolmg 11mo ago> To access [...] health services in my country, I require a mobile device that is remote attested by either Apple or Google I knew of banks, but how is it that health services need remote attested mobile devices? Do clinics not support setting appointments through calls anymore, or what?
- lapcat 11mo ago> The moment gaming became genuinely profitable, console manufacturers realized they could control their entire ecosystem. Proprietary formats, region systems, and lockout chips were all valid ways to ensure companies could levy hefty licensing fees from developers. This is historically inaccurate. All console games were originally produced in-house by the console manufacturers, but then 4 Atari programmers got wind that the games they wrote made tens of $millions for Atari while the programmers were paid only a relatively small salary. When Atari management refused to give the programmers a cut, they left and formed Activision. Thus Activision became the original third-party console game development company. Atari sued Activision for theft of trade secrets, because the Activision founders were all former Atari programmers. The case was settled, with Atari getting a cut of Activision’s revenue but otherwise allowing Activision to continue developing console games. I suspect this was because the 4 programmers were considered irreplaceable to Atari (albeit too late, after they already quit). The licensing fee business model was a product of this unique set of circumstances. The article author's narrative makes it sound like consoles switched from open to closed, but that's not true. The consoles (like the iPhone) switched from totally closed to having a third-party platform, after the value of third-party developers was shown. > Consumers loved having access to a library of clean and functional apps, built right into the device. How can you say they're "built right into the device" when you have to download them? Moreover, you were originally able to buy iPhone apps in iTunes for Mac, and manage your iPhone via USB. > Meanwhile, they didn’t really care that they couldn’t run whatever kooky app some random on the Internet had dreamed up. I'm not sure how you can say consumers didn't really care. Some people have always cared. It's a tradeoff, though: you would have to care enough to not buy an iPhone altogether. That's not the same as not caring at all. Also, remember that for the first year, iPhone didn't even have third-party apps. > At the time, this approach largely stayed within the console gaming world. It didn’t spread to actual computers because computers were tools. You didn’t buy a PC to consume content someone else curated for you. I would say this was largely due to Steve Wozniack, who insisted that the Apple II be an open platform. If Steve Jobs—who always expressed contempt for third-party developers—originally had his way, the whole computing industry might have been very different. Jobs always considered them "freeloaders", which is ridiculous of course (for example, VisiCalc is responsible for much of the success off the Apple II), but that was his ridiculous view.
- everdrive 11mo agoIt's important to understand that we could genuinely lose general purpose computing. I don't think it's in serious danger at the moment, but we've been in the midst of a slide in that direction for the last 10-15 years. Part of it is mobile phones, part of it is TPM, part of it is market forces. The latest turn is strictly political. We've really foolishly built the technology necessary for authoritarianism just a few years head of a general global trend towards authoritarianism. At the moment, anyone can use Linux; it's better and easier than ever. Will the laws of your country make it harder or more difficult to avoid? Will major vendors lock you out of basic functions? Will age verification require an agent run on your Windows or macOS computer? (or worse, require the use of a smart phone just to use the internet?) We're not anywhere there yet, but we're closer than we've ever been, and things keep moving in the wrong direction.
- nxor 11mo ago[flagged]
- everdrive 11mo agoCertainly there was more authoritarianism in past times, but we haven't previously had authoritarian movements at the same time that we've the internet and ubiquitous computing. Authoritarianism isn't meant to be a scare word; in the US, you have the total fecklessness of Congress, the expansion of the executive under every single president in the 21st century. (it's still authoritarianism even if some people like what is being done unilaterally by the executive. eg: both Trump and Biden sought and acted with expanded executive powers. Even if you like the outcomes, it's still actually quite bad. Neither party seems capable of imagining that someone they disagree with could be elected and use those same powers. It's baffling.) You have a lot of governmental changes in parts of Europe, etc. I think it's pretty uncontroversial that there is a global trend towards authoritarianism, but I'm happy to hear other opinions.
- cool_man_bob 11mo agoThat’s a cute soapbox, but I fail to see what it has to do with software freedom.
- hollow-moe 11mo ago> Vote with your wallet Doesn't work when the only options are bad. Every Android OEM embraces the closing of android because it'll allow them to ship all the spyware they already do without the user being able to remove them (or disable them soon enough). Having 2 or 100 options has no difference if they're all bad.
