16 ms·

Time to start de-Appling

616 points by msangi 10mo ago

HardwareLust 10mo ago
I de-Appled when Tim Cook took over. Apple died when Steve passed away and they put a fucking bean counter in charge, which is all Tim has ever been.
spankalee 10mo ago
Something's wrong with the CSS on this page. The end of every line is cut off.
- tempfile 10mo ago
  Same for me. You can get around it by zooming in.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- daemonologist 10mo ago
  .site-content .post has `overflow: hidden;`, .site-content .entry-content has `max-width: 965px;`, and .wide-content has `margin-right: -34.0740%;` Disabling the margin-right or, preferably, the max-width rule will fix the layout. Or make your browser less than 1700px wide. (Crazy rats nest of CSS rules, I assume this is a wordpress/wordpress template thing.)
- fwip 10mo ago
  If you resize the window to a narrower width, it will wrap more normally.
  - glaucon 10mo ago
    A bit weird that it's necessary but thank you for pointing it out.
  - efreak 10mo ago
    I've seen a number of websites that don't like being in windowed mode on desktop, and the very occasional website that doesn't like my tablet (which has a custom width/dp size set). I always assumed they were related to media queries that were set incorrectly, as zooming or resisting the window (or on my tablet, toggling desktop view) nearly always fixes it. Then there's the websites that have a menubar or other UI floating on top of the content it takes you to (this is far more common, and incredibly frustrating as I'm usually using either a toc or a search function and unable to see the content I'm looking for at all)
- busymom0 10mo ago
  Yes, same issue for me. The negative margin-right is causing the issue: margin-right: -34.0740%;
- joshstrange 10mo ago
  Ahh, just saw this after posting my comment. Yes, it appears that at 1700px or greater it cuts off text. Shown in this video: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW
stavros 10mo ago
[flagged]
- swiftcoder 10mo ago
  > Who is "that one" Heather Burns? Like most personal websites, this one prominently features an "about" page, which will likely answer this question to your satisfaction.
- thewebguyd 10mo ago
  > Also, why is Apple disabling ADP, and why are they right? Is it because of the UK wanting to snoop on all communications? Yes. UK wants Apple to give them a backdoor to E2EE iCloud data, including ADP. The UK gov having such a backdoor to iCloud would also affect non-UK citizens, basically UK wants to snoop on everyone's communication, whether they are under UK jurisdiction or not. Apple took the route of not offering ADP to the UK instead of complying with the backdoor request, which IMO, is the right move, they shouldn't compromise their service for everyone on the globe because the UK can't break out of it's nanny state fantasy. But, as always, unless you own and control both ends, you can't really trust that a service does what it says it does.
  - stavros 10mo ago
    Oof, I thought that got shot down. Thanks for the info, the UK has traditionally really liked surveillance.
- oldpersonintx2 10mo ago
  [dead]
iwontberude 10mo ago
Wouldn’t it be easier to just move away from the UK? (I jest, but actually…)
- dhosek 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - noir_lord 10mo ago
    As bad as things feel here in the UK (partner is Hungarian, came and settled way pre-brexit, worked continuously and is many ways more British than me even though I was born in England) I'm not at the "Will random unaccountable group working for the prime minister snatch her of the street" levels yet (though I view reform with absolute fucking horror for many reasons). I hope you and yours are OK though.
- exasperaited 10mo ago
  Not as many easy paths anymore for a British worker, tech or otherwise, thanks to The Foolishness. And the most popular choice -- the USA -- is off the table for the majority of Brits, I think, who cannot comprehend The Other Foolishness. (Mind you, the ones it encourages... I hope they follow their hearts)
  - yearolinuxdsktp 10mo ago
    What about the Republic of Ireland?
    - exasperaited 10mo ago
      That is straightforward to the point that a British citizen can just go there and work, even go there and freelance. (I have given it some consideration myself.) Generally speaking, though, it's not a route Brits take in huge numbers, for legacy reasons. Though plenty investigated their potential for citizenship.
- 10mo ago
waffletower 10mo ago
[flagged]
- wrxd 10mo ago
  In case anyone else is wondering, it is “ technical capability notice”
- gertrunde 10mo ago
  Technical Capability Notice [ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigatory-powers-amendment-bill-factsheets/investigatory-powers-amendment-bill-overview-of-the-notices-regime https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigatory-pow... ]
- fwip 10mo ago
  If you google it with the words next to it, 'Home Office TCN' (no quotes necessary), the proper definition comes right up. It's written for a UK technical audience, who is likely familiar with these terms. An American article doesn't bother to define "FBI" or "USDA," and an article about breaking Python news doesn't expand "PEP" or "RFC."
  - waffletower 10mo ago
    Try any of those example acronyms (which are far more common in search indices IMO "in my opinion" :) and they will be immediately disambiguated by Google's top results. Type "TCN" and "Technical Capability Notice" doesn't show up after 4 pages. I needed to use an LLM and provide a paragraph of context for it to learn about it.
    - fwip 10mo ago
      okay, you can also just provide a shred of context to Google
- waffletower 10mo ago
  Hilarious downvotes, just telling what Google told me. Nice for anyone in any region of the world to qualify their acronyms when first used. But spit on who you need to -- says more about you.
reboot81 10mo ago
Apple obeys the law. Policians set the law. You vote for politicians. So nu, it makes no sense to blame Apple here.
- sfgvvxsfccdd 10mo ago
  > But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me. Author doesn’t. Not sure who you are disagreeing with.
- jjtheblunt 10mo ago
  it does if you're clickbaiting via ragebait, like she is?
  - veleek 10mo ago
    I think it’s a stretch to say the author is blaming Apple in the title and she explicitly calls out in the very first section: > But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
- cbsmith 10mo ago
  > But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me. I don't think there's any blaming of Apple going on here. This is about dealing with the practical realities of the circumstances for people in the UK.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- cjs_ac 10mo ago
  Unlike most writing about politics, the article isn't arguing that 'those are the bad people over there'. The article describes a current aspect of reality and how it came about, and suggests a way of responding to that reality.
nsxwolf 10mo ago
While waiting for this site to come back up can someone explain the word “appling”? Is that a typo?
- colechristensen 10mo ago
  "Apple-ing" turning a name into a verb is common these days
  - liotier 10mo ago
    You mean verbing a noun ?
    - wizzwizz4 10mo ago
      Verbing weirds language.
      - syncsynchalt 10mo ago
        The trees are really sneezing today.
- waffletower 10mo ago
  'Appling' - using Apple products. In this case iCloud SaaS products I believe.
- veleek 10mo ago
  In the context of the article de-appling is what you should do after de-googling.
- croemer 10mo ago
  https://archive.is/8SI66 https://archive.is/8SI66 if you don't want to wait
codexb 10mo ago
Sounds more like people need to de-UK. It's going to be a problem with any company or technology.
- advisedwang 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jajuuka 10mo ago
    Granted it would be more impactful that to stop using Google and Apple services.
  - cmsj 10mo ago
    The actual straightforward fix isn't available to us - namely, we aren't due a general election until 2029 and right now the "good guys" are in power, so it's not at all clear that anyone would even offer to reverse this TCN if they were elected instead, in 4 years time.
    - anonymousiam 10mo ago
      At least the US hasn't postponed the general elections to keep the unpopular party in power. https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/devolution-lgr-and-delays-local-elections https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/...
      - exe34 10mo ago
        I wish they would help get as many reform councils as possible. Given how incompetent they have been in the ones they did get elected, I think it would put a damper on the enthusiasm of their supporters.
        rob_c 10mo ago
        yes, and they're totally not fighting on multiple fronts against central govt, those in the areas they're trying to run deciding that the civil service can now be a political arm of the left or from having to boot the actual racists in sheep's clothing from the party. I'm not defending any party here, I'm even highlighting some of reforms worse issues. But you have to admit it's not apples and oranges when comparing their performance so far with a cushy little on-the-Thames millionaires cul-de-sac.
thw_9a83c 10mo ago
From the article: > Otherwise, please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today. I don't understand the core of this advice. So if you're in the UK and do all the above, can you suddenly get similar E2EE cloud storage from a different provider without a UK government-mandated backdoor?
- benoau 10mo ago
  Hopefully pretty soon Apple will have to provide the same functionality iCloud monopolizes so you can have an equivalent service. But right now you can do an encrypted transmission to a privately-owned NAS like Synology and then E2E cloud storage provider of your choice, with the caveat that things like background syncing are strategically monopolized and no app may backup your full phone. https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/16897724-consumers-association-which https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/16897724-consumers-assoc... (hearing in 9 days)
  - nine_k 10mo ago
    It's a bit like the famous HN post where somebody said that Dropbox is not needed if you have rsync and friends. Technically this can even be correct. You can build and operate a good, secure solution for yourself if you have time and skill to build. Could make sense for a company handling sensitive data. Would hardly make sense for most individuals who are not professional SREs / SWEs. (To check how it feels, an engineer can try to sew themself a pair of pants to wear daily, or do something similarly mundane in what they are not skilled.) A solution that can reliably work for non-experts is very important.
    - benoau 10mo ago
      Sure but in this case most of the difficulties are artificially imposed by Apple, depending on how the tribunal responds to their alleged iCloud monopoly it could become as simple as choosing a compatible provider and putting your username/password in.
