Your Computer Isn't Yours
sneak.berlin
sneak.berlin
I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that direction because it gives them control over the IP of arguably the most important component of the computer, which in turn makes it easier to control software distribution for their architecture as well.
The transition will be slower of course because people have to get used to seeing computers as closed-source devices with app stores, there are still too many of us who have the mindset that you can just install anything you want on a computer without asking Apple for permission and without paying tax to them.
At this point I really wonder how any serious "hacker" can work on such a device, it's becoming the antithesis of everything that the original Hacker culture stood for.
1: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/11/judge-dismisses-apple...
Same on mobile, Android phones - especially in the cheaper ranges - are dodgy as fuck when it comes to privacy and security.
Then how do they know what to fix/improve without that? I can't imagine average iOS/OSX users, who aren't devs, are writing and submitting detailed bug/crash reports on a regular basis.
Or is it just bias and personal preference where "I don't mind Apple collecting my telemetry because I like Apple but Microsoft collecting my telemetry is evil because I hate Microsoft"?
I don't have a dog in this fight but don't trust any for-profit company when it comes to privacy, no matter how good their PR is on the matter, especially since both of them(and most SV companies) were part of the NSA Prism bulk collection program[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
Is there any guarantee that Apple gets zero bytes of your data or do we just take their word for it because their products are shiny and cool?
The same information that can contribute to increased security for the end user is also valuable to sell to advertisers if, delightfully ironically, the security vendor is ok sharing private information with said advertisers.
People will preach all day that they won't make any personal sacrifices to try to avoid feeding literal cancers that are eating the software industry and are shocked when said all consuming voids take away their autonomy but they are so locked in to their ecosystems they are trapped.
These are for profit corporations, not your friends. Their bottom line dictates they maximally abuse copyright and their ability to sell and distribute proprietary software out of your control to maximum effect. Microsoft, Google, et al want you using devices you cannot control, because then they hold all the keys and can demand the greatest ransoms for you to do what you want. Its inevitable, and the persistent total arrogance and hubris on display in the tech hive mind in regards to any of these walled gardens is just... depressing.
Free software isn't going anywhere, especially with RISC-V now being an established failsafe if UEFI PC and ARM totally lock down, but it would just make the struggle a lot easier if the principle victims would stop martyring themselves for the corporate ecosystems they have no say, influence, or control over.
I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. They scream outrage when they're not allowed their tiny little dance-jig operators provided courtesy of an abusive regime.
Sure, I reflect that I may be now nearing the curve of an obsolescent person attached to such silly outmoded principles like "ethics" but if we're all just selling ourselves out constantly to the angry god-machine of the id, is this really the future we want for our daughters and sons?
Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently enjoy.
I recommend Jonathan Blow's talk "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization"[1] for an unsettling view of how far we have already traveled down that path.
I'm sure there are Zoomers out there who can code rings around you(and me).
Perhaps it is considered more of a commodity now?
It is and it should be. What the white beards all too often forget is the fact that the generation before them would say the exact same thing about them (lack of enthusiasm, lack of interest and knowledge, etc.).
This is a story as old as time:
> The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households.
attributed to Socrates (469–399 B.C.)
How many 80s kids were into HAM radio or actually building computers (Ben Eater-style: https://www.youtube.com/c/BenEater/videos ) instead of toying with micros or basically playing Lego with PC components? Same difference.
Today's computers have reached a level of tight integration and complexity that simply cannot be grasped by a single individual anymore.
People keep whining about that when it comes to computers but happily accept the very same thing in other commodities like cars, clothes(!), highly processed food(!), hygiene and cleaning products (soaps, hair gels, rinsing agents, ...), utility grids, etc.
It's hard to get young people enthusiastic about glue or forging metals, even though both are essential to our daily lives - often in ways we don't even realise. Same deal, no whining from metallurgists or chemists.
There has been a significant increase in demand and cost for pre-owned vehicles that do not have integrated entertainment systems and drive-by-wire systems.
The used truck market, I have seen vehicles triple in value over the last decade.
that is perhaps the most poignant take on this i have come across in a while. thanks that got the cogs turning in... different directions. i do need to ease up. :)
A problem is that teachers would require some extensive training first before they can even try to teach kids something they didn't know before.
But the thing is, that's just branding: they aren't actually much more competent or thoughtful than my generation was at that age, they just seem like it. When I look at the code they write, it is as bad as the code I wrote. They have startling gaps in their knowledge and experience, just as I did (and no doubt still do — there is always something to learn!).
The thing that worries me is that until one gets to more objective measures, they really do seem more competent and trustworthy — which means that others are more likely to trust them, which is likely to lead to more bad decisionmaking at scale.
I wonder, though, if there is really a difference at all. Maybe my generation actually seemed more competent to our betters than we really were, too!
The computers are not just getting cheaper, educative material is easier than ever to find.
Because modern computers are much more complex and do much more than before, you don't do much bare metal programming anymore, but then again, nothing is stopping a kid from buying a microcontroller and playing with it. It cheap and information is plentiful. I would even say that it is easier for Gen Z to play with electronics than it was for millennials.
But that unprecedented availability of computers didn't turn everyone into a nerd. Just because someone has a smartphone doesn't mean he has any interest in computing. When computers were limited and expensive, only those who had some affinity with them had them, now everyone have them, so mechanically, you can't expect the same average level of interest.
That's a rose-colored view that maybe reflects a small window in time.
But take the 80s. First of all that computer was maybe $5,000 in today's money. (Yes, there were some limited alternatives like the Sinclair and Commodore 64 that were cheaper.) Long distance telephone calls were expensive as were the big BBS systems like Compuserve. Any software you purchased was costly. A C compiler was hundreds of dollars. (Turbo Pascal at $50 was an innovation.)
Perhaps more to the point, most people didn't just have a computational device of any sort. So the fact that, if you had one, you could use it for a lot of different purposes is sort of irrelevant.
I'm not saying it's exactly equivalent, but there's certainly a perspective which could argue that a) the free JavaScript interpreter available on every device is more featureful and interesting than anything available to us 80s and 90s kids, b) low-cost SBCs running free open source operating systems and compilers are more accessible and better supported than the commercial compilers that few could have accessed back then, and c) the overall ramp from curious/creative gamer kid to capable hacker is much smoother now than it was then, with a lot of interim options between JavaScript and commercial environments in which to gain comfort and achieve interesting results (thinking stuff like GameMaker and RPGMaker, modding communities for existing games, hacking/homebrew/porting communities for consoles, etc).
But yeah, if the Pi shows up as part of an IOT system, or as a TV/streaming box, or to play retro games on, or whatever, then it's there and it's available to be tinkered with; and from my limited experience, basically none of those use cases will run on their own without at least a little bit of tinkering. :) Even my little Linux-running Powkiddy emulation handheld has probably consumed about as much of my tinkering time as it has my retro gaming time.
Great, you can write a script, it's checksum is then sent over the net and verified to not be malicious or if the service on the other side is experiencing lag..well... gotta wait, and wait.
To the point where, all choice is removed from an operating system. So much for root access.
The only thing it will do is make it easier for the general public to work with machines and the masses never cared to begin with and to be frank that's a good thing. They are less likely to install malware and cause trouble for themselves.
Plus you're forgetting that these companies still need engineers to build and maintain their infrastructure so it's not like the knowledge is going to disappear, never mind the fact that the corporations heavily rely on OSS.
There's a big difference between buying a computer explicitly for the purpose (even if it's cheaper), vs being able to play around with the hardware that you already have, for no new monetary investment at all.
What happens there is that you have a pile of photos that are all in one folder and you want to organize them into separate folders by date. A problem you're actually having, not a homework assignment. Which is possible to do automatically, because they all have metadata with that information in it. So you find a python script somebody wrote to do that, and it works! Then you realize the script is just a text file and you can modify it to sort using geotags or something else instead, and now you're down the rabbit hole. But only if it's easy to see and modify the code that runs on the device you actually use.
For example, I learned to read at the same time I learn to code, and from the same source — I had the unusual combination of not just the right birth year, but well-off parents and two elder siblings that had gotten bored of their Commodore 64 just as I was reaching reading age.
Back then my coding was, naturally, 95% transcribing from the manual, but it was fun. One of the few ones I can remember reasonably well this far removed from the experience was a sentence generator that had a list of nouns, verbs, etc and picked from them to build grammatically correct gibberish.
I can still remember being 11 years old and meticulously keying in the hello world program on my dad's aging Tandy Model 16, then saying 'cc hello.c' and watching as the compiler chugged through the tiny program for a minute or two. (It #includes stdio.h, so there was more code to go through than it seemed, plus there was a linking step. And not much actually happened, because Unix C compilers are silent if there are no errors.)
When I ran a.out and saw "hello world" appear, I was over the moon. It was like clearing 1-1 in Super Mario Bros. for the first time. Like I had surmounted the first obstacle and was thus ready for all the challenges that lay ahead.
I also doubt that raspberry pis are actually the type of device that schools are interested in. What they'd want is the TI-84 equivalent of a laptop. It should be easy to reset the laptop to factory conditions and it would only run a few specific preinstalled programs (one of which would be a barebones IDE, probably for Java). To me it feels like the raspberry pi fails at all of these. You have to mess with hardware and then mess with the software. A school provided Chromebook with student accounts managed by the school would be way more practical.
However, if you actually want people to learn programming organically, it's much simpler to just get a Windows laptop and use that as the main device.
On a RPi, with a standard laptop on the side (Windows/Mac/Linux, doesn't matter), and some basic installed tools, you can pull down and configure Alpine Linux and run a bare bones IoT Linux platform. If you want to get really gritty, you also configure and build U-Boot as a primary loader.
Once you get passed that point, you pull docker into your Alpine build and start running containers.
Stepping through that full process will teach you research (because you are going to be reading a lot about how to pull that off), it will teach you about Linux kernel configuration. It will teach you to be at least comfortable with git.
There is a lot you can learn on a Raspberry Pi, cheaply, that only involves plugging in an ethernet port and power supply, and never seeing anything on a terminal.
You can buy an Atmel dip version of the chip in an arduino really cheap, and build basically what is an arduino on a breadboard. Then get a USB programming adapter (again, cheap) to get it running.
Then you can get in expensive USB logic analyzers that are plenty capable of monitoring I2C and SPI buses and learn how all that works.
None of that existed in the 1990s. It simply wasn't there.
The the price and the availability of tools is so much better today. You don't even need to buy any books, it is all online, with community members jumping in all the time to help.
* = The issues with the Raspberry PI are both with Broadcom's closed source hardware (there are other tinkering boards with more open hardware) and of course with the license model of ARM.
As far as the ARM license goes, very few people are ever going to spin their own hardware, and at least the ARM programming API/ISA is very well documented. We'll see if that continues under NVidia.
Certainly MOS, ST, National, Zilog, Motorola, INtel, IBM, Dec, (etc etc) CPU were always closed source. That did not prevent anyone from learning about computer systems and programming then, and it won't stop them now.
That said, I doubt Apple will ever make the M1 available for purchase. Which is where this thread started.
Avoiding the black hole does not solve the part of the problem where you are financally supporting closed hardware and disincentivising the Rasberry PI foundation fron doing the right thing.
Being accessible and being accessed are two different things.
I'll make a more general parallel.
Never in history was such an enormous amount of audiovisual media about the decades preceding the birth of their generation ever produced, during those decades of later. And this astonishing amount of written documents, audio, films, both fiction and non-fiction, live takes, documentaries, is readily available: often immediately, often gratis.
And yet this generation is disconnected from the previous ones in an unprecedented manner. And yet this generation seems to be the most ignorant about how stuff was just a couple decades before them. I've never seen such a break in the flow. The material is present but not reached or understood.
Learning about the Raspberry Pi is nice, but that doesn't help preserve the institutional knowledge needed to build system/low-level features in a modern OS. I'm not talking about teaching kids to program; I'm concerned about preserving in the future the knowledge of how to create all of the complex tech we use today. Many civilizations throughout history collapsed after they lost the technical knowledge on which their civilization depended.
> Because modern computers are much more complex and do much more than before, you don't do much bare metal programming anymore
Yes, that's the problem! Unless those skills are actively used and passed on to the next generation of engineers, that knowledge decays. Part of the reason you don't see a lot of bare metal programming anymore is due to the knowledge decay that has already happened!
> nothing is stopping a kid from buying a microcontroller and playing with it
This article is about how those same kids are being stopped from learning the complex systems we currently use.
> didn't turn everyone into a nerd.
Nobody is trying to turn everyone into a nerd. I'm talking about making sure the nerds of he future have the ability to learn about the tech they use, so the ability to understand and make that tech isn't lost. Locking down the OS into an "appliance" that cannot be inspected or changed is a direct attack on the ability to learn,
And for cobbling together a computer out of microelectronics there's CollapseOS https://collapseos.org/
It is just top down learning, instead of bottom up. For programming, I think either works.
I just happened to learn the other direction because of the year (early 1980s). On CP/M, you had a macro assembler right there, and it took me a while to get my hands on a Basic interpreter.
The modern computer is the pinnacle of human civilization, a thing so complex that it requires thousands of people to fully understand how it works. Low level programming is just a small link in the chain of complexity. From mining the materials, to producing silicon of incredible purity, to designing circuits at quantum scale, to CPU design and finally the guy who places the frame that will display cat videos. So if you argue that no one knows how to program the bare metal (that is not that bare anymore), one can argue that the knowledge of how to make logic gates from transistors or the metallurgy of copper traces is getting lost.
Maybe less people will know how to program on the bare metal. But think about it, it has been thousands of years since most people are unable to hunt and gather. This is a great deal more worrisome than not knowing how to program computers, and yet, human civilization have been thriving.
The important thing is that it is still accessible, and it is.
The problem is more the lack of interest. Low level systems development is hard, a computer engineering degree is hella hard, and all the hype and easy money was in following the webdev career path starting from the late '90s dotcom boom.
As computing and "content" proliferate, the uncompetitiveness of creation, esp. symbolic creation such as programming, is increasing. At some point, broadening of the access no longer offsets this effect, and the talent pool may start to shrink even if capability and permeation is a million times higher than it was.
Pair that up with an arduino, and maybe wiring, and you can a have hardware interaction with a Linux desktop on the 400.
I just helped a young arduino user with reading an analog pot yesterday. There are still young people out there playing with hardware, and it is way easier today than it was for me in 1984.
Then go over and look at the people configuring and compiling custom versions of Marlin for their 3D printers.
Or the nerds designing flight computers for solid fuel model rockets.
Gen Z here. I tried to give manufacturers the finger and try to play with systems level software on modern PC's and ended up retreating after realizing, among other things, just how much modern computers are not for hackers. Everything feels like a "undocumented" (by which I mean the documentation is likely only accessible to OEM's and those with large business deals woth them) mess. Even when it is available, I'm too scared to touch it. I found something I wanted to try to to hack around with till I saw the license agreement I had to read in order to access the docs. I couldn't parse out the legalese, especially regarding open source works and I'm not consulting a lawyer to figure out if I can post some project I might hack together online under an OSS license. The few things that do get open sourced are incredibly half assed and you can still tell they're designed for corporations, not hackers (i.e. edk2)
Conversely, I have an old IBM XT compatible luggable sitting in my closet. The manual for that has the full BIOS source llisting. Nowadays I mostly just hack around woth old non-PC devices, but for the most part computing just isn't fun for me anymore.