- linuxhansl 11mo agoHow will Google know about my choice? I want to let them know that now there is no reason anymore to prefer to Android over another ecosystem. Also, my hardware, my choice. It seems there is no way to actually let them know.
- smarek22 11mo agoI'd go with 1) sign a petition on change.org against that APK lockdown (currently 10.5k votes) - https://c.org/BHZzNvR6pr https://c.org/BHZzNvR6pr 2) In your Android device or Google account use "Send Feedback" and articulate yourself or "Contact us" in Android under "System settings > Tips and support" or best, if you are paying subscriber for any Google LLC service, send the feedback through the subscription management channels (such as feedback in Google One, Workspace or any other paid service)
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- NaomiLehman 11mo agoI hear you but we are a minority. Apple will demolish the market when Gen Alpha grows up. Look at what phones are used to film at concerts by the crowd in the US. it's hard to find a single non-iPhone. Also for a more unbiased take, look up stats for teen preferences. It's not Gen Z that will change the world.
- user_7832 11mo agoI hate to be the old guy yelling at the clouds, but was an LLM used to write parts of this? > Apple sold the walled garden as a feature. It wasn’t ashamed or hiding the fact—it was proud of it... The iPhone’s locked-down nature wasn’t a restriction; it was a selling point. Please, write as a human, I promise you it's good enough. I'd much rather read something that's a bit clunky but human written than something that's very polished but leaves me wondering what the author actually was trying to say. Respect your reader, but most importantly, respect yourself as a writter too.
- caconym_ 11mo agoLLMs only know how to use emdashes, semicolons, and ellipses because human writers used them first. The way I see it, a large part of "respecting yourself as a writer" in current year is not letting the mere existence of LLMs change how you write, just because a bunch of people have latched onto cheap signals like the presence of certain punctuation as a hallmark of LLM output. I don't really think an LLM wrote this, because the use of punctuation is actually a bit clumsy. However, I have no problem parsing the author's intended meaning.
- user_7832 11mo agoIt's not the semicolons or em dashes but the textual content that struck me as weird. > The iPhone’s locked-down nature wasn’t a restriction; it was a selling point. Was it really? I thought it was more about having 1 device that did it all when it launched, and app stores were a rather late addition if anything that still was more pro app store than pro lockdown. To be clear, I think most of the text in that article was human written. I have absolutely no issues with em dashes or other humane figures of speech that LLMs have unsurprisingly picked up on. But it was a few paragraphs here and there (like the example I gave) that felt odd and just out of place.
- caconym_ 11mo ago> Was it really? I thought it was more about having 1 device that did it all when it launched, and app stores were a rather late addition if anything that still was more pro app store than pro lockdown. I don't really agree with it either.
- trentnix 11mo agoThe rot is so much deeper than just running what you want on your own machine. And how we got here is easy to explain. There was once money it letting you run what you want on your machine. Now there's money in not letting you run what you want on your machine. And so, that's what we get. There exists no path where a publicly traded company doesn't eventually view its customers as subjects. Every business school on the planet is teaching their students strategies and tactics that squeeze their customers in pursuit of maximizing revenue. And those strategies and tactics are often at the expense of creativity, ethics, and community. Just last week people's bed didn't work because the company that makes them architected things such that they have absolute control. Only a reasonably altruistic private company might buck the trend. But the publicly traded companies are allowed, by the government(s), to use their largesse in a predatory fashion to prevent competition. They bundle and bleed and leverage every step of the way. They not only contribute to the politicians that do their bidding, they are frequently asked to write the laws and regulations they're expected to follow. Magically, it has the effect of increasing the costs of their competition to enter the markets they dominate. And so, the odds of an altruistic private company emerging from that muck is low. Worse still, many of the elected officials (and bureaucrats) actively own stock in the very companies they are responsible for regulating. Widespread corruption and perversion of the market is the inevitable result. I'm trying to do a better job and redirect my money to the places that better reflect my values. It's not even a drop in the bucket, but it's a lever where I feel like I have a measure of control.
- Rury 11mo ago> people's bed didn't work because the company that makes them architected things such that they have absolute control. Curious, but what bed/company do you speak of?