croemer 10mo ago
https://archive.is/8SI66 https://archive.is/8SI66 (to bypass HN hug of death)
sedatk 10mo ago
> You need to start that because, as we recently learned, at some point in the very near future Apple is withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature from the UK altogether as a result of the Home Office TCN through the Investigatory Powers Act. So, a UK-only advice, and it strangely assumes that any other service in UK wouldn’t be bound by the same laws.
- omnicognate 10mo ago
  I can encrypt anything and store it in anything that provides storage. Why are people acting like "end to end encryption" is a feature you need a cloud service to provide to you. Rather the opposite - it's really something you can only do yourself.
  - culi 10mo ago
    Sure, but almost no one is managing their own keys and knows enough about the various e2ee algorithms to make these decisions on their own. Do you know of a good piece of software or tool that lets a layperson interface with any cloud storage provider?
    - jank199x 10mo ago
      https://github.com/restic/restic https://github.com/restic/restic not exactly for a "layperson", to be honest, but easy enough for someone familiar with a command line
      - NetMageSCW 10mo ago
        So entirely unusable by any layperson, or the majori of the population.
        herewulf 10mo ago
        Obviously the majority of the population needs to elect better leaders, or failing that, be out in the streets over this. But they aren't. They don't care and there lies the real problem.
lloydatkinson 10mo ago
Just to clarify, she's advocating people stop using Apple, quite literally the only big tech company with a slightly better focus on privacy compared to all the others and with a reputation for saying no to the latest authoritarian power grab by the UK government?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- syncsynchalt 10mo ago
  No, she's saying that due to UK legislation that Apple will no longer be allowed to offer e2ee and it's time to start moving your data off of their cloud services before you're forced to turn off ADP. It's not an article about advocacy so much as the pragmatics an upcoming data migration.
- adammarples 10mo ago
  Yes, she's advocating people stop using them for a few services if they require e2ee for those services. Why? Because apple will be removing e2ee for those services. She is also clearly advocating not to use another big tech company for those services. Source: TFA
ZebusJesus 10mo ago
Seeing as the UK is part of the 5 eyes alliance I wonder how long until this is attempted in the other countries
tantalor 10mo ago
> Hi, I'm Heather Burns — yes, that one. Ok, I was going to ask, but taking "yes, that one" seriously I suppose confirms the author is the actress Heather Burns best known for playing the best friend role in a string of successful romantic comedies. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122688/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122688/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns Kind of weird to be reading some blog post about tech privacy from such a well known actress. Am I missing something?
- dmbche 10mo ago
  https://heatherburns.tech/ https://heatherburns.tech/
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- small_scombrus 10mo ago
  > Am I missing something? A joke? A fun tagline? A little zing for under the heading?
- IncreasePosts 10mo ago
  I wouldn't classify "best known for playing a side character in some 90s movies" as a well known actress. Also, different Heather Burns.
  - tantalor 10mo ago
    I'd put her in the top 1% of actors.
    - IncreasePosts 10mo ago
      She might be, but it might also be the case that there are so many actors, to be "well known", you need to be in the 0.001% I probably have seen movies with her in it, but I have no recollection of her as an actor. I did recognize her husband as Samir from Office Space, though I couldn't tell you his name.
joncrane 10mo ago
"— yes, that one." ? Who is this person?
- 9rx 10mo ago
  The person whom you went out of your way to reach out to.
numbers 10mo ago
just noticed your CSS has an issue on wide screens that cuts off some of the words at the end of a line, here's the culprit: ``` @media screen and (min-width: 1200px) { .site-content .entry-content .wide-content, .alignwide, .alignfull { margin-right: -34.0740%; } } ``` that margin-right is causing some of the content to move too far to the right and gets hidden in `.entry-content`
nflekkhnnn 10mo ago
[flagged]
nickcw 10mo ago
Very clever image and caption (right at the bottom of the page) > Header image by me: Alan Turing memorial, Manchester, where he reminds you why keeping data private can be a matter of life and death. The image shows a close up of a statue of Alan Turing, his hand holding an apple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death
- LeoPanthera 10mo ago
  The very Wikipedia page you link explains in great detail why, although we can never know for sure, it's actually unlikely that he committed suicide, and more likely that his death was an accident. The suicide story will probably never go away, because it's too good a story. It fits so neatly into popular culture.
  - raincole 10mo ago
    I read that section word by word and I honestly don't think it "explains that it's actually unlikely that he committed suicide." The opinions are diverse at best.
  - tombert 10mo ago
    Even if he didn't kill himself and even if it was an accident, he still was very much fucked over by the British government. They stripped his security clearance and made him a felon and made him take female hormones. This guy cracked the uncrackable code and basically (co)invented Computer Science, but all they cared about who he had sex with.
  - kristianp 10mo ago
    From the wikipedia article: > Turing may have inhaled cyanide fumes from an electroplating experiment in his spare room How would he have put himself quietly to bed if he had gotten a fatal dose of cyanide in the spare room where the electroplating was taking place? Wouldn't there be very fast respiratory distress?
    - zdragnar 10mo ago
DeathArrow 10mo ago
Maybe people in UK should de-stupidify their politicians.
- odiroot 10mo ago
  The two major parties are both supporters of the nanny state.
- cmsj 10mo ago
  It's doubtful that we can, the "good guys" are in power right now.
- webdevver 10mo ago
  the people are a lot stupider than the politicians. sorry but it needs to be said. as for the MPs, theyre ok. not as stupid as most think. they are very self-interested and not in the business of 'rocking the boat'. strongly prefer managed decline than any risk taking that could result in things going sideways. its easy to critique but truthfully the UK is structurally in a dead end (well ok, maybe not... but it does feel that way). but things could be a lot worse, and many don't appreciate that reality. having clean tap water and paved roads is pretty damn good for a country held up by fintech and scraps of last century's industry. people calling for reforms have no idea what they're in for. Thankfully Reform was deployed together with Nigel Farage, God bless him, rolled in to do narrative control and provide a safe and controlled sponge for dissent. That guy is a 'fixer' for UK political radicalism - every time the crowd starts to have funny ideas, he magically appears and slowly but surely everyone goes back to their £32k/year jobs. I think he's 'retired' from politics thrice now. truthfully, nobody does politics better than the Brits. but then again, they invented this game to begin with!
  - goatlover 10mo ago
    > truthfully, nobody does politics better than the Brits. but then again, they invented this game to begin with! I'm sure the Romans would have had something to say about that.
- alt227 10mo ago
api 10mo ago
IMHO Apple is actually being honest here. They cannot legally operate in the UK without providing a back door, so they are dropping the claim of ADP in the UK. This is letting the user know what's up, and might also help inspire a backlash against these laws. Apple needs to make it clear that they are being forced by UK law to degrade service. Corporations can't really resist governments unless they're not operating in a given government's jurisdiction and therefore have nothing to lose. They can take things to court, but in lieu of a verdict or an injunction they have to comply with the law or they can be fined, have assets frozen, be de-banked or banned from processing payments, etc. I'm sure there's services out there that will secretly comply and still claim to be secure. There's also a lot of companies that will simply abandon security features like ADP or never develop them. Apple is going to the trouble of disabling it only for UK people not everyone, instead of just deprecating it. The latter would be less expensive and expose them to less legal risk. If you really want security in the UK now you have to roll your own and do the encryption yourself. Honestly that's always the best security, since you can never be 100% sure a closed cloud or software vendor isn't messing with you.
- lycopodiopsida 10mo ago
  > Corporations can't really resist governments unless they're not operating in a given government's jurisdiction and therefore have nothing to lose. They can take things to court, but in lieu of a verdict or an injunction they have to comply with the law or they can be fined, have assets frozen, be de-banked or banned from processing payments, etc. It is also maybe a good thing? Corporations should not be stewards of our rights, we do not want to be governed by tech-barons. The problem here lies clearly in UK's laws and government and they cannot be fixed by Apple. The West in general is in this crumbling state, where we take corrupt bastards chewing off our rights for a law of nature, instead of getting furious. France is the only western country where people dare to really protest.
  - api 10mo ago
    I agree. The way I put it is that for profit corporations are not political activist organizations and you should not expect them to be any more than you’d expect the school board to put out a fire. It’s the wrong kind and shape of social organization for that. That’s not to say they’re bad. They do an important thing. But they have a limited sphere. You wouldn’t expect the police to make a laptop or a church to direct air traffic either.
api 10mo ago
Is it now effectively illegal in the UK for a company to provide end-to-end encrypted services to users?
- alt227 10mo ago
  No, whatsapp and signal are providing the service just fine.
welder 10mo ago
Move away from the UK. This is a UK law forcing Apple to share your data if you live in the UK.
surgical_fire 10mo ago
De-appling is easy. I just don't have anything from them. Apart from the work laptop, but that is a problem for my employer, not me. De-googling however is extremely hard. I have been slowly chipping away at it, but there are things I just have no decent option to (such as Waze and Android Auto). Android itself is another problem. I have high hopes for a Graphene device.