Pretty much all inside it is open for you to look into and change as needed.
Also they seem to have released a cheaper micro ATX board: https://www.raptorcs.com/BB/
At some institutions they teach how OS work by students implementing Pintos, a full x86 OS.
In my first year I had to build a full raspberry pi emulator from scratch and then code an assembler for it. These programs would then run natively on the raspberry pi. People wouldn't even touch the hardware until much, much later into the project when the emulator has confirmed to be working.
I disagree with the view that you need a full FOSS hardware to understand a platform. You can do a lot with a VM/QEMU.
If the lack of open hardware bothers you, there are several non-x86 architectures that are fully open source. Chief among them is RISC-V[0]; SiFive[1] is taping out RISC-V processors to real hardware, selling dev boards, and stuff like that. These are real, competitive, Linux-capable CPUs, although widespread adoption has not happened yet.
On the more minimalist front, the ZipCPU[2] is simpler (though has less software support), and it's author writes some really great blog posts about HDL[3] (Hardware Description Language -- how these CPUs are defined).
You might also enjoy developing for very small embedded systems. I like AVR CPUs such as the ATMega328P (of Arduino fame) for this purpose. Although not open-source, they have quite good and thorough datasheets. AVRs are very small 8 bit systems, but as a result, you can fit most of the important details in your head at once.
If you want to talk more about these topics, feel free to get it touch with me. You can find my contact info on my profile, and on my website (also listed in my profile).
Kids today aren't as skilled with computers as I would've expected years ago. I feel the app culture stunts deeper learning.
I am not a software developer and have little formal education in computer software or hardware. With that said, I've picked up enough just by growing up with Commodore, DOS, Linux, etc. to at least have the basic understanding needed to research or just figure out solutions to most common problems.
I work in media production and IT in an educational setting, and while I'm far enough along the Dunning-Kruger graph to know just how little I know, the sort of things I see from students (grad and post-doc at that) definitely give me pause sometimes. Often, the mention of basic things like how to change a setting or search for a file in MacOS or Windows is met with glazed eyes or signs of discomfort. Apologies for how "I'm not really tech savvy" follow talk of anything more complex than pointing at pictures on a screen or doing something outside of the web browser.
And yes, I do understand that the very nature of these students' specialization in other fields can mean they haven't had the need or opportunity to learn much about computing. I just feel like I only picked it up because it was how you got things done or because it was there for poking and prodding when I got bored or curious.
I think in the end it's not just that I have a personal connection to computing and think everyone should share my interests. It's more akin to a basic competency that opens a lot of doors and prevents you from being taken advantage of.
My analogy is usually along these lines: if your job requires you to drive a car, you don't need to be a mechanic or be able to build a car...but you should at least know the basics of how to operate and maintain a vehicle beyond just gas pedal, brake pedal, and wheel.
I do agree that the majority are limited in terms of technical knowledge but I think that was always the case. It's always a (driven)minority that are responsable for tech advancements, preservation and magic.
I wish I was 14 in this day and age with this much information, how-to's, cheap(and expensive) tech and microcontrollers(when is the last time you checked places like aliexpress and git's?).
The whole “playing” with system level software is how I became an engineer in the first place!
It’s also extremely apparent when you suggest a new way of doing things and older folks look at you like you’re crazy or worse, actively block because “we’ve always done it this way”. Those youngsters in those tiny screens have big ideas, from a different perspective, and we should acknowledge that and learn what they know.
Back to topic, I think the maturity of software engineering has enabled a lot of what we see today due to the macro cash grab of capitalism. There are things that stand firm beyond it, but 80%> of software written is logical duplication of software already written (for another company perhaps).
I’m guessing on the percent but it’s important to know that global overall LOC is really just hashing out the same stuff we’ve been doing (albeit in maybe a slightly more novel way) to get business value.
20%< is moving that stick forward.
As a self-taught developer with just a few years of experience, I appreciate seeing this sentiment. I have this burning desire to be a great engineer and to learn as much as I can, but I'm not exactly sure what I should be doing or learning.
Do you have any advice as to activities, books, or other resources that you think would benefit a young engineer who would like to learn how to do things right?
I’m on year 20 of this amazing ride. I have another 20, possibly 40 in me. I love it!
I was self-taught. The trick is to find something you’re super super interested in and learn as much as you can from books, youtube, Google, blogs, other members of HN.
I was really into games and wanted to make quake-style fps games. I started with art. Went to college for graphic design and hated it so I dropped out. Worked on games while I did crap jobs. Eventually made a few small ones and got really into web development. Got a new job...
I can’t really tell you what books without knowing your interests.
I am in my retirement position now, stepped back to staff engineer, because I don't want to spend any more time stuck in meetings. The best principles, the best directors, all came up through the ranks. Yes, some of them returned to college for a few years before coming back, but the best ones just came in as enthusiastic green horns and dove straight it.
I have worked long enough now (36 years in this field, and this is my third 'career') to have seen people I mentored grow into director level positions, and that is perhaps the most rewarding thing there is.
Aren't there more kernel developers now than ever before?
It's not the case that we're struggling to produce technically skilled software engineers.
- Hardware is ridiculously cheap and powerful and widely available
- Inexpensive educational computers such as the BBC micro bit and Raspberry Pi are widely available along with associated educational materials; these devices are easily interfaced to the real world, and can often be programmed at a very low level or high level as desired
- Overall, robotics and real-world computing is cheaper and more accessible than it has ever been
- FPGAs are ridiculously cheap and powerful and allow you to explore processor and digital hardware design
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet contains a web browser that can be programmed in JavaScript, webasm, and dozens of other languages that compile to JavaScript or webasm; web apps can display 2D, 3D and vector-path graphics, generate sound, and interact with all sorts of input devices
- Nearly every computer, smartphone, or tablet has a Python implementation as well
- Free and open source software is widely available
- Free and open source game engines are widely available
- Games are often moddable and many contain built-in level editors
- Source code of almost any type of software you can imagine, from operating system kernels to compilers and libraries to databases to to web browsers to scientific computing to games and productivity software is widely available
- Billions of people have internet access
- Tons of free and often high-quality educational materials are available from universities, khan academy, and many other sources on youtube, on github, and all over the web
- Many books including textbooks and tutorials are available for free as PDFs or readable on the web
etc.
The materials are out there, but the challenge is empowering people to find and make use of them.
At the same time Gen Z has way more choice and exposure to "computers", so worrying about them sounds very diminishing to their prospects. Sure, adoption of computers, even if they fit your bag or your pocket, is much greater nowadays which leads to way wider range of usages, for better of for worse.
In the end same could be said about the Edison generation and electricity. In the end I barely have a clue how electricity networks operate. Can I experiment with it? Sure. Do I need to if I just want to power on my computer? No.
I can go back and play old games I grew up on any number of platforms thanks to emulation or buying old physical media. This generation won't be able to do the same in 10-30 years.
I slowly tend to think that some of those commenters, who fiercely defend all and any action taken by Apple to limit the freedom of its users, are paid marketing and PR firms who scan forums to oppose any opinion that is not in line with Apple‘s vision of a closed system.
Computers are a tool we use to do our work. Setting up the computer cannot become a job by itself.
For example, the latest version of Mac OS broke docker - literally today we discovered this.
That's wrong, Docker will run fine on M1/Big Sur after an ARM release and probably some patching. Not too different what you'd expect on any major OS release.
And Docker has the motivation and means to patch and build the M1 Arm version.
You can take it directly from the Docker people:
> Thanks. We're working closely on this with Apple. This is expected right now (and indeed there's nothing we can do about it yet) as the new chips don't have virtualisation support yet.
https://github.com/docker/for-mac/issues/4733
Notice the lack of panic or any mention of "it'll never be done", even implied.
I haven't had to spends days configuring anything for over a decade.
I play along, but I haven't compiled a single thing in years. I don't even think proper build tools are installed on my PC.
My history of using Linux desktop is riddled with crap like that.
Wish it was as good on the alternatives. Hopefully it works 100% out of the box, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
The Dell XPS 13 is supposedly good too although I don't have personal experience.
I use Macs quite a bit but the idea that running Linux on a properly-selected modern laptop is likely to be an exercise in frustration is just a myth at this point.
But you are absolutely correct, and my Linux laptop is a Thinkpad X1 Carbon. It's also well supported under OpenBSD but for what I do with it (mostly media consumption and some light gaming mixed in with the usual laptop stuff), Linux works out better.
Ubuntu's been really solid. Boring even. Which may not seem like a compliment, but I don't nerd out on OS stuff, I just want a computer that I can do stuff with when I need it. And I personally found previously with mac and windows my ability to 'just do work' wasn't there.
How could it be that people are all about freedom when it comes to governments but have no problem if private companies censor and controll what they write and do?
I.e. if you take away the rights to privately create and distribute software, the current situation will become permanent.
If you don’t, you don’t have to use their products.
Nobody wants to take away their right to do so (ok well maybe some do; I'm not one of them). Just that there should be rules we all agree to when we do.
We accept this in other venues. Seatbelts. Stoplights. Nutrition labeling on packaging. etc..
No such rules exist for software, which is odd. It does seem to suggest the industry is ripe for regulation. It's always disappointing to me that we only accept limits when the law places them, as though ethics and morals are somehow not good things to pursue for their own reasons.
Which goes back to OP's point: just because a company CAN be as dystopian as they can imagine, doesn't mean they should be.
Only a very small set of products have special regulations, generally those which we deem unsafe for consumers unless regulated.
“Seatbelts. Stoplights. Nutrition labeling on packaging. etc.”
A good set of examples. Every one of them is about consumer health and safety. This is consistent with liberal democracy - people should be free to do what they want unless it hurts someone else. That is why all product related regulations are related to safety.
It seems reasonable to assume you are arguing for rules which prevent the installation of unsafe software on computers which are sold to consumers.
Apple would be the most compliant company with such rules, and would benefit greatly.
Developers never use apple because it has tons of compatibility issues.
Good PC laptops are much better if you're using them like a developer would (move it twice a day, code on it for hours without moving).
Thermal design is awful on apple laptops, they are basically running half-speed by design. Can't fix anything if it breaks.
Why would people value brand over all these concerns is beyond me. Must be consumer patriotism, like with Harley-Davidson :)
Can you maybe also comment further on the compatibility issues? Mac is perfectly fine for any general-purpose frontend/backend development. Unless you work in a Windows-centric environment or in a setting that clearly rules out a Mac (e.g. Linux system programming), I cannot really imagine what compatibility issue would prevent you from using a Mac e.g. for Typescript, Java, Python or Go development. Not sure why Poland would be less friendly for developer Macs than the rest of the world.
A lot of people like to rag on Ubuntu. I agree with some of the criticisms. But the one thing they have done right is broker partnerships with hardware vendors like dell and lenovo.
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...
https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-laun...
The crazy thing is that I've been blind to the massive improvement that happened in Linux-land for the 7 years I was using Mac OS.
Of course there is still some PITA with missing productivity software (in my case for hobby photography), but so far I am determined to suffer with open source tools and maybe try to contribute a little.
I run EndeavourOS which is like a GUI installer for Arch. Arch's package management with (AUR -- Arch User Repo) will remind you a lot of Homebrew. And their wiki helps you get up to speed quickly.
It's s good analogy, you have to want it, either skater or hacker, any label really, must be earnt with time and effort. True for all things, and those who have earnt it can spot the pretenders a mile away.
Not sure when, but I'm certain it will.
It is one of those strange things, the more closed things become, the greater the incentive is to open them back up again.
The hacker ethic is still out there, just this recent boom has dulled it a bit. A steady diet of locked down computing will fix that.
It's kinda abusive how you need to pay the hardware tax, the yearly $100 USD rent, and 30% percent of your sales to have the privilege of developing for their platform.
> literal cancers that are eating the software industry
figurative cancers
I wish we had a completely open system of hardware and OS. Is librem making any progress in this space?
Not sure if it’s a sign of aging, but I’m losing hope and interest in most of these pantomimes /s
I don't know what disputes are being argued over, so I bothers me not in the slightest. Would it help if you just ignored the detail and just worked with what's presented?
One example is the simplicity of system management. Desktop oriented Linux distributions tend to take care of everything from application installation to updates with a single interface with minimal interruption to my work flow. This is only sometimes the case with macOS and Windows. Android, iOS, and ChromeOS are not realistic contenders in the application space for some users.
Cost of ownership is another factor. Linux may not make sense for some businesses if they have to hire someone to manage their systems, but an end user who can handle often trivial tasks can usually support their own system and benefit from less downtime. While paying for software is a good thing, it frequently adds many constraints on what can be done while modern business models can make licenses prohibitively expensive (e.g. subscription models or various forms of forced obsolescence).
Other reasons include: sometimes the desired software just works better under Linux since it was designed for Linux, a desire for privacy or a need to ensure confidentiality, compatibility with older hardware that is no longer supported by the vendor (but may be supported by open source developers).
Working with what's presented simply means that you are unlikely to modify what is shipped by the vendor. You can still add to it or benefit in other areas.
Ok, we disagree on that, but I get what you are saying.
But, another aspect of what you are saying is ‘trust the vendor and don’t look under the hood’. This is no different from trusting Apple or Microsoft.
You are actually confirming the general point that Linux provides no benefit in terms of who you have to trust.
I.e. it doesn’t in fact give you a system that you own and control - you are at the mercy of a vendor.
I avoid Apple because of the slow descent into vendor / walled garden lock-in, which suits neither my wallet nor personality.
I have a couple of ChromeOS devices for the kids' schooling, but they're unwieldy for my workflow.
You didn't ask, but I moved away from Windows because of increased bloat, telemetry and the dual issue of decreasing control of "services running" alongside noticeable slow-down of performance frustratingly too soon after a fresh install. I've also had two occasions (which is two too many) where Windows decided, upon it's own, to install updates and reboot, losing whatever I had open at the time, no message pre- or post-update just clean login screen next time I went to use the machine. I think they've made that better, and there are options to control the nature of how updates are dealt with, but I've already made the jump.
"what's presented" by Linux may not be perfect, but it's closer to my perfection than the alternatives I've tried (to be clear, this is what works for me, not necessarily anyone else).
This is the first time I've tried installing linux in about a decade, after using a stable dual-boot setup during university. Things seem to have gotten worse. It'll be another decade before I try again, probably. I lost two days of pay and probably years of non-grey hair dealing with this fiasco.
A hacker in the “Hacker News” sense is more than likely working on an ad-supported web app and dreams of working at a FAANG. The old hacker dream is dead, sadly.
If that hacker ethic lives, it's not in people labelled "hackers" anymore.
See all the events like CCC and the fediverse.
Many for sure are brilliant brains but they lack to monetize it. To break or stop near-monopoly/walled garden systems you have to dismantle them through the market. Build better/cheaper (primary) alternatives which are free and open (secondary).
IMHO mainstream only values convenience and price, freedom is only a "nice to have" item and when it requires more work it is a no-starter.
...as if selling your brain was the most important thing in life.
> you have to dismantle them through the market
Citation needed.
The large majority of modern technology was developed with public money.
Back in the "golden years" you'd have to put effort in to finding and participating in the community. The real hackers are still somewhat underground simply because they're anti establishment; actively seeking out the high effort, loss making niches that attract fringe thinkers and the unique characters required for true innovation.