- fragmede 11mo agohttps://www.eightsleep.com/ https://www.eightsleep.com/
- M95D 11mo agoIt all happens because of people's greed. The companies that make stuff could easily be beaten in the market by a non-profit competitor. With no worries about stock market prices and dividends, a non-profit could direct all it's money into making better products. But the problems are that 1) nobody wants to work for a non-profit and 2) greed redirects the money away from better products into the founder's (or top management's) pockets. Firefox is an example.
- rawgabbit 11mo agoI place a large part of blame of why the public is accepting of this trend of restrictive computing to Microsoft’s decision to loosen security despite of David Cutler’s excellent Windows NT. Cutler came from DEC VMS and built Windows NT to be an enterprise OS with separation between kernel and user space and enterprise level security. Microsoft to go after the consumer space ran a lot of apps and drivers in the kernel space. This meant for over two decades consumers learnt hackers could easily hack, bypass, and take control over their PCs. If you could disguise your code as a driver, it got God permissions to your PC.
- NoSalt 11mo ago> "When the microcomputer first landed in homes some forty years ago, it came with a simple freedom—you could run whatever software you could get your hands on. Floppy disk from a friend? Pop it in. Shareware demo downloaded from a BBS? Go ahead! Dodgy code you wrote yourself at 2 AM? Absolutely. The computer you bought was yours. It would run whatever you told it to run, and ask no questions." None of what was written in the rest of the article after this statement has any bearing on what they said in this statement. Sure, they said the "Microsoft Store", but aside from that, you still have the freedom of running whatever software you want on your own desktop computer, laptop computer, or server (Linux, Windows, or Macintosh) ... nothing has changed about this. I, for one, like the increased security on mobile devices. As far as gaming, I am not a gamer, so I just do not care.
- swiftcoder 11mo ago> or Macintosh I'm not sure how many Macs you've used lately, but this isn't entirely true: out-of-the-box, Macs only run software that has been signed and notarised by Apple. You can still disable this, but the methods of disabling are getting more obscure, and it's not a given they will remain available
- NoSalt 11mo ago> "You can still disable this, but the methods of disabling are getting more obscure" Which is why after Snow Leopard, I switched to Linux 100%.
- jmclnx 11mo agoMy fear with IBM and AI, Linux could go down this path. I remember seeing KDE and GNOME already have their "stores", we need to keep a close eye on Linux.
- throw7 11mo agoPeople are perfectly happy with a walled garden. The question one should always be asking is what is the difference between that and a panopticon? What happens to me if I start seeing faded flowers and no-entry signs? Can I escape? With my stuff or friends or family?
- mikewarot 11mo agoI believe that in the depths of the cold war, when personal computers were just showing up, it was decided, deep within the National Security Agency,that it was more advantageous to let them continue to proliferate without fostering secure Operating Systems, though they were available. We all now live with the blowback from that decision. Most people don't even realize that actually secure computing is a possibility now, even here on HN. This general insecurity means that anything exposed to raw internet will be compromised and therefore significant resources must be expended to manage it, and recover after any incidents. It's no wonder that most people don't want to actually run their own servers. Thus we give up control and this .... Situation .... Is the result.
- SpicyLemonZest 11mo agoI affirmatively argue that actually secure computing is not a possibility. It's fun to build toy models where every process has exactly the permissions it needs and no more, sure. In the real world, your users are going to grant superuser/admin permissions to random installers, and they're not going to perform the complex verification rituals you told them to do beforehand. It's like trying to set up a warehousing system so perfect that the shrinkage rate is 0.
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- bigbuppo 11mo agoIt doesn't increase shareholder revenue. That is the second highest calling. The only thing more important is marketing and advertising, and this also helps that, so hey, two birds one stone.
- whitehexagon 11mo agoI worry that this global push for 'Know Your Developer' and the attempt to make them legally liable for what they produce, is going to destroy open source, An 'open' linux included. After that, certified locked down BigTech 'Personal Computing' will be the only menu choice.
- donmcronald 11mo agoExactly. It’s a tactic so big tech doesn’t have to engage in activity that would justify anti-trust action if they want to ban a developer or even a whole class of apps. It’s also usable in general to benefit the wealthy. They force anyone distributing software into the legal system so a “3rd party” can sue and destroy the life of anyone that goes against the system they want. Anything they don’t like will be accused of violating patents, etc. and the option to distribute anonymously for the good of users / society will no longer exist.