- whstl 10mo ago
  De-Googling is also extremely easy, I haven't had a Google account in 10 years, I use uBlock to block the ads, DuckDuckGo for search and a Youtube app that downloads from it instead of using the website. Perhaps the only thing I use directly is Recaptcha. The bigger problem is doing both.
  - celsoazevedo 10mo ago
    It's easy to use a different calendar, search engine, etc, but it's far from easy to use an Android device without Google Services. Can be done, but banking apps, contactless payments, etc, become painful or impossible.
    - whstl 10mo ago
      The point is that avoiding Android is also easy. I never had an Android device and have no interest. Once again: The only problem is avoiding both platforms.
      - fsflover 10mo ago
        I avoid both platforms. Librem 5 is my smartphone.
        whstl 10mo ago
        There you go! It’s possible.
827a 10mo ago
> Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for these users Extremely interesting.
- odo1242 10mo ago
  ADP means that you own the encryption key to the data and Apple can’t access it, so Apple being able to turn ADP off by itself would invalidate the whole point of the system.
  - 827a 10mo ago
    In theory, sure, but that theory surviving practice (e.g. a G20 government bearing against it) is meaningful. E.g. they could push an OS update to automatically turn off ADP for impacted users, but they aren't.
    - odo1242 10mo ago
      True
0manrho 10mo ago
> We are all liabilities to our own opsec now. Always have been. It's unfortunate that gross government overreach and corporate cooperation with it is what it takes for people to even recognize the concept of data privacy and data ownership is a thing, much less that they should do something about it and that their data is and never was "safe" in the cloud, no matter which corporate overlords walled garden you called home. Apple has never been an exception to this rule.
joshstrange 10mo ago
On a 1700px or wider screen your text is cut off on the right-hand side: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW
isodev 10mo ago
> please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today. That's the message. It's high time. We can what-about-argume about what's E2EE and what Apple "pinky promises" isn't used or sold but the reality is that anything seated in the US may as well be a publicly open http for the right buyer (be it the US government, Saudi Arabia, Israel or whatever...) Especially if you're in charge of customer data, you can't "just" setup something on a EU server if the corp is based in the US, those days are over now. You need to do the legwork.
peterspath 10mo ago
Maybe it is better to de-tech a bit. Go back to some older decentralised stuff. Like buy cd's and blu-rays instead of digital/drm locked/streaming service shit. Be an owner again instead of a renter.
- jckahn 10mo ago
  It's all fun and games until you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life.
  - peterspath 10mo ago
    so does digital..
  - Klonoar 10mo ago
    It’s why you archive the things you buy on physical media.
    - nomel 10mo ago
      > you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life. Their point is that physical media itself has a limited lifespan. You need to continuously "refresh" it every 1 to 10 years, depending on the physical media you choose, or it's most likely corrupted. I've lost many HDD, SSD, SD cards, and about 50 "archival quality" DVD/CD to time, with all manufacturers having somewhere around 3x to 20x exaggerated claim of longevity. I'm guessing their numbers are based on some temperature/humidity controlled marketing BS, rather than anything resembling reality. SD Cards are the saddest. I've seen many older members of my family shed tears when they pull out their SD cars they carefully stored in a drawer/safe, and they're junk. Charge drift be a harsh mistress.
- eloisius 10mo ago
  I don’t think you have to go that far backward. You can get a QNAP or Synology NAS, a storage VPS and use syncthing. I don’t even have the NAS yet, just a Pi with an external drive and I’ve gotten pretty far. The part I haven’t been able to crack is syncing the Documents folder on my iPhone. All the syncthing apps for iOS are abysmal because there’s no real background sync. You can add a SMB share in the Files app, but that doesn’t get you offline access.
phendrenad2 10mo ago
You can de-Google, de-Apple, de-Microsoft, de-bank, de-whatever, go live off-grid in a thatched hut in Sherwood Forest. But the government will spy on you all the same.
ebbi 10mo ago
Taking inspiration from the East India Company, Apple should colonize the UK and take over the government - the iGovernment, if you will. Citizens will regain their right to e2ee privacy, they will not have to deal with voting for mediocre politicians to lead them. Instead, Tim Cook will be their new leader, and every morning over the mandatory installation of HomePods in each home, citizens will be greeted with an ecstatic "Good morning!" to get them energized for the day ahead. Voting will be done via iPhones, where FaceID will verify the eligibility of the voter before the vote has been submitted.
- dan-robertson 10mo ago
  Either way we’re totally cooked
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 10mo ago
    Tim Cook'd
- sargun 10mo ago
  I have wondered why the likes of McKinsey, KPMG, and PWC do not put up candidates (don't even sponsor them, just say you're electing _well known consultancy_).
  - ebbi 10mo ago
    "Here is my 300 slide pack to explain why you should vote for me"
    - blitzar 10mo ago
      and that is how we got the "theys tells its likes it is" candidates.
  - dan-robertson 10mo ago
    1. Why would McKinsey etc be interested in a well-functioning government? Best argument I have is that if the economy grows then government (and private) spending on consulting may grow. 2. Note that the consulting firms already managed to get the legislation they most cared about – creation of the LLP as a kind of entity – despite not having any candidates 3. If the government is too associated with a big consultancy then (a) they may be pressured out of giving them contracts (not good for McKinsey!) and (b) failures by that consultancy will be highlighted more than usual in the news (also not good!) 4. I mean plenty of people would go through the consultancy meat-grinder before becoming politicians. If you are training juniors to think similarly then that may carry over after they leave.
tristor 10mo ago
Maybe this was intentional by the author to annoy Mac users, but the word/line wrapping is broken on the latest Firefox on the latest macOS: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:144.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/144.0
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
raincole 10mo ago
> > Otherwise, please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today. So American companies are complying UK laws, and the conclusion is that UK citizens should "de-American"...? Am I reading it wrong?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- hunterpayne 10mo ago
  No, you got it right. Anti-Americanism is one of the few canards that the UK government can use as a boogieman to force through their most questionable policies. One of the most shocking things about Europe when I have visited is what your average European (or Brit, since I guess they don't call themselves European anymore) thinks the US is like (even ignoring politics, just basic standard of living stuff). They've never been and probably will never be able to visit so all they know is what they've been told. When they do visit, they return with a much poorer opinion of how their country is doing. That's why the "I was lied to..." clickbait is so common in European made US travel videos now.
  - al_borland 10mo ago
    What are they being told, and how can it take hold, when there are so many movies, YouTube videos, tv shows, news outlets, etc that show what it’s like in the US?
    - hunterpayne 10mo ago
      You are assuming that media is accurately portraying what it is like in the US.
bnastic 10mo ago
Isn't Apple taking UK gov't to court over this, and the reason they have abandoned encryption for everybody is to avoid being forced to provide backdoors. On this you should be on their side, not against them.
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  > On this you should be on their side If Apple was transparent, I would be. But they are user-hostile and trust the federal government more than their customers. Apple is on-record[0] admitting that the US government requires them to their cover-up cooperation with surveillance. After decades of users demanding proper accountability from Apple, this is exactly what they warned would happen. You have no right to demand that I take their side - Apple's disregard for privacy nauseates me. Everyone who sincerely trusted Apple to protect them against the fed is a lost cause. Go ask Apple to save you. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
bdcravens 10mo ago
Apparently she's so thoroughly de-Googled and de-Appled that the page doesn't display correctly on Chrome on MacOS on my machine, cutting off part of the text on the right margin (manages to render correctly if I resize the window to a smaller width however)
NoSalt 10mo ago
I do not believe she is, in fact, "that one". https://www.google.com/search?q=heather+burns https://www.google.com/search?q=heather+burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns
- skrebbel 10mo ago
  It’s a joke
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - NoSalt 10mo ago
    Ok, and how are we supposed to know this?
jlokier 10mo ago
From the article, I'm suprised at this unusual twist: > What about that second TCN? > On the 1st of October, the Home Office issued a second TCN against Apple for the same as before, but only for _British citizens’_ data. World-leading! > Those who follow my work know that this phrase made me spew a double barrel of Glaswegian swearing. British citizens’ data, as opposed to British users’ data? The dividing line here is not e.g. being located in the UK or having registered an account here, but what it says on your passport? How is Apple going to know that, much less roll it out? (/s) > Did Apple just publicly state that they’re going to be removing a security layer and adding a nationality check layer? > We don’t know. > We don’t know because as with the first TCN, that information only became available in the public domain due to someone leaking it to the media. That’s all there is to know. Everything else is confidential and NCND. There is nothing else to say because nothing else is known. If someone who did know something was sitting across from me right now, and they told me, they would be committing a crime. Does that mean my non-UK citizen friends who are resident in the UK now have better privacy rights than UK citizens in the UK? Does it mean it's better to remain only a resident, than to attempt to obtain citizenship in the long run?
mattrad 10mo ago