Crypto parties, maker faires, get to one. If nothing exists locally, build it and they will come. (And admittedly I need to take my own advice).
Everyone has an Apple or android device, and macs are easily make up 90% of the personal workhorse laptops. Because at the end of the day, technology that just works, is nice too.
I get that it’s probably very different in crypto communities, but we don’t really have any of those around here. I wouldn’t say that real hackers aren’t using walled gardens though.
I'm not a hacker, I'm a corporate shill because I work for my own profit within a system that's set up to ensure its own continuity. I'd like to be a hacker, but I have a family to support and am too weak or addicted to lifestyle or scared or realistically-minded to actually commit to what's required to earn the title of hacker. Same with anyone working towards advertising, marketing, consumer data collection. Doesn't matter how intelligently you solve a problem in those fields, ain't no starry eyed kids ever wanted to grow up to make the world a better place by more accurately identifying and individuals preferences on the internet.
Fuck fake hackers. The best thing I've done with my life is being a good husband to a teacher.
The ethos went "mainstream" in the sense that it was fashionable to play the part and be in your words a "fake hacker". And for future historians and those unfamiliar with the jargon, hacker ethos isn't about criminally breaking into computer systems.
Consider all of the school age kids using chromebooks, many of them their 1st computer.
Will they care in 10 years as adults that their Mac doesn't allow programs to be installed from "untrusted sources"? Unfortunately, this transition probably won't phase them.
There is money in creating apps for Apple systems, but you are giving up a lot in exchange.
Some developers use it for convenience but I would not say it is widespread and most are fundamentally opposed to use a mac.
Our advertising department is the only one with macs. Sadly, we still support Apple because every sales rep gets the whole suite. iPhones and iPad Pros (because the others are too small and you cannot work with them... what a new revelation...), that is a few thousand bucks for every employee that Apple gets. They even get the ridiculously priced pen (120$?) and keyboard (300$+). And our sales people still complain about not have notebooks, because they are superior devices. There is just the presentation argument.
I do know that my next machine will be Linux. I'm probably going to put together a desktop for my office, and I'll buy a System76 laptop or whatever for those times when I want to work from the porch.
edit: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/
It is quite high and to correct myself: Some developers have a Mac for iOS development. Most people I know hate it.
Mac has everything I liked about Linux but with zero cognitive overhead. With brew and a window manager (amethyst) I'm not missing any features I enjoyed in Linux.
Two unexpected events in information processing technology threw monkey wrenches in the industrial and geopolitical policies of the strategic thinkers dreaming in DARPA, SRI, and elsewhere:
1 - Personal Computing was an unexpected event. It has taken all of 4 decades to put that genie back in the bottle. The topic of this thread.
2 - AI. This mainly threw a big wrench in the planned integration of Communist China into the Western system. AI enabled CCP to maintain control of the Chinese society, which was completely unexpected.
Having advanced general purpose, user programmable, computing machines networked globally in the hands of peasants is simply unacceptable to the folks who gifted humanity with these tools.
Could you expand on this or better yet, point to some reading on the subject? This sounds like a very interesting topic.
Back in the early 70s, when the deal that Kissinger and Mao shook hands on was made, there were no PCs, or pervasive networking and mobile communication and computing. It was always my speculation that the risky gambit of fast forwarding China's development and economy and freely transfering crown jewels of technology was made with the conviction that the process of integrating with the West would naturally create a power base in Chinese society that would push aside the Communist Party. Tiananmen ("June Fourth Incident") was a manifestation of this correct original prognosis of the planners of the deal, that it would cause political headaches for the CCP. A cultural instead of a kinetic overcoming by the West.
I think the consensus now in the West is that CCP armed with AI, pervasive networking, and the emergence of a digital society in the true sense, can stifle any possible organic formation of alternative poles of power in Chinese society. The only remining challenge to CCP were the Tech Mandarins (like the Senior Self Crowned Bozo in the West, a certain Bill Gates) and just this week Jack Ma was reminded as to who is in charge in New China.
And of course, Eric Schmidt et al. are now salivating at the "Chinese Model" and we're gonna get the same, regardless of what little you and little me thinks about it.
/end speculation
[1] browsing data shows around 10% market share but it is based mostly on English websites which are minority (and English-speaking countries have significantly higher apple users percentage than the rest of the world).
Everyone else was vertically integrated, if anything Apple is the survivor of those kind of systems, and now everyone (OEMs) else wants that model back.
If any company, be they Google, be they Apple, should experience total "victory" in the war on intellectual property they would find everyone who is not
* An investor
* In management
* An employee
* A temp/contractor, or
* A happy customer
I used to understand the CEO's job as cheerleader, for the investors, for the employees. I still think that is how they operate tactically, but strategically, I think the goal of a CEO in a Obama-era neo-liberal is to put the whole world in one of those categories above I suppose, with the acceptable additions of
* Vendor/supplier
* Companies in partnership
* Competitors who participate in a trade association together in a reasonably civil manner, or
* Members of government who are lobbied to advocate for your firm or industry or a strategic need that you hold in common with the broader public
So all of that to say that I expect one day, maybe 40 years from now, maybe 80, that IP as it operates today will be transformed into an index of ideas that everyone can take and implement who might put them to use beneficially for the citizenry and other residents. It will be nice after all of that work to have a primary key for the ideas that have been created so far, so I don't think we the people will burn down the USPTO or the LOC or anything like that.
These companies have repeatedly shown that they don't respect people's privacy and people have resoundingly responded that neither do they.
I would suggest that the users here are probably some of the best suited in the world to help smooth those rough edges and even surpass the features and usability in the privacy respecting alternatives I just hope we collectively notice this before it's too late.
Majority of iPhone users are women and HN/reddit are primarily men dominated. It should be no surprise that apple caters to aesthetics over thermals and you see people complaining about that on these platforms.
Apple customers put status and prestige when deciding to purchase something above cost. They are rich. They care about environment that's why apple "care" about environment. They care about privacy which is why apple "care" about privacy.
So for them, it's reasonable to change the device than allow it to be repaired at some shady shop. It's consistent with their image. They can't compromise on privacy or safety because that's why they bought into apple ecosystem.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/26/apple-doe...
I sold iPhones for years and never noticed this trend. I highly doubt it is true in any significant way. I would also challenge the assumption that women want aesthetics over some other factor. In this day and age, that's an incredibly 'old fashioned' statement to make.
From what I could tell. People bought iPhones because they were:
a)Cool and of good quality. (Your everyman can just go buy an iPhone and KNOW it won't be junk. They don't know the other brands and researching stuff is a pain in the ass)
b)They were used to using them and didn't want to use android/didn't like using android phones
c)They had shit experiences with other platforms and just wanted something 'that would just work'
d)The iPhone really was the first good smartphone on the scene. They have inertia associated with points a->c above.
If spending in cosmetics industry is any indicator, women definitely cares about how something looks over men. There are hard number even if you don't believe in the various evolution theories and biological differences which makes women more prone to noticing subtle visual and design cues.
From 2010: https://appleinsider.com/articles/10/12/01/women_want_apples...
From 2013: https://www.statista.com/statistics/271204/android-vs-iphone...
From 2015: https://www.statista.com/statistics/513995/smartphone-user-g...
I am not aware of any large scale recent surveys focused entirely on that but there are many dating surveys which reports women having preference for men with iPhones. Likely dubious at the numbers most of them report (70%?) and could be influenced by other factors but still it seems women do prefer iPhones more.
I don't think this should be odd. iPhones have the best overall cameras every year and are huge on Instagram and Pinterest (platforms dominated by women) so I can only extrapolate the difference would be bigger now with social media booming.
As such - men spend a lot on fashion and grooming, while the same can be said about women and cosmetics... but that's mostly about cultural customs.
PS: Only the latest iPhone has best camera. They traded places with Pixel, Samsung, etc... over the last few years.
PPS: Your stats are a little bit out of date... Let alone - the 2013 data contradicts your claim. Women are distributed between Android and iPhone equally in 2013. There would be a shift towards iPhone, if women wanted iPhone more.
> The 2013 data contradicts your claim.
It doesn't. Men want iPhone less than women. My initial point was simply that people here and on reddit (men dominated sites) are not reflective of apple's focus.
31% of men wanted Android while only 24% of women wanted the same.
> PS: Only the latest iPhone has best camera. They traded places with Pixel, Samsung, etc... over the last few years.
This is misleading. While iPhones fared worse than pixel in photo department for 3 years, they make up to it in other aspects especially video. As for Samsung, it depends on what you consider better camera. iPhone arguably has the best color profile and accuracy while Samsung phones does beautification and increase contrast which does make them look nicer but overall, not accurate.
You're trying to make a biological preference claim out of what is customary in the Western European cultures.
Sometimes it's better to say that "we don't know", because that is exactly it.
> This is misleading.
No... Your original was misleading, I just forced you to correct yourself.
In addition to that... I actually sold the damn things to actual human beings! I KNOW who is buying them! I've met them by the thousands! It's like approaching a mechanic about why Ford's don't break down by pointing vaguely at some tables.
Your data doesn't particularly support your views either.
In times of strife, at least there's one thing you can always count on: Democracy. It never fails. If you can just remember that one thing, you should be able to sleep soundly at night. (It works for me at least, I used to be a constant worrywart until I learned this trick from my therapist, and I've been golden ever since.)
Are you serious? Since you're using the term bipartisan, I'm going to assume you're also from the US. Have you been following the news/current events recently (and by recently, really I mean any time at all over the course of the past forty or fifty years)? Almost nothing actually gets "bipartisan" support these days. Our government is in a constant state of gridlock and it is next to impossible to get anything done.
> In times of strife, at least there's one thing you can always count on: Democracy. It never fails. If you can just remember that one thing, you should be able to sleep soundly at night. (It works for me at least, I used to be a constant worrywart until I learned this trick from my therapist, and I've been golden ever since.)
I'm really having a hard time telling if this comment is sarcastic. I'm not trying to cause you to lose sleep or anything, and honestly, I commend your optimism if you're serious, but the fact is that democracy is an abstract concept that is almost never put into practice perfectly. Even if democracy's promise of "most people being happy" meaning 51 people are happy while 49 people are not is actually sufficient, even that idealized version is very far from our actually political system in the United States.
I think one thing most Americans actually would agree with is that the way we do things here, right now, in terms of government, doesn't work so well. I think there is a lot of disagreement about what should change, and how, but it seems like very few people are satisfied with the current state of affairs. The more I think about it, the more I think this comment just has to be sarcastic, so this reply is probably a waste of everyone's time, but in any case, wow. I wish what you were saying here were actually true. That would be a nicer world to live in than this one (although, frustrating as it might be at times, this one is also not so bad).
There is bipartisan support - for breaking encryption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EARN_IT_Act_of_2020#Legislatio...
I think we are handing over the future of tech to these few tech giant megacorps.
I agree that it's not as much as a polished experience, but that's the point as indicated - trading off polish for ownership.
I'm excluding from the discussion professional documents editing - compatibility with Libreoffice is mediocre (at best) in my experience, but having very good compatibility is not a consumer requirement IMO.
But it's also just as likely that you're using a browser made by Google, and using other services made by one of the big companies that don't care about your privacy. Where's the difference?
> The alternatives are still completely unusable by most people.
Otherwise the statement wouldn't make sense.
Or their smartphone, which is a hell of a lot smoother experience. So why does Linux Desktop continue to pride itself on being "good enough" for an "average user" [0] that doesn't even use a desktop?
Browser apps need connection. Most of the services are also subscription based.
If all people need is a browser, they should buy ChromeOS or an iPad.
Ironically, one of your two suggestions is a Linux distribution.
There is nothing ironic about that. Users don’t know and don’t care.
Are you equating the presence of the Linux kernel with some notion of software freedom or independence from corporate control?
If all people want to use is a browser, Linux is irrelevant.
Whenever someone says “I don’t get computers” or gets angry at their smartphone they’re just leveraging that expectation and conning themselves out of a gain they could make. Same problem - laziness and expectation. At the end of that path is a life of a sharecropper and a cow to milk.
The fact it happens to use the Linux kernel is like saying MacOS is based on FreeBSD.
Macs are shiny and their marketing department is fantastic. Windows has a monopoly with OEM preinstalls. Those are the main reasons why macos and Windows are so popular.
I've tried using Windows, it's "completely unusable" to me. I couldn't even figure out how to install it without creating a Microsoft account nor could I figure out how to turn off "telemetry".
While it sounds nice in theory, is just unrealistic.
We'd also need to educate people why they cannot use random proprietary rental application on their mobile device that's not google or apple, or connect to a university vpn that doesn't support linux properly. Many workplaces use zoom for meetings, or google suite, etc etc
Exclusively switching to open/ethical software starts to resemble living like a hermit in the woods, and in reality makes ones life more difficult, reducing the impact the person can do on others.
Most people are using their (personal) computers for browsing, maybe an email client if they're not using one of those web-email abominations, the odd bit of word-processing and watching movies/listening to music. Linux works just fine out of the box and the install is substantially simpler than anything I've ever seen over in the MS world.
Today we just tell auntie to buy an iPad.
> continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft
That is probably 98%+ of devices that most typical people use for everyday computing, across phone, laptop, and desktop. Whether it is an android device, an iPhone, a Dell laptop or a new M1 macbook you are beholden to a corporation that doesn't care about privacy. I would argue that Apple cares a bit more, and I really hope they respond to the most recent shit show with some changes, but I'm not holding my breath.
And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis. And hell, if you setup Chrome and Gsuite as your default tools of choice, as many do (or are forced to because their job) how much are you really breaking free anyways?
I don't know the solution, but its clear that in the war between privacy and convenience and usability that privacy is on the ropes and its the last round of the fight.
Look where fighting Facebook and political influence got us. Nowhere.
However, in the developer sphere, GNU/Linux is way more represented. In the Stack Overflow 2020 survey, 26% of people said they were using a Linux based OS [0]. This number has been gradually increasing over the years so further growth is expectable. It's less than one percent less than the Mac OS share of 27%, but I'm not sure how much noise there is.
So Linux is usable enough for a growing community of developers, and many laptop/computer vendors targeting the developer market offer GNU/Linux as a preinstalled option.
As a result, at least for software people, Linux is a real privacy preserving alternative on the Desktop. HN is a software forum, and the blog post was also made with people educated about software as the recipients. So I think the post you are replying to should be understood not in a global context but in a context of the IT crowd.
Of course, it's not beautiful that Linux is less of an alternative to people who need to use complicated niche ISV software, but generally any industry can make the move if there is a subset of users pushing towards GNU/Linux.
[0]: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-de...
Linux is fine, but it doesn't just work, and it needs to in order to gain a foothold not just in the developer community but with the general public -- that's the lesson Android has taught us. Until it does it will not budge the numbers. It just won't.
The real apologism here comes from the Linux community, who believes that by virtue of existing, and not being an Apple or Microsoft project, it should be widely accepted in spite of being a distant third in usability. Linux needs to step up its game or it will forever remain a distant third. The general public does not care about "free and open source" -- heck they barely care about privacy at all. That's just us, the HN crowd.
I love Linux in theory, I use it a lot, but my daily driver is macOS. Frankly it likely will remain so even as I transition to being an Android engineer in the coming months.
I haven't used MacOS for a couple of years but I can say for certain that Linux is not that far behind Windows and sometimes even ahead. I think the main problem is lack of application support but specifically for developers most applications are already there.