- moi2388 11mo agoGood. I want walled gardens. I want to be sure all code is audited and vetted. I don’t like that governments are forcing companies to open their environments up to random code, I wish they instead put legislation in place about transparent vetting processes, and allowing different kinds of apps. In general I think software engineers get away with things no real engineering job gets away with, and it baffles me.
- leoh 11mo agoYep, 1984 Camera Tube.
- TYPE_FASTER 11mo ago> However, there is an increasing userbase whose first experience of computing was in these locked-down tablet and smartphone environments. They aren’t so demanding about little things like proper filesystem access or the ability to run unsigned code. They might not blink if that goes away. I would also suggest that there is another user base who has been using computers for a long time, before GUIs existed, is fed up with fighting malware, welcomes the protection of a sandboxed, protected system, but doesn't understand the importance of having the option of escaping the sandbox. These users might not see the loss of not being able to install a kext on Mac OS without booting into Recovery Mode. But they will notice the loss when, at some point, we can't run anything that isn't signed on any platform. Google and Microsoft are slowly moving towards the Apple model because it works as far as decreasing support costs go. When the day comes that there isn't any hardware we can purchase that we can't install OpenBSD/Linux/whatever we want, it will be too late. We have to push back before then somehow.
- npodbielski 11mo agoWhich means that in the future will be less engineers and software developers because they never had a chance to learn. And if somebody will know how all of this works really, they won't be working for peanuts. So in an essence all of those companies are eating their own tails. Which is expected since all of it is driven by the stock exchange executives that are interested only by short term profit. Yes it will be terrible but on the other hand all empires are terrible at some point ridden by the stagnation and multitude of radicoulus laws. Will it be the same with technocracy? Probably yes if they lock it all down, new generations will never learn, they will be less and less people with knowledge to maintain the infrastructure and without maintenance it will collapsee eventually.
- MisterTea 11mo agoI'm sure there are people in high places believing this is not important because AGI.
- npodbielski 11mo agoWhich would be fine, if AGI would be real. It is not yet and even if this would be around the corner it would be rather like in some movies: giant computer with tones of equipment, security and personnel making it work. Ah and giant nuclear reactor powering it too. Till we will be having autonomous robots that have intelligence built-in into it, does not require constant connection to some server and can run for few days on internal power... I do not see it happening.
- linuxhansl 11mo agoPlease complain here: https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides/faq https://developer.android.com/developer-verification/guides/... (there's a link at the end). Probably won't help, but it is something.
- Yeul 11mo agoWindows 11 gives me a giant warning if I actually want to run something. Computers nowadays are so weird.
- neilv 11mo agoSomething to keep in mind, when sharing code you've written... to promote the Mac or Windows platform you use, and putting it on GitHub to endorse that, and starting a Discord for community around it.
- butlike 11mo agoDisk space is becoming more akin to real estate, with the OS manufacturers similar to HOAs (Home owner associations) determining how you need to maintain the landscape.
- cadamsdotcom 11mo agoTime for a Digital Bill of Rights. What would you include?
- QuiEgo 11mo agoIt seems like the path we’re heading to for the next 5-10 years is that we’ll still have general purpose compute, but many things will require a locked down smartphone as an access token. This is already the case in many corporate environments. More and more webpages are going to go this route in the name of security (along with only allowing access from a “trusted” browser authenticated with a TPM). So you’ll still be able to write code and scripts and play on the side on your laptop, but if you want to access your banks webpage (or really, anything you get through someone else’s server: streaming media, the news, porn, whatever) you’ll be forced to Chrome + laptop with TPM + authentication through smartphone app. Not ideal.
- isolay 11mo ago> [Apple] promised apps with no viruses and no risks; a place where everything was curated and safe. Apart from the viruses, nothing of the above is true any more. Apple doesn't care if you're getting screwed over by an app, and neither does Google. If they can increase their profits by taking away our freedom and/or control over "our" devices, then it WILL happen, as sure as death and taxes.
- lunias 11mo agoIt's an education problem. A lot of people no longer understand the advantages of general purpose computing.
- musicale 11mo agoThere is a DMCA exemption for jailbreaking smartphones. Not for tablets or game consoles though. The killer app for jailbreaking is usually running unlicensed games.