UK Govt. stupidity aside, Apple could allow iOS users to switch their backup provider from iCloud to other services or backup targets. But they won't because they want to continue to grow their services revenue.
tammer 10mo ago
Recent history of Apple vs. sovereign states is a real time vindication of Polanyi. Capital is always subordinate to the state (even if it proclaims to be the opposite).
- stOneskull 10mo ago
  > Capital is always subordinate to the state the international monetary fund has every state in debt. some third-world countries become subordinate to it, when they're not able to pay the interest payments.
  - Aloisius 10mo ago
    The IMF is a UN agency controlled by member governments. It's subordinate to 190 governments.
sitzkrieg 10mo ago
apple privacy has always been marketing
TexanFeller 10mo ago
Unfortunately the user friendly non-Apple alternatives like Google devices and services are dramatically worse than Apple’s when it comes to privacy. Years ago when I was still giving Android a chance I found that things like banking apps refused to work if I loaded a custom ROM or IIRC even if I enabled superuser access on the stock ROM. Those things are probably even more tightly controlled now, so de-Googled Android doesn’t seem worth trying again. Too bad other truly OSS mobile options are in their infancy, heck I couldn’t even get all the drivers configured stably on a work provided laptop with Linux support supposedly validated by the manufacturer. It could be years before we get good OSS phone and tablet software, if it ever comes at all.
- einpoklum 10mo ago
  Both Apple and Google guarantee you a total _breach_ of your privacy: They are known to share most or all of your data, that's on their servers / comm lines, with branches of the US government, en masse, pursuant to agreements or compelling arrangements. This is the PRISM program, revealed last decade by CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden. As for other uses of your data, and what they "send back home", there you might be right about the differences between Apple and Google, but I would again not put faith in either.
  - NetMageSCW 10mo ago
    Citation needed.
    - fsflover 10mo ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
josefritzishere 10mo ago
If you don't have it locally you dont have it.
zmmmmm 10mo ago
I know this is a tangent but honestly, this is why the Google decision to de-openify Android is insane even from Google's point of view. Who would want to be an iron clad gate keeper when the world is descending into authoritarianism? You just paint a giant target on your back for the authoritarians to come after. If Apple had supported open iCloud alternatives for backup and other services from day one, it woudn't even be a discussion now. The UK probably wouldn't have thought of the idea of mandating against E2E encryption because it would be self evident it would actually just churn people to alternatives where they have less leverage and visibility. But Apple couldn't resist bricking up the walled garden and now it's hostile to both them and their users, and to be honest, everyone on the planet since it is obvious that once this happens in the UK it will be silly for every government everywhere not to follow suit.
- tombert 10mo ago
  I mean, I think the answer to this is the very simple: they think it will lead to more money. I'm sure someone in a board meeting saw something about GrapheneOS and LineageOS and Cyanogen and feels like if they de-open Android, some (or most) of those users will move to vanilla Android, and that will lead to profits. I'm not saying that they're right about this; I think ultimately very few (if any) people actually know how to run businesses and it's all about giving an appearance of maximizing profitability, and as long as it leads to a potential short term stock boost then these executives get their huge bonuses and they can just blame the next guy when things break. This isn't really theoretical; look at how Jack Welch took one of the most respected companies in the world, more or less integrated ponzinomics to temporarily bump the stock prices, and 20+ years later GE is kind of a joke and isn't even on the S&P500 anymore.
  - tasn 10mo ago
    I don't have exact numbers, but I'm sure Graphene, Lineage, and all of the mods combined are much less than 1% of all android users; as well as these customers being less profitable than average as a marketing target. Posting this from my lineage phone.
    - 10mo ago
wackget 10mo ago
The article text does not display properly on Firefox for me. The text gets cut off.
- PapaPalpatine 10mo ago
  Same with me on Safari.
user3939382 10mo ago
I have a new device for you guys it’s cheap it’s better than your iphone and there’s no wait period once I release it. It’ll be ready in 2 months no pre order needed.
fiatpandas 10mo ago
Why would the UK government continue to allow e2e iMessage? Is it because they have an existing wiretap law?
zdc1 10mo ago
We need to make it easier to work with client-side encryption. Keys on the devices, ciphertext in cloud storage. I was using CloudMounter to do this, but the software was unfortunately a bit rough around the edges and didn't feel as reliable and seamless as the other options. These days I have some hacked together tar + PGP scripts for encrypted backups, but still rely on iCloud + ADP for the rest.
al_be_back 10mo ago
this is not practical or desirable in my view: de-google, de-apple, de-meta, de-aws etc etc etc What next, become stone masons? nah, that's too corporate, pick berries instead ;) Come on, what happened to moderation, discipline and planning? How about use what you need, hedge your risks (mix providers, products), be more proactive than reactive to demands for consumption?
- Cheer2171 10mo ago
  Make intentional, rational, specific decisions about which people and companies to support with your hard earned cash based on alignment of values and interests.
ineedaj0b 10mo ago
this is an article about why you shouldn't live in the UK. I always think right-wing news makes it sound worse than it is.. I have a feeling it's truer than not. Brexit was the tipping point.
fastball 10mo ago
I don't understand. Apple is being forced to disable E2EE due to UK legislation. This legislation does not just apply to Apple, so presumably any service you switch to (e.g. Proton was suggested in the article) will be subject to such orders as well. Seems like it is time to de-Britain, rather than de-Apple.
Havoc 10mo ago
It really is getting to the point where the crypto gang is right „not your keys not your bitcoin“…except for encryption keys. DIY is pretty hard though even for the reasonably skilled. Even if you go full nextcloud or whatever - that’s not exactly risk free either
lylo 10mo ago
De-Appleing is very difficult if you have a family using iCloud Photos, music, drive etc. Looking at the list, perhaps moving documents off iCloud Drive (to where? Dropbox? That isn’t E2E is it?) and Notes is enough. Do I really care if my photos are E2E encrypted? Most of my photos are in Lightroom cloud so those are not anyway. I don’t use reminders or Freeform or voice memos, and I couldn’t care less about safari bookmarks. If I move off Drive and Notes, I don’t really care about iCloud backup either. Is this sufficient? My notes will go to Obsidian (except some disposable shared ones) but where do I move my documents if not on iCloud Drive? Is Dropbox any better?
- bean469 10mo ago
  > De-Appleing is very difficult if you have a family using iCloud Photos, music, drive etc. Although this is just anecdata, I moved my senior parents from iCloud Photos to Immich recently and their response was something like: "Wow, the new Photos program on the iPad looks nice!" For them it works out fine, since their use-cases are checking out vacation photos by scrolling the timeline and also occasionally clicking on the "memories" from N years ago. Helps that the app icon is very similar, too.
  - lylo 10mo ago
    Thanks. Looks good, although perhaps Ente has the edge with things like facial recognition (I know this is a big draw for family with Apple Photos)
- neop1x 10mo ago
  Self-host. NextCloud & Ente are great alternatives.
rob_c 10mo ago
[dead]
eviks 10mo ago
> thorough job of de-Googling that I forgot to show up for a meeting with someone, because I hadn’t checked my Google calendar in ages That's a shoddy job of de-Googling, a thorough job would have seamless redirection to whatever current calendar service you use. > I’m not going to tell you where to move your stuf But that's the most important stuff!!! Don't leave poor users dry with an impractical advice that will lead them missing important meetings
- port11 10mo ago
  Calendars are a tough issue, I'm not sure what I'd recommend. My partner's on Outlook so many of the OSS options won't work for sharing our calendars. I can move her entirely to the family server, but even I'm confused. There's too many Calendar servers with different features, and all with a generally terrible UI. Once I finally settle for one of the server options, I'd have to get her using whatever calendar agent is good on Android, but that's another 20+ options to look at. Sometimes the bazaar is quite confusing and overwhelming.
deadeye 10mo ago
Why not start fixing your country instead of retreating constantly?
reader9274 10mo ago
What a disorganized, poorly written article. Just rambling on about the UK issue, then giving random suggestions for specific apps, then more rambling.
8fingerlouie 10mo ago
If you still want/need cloud storage, but don't want to roll your own (with the warts that brings), Cryptomator is an excellent tool for source encrypting your data before uploading them. It works transparently, and has clients for Mac/Windows as well as iOS/Android. It's also open source, and "free" (IIRC there's a one time fee for the mobile client). https://cryptomator.org/ https://cryptomator.org/
- gtirloni 10mo ago
  There's also the `crypt` remote for rclone: https://rclone.org/crypt/ https://rclone.org/crypt/
  - 8fingerlouie 10mo ago
    Rclone works fine, but the main difference to Cryptomator is that their mobile apps integrate well into the phone filesystems, essentially allowing you to modify the contents of an encrypted vault from mobile, desktop or wherever. It’s basically cloud storage (works on local drives as well), but fully source encrypted.
Kim_Bruning 10mo ago
I have this idea that constantly retreating, away from desktop, away from phone, away from google, away from apple, is just going to leave people in a tiny corner, until the corner goes away too. How would we go about actually exerting political pressure in the other direction? Expanding rights and expanding freedoms outside one small corner, so that more people become aware of them and start exercising them.
- weregiraffe 10mo ago
  A corner of what? Were people in a corner in the 1970s?
danjermaus 10mo ago
De-appleing, not de-applying. Applying is already a word
sailmates 10mo ago
shameless plug, but if anyone is looking for alternatives, our association focuses on helping end users to adopt mobile OS alternatives: https://sailmates.net/actors/ https://sailmates.net/actors/
JohnClark1337 10mo ago
[dead]