I work on dotnet. I've not been able to run my azure functions on Linux at all. Even on windows, I have to start the azure storage emulator directly and then start func (using the full path). On Linux, azurite is not the same thing as azure storage emulator.
So I must use windows for dotnet development. Even after four years of dot net core. That being said, Linux isn't the problem. Gnome 3 isn't the problem either. Flatpak works great.
There are a few regressions once in a while though. For example, I'm unable to use my lenovo flex 14 (and ryzen 3500U) built in mic since I upgraded to Fedora 33. Looks the issue well be fixed in kernel 5.9 but for the moment I'm on 5.8. But it has been great mostly. If I could use it for work, that'd be great.
Someone has to say this literally any time someone mentions problems with Linux Desktop, along with "it works for me", "my grandma uses it!", "you just have to buy the right hardware", and "you're using the wrong distro". It is incredibly tiring.
It's extremely tiring to watch this happen for as long as I have been watching it happen.
Also if you have to argue with someone that linux does work for them, you've missed the point.
In some aspects, the hardware on high-end-insh laptops have moved nowhere in the last few years. Yeah, they've got slightly better GPUs to handle 4k, Vulkan/SPIRV and new media codecs, and faster SSDs once they've got rid of SATA, but the CPU performance moved just in percents and it comes with the same memory. My wife still uses 2012 i7 Thinkpad (T430s) with 16 GB RAM, and there are not many cheap machines that could be objectively called better. Certainly not in the $300 range. Heck, until Ice Lake, you couldn't purchase a laptop with more RAM unless you went into luggable workstation segment, so it is no wonder that MacOS works relatively OK on 5yo machines. They are still way better than $300 Acer, despite that Acer having possibly some better paper specs.
There are no multitouch gestures, there's screen tearing, 4K video playback on a 4K screen is choppy, sleep and wake up both take a long time, deep sleep doesn't work properly and I HAD TO DOWNGRADE MY KERNEL because of the stupid "Resetting rcs0 for hang on rcs0" bug that would freeze the machine for five solid seconds every minute.
The thing about Android, it was essentially foisted on people, not chosen because it just works. Also, many Linux distributions today "just work" on typical hardware - almost as well as Android on your phone. And if you were using a hardware config chosen by someone else, and a Linux-based distribution pre-installed and pre-configured for that hardware - then Linux very much "just works".
It is true, though, that this is not enough to expand the user base far enough. That needs a lot of coordinated, collective, public activity.
There are probably also plenty of companies which exclusively develop on Windows. You can have an entire career in the embedded industry, target Linux all the time, but never use it for development. Development is not all Linux based, I never said that. What I quoted were percentages.
> it should be widely accepted in spite of being a distant third in usability.
As you shared your anecdote, let me share mine. Recently I had to set up a new networked printer on both Windows and Linux. On Linux it worked immediately, on Windows it didn't and required installation of a manual driver. That installation was partially botched and removal didn't work. Only after a few attempts it did, at which point I've spent an hour with the problem. It's the same old crap that you had with Win 95, but now on Windows 10, while Linux has a proper IPP driver and no need to install outside software. Maybe Windows has an IPP driver too, no idea, but it didn't work which is what matters :).
Also, there are definitely distros that are more usable and ones which are less usable. I think there is a true core in the meme of people being lured to linux by "use linux it's user friendly", then being told that Arch isn't that much harder anyways, and then ending up using one of the expert distros which often break in subtle and hard to debug ways.
But yes, in many ways Linux could do better usability wise. For example, it's a nightmare to target GUI Linux and then expect your binaries to work for years. It's almost easier to just ship Windows software and then use Wine. Nvidia also has shitty drivers, and in general, the driver situation isn't perfect. But things are improving I think and the gap is shrinking.
Also note that there is an effect when more people use a piece of software, there is a larger market for people who make a living with improving that software, via support contracts, consultancy contracts, etc. So once desktop Linux gets adopted widely, it might improve in many ways from the current state, simply due to ecosystem size.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24831162
Anyways, the claim was that Windows and Mac are way better than Linux and it doesn't even compare. My anecdote shows that it's not always the case :).
I switched from Mac to Linux, and it's been fine, partly because I used a laptop that has Linux installed by the manufacturer. If you only ever used Hackintoshes you'd think MacOS was a mess, too.
Choosing examples from the UK so people can search for them in English, they care when their healthcare data isn't secured, when dating apps leak information, when local councils abuse the rules to "snoop" on people.
If you explain that without a blocking extension (or Firefox's built-in one now?) most pages they visit are sent to Google, and Google maintains a detailed profile, they will ask how to install the extension.
You can say the common man doesn't care about free speech, but enough do care that we maintain it in Western countries.
Every researcher I've met in the last 10 years needs some version of Linux to get their job done effectively. Largely because tools like Python/Numpy have replaced stagnated (due to years of monopoly) tools like Matlab and they are much easier to setup and use on Linux.
Mind you, I am not talking just computer scientists. Biology, physics, maths, all use linux based setups.
Counter-anecdote: I have had a Linux computer on my desktop for over the last twenty years, have used Linux primarily for maybe the last eleven, and exclusively for the last eight.
I do not get the near-religious love for Apple products. Pre-OS X, they really were wonderful, best in class without a doubt. I kinda get the attraction back in the early 2000s, when Linux could still be a chore and Macs were a decent choice to get a computer which had a shell and ran real software. But now? They are just not for me. I want to own my own computer, write my own software and control my own destiny.
You may want some idea of controlling your own destiny, but it’s a mirage.
However using a Linux desktop simply is not a step in any particular direction. It is especially meaningless for non-developers to do if one of the other platforms just works for them.
Steps in the right direction involve developing software to solve the problems that the corporate operating systems have in fact solved.
The first step in solving problems that corporate OSes have solved is identifying them. For example, one of the problems is stable/versioned/sandboxable/distro-agnostic ABIs and that is something that is being worked on and they are quite usable nowadays. The related problem is, that the corporate-software is ignoring them (how many conference solution support Pipewire for desktop sharing? Or Wayland in Chrome? Heck, VA in Chrome? Exactly... but whatever Apple comes with, they support within weeks).
How would I even begin to know the answer to these questions when it comes to the Linux technologies you are naming.
Based on what I read here, the community of people who do use them isn’t even sure.
So excuse me, I'm going to look for a new release of Cisco VPN that works with Big Sur. Of course, it is customer's VPN, and they don't care that their vendors might use Mac, so no help from them, it is my problem now.
But more importantly - you verified my assertion.
Even if a small number of security related technologies have a smaller deprecation window, the others have very long ones.
More importantly - we can even find out what they are!
With Linux, can you even tell me whether Cairo, the graphics library behind GTK and for which there is no alternative is even still supported?
It uses mechanism that was introduced in Mojave, so that deprecation window was very fast. Definitely faster than Cairo, which has already more than decade and half under it's belt.
There are alternatives to Cairo, but not drop-in ones; they would require porting (Skia, for example). Other than that, Cairo is basically "done". Yeah, there is occasional need for release with small fixes, but as a software-based rendering library it is not going anywhere. Not that announcing deprecation is otherwise widely respected; the Xorg-server was declared obsolete years ago, the last major release was in 2018, but hey, some still think there's a future and in a few years are going to be surprised by "sudden abandonment".
But you are confirming the point - nobody even knows what is deprecated or what the alternatives are.
You still haven’t answered the question of how someone is supposed to tell whether Cairo is supported or not.
Is it done? How do you know. Does it need to be developed further? It sounds like it does since people say it’s very slow compared to skia.
It seems like you think you know what the status of things are, but other people don’t. How can that be?
This is the reality of Linux.
2 years/2 releases is small window. Alternative was delivered, but it also is no drop-in one. Just lika Skia vs Cairo, requires porting/reachitecting and might not have 100% coverage for what the old solution did. You might have noticed, that in Big Sur there is a list of system apps that ignore VPNs and filtering. That's a problem.
> But you are confirming the point - nobody even knows what is deprecated or what the alternatives are.
Because it works differently. There is no dictator (vendor controlling access) telling you what you are going to use whether you like it or not, and present it as a done thing. Instead, it works by forming a consensus (not 100%, mind you), whether something is needed or not. The community around a piece of a stack might arrive at a conclusion that given piece is no longer maintainable, and make something new (i.e. Xorg-server vs Wayland compositors, or systemd vs sysv-init) and then it will bubble through as distributions adopt it - either because the new solution is maintained and the old one is not, or because the new one solves their problems better than the old one.
> You still haven’t answered the question of how someone is supposed to tell whether Cairo is supported or not.
Supported by whom? In this case, the original maintainer is no longer around. But that's not a problem, distributions will support whatever they ship, so if you have an application that uses it, it will continue to work.
Should you use it for a new project? No. But that was true for years. Cairo is 2000-era software library. Consider it equivalent to QuickDraw, you would not use it for a new software either. Gtk (which was issue here on HN recently) uses it for software fallback (and they've made part of their API, so they've locked themselves in; changing it would mean they would have break their ABI. On the upside, that means that there always be some support). Firefox abandoned Cairo years ago, in favor of Skia, and so did LibreOffice in the last release.
So it shows, that a library or piece of a stack might be deprecated for years, but there might be someone somewhere who really needs it and is willing to keep it on life support (exactly just like Gtk needs Cairo). So the question for you, as someone who requires support, is: what level of support you require and what are you willing to pay (not means in purely monetary sense; though when users are expected to pay for continual support, what's wrong with expecting that on different layer of the stack?) for getting that? Because you can always get it supported; or support it yourself, if you really needed. No one is going to kick it from underneath.The source will still be available, and it is always possible to fix it when needed. You will be never completely denied access as is the case in proprietary stacks.
> It sounds like it does since people say it’s very slow compared to skia.
It is going to stay slow (unless someone invests heavily into it; which is not probable). It is a software library, deliberately; if you want hardware acceleration, switch to Skia, and accept the tradeoffs that come with hw accel.
> It seems like you think you know what the status of things are, but other people don’t. How can that be?
Simple. I asked.
There are many venues, where you can ask. These people will tell you. However, due to having no dictator mentioned above, their answer on roadmap-like questions might be: "depends on the community adoption".
And so if the answer is always ‘it depends’, you are making my point for me.
Others may have specific reason, why they are still using it (like the Gtk example). Your new project doesn't.
I understand the general public, but the developer community? Why can't the "professional-computer-whisperer" demographic be arsed to setup their computers?
In all seriousness: The extent to which you have to manually configure / fix stuff in Linux is seriously overstated, especially w/ the "easy" distributions like Ubuntu and Mint. I've installed both of those on other people's laptops and they've had no complaints at all.
This isn't true. This perception continues to hurt the Linux community along with others. Use a properly supported -buntu distro and you are good.
I spend enough time changing config files for my job, I’m not spending my own time doing it just to get basic functionality working for workstations.
Same as with mac really.
Parent must be very unlucky, or in fact not realise it is their tweaking and tuning that causes issues.
I definitely encountered this on my mac work laptop from three years ago. (Left that job and have been Linux-based since then.)
Yet the problems remained. Maybe when people say they had lots of problems and it wasn’t worth their time, take them at their word ?
Choose a mature/stable distro and that is it. Be prepared to trade a bit of convenience for privacy in case of weird/non-free hardware/firmware.
Every 2 years or so, I give Linux another try on the desktop, and it always ends after a couple of weeks, because I'm just tired of fixing mouse and keyboard settings, touchpads, HI-DPI and multi-monitor settings, font rendering and video codecs.
I've tried Ubuntu, Mint and recently Manjaro and – don't get me wrong – all of them had great stuff in it and worked fast out of the box, but it's always the last little details where desktop linux fails for me.
Honestly it sounds insane but I've started recommending Manjaro KDE. Stuff breaking due to rolling release seems to happen less often than me avoiding having to do other stuff that newcomers to Linux are unfamiliar with.
Like adding a ppa or struggling to find a package since it lets you easily add the AUR, snaps, flatpaks, what have you without a care about the competition between those. The install is painless. KDE's stuff feels intuitive and familiar to windows users and is customisable enough you don't have to deal with some minor personal preference annoyances.
And yet, unvariably people aren't good, and when they complain, they are told, "use this other distro" or whatever...
The continual denial, constant evangelism, and needless condescension, which I have watched for 20 years now, is what hurts the Linux Desktop community.
I think why Apple, Android, Windows has the advantage is none of those 3 OSes require installation by most people. Why treat Linux differently?
>>> and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis
User-Friendliness, I think, is more on day to day interaction. It will be interesting if there is a study in an area with low computer/smartphone interaction. Split them into 4 groups. Each group has their own OS. Later on they will be tested with some tasks.
Actually even easier because there's no "You must have an AppleID to use this machine - if you don't have one go and register now" step, and no associated problems with that.
Have you read the article?
Spoiler: They don't.
I suffer through all of it because I need docker with gpu support, but it's honestly a lot worse than what I expected.
The office suite is easy to use. Thunderbird is as easy to setup as Mail. Networking and devices are easy to configure from the gui, and Firefox and VSCode run without crashes. Proprietary video drivers for common hardware can be downloaded and installed via the gui. It's at least as usable from an admin standpoint as Windows 10, and from a user standpoint as Mac OS, albeit with a much smaller "app store" experience.
You need to open a burger menu in the top right corner. And then the new folder button is purely an icon and it doesn't show a folder.
One thing with Nautilus is that if there is no empty space to right click on, you can't get to the context menu, because you always end up in the context menu of one of the icons. There is no dead space between them to click on. In this case you can click the breadcrumb to get the context menu or use the icon in the overflow.
I would generally recommend Kubuntu over Ubuntu -- it seems like Gnome aims for minimalism somehow, and has thrown out a lot of functionality that used to exist, and generally tends to emulate OSX for a lot of things. (E.g., OSX doesn't do alt-tab for multiple windows of the same app either IIRC.)
BTW, Kubuntu's default image viewer would likely be Gwenview -- You can get it to show a lot of information by clicking "More..." in the Meta Information panel and selecting stuff in the resulting dialog window. Here's a screenshot I found on the nets: https://www.fossadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Gw...
Thank you sooo much.
Yet Dell and Lenovo offer computers with Linux pre-installed, but so many technical people ignore them because Apple is shiny and fast.
If this trend continues then Linux and other open source OS will eventually exist only as a virtualized guest inside a locked-down proprietary system.
There is genuine choice in the market now, but in ten years there won't be if people keep chasing baubles.
I got a Lenovo last year with Ubuntu preinstalled. It was he "blessed hardware". Wifi didn't work after wake / sleep and my connection via usb-c to my monitor was unusable. I switched back to a mac because I wanted to work, not fix my tools.
These aren't one off anecdotes, there are dozens of people in this thread with the same story slightly different. This isn't people going to Apple because it is shiny, it's going to Apple because managing hardware isn't their job.
Either verbally address that meaningfully or drop the condescending attitude.
Uh, no.
There are many reasons why people don't use Linux. The easy of setup and use lines are pure nonsense. Many Linux distributions have been easier to setup and use since at least the introduction of Ubuntu, and perhaps earlier. Just pop in the live installation media, try it out for a bit to ensure your hardware is compatible, then run an installation program that asks questions that make sense to people rather than marketers. Getting the applications you need installed has involved using a store-like interface for longer than software stores have existed on commercial desktop operating systems.