616 points by msangi 10mo ago

I de-Appled when Tim Cook took over. Apple died when Steve passed away and they put a fucking bean counter in charge, which is all Tim has ever been.

spankalee 10mo ago

Something's wrong with the CSS on this page. The end of every line is cut off.

tempfile 10mo ago
Same for me. You can get around it by zooming in.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
daemonologist 10mo ago
.site-content .post has `overflow: hidden;`, .site-content .entry-content has `max-width: 965px;`, and .wide-content has `margin-right: -34.0740%;` Disabling the margin-right or, preferably, the max-width rule will fix the layout. Or make your browser less than 1700px wide. (Crazy rats nest of CSS rules, I assume this is a wordpress/wordpress template thing.)
fwip 10mo ago
If you resize the window to a narrower width, it will wrap more normally.
- glaucon 10mo ago
  A bit weird that it's necessary but thank you for pointing it out.
- efreak 10mo ago
  I've seen a number of websites that don't like being in windowed mode on desktop, and the very occasional website that doesn't like my tablet (which has a custom width/dp size set). I always assumed they were related to media queries that were set incorrectly, as zooming or resisting the window (or on my tablet, toggling desktop view) nearly always fixes it. Then there's the websites that have a menubar or other UI floating on top of the content it takes you to (this is far more common, and incredibly frustrating as I'm usually using either a toc or a search function and unable to see the content I'm looking for at all)
busymom0 10mo ago
Yes, same issue for me. The negative margin-right is causing the issue: margin-right: -34.0740%;
joshstrange 10mo ago
Ahh, just saw this after posting my comment. Yes, it appears that at 1700px or greater it cuts off text. Shown in this video: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW

stavros 10mo ago

[flagged]

swiftcoder 10mo ago
> Who is "that one" Heather Burns? Like most personal websites, this one prominently features an "about" page, which will likely answer this question to your satisfaction.
thewebguyd 10mo ago
> Also, why is Apple disabling ADP, and why are they right? Is it because of the UK wanting to snoop on all communications? Yes. UK wants Apple to give them a backdoor to E2EE iCloud data, including ADP. The UK gov having such a backdoor to iCloud would also affect non-UK citizens, basically UK wants to snoop on everyone's communication, whether they are under UK jurisdiction or not. Apple took the route of not offering ADP to the UK instead of complying with the backdoor request, which IMO, is the right move, they shouldn't compromise their service for everyone on the globe because the UK can't break out of it's nanny state fantasy. But, as always, unless you own and control both ends, you can't really trust that a service does what it says it does.
- stavros 10mo ago
  Oof, I thought that got shot down. Thanks for the info, the UK has traditionally really liked surveillance.
oldpersonintx2 10mo ago
[dead]

iwontberude 10mo ago

Wouldn’t it be easier to just move away from the UK? (I jest, but actually…)

dhosek 10mo ago
[flagged]
- noir_lord 10mo ago
  As bad as things feel here in the UK (partner is Hungarian, came and settled way pre-brexit, worked continuously and is many ways more British than me even though I was born in England) I'm not at the "Will random unaccountable group working for the prime minister snatch her of the street" levels yet (though I view reform with absolute fucking horror for many reasons). I hope you and yours are OK though.
exasperaited 10mo ago
Not as many easy paths anymore for a British worker, tech or otherwise, thanks to The Foolishness. And the most popular choice -- the USA -- is off the table for the majority of Brits, I think, who cannot comprehend The Other Foolishness. (Mind you, the ones it encourages... I hope they follow their hearts)
- yearolinuxdsktp 10mo ago
  What about the Republic of Ireland?
  - exasperaited 10mo ago
    That is straightforward to the point that a British citizen can just go there and work, even go there and freelance. (I have given it some consideration myself.) Generally speaking, though, it's not a route Brits take in huge numbers, for legacy reasons. Though plenty investigated their potential for citizenship.
10mo ago

waffletower 10mo ago

[flagged]

wrxd 10mo ago
In case anyone else is wondering, it is “ technical capability notice”
gertrunde 10mo ago
Technical Capability Notice [ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigatory-powers-amendment-bill-factsheets/investigatory-powers-amendment-bill-overview-of-the-notices-regime https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigatory-pow... ]
fwip 10mo ago
If you google it with the words next to it, 'Home Office TCN' (no quotes necessary), the proper definition comes right up. It's written for a UK technical audience, who is likely familiar with these terms. An American article doesn't bother to define "FBI" or "USDA," and an article about breaking Python news doesn't expand "PEP" or "RFC."
- waffletower 10mo ago
  Try any of those example acronyms (which are far more common in search indices IMO "in my opinion" :) and they will be immediately disambiguated by Google's top results. Type "TCN" and "Technical Capability Notice" doesn't show up after 4 pages. I needed to use an LLM and provide a paragraph of context for it to learn about it.
  - fwip 10mo ago
    okay, you can also just provide a shred of context to Google
waffletower 10mo ago
Hilarious downvotes, just telling what Google told me. Nice for anyone in any region of the world to qualify their acronyms when first used. But spit on who you need to -- says more about you.

reboot81 10mo ago

Apple obeys the law. Policians set the law. You vote for politicians. So nu, it makes no sense to blame Apple here.

sfgvvxsfccdd 10mo ago
> But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me. Author doesn’t. Not sure who you are disagreeing with.
jjtheblunt 10mo ago
it does if you're clickbaiting via ragebait, like she is?
- veleek 10mo ago
  I think it’s a stretch to say the author is blaming Apple in the title and she explicitly calls out in the very first section: > But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me.
cbsmith 10mo ago
> But I will say that the shutdown of ADP is Apple being on the right side of the geopolitical fight, as inconvenient as that may be to you and me. I don't think there's any blaming of Apple going on here. This is about dealing with the practical realities of the circumstances for people in the UK.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
cjs_ac 10mo ago
Unlike most writing about politics, the article isn't arguing that 'those are the bad people over there'. The article describes a current aspect of reality and how it came about, and suggests a way of responding to that reality.

nsxwolf 10mo ago

While waiting for this site to come back up can someone explain the word “appling”? Is that a typo?

colechristensen 10mo ago
"Apple-ing" turning a name into a verb is common these days
- liotier 10mo ago
  You mean verbing a noun ?
  - wizzwizz4 10mo ago
    Verbing weirds language.
    - syncsynchalt 10mo ago
      The trees are really sneezing today.
waffletower 10mo ago
'Appling' - using Apple products. In this case iCloud SaaS products I believe.
veleek 10mo ago
In the context of the article de-appling is what you should do after de-googling.
croemer 10mo ago
https://archive.is/8SI66 https://archive.is/8SI66 if you don't want to wait

codexb 10mo ago

Sounds more like people need to de-UK. It's going to be a problem with any company or technology.

advisedwang 10mo ago
[flagged]
- jajuuka 10mo ago
  Granted it would be more impactful that to stop using Google and Apple services.
- cmsj 10mo ago
  The actual straightforward fix isn't available to us - namely, we aren't due a general election until 2029 and right now the "good guys" are in power, so it's not at all clear that anyone would even offer to reverse this TCN if they were elected instead, in 4 years time.
  - anonymousiam 10mo ago
    At least the US hasn't postponed the general elections to keep the unpopular party in power. https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/devolution-lgr-and-delays-local-elections https://www.local.gov.uk/our-support/devolution-and-lgr-hub/...
    - exe34 10mo ago
      I wish they would help get as many reform councils as possible. Given how incompetent they have been in the ones they did get elected, I think it would put a damper on the enthusiasm of their supporters.
      - rob_c 10mo ago
        yes, and they're totally not fighting on multiple fronts against central govt, those in the areas they're trying to run deciding that the civil service can now be a political arm of the left or from having to boot the actual racists in sheep's clothing from the party. I'm not defending any party here, I'm even highlighting some of reforms worse issues. But you have to admit it's not apples and oranges when comparing their performance so far with a cushy little on-the-Thames millionaires cul-de-sac.

thw_9a83c 10mo ago

From the article: > Otherwise, please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today. I don't understand the core of this advice. So if you're in the UK and do all the above, can you suddenly get similar E2EE cloud storage from a different provider without a UK government-mandated backdoor?

benoau 10mo ago
Hopefully pretty soon Apple will have to provide the same functionality iCloud monopolizes so you can have an equivalent service. But right now you can do an encrypted transmission to a privately-owned NAS like Synology and then E2E cloud storage provider of your choice, with the caveat that things like background syncing are strategically monopolized and no app may backup your full phone. https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/16897724-consumers-association-which https://www.catribunal.org.uk/cases/16897724-consumers-assoc... (hearing in 9 days)
- nine_k 10mo ago
  It's a bit like the famous HN post where somebody said that Dropbox is not needed if you have rsync and friends. Technically this can even be correct. You can build and operate a good, secure solution for yourself if you have time and skill to build. Could make sense for a company handling sensitive data. Would hardly make sense for most individuals who are not professional SREs / SWEs. (To check how it feels, an engineer can try to sew themself a pair of pants to wear daily, or do something similarly mundane in what they are not skilled.) A solution that can reliably work for non-experts is very important.
  - benoau 10mo ago
    Sure but in this case most of the difficulties are artificially imposed by Apple, depending on how the tribunal responds to their alleged iCloud monopoly it could become as simple as choosing a compatible provider and putting your username/password in.

croemer 10mo ago

https://archive.is/8SI66 https://archive.is/8SI66 (to bypass HN hug of death)

sedatk 10mo ago

> You need to start that because, as we recently learned, at some point in the very near future Apple is withdrawing its Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature from the UK altogether as a result of the Home Office TCN through the Investigatory Powers Act. So, a UK-only advice, and it strangely assumes that any other service in UK wouldn’t be bound by the same laws.

omnicognate 10mo ago
I can encrypt anything and store it in anything that provides storage. Why are people acting like "end to end encryption" is a feature you need a cloud service to provide to you. Rather the opposite - it's really something you can only do yourself.
- culi 10mo ago
  Sure, but almost no one is managing their own keys and knows enough about the various e2ee algorithms to make these decisions on their own. Do you know of a good piece of software or tool that lets a layperson interface with any cloud storage provider?
  - jank199x 10mo ago
    https://github.com/restic/restic https://github.com/restic/restic not exactly for a "layperson", to be honest, but easy enough for someone familiar with a command line
    - NetMageSCW 10mo ago
      So entirely unusable by any layperson, or the majori of the population.
      - herewulf 10mo ago
        Obviously the majority of the population needs to elect better leaders, or failing that, be out in the streets over this. But they aren't. They don't care and there lies the real problem.

lloydatkinson 10mo ago

Just to clarify, she's advocating people stop using Apple, quite literally the only big tech company with a slightly better focus on privacy compared to all the others and with a reputation for saying no to the latest authoritarian power grab by the UK government?

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
syncsynchalt 10mo ago
No, she's saying that due to UK legislation that Apple will no longer be allowed to offer e2ee and it's time to start moving your data off of their cloud services before you're forced to turn off ADP. It's not an article about advocacy so much as the pragmatics an upcoming data migration.
adammarples 10mo ago
Yes, she's advocating people stop using them for a few services if they require e2ee for those services. Why? Because apple will be removing e2ee for those services. She is also clearly advocating not to use another big tech company for those services. Source: TFA

ZebusJesus 10mo ago

Seeing as the UK is part of the 5 eyes alliance I wonder how long until this is attempted in the other countries

tantalor 10mo ago

> Hi, I'm Heather Burns — yes, that one. Ok, I was going to ask, but taking "yes, that one" seriously I suppose confirms the author is the actress Heather Burns best known for playing the best friend role in a string of successful romantic comedies. https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122688/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122688/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns Kind of weird to be reading some blog post about tech privacy from such a well known actress. Am I missing something?

dmbche 10mo ago
https://heatherburns.tech/ https://heatherburns.tech/
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
small_scombrus 10mo ago
> Am I missing something? A joke? A fun tagline? A little zing for under the heading?
IncreasePosts 10mo ago
I wouldn't classify "best known for playing a side character in some 90s movies" as a well known actress. Also, different Heather Burns.
- tantalor 10mo ago
  I'd put her in the top 1% of actors.
  - IncreasePosts 10mo ago
    She might be, but it might also be the case that there are so many actors, to be "well known", you need to be in the 0.001% I probably have seen movies with her in it, but I have no recollection of her as an actor. I did recognize her husband as Samir from Office Space, though I couldn't tell you his name.

joncrane 10mo ago

"— yes, that one." ? Who is this person?

9rx 10mo ago
The person whom you went out of your way to reach out to.

numbers 10mo ago

just noticed your CSS has an issue on wide screens that cuts off some of the words at the end of a line, here's the culprit: ``` @media screen and (min-width: 1200px) { .site-content .entry-content .wide-content, .alignwide, .alignfull { margin-right: -34.0740%; } } ``` that margin-right is causing some of the content to move too far to the right and gets hidden in `.entry-content`

nflekkhnnn 10mo ago

[flagged]

nickcw 10mo ago

Very clever image and caption (right at the bottom of the page) > Header image by me: Alan Turing memorial, Manchester, where he reminds you why keeping data private can be a matter of life and death. The image shows a close up of a statue of Alan Turing, his hand holding an apple. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Death

LeoPanthera 10mo ago
The very Wikipedia page you link explains in great detail why, although we can never know for sure, it's actually unlikely that he committed suicide, and more likely that his death was an accident. The suicide story will probably never go away, because it's too good a story. It fits so neatly into popular culture.
- raincole 10mo ago
  I read that section word by word and I honestly don't think it "explains that it's actually unlikely that he committed suicide." The opinions are diverse at best.
- tombert 10mo ago
  Even if he didn't kill himself and even if it was an accident, he still was very much fucked over by the British government. They stripped his security clearance and made him a felon and made him take female hormones. This guy cracked the uncrackable code and basically (co)invented Computer Science, but all they cared about who he had sex with.
- kristianp 10mo ago
  From the wikipedia article: > Turing may have inhaled cyanide fumes from an electroplating experiment in his spare room How would he have put himself quietly to bed if he had gotten a fatal dose of cyanide in the spare room where the electroplating was taking place? Wouldn't there be very fast respiratory distress?
  - zdragnar 10mo ago

DeathArrow 10mo ago

Maybe people in UK should de-stupidify their politicians.

odiroot 10mo ago
The two major parties are both supporters of the nanny state.
cmsj 10mo ago
It's doubtful that we can, the "good guys" are in power right now.
webdevver 10mo ago
the people are a lot stupider than the politicians. sorry but it needs to be said. as for the MPs, theyre ok. not as stupid as most think. they are very self-interested and not in the business of 'rocking the boat'. strongly prefer managed decline than any risk taking that could result in things going sideways. its easy to critique but truthfully the UK is structurally in a dead end (well ok, maybe not... but it does feel that way). but things could be a lot worse, and many don't appreciate that reality. having clean tap water and paved roads is pretty damn good for a country held up by fintech and scraps of last century's industry. people calling for reforms have no idea what they're in for. Thankfully Reform was deployed together with Nigel Farage, God bless him, rolled in to do narrative control and provide a safe and controlled sponge for dissent. That guy is a 'fixer' for UK political radicalism - every time the crowd starts to have funny ideas, he magically appears and slowly but surely everyone goes back to their £32k/year jobs. I think he's 'retired' from politics thrice now. truthfully, nobody does politics better than the Brits. but then again, they invented this game to begin with!
- goatlover 10mo ago
  > truthfully, nobody does politics better than the Brits. but then again, they invented this game to begin with! I'm sure the Romans would have had something to say about that.
alt227 10mo ago

api 10mo ago

IMHO Apple is actually being honest here. They cannot legally operate in the UK without providing a back door, so they are dropping the claim of ADP in the UK. This is letting the user know what's up, and might also help inspire a backlash against these laws. Apple needs to make it clear that they are being forced by UK law to degrade service. Corporations can't really resist governments unless they're not operating in a given government's jurisdiction and therefore have nothing to lose. They can take things to court, but in lieu of a verdict or an injunction they have to comply with the law or they can be fined, have assets frozen, be de-banked or banned from processing payments, etc. I'm sure there's services out there that will secretly comply and still claim to be secure. There's also a lot of companies that will simply abandon security features like ADP or never develop them. Apple is going to the trouble of disabling it only for UK people not everyone, instead of just deprecating it. The latter would be less expensive and expose them to less legal risk. If you really want security in the UK now you have to roll your own and do the encryption yourself. Honestly that's always the best security, since you can never be 100% sure a closed cloud or software vendor isn't messing with you.

lycopodiopsida 10mo ago
> Corporations can't really resist governments unless they're not operating in a given government's jurisdiction and therefore have nothing to lose. They can take things to court, but in lieu of a verdict or an injunction they have to comply with the law or they can be fined, have assets frozen, be de-banked or banned from processing payments, etc. It is also maybe a good thing? Corporations should not be stewards of our rights, we do not want to be governed by tech-barons. The problem here lies clearly in UK's laws and government and they cannot be fixed by Apple. The West in general is in this crumbling state, where we take corrupt bastards chewing off our rights for a law of nature, instead of getting furious. France is the only western country where people dare to really protest.
- api 10mo ago
  I agree. The way I put it is that for profit corporations are not political activist organizations and you should not expect them to be any more than you’d expect the school board to put out a fire. It’s the wrong kind and shape of social organization for that. That’s not to say they’re bad. They do an important thing. But they have a limited sphere. You wouldn’t expect the police to make a laptop or a church to direct air traffic either.

api 10mo ago

Is it now effectively illegal in the UK for a company to provide end-to-end encrypted services to users?

alt227 10mo ago
No, whatsapp and signal are providing the service just fine.

welder 10mo ago

Move away from the UK. This is a UK law forcing Apple to share your data if you live in the UK.

surgical_fire 10mo ago

De-appling is easy. I just don't have anything from them. Apart from the work laptop, but that is a problem for my employer, not me. De-googling however is extremely hard. I have been slowly chipping away at it, but there are things I just have no decent option to (such as Waze and Android Auto). Android itself is another problem. I have high hopes for a Graphene device.

whstl 10mo ago
De-Googling is also extremely easy, I haven't had a Google account in 10 years, I use uBlock to block the ads, DuckDuckGo for search and a Youtube app that downloads from it instead of using the website. Perhaps the only thing I use directly is Recaptcha. The bigger problem is doing both.
- celsoazevedo 10mo ago
  It's easy to use a different calendar, search engine, etc, but it's far from easy to use an Android device without Google Services. Can be done, but banking apps, contactless payments, etc, become painful or impossible.
  - whstl 10mo ago
    The point is that avoiding Android is also easy. I never had an Android device and have no interest. Once again: The only problem is avoiding both platforms.
    - fsflover 10mo ago
      I avoid both platforms. Librem 5 is my smartphone.
      - whstl 10mo ago
        There you go! It’s possible.