So why is it perceived as harder? One reason: users typically have to install their operating system, while end users rarely see the process on commercial operating systems. Second reason: those who do install their own OS typically dedicate their system to commercial operating systems, yet use dual-boot for Linux (which will add technical steps). Third reason: those making the transition may try to install commercial applications via a VM or WINE due to compatibility, familiarity, or (periodically) the lack of an open source alternative. In other words, it is perceived as harder because people make it harder.
As someone who has been using Linux for decades, I find the setup and user friendliness of something like Windows far inferior to to Linux. Yes, part of that is due to familiarity. On the other hand, some of it is inherent due to there being fewer restrictions with open source software.
I have used Linux as a daily driver desktop for years, but I don't just buy random hardware and expect it to work. I do some research first and make sure what I buy works well enough with Linux to meet my needs.
Non-tech people don't want (or don't know how) to "setup". The most user-friendly setup won't ever beat "no setup" (e.g., macOS).
Besides, marketing plays a huge role as well. Ask people to name a few "computer" brands: Apple, Microsoft, Google. No one would name "Linux". So, it's not just that people should be able to buy Linux computers with no setup (Dell is selling them, I think), it's also that these kind of computers should get enough marketing so people know about them.
I don't like this line of thinking because it is condescending. More importantly though, there are plenty of competent technical users like myself that would love to be using an open operating system but are fed up with dealing with the systemic problems Linux Desktop has that its developers and community keep papering over and pretending don't exist.
I may be an extreme example in some ways, but everyone only has so many fucks to give, and most people have legitimately exhausted their budget by the time they get to tech policy.
This year is different though! I'm going to make it work. Also looking at Pinephone for my mobile.
Strictly speaking, Windows is a usability nightmare. Most people don't notice simply because most people learn and use a tiny subset what is there. Beyond that, there is an entire industry to support Windows (which is part of the reason why people like it). Apple isn't much better. They tend to paper things over by simply dropping support. An example was brought up by another commenter when they mentioned that some ix programs use raster fonts. Strictly speaking that can happen under Linux yet not macOS since Apple dropped support for legacy software while some ix software is decades old. Linux will have its own issues, but I'm not the best judge of that since it is my operating system of choice.
At the end of the day, any operating system will be a compromise of some form or another. Which you choose will depend upon what your wants and needs are.
My problem isn't so much that there are tradeoffs, or even that those tradeoffs are not ones I want to make, it's that there are people out there who seem to insist that Linux Desktop is the one and only proper choice and everyone who doesn't choose it is either stupid or misinformed. If Linux Desktop people were more willing to listen to why people don't use it and take criticism to heart instead of as some kind of personal attack, it might have evolved into something more people would actually want to use.
That's fine, and I agree that advocates sometimes detract from progress.
That's the problem: non-tech people don't know they can do that. Besides, why would they buy a PC with "GNU/Linux" preinstalled if they don't know what "GNU/Linux" mean to begin with? Almost everyone out there knows what "Mac" or "Windows" means, and so they buy Apple stuff. Again, marketing.
If by "people" you mean "Linux Desktop developers". They have taken relatively simple things and abstracted them two or three times until they are so complex and fragile they need special programs and standards to automagically manage it all for the user. As soon as you step outside the box of what they expect (hey, why can't I install a program on a different disk than my OS?) it is revealed for the Goldbergesq garbage pile it is.
Apple user here (had Linux on the desktop for 5+ years and windows for a longer time):
Why would I care whether my program is on one disk or another? Why would I even "install" something, instead of dragging/dropping a single "file" (yes I know it's a directory) like I usually do. Do Linux applications all self-update using Sparkle like Mac-applications do?
I also love Apple-music where I can listen to everything on all my devices, can I have that in Linux?
Does linux have the same beautiful font-rendering that I get in OSX, or do I have ugly non-antialiased bitmap-fonts now and there?
I also haven't used installation-media for operating-system installation in many many years, everything just works via the internet. I input my apple-id on a new mac and everything sync perfectly without any issue. Do I get that in linux? One login and my mail, notes, calendar, photos, music, files, backups, keychain sync across all devices?
And also simpler UI-questions: Can I rightclick on a file/folder and it says "Compress to zip?". I can have that in windows, can I have it in Linux? Can I easily create a encrypted bundle and mount it in the UI? Can I drag the little icon on top of any open window into any filedialog to rapidly access that file?
Can I easily configure keyboard shortcuts system-wide?
Can I have a photos-app that is as good as Apple Photos?
I think OSX is great. It feels more and more locked down, that is true, but I haven't had any real issue with this yet. I still can develop whatever I want and run it if I feel like it.
A lot of reasons. Maybe your OS disk is on a ludicrously fast SSD but is space-limited and you don't want to waste that space on applications that don't need it.
> Why would I even "install" something, instead of dragging/dropping a single "file" (yes I know it's a directory) like I usually do.
Agree wholeheartedly. It makes perfect intuitive sense: the application is exactly where I think it is, and if I move it somewhere else then it is exactly there, and if I delete it then it is exactly gone.
Answer to your second question is very similar to the first one. Why should user drag anything anywhere, and decide to which folder put the applications? It is much easier to click on the install button in the store-like application.
Many users are confused by dmgs and they keep launching apps they downloaded from their ~/Downloads folder.
> Do Linux applications all self-update using Sparkle like Mac-applications do?
Linux applications were auto updated by their respective package managers before Sparkle was a thing. I consider keeping a Linux system updated to be much easier, than Mac one; even if it is updated by multiple mechanisms underneath (apt/dnf, ostree, flatpak, fwupd), from the user's POV it is unfied in the form of Gnome Software or KDE Discovery. On Mac, you have Apple App Store, Sparkle, brew, Microsoft Update, Adobe Update, Eclipse updater, and myriad of other mechanisms, specific to each app.
> I input my apple-id on a new mac and everything sync perfectly without any issue. Do I get that in linux? One login and my mail, notes, calendar, photos, music, files, backups, keychain sync across all devices?
I don't get that on a Mac. But then, I'm not locked into their products.
> And also simpler UI-questions: Can I rightclick on a file/folder and it says "Compress to zip?"
Yes, you can. In Gnome (default for Ubuntu, Fedora), you can right click a folder and there is a "Compress..." menu item. It will give you a choice of .zip, .tar.xz, .7z. I'm sure KDE has something similar.
> Can I easily configure keyboard shortcuts system-wide?
Easily? There's no system that would do that. Some are more flexible, but more difficult to configure, and vice-versa. MacOS goes into the less flexible one, for example I've never managed to have the media keys controlling VLC instead of launching iTunes, or Apple Music nowadays.
> Can I have a photos-app that is as good as Apple Photos?
This is about the first time I see 'good' and 'Apple Photos' used in the same sentence.
There are like 7+ different file managers that you can install and use. One of them probably has compress to zip. Some of them are much more powerful than finder in OS X. I use `mc` and I don't even need to click. I just select a folder <F2> <Enter>, and the folder is compressed. Two pane file managers are great. I love them ever since MS-DOS times.
The fact that I can use bitmap fonts is the major benefit of Linux to me, because I don't use hidpi screens. I can have small fonts that don't suck to look at, and are perfectly crisp. I like that I have that choice.
All of those automatic sync things are an anti-feature to me. I was given an iPhone for webdev testing, and was snapping an odd photo or two with it from time to time, including photos of my ID documents, without realizing that it by default uploaded everything into some stupid cloud. Great, now my state ID is with Apple.
A few times I had to use Mac OS for development had me running the other way since then. Why would I search online and download files to drag and drop them around to "install" them, and sometimes click through next next next finish dialogs, like on Windows, when I can just type a list of programs I want installed and they just get downloaded and installed for me with no fuss, and meanwhile I can do something more meaningful? I can install 10 different programs I need for some project in a single command, and it's such a time saver.
To some people Mac features may be great, to some they suck horribly.
So... way harder than Mac OS.
In fact, that’s literally impossible on my computer.
But seriously, I guess it is possible to use a USB thumb drive on my Mac with only Thunderbolt ports, but I never have and it’s never occurred to me. I suppose I still have one somewhere and maybe a dongle that would let me do it.
If you want to power the device, you do it through a thunderbold. If you want to connect a USB that is not USB C, you have to use adapter and/or USB HUB. So you would have to connect to your USB through adapter/hub, and if for some reason whatever installer wouldn't support this you would be screwed (but I guess most of the time it would be doable, just inconvenient).
I didn't find it particularly difficult to set up. Some things are much easier (TAP drivers for connecting to multiple VPNs and running side by side remote sessions to difficult workstations across different networks, for instance). Even setting up a Windows virtual box was no biggie.
There's two reasons I switched back: 1) lack of consistency across applications is hampering to productivity, and 2) lack of stability in the application/tooling is hampering to productivity.
I gave myself 6 months to let myself get used to it, and there's a great many things I loved about it, but in the end it was less of a hurdle to deal with Win10's oddities than it was do deal with various inconsistencies and "usage maintenance" of getting having a suitable, productive workspace across Linux (and yes, I realize a large part of this was due to the fact I essentially run an MS-development shop and therefore have to work with MS tooling, but on the other hand, everyone working in any end-user business scenario has to work with Office documents, etc.)
I have tried moving over to linux several times throughout the years, but setup was always a huge issue. Installation was easy, but things like trying to get my aging peripherals to work properly, and trying to get font rendering not to look like absolute ass were always a huge hindrance.
Your style of comment is also quite the meme at this point, though.
I always reply with: if my dad, mom, grandfather and other 10+ members of my family can use Mint and I have to do minimal maintenance for them, much less frequently than with Windows, then so can you.
Ugh.
> [..] they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis.
I think my comment is a fair rebuttal of nowhere near and most. If it was true, all of my family members would have to be outliers, which is statistically improbable. The more credible explanation is that it is not really true (and in my opinion, it clearly isn't).
How would you get around the problem that many vocal Linux users think easy-to-use software is for weak losers, and consider difficult software a sign of manliness and an identity, even a religion? This is like saying Buddhists would be the best suited people to disarm gun-lovers, without considering that said gun-lovers don't want to be disarmed, and see pacifists as weak and unmanly.
Legislation and regulation are the only fixes for these practices. The EC have a lot of kettles in the fire here - on multiple fronts. I trust that, although it will take time, "fairness" will prevail.
I didn't. I encouraged friends and family to ditch IE for Firefox and nowadays I encourage them to ditch Chrome for Firefox. I never cared that Chrome was a little faster for some time.
One person that only uses the (very old and underpowered computer) for mail and printing documents I helped install Linux (not Ubuntu ;)) and since then they are much happier, because it doesn't get slower with each security update and needs less maintenance help than with Windows.
You should probably start advising that they ditch Firefox for IceCat.
Antitrust entities bashed microsoft for shipping IE and look where that got us.
If anything, it's worth keeping in mind that volumes of regulations written for big corps may indeed force them to behave, but are an impediment for tiny companies to enter.
Corps like microsoft do call for regulations and copyright laws all the time, the have an army of lobbyists, they know that even without regulatory capture these extinguish competition.
With better design and products of course, none the less the business practices are the same. Much this is enforced by the current economic and political system.
Their backdoor put a really bad taste in my mouth. Will try to avoid them if I can.
They're doing it because the cloud is Linux and they need to get into the cloud because Nadella's vision for the MS OS going forward is a unified system that spans PCs, phones, tablets, IoT, everything, not just a desktop OS.
Define "much". Windows 10 is a mind-boggling privacy invasion. It's just the other offenders attract more attention, that's all.
Otherwise, here's Windows 10, have it for free, hell, here's Linux on Windows, just stay on the OS, buy apps on the Store and see these ads! Also give us telemetry.
Side note: no one cares, but I finally tracked down the cause of a really annoying bug, hibernation due to "thermal event" (CPU "overheating") in Windows 10: It's because of using dynamic disks in mirror mode (perhaps in other modes, as well). Makes Windows 10 hibernate randomly. Converted disks back to basic, no problems. Took me a long freaking time to finally solve this.
Most likely that means I'll run a Linux laptop for programming, and have a partition for Windows on a gaming computer, cuz I love me some games. I know Steam is gradually approaching Linux, but most AAA games still run best under Win. Plus it's an easy platform (outside OS X) to run multimedia production tools. Sorry, I just don't think Gimp or other Linux tools for multimedia production are good enough yet, but the hope remains that they will someday compete with giants like Adobe. For real. And not just as free but woefully inadequate alternatives. Please correct me if I'm wrong here, though. I'd love to be surprised, if you are able!
But apart from that it is a bad deal.
Windows degraded itself with its bad store, telemetry and PaaS dream, but yes, as soon as they could Apple developed in the same direction. Microsoft suffers from bad decisions on some management level.
100% agreed. And I would even go so far as to say that Steve Jobs had such a strong vision of how things could be, that it was his greatest mistake to put someone in charge who did not (Tim Cook).
While there is some merit to this claim, I don't agree with it entirely. In my experience using these systems side-by-side for over 10 years now, it's pretty obvious that Microsoft has stabilized while "stealing" Apple's good parts, and that Apple hasn't really evolved any further than they got in about 2010. In essence, Apple has allowed Microsoft to close the gap, although by about 2005 Apple managed to become so high quality on the computer market, and so ahead of its time (by "stealing" the good parts from Linux) that it's hard for me to say how they could possibly keep that position for long. (I'm not saying that they literally stole things. Obviously they've done a lot of innovation themselves, but there are also some pretty obvious signs of "inspiration" going on too.)
There has for sure been downgrades with Apple too, but not really in regards to pure stability. In my experience most of it started in the 2010's, when Apple decided to turn away from the pro market to focus more on the trend consumer market instead. At first it happened slowly with a few technical changes that put off web designers. However the first major blow was against Final Cut Pro. I guess it turned out well in the end, but in the beginning they stumbled badly and gave away a large market share to Adobe as media pros started fleeing from Apple. Soon after came system changes that made Adobe crash more often (I'm sure it was just a coincidence...), only resulting in customers fleeing from Apple as a whole. Today Apple Mac's are decidedly more of a tightly controlled trend brand than the prosumer brand it used to be. (Kind of like Hasselblad has gone from the photo engineer's brand to an almost purely luxury brand by now.) (Also I really miss the MagSafe lol.)
I mean, this is just plainly not true.
Apple has done many things, things they did not at all need to do, in order to protect user's privacy. They have shown, repeatedly, that they do in fact care.
Or we like what Apple/Google/Microsoft are putting out, including the "walled" nature of the iOS/macOS. People's homes are also "walled" for a reason.
Your concerns are not everybody's concerns.
That said, I don't like the telemetry and information leak as described in the article, and would want Apple to stop it and allow disabling it.
But I also don't care for using another OS just because "it's actually yours and you can do anything you want with it". That's also true for TempleOS, but I would't want to use it (to use an extreme example of an alternative), and simililarly, I prefer macOS and the app ecosystem to any Linux distribution I've seen (and I've used UNIX when there were still UNIX wars and SunOS workstations with black and white monitors, and Linux for close to 25 years).
I found myself being one of those people, so I made a commitment to no more Microsoft or Apple for my personal devices[1]. I'm eagerly awaiting PostmarketOS to reach full functionality on the PinePhone and I'll give up my Android phone at that point, taking Google out of the equation as well.
I'm even considering trying to learn C so I can contribute to OpenBSD for my hardware that is "rough around the edges".