827a 10mo ago

> Apple cannot disable ADP automatically for these users Extremely interesting.

odo1242 10mo ago
ADP means that you own the encryption key to the data and Apple can’t access it, so Apple being able to turn ADP off by itself would invalidate the whole point of the system.
- 827a 10mo ago
  In theory, sure, but that theory surviving practice (e.g. a G20 government bearing against it) is meaningful. E.g. they could push an OS update to automatically turn off ADP for impacted users, but they aren't.
  - odo1242 10mo ago
    True

0manrho 10mo ago

> We are all liabilities to our own opsec now. Always have been. It's unfortunate that gross government overreach and corporate cooperation with it is what it takes for people to even recognize the concept of data privacy and data ownership is a thing, much less that they should do something about it and that their data is and never was "safe" in the cloud, no matter which corporate overlords walled garden you called home. Apple has never been an exception to this rule.

joshstrange 10mo ago

On a 1700px or wider screen your text is cut off on the right-hand side: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW

isodev 10mo ago

> please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today. That's the message. It's high time. We can what-about-argume about what's E2EE and what Apple "pinky promises" isn't used or sold but the reality is that anything seated in the US may as well be a publicly open http for the right buyer (be it the US government, Saudi Arabia, Israel or whatever...) Especially if you're in charge of customer data, you can't "just" setup something on a EU server if the corp is based in the US, those days are over now. You need to do the legwork.

peterspath 10mo ago

Maybe it is better to de-tech a bit. Go back to some older decentralised stuff. Like buy cd's and blu-rays instead of digital/drm locked/streaming service shit. Be an owner again instead of a renter.

jckahn 10mo ago
It's all fun and games until you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life.
- peterspath 10mo ago
  so does digital..
- Klonoar 10mo ago
  It’s why you archive the things you buy on physical media.
  - nomel 10mo ago
    > you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life. Their point is that physical media itself has a limited lifespan. You need to continuously "refresh" it every 1 to 10 years, depending on the physical media you choose, or it's most likely corrupted. I've lost many HDD, SSD, SD cards, and about 50 "archival quality" DVD/CD to time, with all manufacturers having somewhere around 3x to 20x exaggerated claim of longevity. I'm guessing their numbers are based on some temperature/humidity controlled marketing BS, rather than anything resembling reality. SD Cards are the saddest. I've seen many older members of my family shed tears when they pull out their SD cars they carefully stored in a drawer/safe, and they're junk. Charge drift be a harsh mistress.
eloisius 10mo ago
I don’t think you have to go that far backward. You can get a QNAP or Synology NAS, a storage VPS and use syncthing. I don’t even have the NAS yet, just a Pi with an external drive and I’ve gotten pretty far. The part I haven’t been able to crack is syncing the Documents folder on my iPhone. All the syncthing apps for iOS are abysmal because there’s no real background sync. You can add a SMB share in the Files app, but that doesn’t get you offline access.

phendrenad2 10mo ago

You can de-Google, de-Apple, de-Microsoft, de-bank, de-whatever, go live off-grid in a thatched hut in Sherwood Forest. But the government will spy on you all the same.

ebbi 10mo ago

Taking inspiration from the East India Company, Apple should colonize the UK and take over the government - the iGovernment, if you will. Citizens will regain their right to e2ee privacy, they will not have to deal with voting for mediocre politicians to lead them. Instead, Tim Cook will be their new leader, and every morning over the mandatory installation of HomePods in each home, citizens will be greeted with an ecstatic "Good morning!" to get them energized for the day ahead. Voting will be done via iPhones, where FaceID will verify the eligibility of the voter before the vote has been submitted.

dan-robertson 10mo ago
Either way we’re totally cooked
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 10mo ago
  Tim Cook'd
sargun 10mo ago
I have wondered why the likes of McKinsey, KPMG, and PWC do not put up candidates (don't even sponsor them, just say you're electing _well known consultancy_).
- ebbi 10mo ago
  "Here is my 300 slide pack to explain why you should vote for me"
  - blitzar 10mo ago
    and that is how we got the "theys tells its likes it is" candidates.
- dan-robertson 10mo ago
  1. Why would McKinsey etc be interested in a well-functioning government? Best argument I have is that if the economy grows then government (and private) spending on consulting may grow. 2. Note that the consulting firms already managed to get the legislation they most cared about – creation of the LLP as a kind of entity – despite not having any candidates 3. If the government is too associated with a big consultancy then (a) they may be pressured out of giving them contracts (not good for McKinsey!) and (b) failures by that consultancy will be highlighted more than usual in the news (also not good!) 4. I mean plenty of people would go through the consultancy meat-grinder before becoming politicians. If you are training juniors to think similarly then that may carry over after they leave.

tristor 10mo ago

Maybe this was intentional by the author to annoy Mac users, but the word/line wrapping is broken on the latest Firefox on the latest macOS: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:144.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/144.0

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

raincole 10mo ago

> > Otherwise, please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today. So American companies are complying UK laws, and the conclusion is that UK citizens should "de-American"...? Am I reading it wrong?

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
hunterpayne 10mo ago
No, you got it right. Anti-Americanism is one of the few canards that the UK government can use as a boogieman to force through their most questionable policies. One of the most shocking things about Europe when I have visited is what your average European (or Brit, since I guess they don't call themselves European anymore) thinks the US is like (even ignoring politics, just basic standard of living stuff). They've never been and probably will never be able to visit so all they know is what they've been told. When they do visit, they return with a much poorer opinion of how their country is doing. That's why the "I was lied to..." clickbait is so common in European made US travel videos now.
- al_borland 10mo ago
  What are they being told, and how can it take hold, when there are so many movies, YouTube videos, tv shows, news outlets, etc that show what it’s like in the US?
  - hunterpayne 10mo ago
    You are assuming that media is accurately portraying what it is like in the US.

bnastic 10mo ago

Isn't Apple taking UK gov't to court over this, and the reason they have abandoned encryption for everybody is to avoid being forced to provide backdoors. On this you should be on their side, not against them.

bigyabai 10mo ago
> On this you should be on their side If Apple was transparent, I would be. But they are user-hostile and trust the federal government more than their customers. Apple is on-record[0] admitting that the US government requires them to their cover-up cooperation with surveillance. After decades of users demanding proper accountability from Apple, this is exactly what they warned would happen. You have no right to demand that I take their side - Apple's disregard for privacy nauseates me. Everyone who sincerely trusted Apple to protect them against the fed is a lost cause. Go ask Apple to save you. [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...

bdcravens 10mo ago

Apparently she's so thoroughly de-Googled and de-Appled that the page doesn't display correctly on Chrome on MacOS on my machine, cutting off part of the text on the right margin (manages to render correctly if I resize the window to a smaller width however)

NoSalt 10mo ago

I do not believe she is, in fact, "that one". https://www.google.com/search?q=heather+burns https://www.google.com/search?q=heather+burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns

skrebbel 10mo ago
It’s a joke
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- NoSalt 10mo ago
  Ok, and how are we supposed to know this?

jlokier 10mo ago

From the article, I'm suprised at this unusual twist: > What about that second TCN? > On the 1st of October, the Home Office issued a second TCN against Apple for the same as before, but only for _British citizens’_ data. World-leading! > Those who follow my work know that this phrase made me spew a double barrel of Glaswegian swearing. British citizens’ data, as opposed to British users’ data? The dividing line here is not e.g. being located in the UK or having registered an account here, but what it says on your passport? How is Apple going to know that, much less roll it out? (/s) > Did Apple just publicly state that they’re going to be removing a security layer and adding a nationality check layer? > We don’t know. > We don’t know because as with the first TCN, that information only became available in the public domain due to someone leaking it to the media. That’s all there is to know. Everything else is confidential and NCND. There is nothing else to say because nothing else is known. If someone who did know something was sitting across from me right now, and they told me, they would be committing a crime. Does that mean my non-UK citizen friends who are resident in the UK now have better privacy rights than UK citizens in the UK? Does it mean it's better to remain only a resident, than to attempt to obtain citizenship in the long run?

mattrad 10mo ago

UK Govt. stupidity aside, Apple could allow iOS users to switch their backup provider from iCloud to other services or backup targets. But they won't because they want to continue to grow their services revenue.

tammer 10mo ago

Recent history of Apple vs. sovereign states is a real time vindication of Polanyi. Capital is always subordinate to the state (even if it proclaims to be the opposite).