[1] My wife's PC with Windows 10 is exempt for now; she's not a techie person at all and I don't want to force her into something alien. She tends to borrow my Thinkpad with Linux every now and then and is getting more used to it, so we'll see how that goes.
This is the only reason I had to move away from (arch) linux and it saddens me every day.
In the background there is a war going on, but it isn't what you think. It is a war between malware creators and OS creators.
From my perspective it goes like this:
To "identify" malware you need signatures. Signatures need valid certificates. Signing keys get lost (or worse stolen), bad actors need to get identified and their identity revoked.
If you don't have signatures you will end up with polymorphic malware. (Brew, pip, ruby gems, npm make me uneasy with how much external trust they require!)
To stop persistence you need some system immutability and secure startup / boot.
If you don't have secure startup / boot you will allow persistence in ways it may be impossible to remove.
If you don't have an encrypted disk protected by a passphrase, a lost device means your personal data is now potentially now "public". If you don't also have the other above protections having a passphrase at this point may be meaningless.
I use an iPhone because it boots from ROM and a DFU Restore wipes all mutable firmware. The flash, where my data is stored is encrypted. When I can, I will also use an Apple Silicon Mac because it works the same way.
Hardware products and operating systems from other vendors and sources do not have these protections. Some attempt to, but the implementations are very flawed or poor - I choose not to use them with my personal information.
For me, Apple products really are designed to protect my personal information.
Which unfortunately isn't mutually exclusive with granting full access to your stuff to state-level actors.
But I guess there's always a category of people who actually like the idea of big brother.
I am not an advocate for big brother.
The 2012 date is also suspicious - it is in the same year a new Apple datacenter in Prineville came online.
I personally think that PRISM works by externally intercepting data communication lines running to / from the unwitting companies.
The NSA has previously tapped lines (AT&T), but they made the mistake of doing it inside the AT&T building. That eventually leaked out -- so I think it is most likely that PRISM is implemented without the knowledge of anyone except the NSA.
[edit] I started doing more research. Facebook also has a datacenter right next door. I wonder who else is there and where do all the network cables go.
> Sorry, but there are no details about how PRISM works.
> I personally think that PRISM works by externally intercepting data communication lines running to / from the unwitting companies.
Unless you can prove you're ex-NSA or worked in SIGINT, sharing your opinion is not proof. Snowden's leaks are proof.
Why not give weight to the arguments and proof put forth by Edward Snowden? There have been no attempts by the US govt. or the NSA to disprove his leaks. No counter-evidence presented.
My question is: what do you benefit from continuing to deny and refuse to accept Snowden's whistleblowing?
I do not believe that the Snowden slides show proof of collusion by any of those companies. All the slides do are indicate that data is being collected from those companies and the program is called PRISM.
If for example, there was also a slide that indicated payments were being made in exchange for the data, then that would be an entirely different thing. That would indicate collusion and be more believable.
I am not denying or refusing to accept Snowden's whistleblowing. I think it is highly likely that PRISM exists. What I refute are the speculations that the companies listed are complicit.
I will also add that PRISM and "beam splitting" are a bit too close for coincidence.
Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, SF is where "beam splitting" was done. That info leaked. The NSA isn't stupid, I doubt they wanted to repeat that sort of discovery - which is why I think it is believable and likely that the companies listed on the slides have no idea what has been done.
[edited to fix grammar and that there was more than one slide leaked]
Don't forget that Apple is a multinational megacorp, and is user centric only when it suits them. Consider Tim Cook speaking at the conference used by the Chinese government to promote internet regulation, saying that the vision of the conference is one that Apple shares.
The phone-home is the issue, however. I've long understood the issue with certificate validity periods and the tradeoffs between short notAfter/frequent reissue and revocation check intervals.
The side effect is that it functions as telemetry, regardless of what the original intent of OCSP is or was. Additionally, even though the OCSP responses are signed, it's borderline negligent that the OCSP requests themselves aren't encrypted, allowing anyone on the network to see what apps you're launching and when.
Many things function as telemetry, even when not originally intended as so. The intelligence services that spy on everyone they can take advantage of this when and where it occurs, regardless of intent.
It's not worth putting everyone in a society under surveillance to defeat, for example, violent terrorism, and it's not worth putting everyone on a platform under the same surveillance to defeat malware. You throw out the baby with the bathwater when, in your effort to produce a secure platform, you produce a platform that is inherently insecure due to a lack of privacy.
PS: The platforms, even with all of their cryptography, aren't nearly as secure as you'd like them to be: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/10/new-report-on...
Most of the bulk surveillance, pattern-of-life IC stuff is passive, not active.
Ultimately, though, I should be able to opt out of app/binary signing (and associated certificate checking) entirely if I so desire, ideally with a preference setting, or at least with Little Snitch. It looks like I'm going to have to compromise platform security overall to disable it, or use external network filtering hardware.
It also seems like a bloom filter could be used instead.
It really points to Apple being quietly satisfied to have this massive stream of usage data. And available every ISP and snooper along the way too.
Yes, and DNS is another example of Telemetry. What is google doing with the data they get from their DNS services?
I have in the past examined other devices - A QNAP NAS for example, phones home, sending the last part of the device MAC address. It did this once a minute from when it was turned on. I stoped using it - I do not know if this has changed in recent QNAS versions.
This would give good protection against hackers, and not require uploading a signature for every binary run.
Operating a "trusted" Certificate Authority generally requires operating under some rules. For example, the "Certification Authority Browser Forum" requires operating a CRLs (now considered bad) or a live OCSP endpoint.
Let's Encrypt does this, as does every other certificate issuer.
As is being discussed, separate OCSP is bad from a privacy standpoint - if a check of OCSP is being made, it gives telemetry on if you are trying to validate a certificate. If you can see the traffic it does reveal the certificate being checked.
FWIW, there is an OCSP Stapling method of attaching "recent" OCSP responses inside of TLS requests so that a TLS client doesn't have to make a separate request to an OCSP service.
Chrome hasn't supported OCSP since 2012, and publishes CRLSets instead.
OCSP is considered bad by at least Chrome and Firefox due to leaking side channel information in exactly the way the article describes.
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/21/crlite-part-3-s...
Unfortunately, there is no obvious way to carry over this behavior to application binaries, since we're not dealing with a client-server architecture here.
Myself I still have some hopes and use QubesOS - I hope they find a business model for it.
With our laptops full of PII, corporate secrets, cryptocurrency wallet keys and so on, without proper security measures one can be taken advantage of without detection over long periods of time, and only a tiny percentage of the user base can adequately assess potential attack vectors (even the scope of possible damage is not intuitively obvious).
There may be issues with specific implementations, and the degree of trust one has to put in their device’s manufacturer could probably be lower, but without those measures a typical user would be like a 5-year old driving a Ferrari on a winding mountain road. Yes, I’d be okay if my car automatically stopped before a cliff that I couldn’t see even if I drove right into it.
Previously a hacker might have gotten access to your computer and maybe you had a keylogger, which could compromise you to a great deal. Today you have so much of your info not on your local device that you have countless additional attack vectors. Where do peoples info get leaked? In cloud services mostly.
edit: And of course your info is not safe. The programs you run get send to Apple. That is nothing else as a data leak.
For me, the cost of "protecting my personal information" is too high.
If you are not going to allow "malware" on your computer, you're giving the power to Apple to label anything they don't want you to run as "malware".
They already have a walled garden on the phones and tablets, which has greatly benefited them. They can deny anyone access to publish software and they have exhibited everything that is obviously anti-competitive.
Now, they're bringing it to laptops.
Honestly, I don't see anything happening to Apple anytime soon. They're way too well off and they have very important government officials in their pockets. The best thing that may happen will probably come from the outside... like the EU antitrust investigation that is going on. Even so, it's not going to stop, not anytime soon anyway.
No, this is _exactly_ the war we think. It is a war between Apple and malware over control of _my_ personal(!) computer.
At this point both malware and Apple leak personal data from _my_ personal computer. So from the perspective of controlling MY personal computer they are both malware and differences are neglectable if I do not even have a choice to install my own OS.
Secure boot is secure if I(!) can secure it, not Apple or any other external authority.
>For me, Apple products really are designed to protect my personal information.
Apple products designed to get _control_ of your personal information from you and thus to control you and your behavior.
Computer is no longer a "Personal Computer" with all of these developments. It's simply a termianal of some big machine where your 'personal' space isn't even really your personal.
Probably it is a good idea to recall what "Personal Computer" meant and what it should mean.
For me it is My control over My computer and My data if I wish to, and this a minimum for My privacy.
And privacy is a minimum for society respecting freedom and rights of a person.
All of this is really like R. Stallman predicted.
How much private entities get to shape this stuff is a sensible concern but this sort of absolutism is how pretty much nothing actually works. You can't drive an unsafe car on public roads. You can't build an unsafe house, even on "your" land, etc. It's not crazy to regulate what kind of computer you can put on the public network.
May be for you it's not even crazy to regulate what kind of paper person uses for own notes because who knows, may be he will bring those notes to the public one day. But for me this communist and totalitarian way of disrespect to personal rights and freedoms is crossing the red line. I've been in such situations and I saw in person the results of such disrespect therefore I think those who are willing to attack personal freedoms should learn some history and shouldn't be surprised about what people can do to protect their freedoms when words do not work.
"Your computer isn't yours" is a powerful way to express the essence of those debates. Who has the right to do what they want with a computer, the company that built it or the person who owns it?
Software signing is admittedly a relatively minor battle in that war, but it's not completely separate from the broader issues.
It is not a "flaky security feature" It is a main thing that defines who controls the personal computer.
Accessing and controlling Personal Computer with personal notes is the same as accessing and controlling personal notes written on paper.
There is no elevation here from my side, it is literally about human right for privacy and I am not the one who tried to elevate the issue to unrelated areas like cars and houses.
It's a flaky feature that people had a workaround for in minutes. Nobody lost control of their computer.
There is no elevation here from my side, it is literally about human right
My secondary school had a bigass Universal Declaration of Human Rights mounted on a wall behind plexiglass. Whenever I got detention I'd protest citing Article 9. At 12, this seemed both funny and trenchant commentary on my predicament.
The general issue of other people (I.e. Apple et al) having a lot of control over your computer, is entirely valid even if some of the points in the piece are exaggerations.
The problem is that people want it that way.
They are in fact correct that computers are scary and too complex for them to manage, and they want someone they can trust to do it for them.
Stallman may have predicted the issue, but he really didn’t do much to solve the real problems.
The presence of open software isn’t enough without a way for people to know what is trustworthy without being experts.
Until we provide that, this situation cannot change.
As Apple has demonstrated, neither has the presence of closed software. Between Apple and Microsoft, they're nearly 100% likely to get software that is not trustworthy, and cannot be made so.
This would be less worrisome if the state did not compel these organizations to provide their data to the military on demand without a warrant, but due to the vertical integration of big tech companies and US military spying, this becomes a major threat to our society and the basic exercise of civic participation.
It's hard to do things like, for example, investigative reporting against corrupt government officials if the government officials know every time you open Premiere, and where you do it, because they forced your chip/OS manufacturer to tell them.
Sure a government agency may be forcing Apple or MS to help them spy on you, just as they could have compromised whatever else you are using.
But when you download software from at least the Apple App Store, you are in fact protected from many kinds of harmful software.
Let’s not lie and pretend that isn’t a real benefit to many people, even though there are serious downsides to it.
But even if you were right about the equivalence - what’s the point in the handwringing?
There is no way out unless we build our way out.
Shaking your fist at the man just isn’t going to do anything.
The reason there is no alternative is that we haven’t solved the problems yet. People are in fact trying.
Nothing you can say about Microsoft or Apple will make an alternative appear.
That’s a nasty communication you chose to receive by installing ad supported software.
It has nothing to do with security or really even computers.
A claim that "buying Apple makes you safer" makes one less safe, due to perception of extra safety.
Is this an argument for forced autonomous cars or stopping selling of knives because they are scary and you can cut yourself while cooking?
I vehemently oppose government regulation of software distribution, precisely because otherwise we won’t be able to develop a true alternative.
I don’t want people to be prevented from using dangerous tools such as sharp knives, or manual vehicles.
But neither do I want them to be forced to take risks they don’t want to take.
Stopping selling of knives: Yes, once we have a safer way of cutting things. Though the real problem is probably people cutting each other on purpose, rather than themselves by accident.
Selt belt wearing is rarely enforced anywhere (especially in Europe, in Italy nobody wears one even though it is illegal).
As for autonomous cars. If they ever work, one of the first mods people will do is to add a steering wheel.
> Stopping selling of knives: Yes, once we have a safer way of cutting things.
Knives are a safe way of cutting things. Billions of people use them everyday without issue.
> Though the real problem is probably people cutting each other on purpose, rather than themselves by accident.
How are you going to stop people from making knives? Humans have been making them for several 1000s of years, IIRC Chimps can make them now. In prisons they literally make shives out of toilet paper.
In the UK carrying knives is banned and their sale is heavily restricted. However in our capital city we still have a lot of knife violence. Guns are also heavily restricted but people still have those illegally and people do get shot. My uncle is a convicted bank robber, he had plenty of guns.
You are solving the wrong problem. You must solve the problem of why people are being violent to one another. That will actually make people safer.
Maybe where you live. Everybody wears one here.
> Knives are a safe way of cutting things. Billions of people use them everyday without issue.
You probably missed the part where I said we would only outlaw knives if we had a safer way of cutting things (reliably).
Enforcement and compliance are two different things. I was saying that it cannot be enforced. Not that people won't comply.
> You probably missed the part where I said we would only outlaw knives if we had a safer way of cutting things (reliably)
You seemed to misunderstand. The way we have is perfectly safe as it is. Billions of people use them everyday without issue. There is neither the incentive or need to.
You cannot enforce the ban of knives as they are soooo trivial to make (you can make a knife by hitting a large stone against a piece of flint). Even in a very locked down environment such as a prison inmates still manage to acquire them or produce them.
Even if in your fantasy world you did outlaw them and was successful. People would hit each other with Baseball bats, Umbrellas, Pieces of wood, Bricks, lumps of metal.
You must solve the problem of why people are being violent not what they are using to be violent.
That's a good list of items less deadly than a knife.
It is obvious that you are either idiotic or disingenuous. Judging by the user name, I would guess the second. Have a nice day.
> For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor.
This may have been true back in the early 2000s when people first had good broadband. However all the major operating systems have pretty decent security out of the box mainly due to the embarassment of events like MS Blaster Worm.
> The general issue of other people (I.e. Apple et al) having a lot of control over your computer, is entirely valid even if some of the points in the piece are exaggerations.
The problem is that if you buy a general purpose computing device. You should be able to run whatever you like on it.
They should just have a button somewhere in whatever the equivalent of the BIOS on these machines is that says "I am an adult and I accept the risks of turning off these protections" and then let you install Temple OS if you so choose to.
This is something that needs to be enforced by legal means IMO, something similar to right to repair.
> The problem is that people want it that way.
I don't know about that. They frequently get irritated by it and are just resigned to it IME.
However the popularity of single board computers such as the Raspberry Pi, People building their own gaming rigs and people tinkering with gadgets goes someway in refuting this notion. There will be of course many people that just won't care and will use "iDevice" and that is fine, however there is a large spectrum between "I only run stuff from the app store" to "I run custom Arch Install with optimised kernel with tk kernel patches".