stOneskull 10mo ago
> Capital is always subordinate to the state the international monetary fund has every state in debt. some third-world countries become subordinate to it, when they're not able to pay the interest payments.
- Aloisius 10mo ago
  The IMF is a UN agency controlled by member governments. It's subordinate to 190 governments.

sitzkrieg 10mo ago

apple privacy has always been marketing

TexanFeller 10mo ago

Unfortunately the user friendly non-Apple alternatives like Google devices and services are dramatically worse than Apple’s when it comes to privacy. Years ago when I was still giving Android a chance I found that things like banking apps refused to work if I loaded a custom ROM or IIRC even if I enabled superuser access on the stock ROM. Those things are probably even more tightly controlled now, so de-Googled Android doesn’t seem worth trying again. Too bad other truly OSS mobile options are in their infancy, heck I couldn’t even get all the drivers configured stably on a work provided laptop with Linux support supposedly validated by the manufacturer. It could be years before we get good OSS phone and tablet software, if it ever comes at all.

einpoklum 10mo ago
Both Apple and Google guarantee you a total _breach_ of your privacy: They are known to share most or all of your data, that's on their servers / comm lines, with branches of the US government, en masse, pursuant to agreements or compelling arrangements. This is the PRISM program, revealed last decade by CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden. As for other uses of your data, and what they "send back home", there you might be right about the differences between Apple and Google, but I would again not put faith in either.
- NetMageSCW 10mo ago
  Citation needed.
  - fsflover 10mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261

josefritzishere 10mo ago

If you don't have it locally you dont have it.

zmmmmm 10mo ago

I know this is a tangent but honestly, this is why the Google decision to de-openify Android is insane even from Google's point of view. Who would want to be an iron clad gate keeper when the world is descending into authoritarianism? You just paint a giant target on your back for the authoritarians to come after. If Apple had supported open iCloud alternatives for backup and other services from day one, it woudn't even be a discussion now. The UK probably wouldn't have thought of the idea of mandating against E2E encryption because it would be self evident it would actually just churn people to alternatives where they have less leverage and visibility. But Apple couldn't resist bricking up the walled garden and now it's hostile to both them and their users, and to be honest, everyone on the planet since it is obvious that once this happens in the UK it will be silly for every government everywhere not to follow suit.

tombert 10mo ago
I mean, I think the answer to this is the very simple: they think it will lead to more money. I'm sure someone in a board meeting saw something about GrapheneOS and LineageOS and Cyanogen and feels like if they de-open Android, some (or most) of those users will move to vanilla Android, and that will lead to profits. I'm not saying that they're right about this; I think ultimately very few (if any) people actually know how to run businesses and it's all about giving an appearance of maximizing profitability, and as long as it leads to a potential short term stock boost then these executives get their huge bonuses and they can just blame the next guy when things break. This isn't really theoretical; look at how Jack Welch took one of the most respected companies in the world, more or less integrated ponzinomics to temporarily bump the stock prices, and 20+ years later GE is kind of a joke and isn't even on the S&P500 anymore.
- tasn 10mo ago
  I don't have exact numbers, but I'm sure Graphene, Lineage, and all of the mods combined are much less than 1% of all android users; as well as these customers being less profitable than average as a marketing target. Posting this from my lineage phone.
  - 10mo ago

wackget 10mo ago

The article text does not display properly on Firefox for me. The text gets cut off.

PapaPalpatine 10mo ago
Same with me on Safari.

user3939382 10mo ago

I have a new device for you guys it’s cheap it’s better than your iphone and there’s no wait period once I release it. It’ll be ready in 2 months no pre order needed.

fiatpandas 10mo ago

Why would the UK government continue to allow e2e iMessage? Is it because they have an existing wiretap law?

zdc1 10mo ago

We need to make it easier to work with client-side encryption. Keys on the devices, ciphertext in cloud storage. I was using CloudMounter to do this, but the software was unfortunately a bit rough around the edges and didn't feel as reliable and seamless as the other options. These days I have some hacked together tar + PGP scripts for encrypted backups, but still rely on iCloud + ADP for the rest.

al_be_back 10mo ago

this is not practical or desirable in my view: de-google, de-apple, de-meta, de-aws etc etc etc What next, become stone masons? nah, that's too corporate, pick berries instead ;) Come on, what happened to moderation, discipline and planning? How about use what you need, hedge your risks (mix providers, products), be more proactive than reactive to demands for consumption?

Cheer2171 10mo ago
Make intentional, rational, specific decisions about which people and companies to support with your hard earned cash based on alignment of values and interests.

ineedaj0b 10mo ago

this is an article about why you shouldn't live in the UK. I always think right-wing news makes it sound worse than it is.. I have a feeling it's truer than not. Brexit was the tipping point.

fastball 10mo ago

I don't understand. Apple is being forced to disable E2EE due to UK legislation. This legislation does not just apply to Apple, so presumably any service you switch to (e.g. Proton was suggested in the article) will be subject to such orders as well. Seems like it is time to de-Britain, rather than de-Apple.

Havoc 10mo ago

It really is getting to the point where the crypto gang is right „not your keys not your bitcoin“…except for encryption keys. DIY is pretty hard though even for the reasonably skilled. Even if you go full nextcloud or whatever - that’s not exactly risk free either

lylo 10mo ago

De-Appleing is very difficult if you have a family using iCloud Photos, music, drive etc. Looking at the list, perhaps moving documents off iCloud Drive (to where? Dropbox? That isn’t E2E is it?) and Notes is enough. Do I really care if my photos are E2E encrypted? Most of my photos are in Lightroom cloud so those are not anyway. I don’t use reminders or Freeform or voice memos, and I couldn’t care less about safari bookmarks. If I move off Drive and Notes, I don’t really care about iCloud backup either. Is this sufficient? My notes will go to Obsidian (except some disposable shared ones) but where do I move my documents if not on iCloud Drive? Is Dropbox any better?

bean469 10mo ago
> De-Appleing is very difficult if you have a family using iCloud Photos, music, drive etc. Although this is just anecdata, I moved my senior parents from iCloud Photos to Immich recently and their response was something like: "Wow, the new Photos program on the iPad looks nice!" For them it works out fine, since their use-cases are checking out vacation photos by scrolling the timeline and also occasionally clicking on the "memories" from N years ago. Helps that the app icon is very similar, too.
- lylo 10mo ago
  Thanks. Looks good, although perhaps Ente has the edge with things like facial recognition (I know this is a big draw for family with Apple Photos)
neop1x 10mo ago
Self-host. NextCloud & Ente are great alternatives.

rob_c 10mo ago

[dead]

eviks 10mo ago

> thorough job of de-Googling that I forgot to show up for a meeting with someone, because I hadn’t checked my Google calendar in ages That's a shoddy job of de-Googling, a thorough job would have seamless redirection to whatever current calendar service you use. > I’m not going to tell you where to move your stuf But that's the most important stuff!!! Don't leave poor users dry with an impractical advice that will lead them missing important meetings

port11 10mo ago
Calendars are a tough issue, I'm not sure what I'd recommend. My partner's on Outlook so many of the OSS options won't work for sharing our calendars. I can move her entirely to the family server, but even I'm confused. There's too many Calendar servers with different features, and all with a generally terrible UI. Once I finally settle for one of the server options, I'd have to get her using whatever calendar agent is good on Android, but that's another 20+ options to look at. Sometimes the bazaar is quite confusing and overwhelming.

deadeye 10mo ago

Why not start fixing your country instead of retreating constantly?

reader9274 10mo ago

What a disorganized, poorly written article. Just rambling on about the UK issue, then giving random suggestions for specific apps, then more rambling.

8fingerlouie 10mo ago

If you still want/need cloud storage, but don't want to roll your own (with the warts that brings), Cryptomator is an excellent tool for source encrypting your data before uploading them. It works transparently, and has clients for Mac/Windows as well as iOS/Android. It's also open source, and "free" (IIRC there's a one time fee for the mobile client). https://cryptomator.org/ https://cryptomator.org/

gtirloni 10mo ago
There's also the `crypt` remote for rclone: https://rclone.org/crypt/ https://rclone.org/crypt/
- 8fingerlouie 10mo ago
  Rclone works fine, but the main difference to Cryptomator is that their mobile apps integrate well into the phone filesystems, essentially allowing you to modify the contents of an encrypted vault from mobile, desktop or wherever. It’s basically cloud storage (works on local drives as well), but fully source encrypted.

Kim_Bruning 10mo ago

I have this idea that constantly retreating, away from desktop, away from phone, away from google, away from apple, is just going to leave people in a tiny corner, until the corner goes away too. How would we go about actually exerting political pressure in the other direction? Expanding rights and expanding freedoms outside one small corner, so that more people become aware of them and start exercising them.

weregiraffe 10mo ago
A corner of what? Were people in a corner in the 1970s?

danjermaus 10mo ago

De-appleing, not de-applying. Applying is already a word

sailmates 10mo ago

shameless plug, but if anyone is looking for alternatives, our association focuses on helping end users to adopt mobile OS alternatives: https://sailmates.net/actors/ https://sailmates.net/actors/

JohnClark1337 10mo ago

[dead]