> The presence of open software isn’t enough without a way for people to know what is trustworthy without being experts.
I agree. This is a failing of the open source community. I've actually written a draft manifesto called "better than freedom". This may actually push me to at least have it critiqued by my friends.
> Until we provide that, this situation cannot change.
Something has to change. We are sliding back into the 1980s where all the computer hardware was incomptable with one another.
> You should be able to run whatever you like on it.
You are contradicting yourself. People are explicitly choosing iphone, a walled garden. Then you say that that's a wrong choice because you believe it's a general purpose computing device and should work differently.
If people buy it then, well, they are fine with it.
If you read the rest of my comment I specifically mentioned some sort of mechanism for turning off the walled garden protections. I would imagine it would work something like secure boot. I have a motherboard that lets me turn off that machanism if wanted to via the BIOS software.
If the only way for it to happen is through lobbying politicians and requiring it by law (not a solution I would prefer) so be it.
Also it is quiite clearly a general computing device as it has all the characteristics of one. It isn't a matter of belief.
Well you are free to provide a platform that is as convenient as ios and as free as linux.
In practice that's not easy to say modestly since convenience require quite an investment in design and developement which free platforms tend to lack.
So in reality it's either a well monetized platform (which is either a walled garden or just sells your data), or free platform which is far behind in terms of convenience and support.
> Also it is quiite clearly a general computing device as it has all the characteristics of one. It isn't a matter of belief.
No, it's exactly your belief. Apple doesn't advertise it to you that way, they doesn't say you'll be able to run whatever you'd like on it, so I dunno where did you get this misconception that they should provide you such an ability.
Respectfully you obviously don't understand what I wrote.
I was quite clearly talking about the ability to run an alternative OS on the platform. Not whether there Lineage OS or similar is as good as iOS.
You can install whatever operating system you want on a Laptop or a PC. You can already run other ROM images on Android (though some phones you have to root the device which is not okay.
It isn't about an OS already being there. It being able to run whatever OS might be available.
> No, it's exactly your belief. Apple doesn't advertise it to you that way, they doesn't say you'll be able to run whatever you'd like on it, so I dunno where did you get this misconception that they should provide you such an ability.
There is no misconception on my part. If you look up what makes a general purpose computer, that includes things such as PC, laptops, servers and smartphones. The iPhone has all the properties that make it one.
So whether you like it or not, it fits all the criteria. It doesn't matter what Apple market it as or whether they artifically lock it down. That doesn't fundamentally make it a different thing.
I got it, and explained how it will hurt monetization of their product. Android is a different story with different (I dare say way more scummy) strategies of monetization.
The point is you can't have a convenient platform which doesn't produce revenue allowing to make it convenient and rewarding the investment.
As to whether it would hurt monitisation. I don't think it will and even if it did I don't care they have more money than most countries do. If they must be required to by legal means so be it.
Also they already kinda allow some of this when you enable developer mode via a Mac with the appropriate iOS developer account. So there is no reason why they cannot do this tomorrow without the paywall.
> So there is no reason why they cannot do this tomorrow without the paywall
Sure you don't when you are dismissing economics of software development so vigorously. Try to look at things from the perspective of economic incentives, not pure technical standpoint. You'll understand why free platforms are way less convenient, and closed platforms are as they are.
I don't think people have much choice these days. If you want a smartphone then you will either get something from Apple or from Android people. There are other choices but are they mainstream? In my local shops I can't see anything else. Android or Apple.
That's why I'm buying PinePhone and going to waste lots of my life to make it fit my needs, but I hope once time is spent I will be happier human being ;)
Well, choice is about compromise. You have to choose between freedom and convenience, but you can choose. I'm saying that as a person who used 4 linux phones as daily drivers for last 10 years (n900, n9, jolla, xperia with sailfish).
> There are other choices but are they mainstream
Well there are. Maybe they are not mainstream because people value convenience over freedom, which is unfortunate to me, but who am I to dictate them my values.
At least there are always some linux phones to choose from, and hopefully fabless/new open platforms would even increase the amount of such. I mean, 10 years ago it was nokia or nothing, today there are pinephone, fairphone, librem
There are many open source products that have had huge investments without monetization.
Like what?
They could literally put in a button to let you install what you like. In fact they already did this in the past.
No, it's not at all the same sort of logic. We are talking about technology here, not overall life experience. Everyone starts out life on the same footing, with zero experience, and has the innate potential to learn how to live it. But computers are a very specific, highly specialized machinery that the vast parts of the population will never be able to directly understand or fix. I can drive a car but I don't know the first thing about fixing it.
You could claim that no one should own technology if they don't understand it intimately, but that is a different kind of logic and argument. It's silly to conflate the two.
> Everyone starts out life on the same footing, with zero experience, and has the innate potential to learn how to live it. But computers are a very specific, highly specialized machinery that the vast parts of the population will never be able to directly understand or fix.
I started off with zero experience and learned more over time to throw your own words back at you.
I learned how to program on a computer when I was 10 years old (which was 28 years ago now) after my Grandfather (who was born in the 1920s) learned how to operate his own computer at home. We had manuals and trial and error and the library. It was much more difficult to learn back then because there was no internet, no youtube and almost nobody had a computer. Computers back then were a lot more difficult to use as well. So don't give me this nonsense about it being so opaque it is impossible for an ordinary person.
Also most people will know a friend or relative that is handy with a PC or you could go to a local specialist for help. A large multi-billion company "looking out for the plebs" isn't required.
Apple has been quite good it seems as selling this narrative.
> I can drive a car but I don't know the first thing about fixing it.
Plenty of people used to be able to work on their own cars in the past (and still do today). Most of them would be considered "laymen". Plenty of people fix their own phones and computers, or go to a repair shop where people have taught themselves to repair electronics and turned it into a business. Just because you choose to be ignorant (which is absolutely fine) doesn't mean other people aren't able or willing to.
Do you think that all people are born with the innate ability to master computers, programming, and other technical tasks?
Just as not all people are born with innate ability to write a good novel, paint a masterpiece, write a symphony, or lead a nation, I'd say no.
But all people are born with the ability to live their own life and learn how best to do it in the direction that seems natural for themselves.
You are confusing the spirit of this discourse.
Can you point out where he made such a claim? Because I don't see it.
>But computers are a very specific, highly specialized machinery that the vast parts of the population will never be able to directly understand or fix.
Computers are all that only in the vaguest of sense. They're actually not specialised at all. They're actually extremely general purpose. But whether that's the case at all there's a lot items, equipment and tools that are very specialised that most people don't understand but if they were made in act in any way similar to this because someone somehow managed to use them in a retarded way it would surely raise some eyebrows.
Company incentives are trash and I trust them A LOT lot less to not make stuff designed to fail, to lock in customers, to snoop data, etc, etc than I trust myself to not do stupid shit when i want an exception to some safety feature or the like.
>I can drive a car but I don't know the first thing about fixing it.
And would you buy a car with the hood welded shut? With the tires needing some kind of manufacturers signature to not be locked? One that locks up if you try to use some 3rd party seatcovers? No.
And yeah there's some type of modifications to them and actions that we generally try to prevent...but that's because we're talking about a highspeed deathmobile to surrounding drivers/pedestrians if you start putting spikes on it or fuck up your breaks. That however is not the case for a pc, phone, printer or what have you.
Please see again the phrasing I used. Specifically, the clause using the word “could“.
I am not making any argument that can be construed as this. You are misreading me if you think I am. I agree that people should be allowed to make their own choices which is why I strongly oppose government regulation of software distribution. It’s also why I support people’s right to choose platforms like iOS.
“Something has to change. We are sliding back into the 1980s where all the computer hardware was incompatible with one another.”
I’m not sure freedom and compatibility always go hand in hand, but I agree that something has to change.
As to the tinkerers and people building their own rigs - the idea that there is a large spectrum. I potentially agree.
Serving those people well is a hugely untapped potential. I used to believe that Apple would see this, but I no longer do. I suspect that Jobs would have done.
I would like to think the open source community and commercial ecosystem outside of Apple and Microsoft can seize the opportunity.
We won’t if we spend our time feeling victimized by corporations doing what corporations do.
Fair enough. I've read some of your other replies on here and I got the wrong end of the stick.
As for the rest of your comment here. I agree.
No, the real story here is that Corporations in the USA, and other Global North countries, have both 1) benefited from state/taxpayer-funded subsidies, grants, and research, and 2) are now locking up and monopolizing these discoveries using the international TRIPS system, 'claiming' Patents and Copyrights, 'kicking away the ladder':
"How did the rich countries really become rich? In this provocative study, Ha-Joon Chang examines the great pressure on developing countries from the developed world to adopt certain 'good policies' and 'good institutions', seen today as necessary for economic development. Adopting a historical approach, Dr Chang finds that the economic evolution of now-developed countries differed dramatically from the procedures that they now recommend to poorer nations. His conclusions are compelling and disturbing: that developed countries are attempting to 'kick away the ladder' with which they have climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing counties from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves have used."
+
“Rich countries have ‘kicked away the ladder’ by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past.” [1]
Professor Yash Tandon adds:
“During the 1980s and 1990s I worked in many countries in eastern and southern Africa, and then for four years at the South Centre—2005–09. I can say from my experience that the industrialised countries of the North have been trying systematically to block all efforts by the countries of the South to industrialise. Their mega-corporations have tried—and, alas, succeeded—in privatising knowledge, and using it to promote corporate profits over the lives of people."
[...]
“It is the seeds and pharmaceutical companies of the West that have pirated the knowledge of seeds and medicinal products from the South. But whereas in the South this knowledge was shared as a public asset, the Western companies, having learnt from the South, proceeded to claim it as their private property. They are guilty—morally guilty—for the avoidable deaths of millions of people in the South who cannot afford their ‘patented’ medicines against, for example, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other killer diseases. It is a sordid story. But it is not all doom and gloom. Those who control the system (the global corporations and the international organisations that the West controls) do not get their own way entirely. Wars do not always end in the victory of the militarily or ‘intellectually’ powerful.” [2]
All of this then comes together through Tech's Great-Man theory, that has us idolizing those monopolizers:
"In the movie Steve Jobs, a character asks, “So how come 10 times in a day I read ‘Steve Jobs is a genius?’” The great man reputation that envelops Jobs is just part of a larger mythology of the role that Silicon Valley, and indeed the entire U.S. private sector, has played in technology innovation. We idolize tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, and credit them for most of the growth in our economy. But University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato, who has just published a new U.S. edition of her book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, makes a timely argument that it is the government, not venture capitalists and tech visionaries, that have been heroic.
“Every major technological change in recent years traces most of its funding back to the state,” says Mazzucato. Even “early stage” private-sector VCs come in much later, after the big breakthroughs have been made. For example, she notes, “The National Institutes of Health have spent almost a trillion dollars since their founding on the research that created both the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors–with venture capitalists only entering biotech once the red carpet was laid down in the 1980s. We pretend that the government was at best just in the background creating the basic conditions (skills, infrastructure, basic science). But the truth is that the involvement required massive risk taking along the entire innovation chain: basic research, applied research and early stage financing of companies themselves.” The Silicon Valley VC model, which has typically dictated that financiers exit within 5 years or so, simply isn’t patient enough to create game changing innovation." [3]
[1] https://anthempress.com/kicking-away-the-ladder-pb
[2] https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/trade-war-yash-tandon-2nd-ed...
I remember very well the times where when you’d connect a fresh Windows XP SP2 to the internet without a router or firewall it immediately showed malicious popups and eventually a BSOD.
"The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better." -- George Orwell, 1984
I own a company which manufactures and sells showerheads. Since "most" people are prone to a fall while taking a shower, my company also mandatorily installs a camera alongside, so that we can monitor for accidents, given our deep concern for our customers.
"Some" customers have raised concerns about their privacy, but this is for the greater good. My company is very ethical in its practices, and really values each customer's privacy (pinky promise).
The footage of you and your loved ones showering is completely safe with us, although you can choose not to be recorded while showering by not purchasing our products.
Oh by the way, our showerheads are sleeker and more convenient than anything else in the market.
Been using Fedora for a few months now and I haven't had a sleepless night yet. Everything just works.
As a counter-example, I recently installed Manjaro (Arch-based) over Pop OS because Pop was slow and buggy on my relatively high-end system.
Aggregate data can at least give a sense of how likely a given distro is to provide a smooth experience:
Most of the components inside my PC are over 10 years old. I do video editing. I do music production with many VSTs open and running. And of course web browsing with a million tabs opened at once. For any of those tasks I can't see what would be the point of having a faster machine. Everything happens at once.
Also, having a modular machine lets you replace individual parts when they fail (which they almost never do anyway).
What are people doing with their computers that need so much computing power? Is it gaming?
Running and developing web apps and microservices in proprietary languages and using oh-so-great modern environments and IDEs only there to lock you into a vertical garden
(well, I use excellent DokiWiki engine as my primary knowledge base, but to make it available on the mobile phone requires setting up and securing a web-hosted machine which is too much bother for me right now)
The faster a chip is, per watt, the fewer watts it needs to draw for the same amount of performance.
I don't even miss the Apple Trackpad since I've gotten used to the Thinkpad Trackpoint which is an order of magnitude better as an input device than any trackpad, with the only caveat that it'd take you a week or two to get a hang of it.
Are they easy to repair? And is 8/16GB enough? Looking to buy something similar too.
The newer Thinkpads are not as extensible/repairable as back in the day. However, anything is a significant improvement when compared to the horrible dictatorial ecosystem of Apple.
So starting to scope out what options I have and this helps.
Lenovo has started to offer a few Thinkpad models with Fedora pre-installed afaik. I believe you can select the OS on Lenovo's website while placing an order. So you can hit the ground running with Linux.
Alternatively Dell XPS offers Ubuntu out of the box as well. But I prefer Thinkpads since XPS has only USB-C ports like the Macbook, requiring you to carry a dongle around.
What we are headed for is a world where a certain subset of people with the technical knowledge have computing freedom, and that vast majority giving up all kinds of rights and data for convienience. A techno-caste system underneath the neo-feudal system that is incoming.
Even that is optimistic.
I call BS on Apple having the fastest machine, even at current moment, not to mention in the future. I can make a gaming rig with latest Ryzen CPU that will run whatever I want and be both faster and cheaper than Apple's expensive crap.
Apple's mobile chips have been consistently the best in the business. When the A14 was released, the second fastest mobile chip you can buy became... the A13.
Is this unsurmountable? Obviously not, it's excellent engineering, not a pact with the Devil. But you can't just hand-wave it away either, Apple's silicon is the one to beat, and they have a head start.
Even if the rest of the PC industry never goes to ARM, Apple’s market share won’t change more than one measly percent IMO.
I have 2 laptops, bought them to my kids for this times when online school is a must. I tried to do some work, didn't like the small screen.
The only thing that makes it not a laptop is the form-factor.
It would be weird if the person you’re responding to were referring to personal efficiency—that depends on the person. They were likely referring to power efficiency.
If you find such a beast, I will buy it instantly, and I will happily ignore the fact that the MBAir will still have a better trackpad and speakers.
I am not looking to buy a "rig", but a laptop.
I'm not sure what "18 hours" means, I am inherently skeptical of any "hour" claims of battery — obviously the less you demand of your machine the less battery it will take.
Apple's way out in front here, and they know it. That's why I wrote this article: because the choice is private xor fast.
There's perhaps some good news, though: it may be possible to disable the signed system volume checks on the Apple Silicon macs, which would allow editing of the OS startup scripts/settings.
For regular desktop use it's 15 hours, which is about the same as other higher battery spec laptops.
No you can not. The M1 chip has the fastest single-core performance of any consumer chip available today, beating every chip in AMD’s brand-new Zen 3 lineup. You can get faster multi-core performance (5950X) but definitely not foe the same price as Apple’s new computers - not to mention the massive power draw and much worse thermals in comparison.
A key fact about extortion is that the person being coerced is often not the person surveilled. It may be, instead, a judge, or a prosecutor, a purchasing agent, an admissions director, a night watchman. Each has parents, children, spouses, bosses, friends they would not want to suffer. The person surveilled need not even know they were used; the coercion is often more effective when they don't.
For each time you have heard of a defendant who pled guilty to a false charge, a judge who ruled in obvious contradiction to settled law, a legislator who voted against contituents' interests or resigned for "personal reasons", a manager who embezzled, or a contract awarded to the weaker proposal, consider whether it really was just on a whim.
This is the world of pervasive surveillance we are plunging into. This is the world that only consistent encryption and anonymity can have any chance of protecting against. But it is your family and friends who need the encryption and anonymity, not just you.
???
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/12/21563092/apple-mac-apps-...
Apple really doesn't need to do this, and it subverts their own privacy policies and features, including their commitment to on-device processing:
First it sneaked Windows 8 and 10 updates onto people's computers, then used every dark pattern imaginable to get them to consent to tracking, then slowly included ads in their operating system.
For the last 2-3 years, I thought "at least Apple isn't doing that", but that is changing.
I've been meaning to do this for some time anyway, due to the pervasive spyware that's embedded in most iOS apps, which Apple explicitly permits in the App Store. One travel router device should serve me for phone+tablet+laptop. I'll probably have it just do LTE+WireGuard back to a server I run, and then do all of the filtering/monitoring on the VPN server.
It sucks that it's come to this. Hopefully Apple can find their way back. I have a machine running KDE Plasma, which is worlds better than it was in years past, but still has enough rough edges compared to macOS's mirror sheen that it's annoying to use. I'm keeping my intel rMBP 16" I just got as it's likely the last machine of this quality level that will be able to run such a system.
It's not going to happen. Apple talks up privacy and security but the truth is they don't care about those things. What they care about is having a locked-down platform because locked-down platforms make Apple $hitloads more money than open general-purpose computers.
Let's take another example: Remember back before 9/11 and you didn't have to show an ID when you boarded a plane? The airlines hated that because it meant people could resell tickets when they changed their plans, and there was no way for the airlines to get a cut of that money. After 9/11, the Feds made the airlines ask for ID, which the airlines absolutely loved because it destroyed the secondary market for unused tickets. Of course they didn't frame it this way--the airlines said "they were happy to help enforce additional security measures"--even though you and I both know that asking for ID before boarding a plane is just another aspect of security theater.
Apple is doing the same thing. Locked-down platforms they justify with security theater are making Apple a lot of money. They have absolutely no incentive to change anything.
I'm allowed to hope, I've been using macs continuously since I was 4 years old, over 30 years.
I'll miss it.
EDIT: It's possible that via bputil(1) run from the Recovery partition that the signed system volume checks might be disabled in M1 macOS 11. This means I could remove the plists for certain intrusive/telemetry system services and still boot. I've updated the post, and will write more about it once I have the equipment in hand.
But I'm about done. Apple has turned into an entity I no longer recognize. They have become--to use Google's word--"evil".
It's bad enough that they can't seem to fix long-standing and new bugs in their operating systems.
It's bad enough that every version of the operating system deprecates or eliminates useful features in favor of shiny useless ones.
It's bad enough that they don't care about developers any more, and cannot be bothered to create sane developer tools or documentation.
It's bad enough that they don't do backward compatibility any more and you are pretty much forced into a newer -- and in most respects worse -- version of MacOS at least once a year, or else you don't get security updates any more.
It's bad enough that the IOS upgrade treadmill is an even worse situation, where if you have an iPhone, you must keep upgrading it constantly, cannot downgrade, and will have to buy new hardware just to stay on the treadmill.
But what I cannot abide is Apple's increasing lockdown of the platform. It's now to the point that they no longer sell general-purpose personal computers. As your article points out, it's not even yours any more and it cannot be made yours.
Apple just sucks now. And I get to say that because I've been their biggest cheerleader for 36 goddamn years.
Source?
iOS has always been locked down.
MacOS now won't run unsigned software. Mac Pros will brick if you replace the SSD with another genuine SSD.
Safety net on android makes it harder to use root. There is an API to block screenshots. Security changes in Android 11 break termux and all other bash apps.
Windows tried RT and the S version but it doesn't seem to be replacing the regular one yet.
I have a MBP and:
$ gcc -O3 hello.c && ./a.out
hello world
For comparison I would say Linux is like bootstrap that you can customize to make it look the way you want. iOS is like a paid theme you have bought over Themeforest with near to zero flexibility.
If you want a predefined good looking desktop, you can look at Manjaro ( that I am currently using and am pretty happy , my decent 16gb RAM with SSD system boots faster than my Macbook Pro 2019 and opens applications faster on cold boot as compared to Mac )
I have a ThinkPad T470s running Arch Linux (I also tried Fedora and Ubuntu and saw these there too):
- Desktop performance is too poor to run at 4K, even though it works fine in Windows. I'm not talking playing games (they actually work well), just having a desktop with a browser and editor running at 4K. Ive tried Gnome, XFCE and Plasma on Wayland and X11 and they are all the same. The desktop feels slower, but strangely running tests (backend TypeScript and Scala) is noticeably much slower.
- Multiple monitors mostly works, but it's not always plug and play. Sometimes when I plug in an external monitor it doesn't always switch to it, so I have to set it up manually. Other times it just doesn't detect the monitor so I need to reboot. See note above about testing different DEs.
- Bluetooth audio mostly works (including LDAC) but the sound system often gets confused about which output device should be used. Sometimes Bluetooth audio connects, but it still defaults to the speakers. Sometimes the volume control turns down the Bluetooth audio, but turns up the speakers. See note above about testing different DEs.
- Suspend/resume mostly works, but sometimes it has the same issues as when connecting monitors. Sometimes when I resume I get a black screen, but if I go to a virtual terminal I can restart X11 and everything works. Other times it doesn't without a reboot.
Now of course these aren't the end of the world. I've been using this system and dealing with these issues for a couple of years now. The tradeoffs vs Apple privacy and better developer tooling (native Docker is so much nicer) on Linux make it worth it for me. I also have a desktop system which works perfectly, so it seems to mainly be issues with laptops (or this laptop?). But yeah compared to macOS or Windows, Linux really lacks a lot of polish.
They do bunch of optimization and come with tested and stable drivers pre-installed.
I have used 4k with Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA GPUs on Linux (both Wayland and X11) and it is a smooth as it is on macOS. My only data point is GNOME though, because I am happy enough to never try another DE.
I fully agree with Bluetooth problems. I just gave up and use a wired headphone with mic now :(.
But yeah compared to macOS or Windows, Linux really lacks a lot of polish.
I generally agree. I am a NixOS user, though I recently tried Fedora Silverblue and I was surprised how smooth the whole experience is. They nailed the desktop. Atomic upgrades/rollbacks. Flatpaks are really a nice model for installing desktop applications. It's one of the first times I felt that it's a Linux-based system that I wouldn't worry much about recommending to non-technical users.
I think the more serious problem is the lack of applications like Microsoft Office, the Adobe Suite, the Affinity Suite, OmniGroup applications, etc. Sure, there are free replacements, but they are not as good. And even if they were as good, people generally do not like to switch away from what they know.
I'd buy Affinity again if I could use it on Linux. I'm hoping that MS does port Office as it will make me stop wondering why I pay for Office Live (365 or whatever they call it this week).
Doesn't user experience account for what you can do on your device and with how much ease?
So while Linux's UI may be worse (in an individuals opinion) the UX could be better (in an individuals opinion).
And the BSD's plus a couple others.
There are more options, the question is just are you willing to make the tradeoffs to take them.
I occasionally have to use a Macbook for work. The last thing I want when I'm trying to get work done is: an unsolicited notification that OS updates are available, with no direct option to decline to update and dismiss the notification. I'd much rather update my system by issuing "pacman -Syu" on my own terms, and I consider Linux distros to offer a superior user experience in this regard.
I'm not so sure Linux is that bad of a user experience anymore. I just switched back to Kubuntu from MacOS and Windows 10. The only app I really need that I can't run on Linux is Xcode for building iOS apps. I can't really think of one hardware feature that doesn't work better under Kubuntu than Windows or MacOS: printer works, bluetooth works way better, multiple displays work, sleep/suspend works, sound works better, USB works better (Linux will mount and connect to stuff that Windows and MacOS won't) and that's before we even talk battery. The biggest surprise is that I'm getting 4-5 hours of battery with Kubuntu out of a Dell XPS-15 (i7 w/ Radeon graphics and 4k display) when Windows would kill the rather large battery in about 35 minutes. Honestly, I've been pleasantly surprised, and I have to go do command line config stuff about as often as I did on the Mac.
For years now, cutting edge OS research has just been reimplementing unix with $new_security_feature.
So many lines of code are written but so little changes in terms of what we are supposed to expect out of our computers, and if it ever does, it's always in the direction of walled garden phone-ification of the personal computer. It feels like our CPUs and RAM have grown, but our ambition has atrophied.
What we need is a new synthesis.
A personal computing platform that picks up in 2020 from where the lisp machines left off in the 80's. Something built from scratch to be interactive, dynamic, and hackable.
It will never actually happen, for "worse is better" reasons, of course. But it's nice to dream about.
If anyone out there is working on something like this, even on a conceptual level, I would love to hear your thoughts :)
If that’s really true, how can anyone take the claim being made by one of the largest and most privacy-touting companies seriously?
If they send, in real-time, location and which program is being run unencrypted over the Internet for anyone to read, this should get a lot more traction. Especially because of it being Apple, making this a huge double standard.
I, and the vast majority of computer users, don’t want to manage every nitty-gritty detail of the security and privacy of my computer. I have better things to do. In fact, doing it fully competently is more than a full time job.
So farming this out to a third-party is a necessity, for me and many, many others.
Of course, it’s not perfect. How much can I trust the third party? How well can they prevent, fix, or remediate bugs, breaches, and other threats? How much do they even want to?
It’s not perfect, that’s for sure. We see bugs. We see potential tracking opportunities. We see difficult to work-around limitation...
But no one is offering a better solution. Not for me, that is, nor the vast majority of computer users.
If your response to this is “Look at the sheeple defending Apple!” you aren’t getting it.
Now that third-party is the computer vendor itself. Will we be able to get rid of them when they all start going down that path ?
I’m 100% apple hardware atm, my first mac was the macintosh plus with 128kb ram, and i’m an iOS professional developer. Let me tell you that moving away from apple is not going to be easy for me, but with the recent trend in government behaviors (always in the name of Good and Security) i feel that i have no choice.
Evangelists do nothing but attach a higher value to computers in an effort to convince others that they are not doing "work" and that their way is the right way.
You would be hard pressed to find a better tool to do your work than a Mac/iPad/iPhone in 2020.
They stopped being mere tools for work a long, long time ago. Computers are - apart from nowadays being ubiquitous in many everyday objects - sold as consumer appliances for end users to watch TV and store their personal photos, texts, correspondence and conversations.
And even if people stop doing that, computers are also used to do banking and contact government agencies, in many places so much so that they're _needed_ to do this, creating a massive lock-in for most people to accomplish everyday tasks.
I wonder how many people there'd be who'd really have to "do work" on computers if the above wasn't the case.
What a despondent and dystopian attitude shift from "bicycles for the mind." If this is the modern attitude of Apple users, no wonder the products have also gone to shit.
Good Linux distros have sane defaults managed by volunteers for you, so on OSes that respect your freedom you still don't have to do this.
> I have better things to do.
Oh, mr. I'm-so-important, if ignoring your privacy and the rights to use your own machine is low on your priority list, you gotta respect those people who see it as something important, as well as their demand for something better. If you are fine with Apple/MS, great, use it. But don't try to take away the rights of others to look for something that better addresses their needs, and, especially, their right to try to tell others that it could work for them too.
Of course, it's not perfect. Some customers have raised concerns about their privacy, but this is for the greater good. My company is very ethical in its practices, and really values each customer's privacy (pinky promise). This is the best solution for everyone.
The footage of you and your loved ones showering is completely safe with us, although you can choose not to be recorded while showering by not purchasing our products.
Oh by the way, our showerheads are sleeker and more convenient than anything else in the market.
People are lazy. They want their computer to show them pictures on Facebook, funny videos online and run some numbers for them. People don't want to care about stuff like privacy, because thinking gets in the way of fun and ease.
Malware has already bypassed Apple's signature mechanism and has been vetted to run by Apple as a result. The security and trust argument only works if Apple's security mechanisms work.
The vetting Apple is doing here is a solution looking for a problem. People have been installing third party applications forever, the ability to do so is a feature, not a bug. Instead of fixing the lacking antivirus software built into macOS, Apple is branding third party code as dangerous and untrustworthy.
I don't know anybody who cares about the problem this is solving, because it's a theoretical problem only tech literate people care about; the same tech literate people are also the people who run into this stuff the most. The reason that no one is offering a better solution is that there isn't a real problem that this solution is solving.
It's not laziness. I want Apple to take responsibility for privacy and security mechanisms in the OS. I want them to be the experts on this. That's part of what I'm paying them for.
> The security and trust argument only works if Apple's security mechanisms work.
If a security mechanism isn't 100% effective that doesn't mean it doesn't have substantial value. Black and white thinking isn't a useful way to evaluate security (or privacy) mechanisms.
> Apple is branding third party code as dangerous and untrustworthy
I think the design of the code signing warning is good: If someone is unsophisticated enough to be frightened by that warning, they probably should be.
For me, the real issue today is not much the disappearance of opportunities to practice and to learn: some of you noted the availability of open source, single board computers, cheap hardware, free software... and even the presence of a free JavaScript engine on all devices.
No, the real issue when you have a computer flavor (PC, phone, tablet...) in hands is that there are too many distractions. In the past, you could get bored in front of your computer and look for new challenges: trying new stuff, trying some programmation, changing files... Now, you can switch from an unlimited stock of games, to an unlimited volume of press, to an unlimited volume of video, to an unlimited volume of discussions, to an unlimited volume of films and series...
There is no place to get bored and look for new challenges. It even takes a strong will to refuse to engage with these stocks and keep programming and experimenting.
I see it everyday with my teenager: I have a hard time stopping the brainwashing of day-long poor social discussions, shopping, video and series on a small phone screen. They are consumers instead of being actors. And when the phone is off, they are just lost, unable to engage in anything.
To come back to the article, these machines are not only technical jails, they are also little mind-jails.
Opting out of this stuff is hard, and in many causes would involve changes at educational institutions and companies. IMO it's the normalization and following-by-example of adults that lead children to sacrifice their freedom and privacy. Things such as
- creating G-Suite accounts for users joining an institution
- school-provided MacBook Pros/Chromebooks
- making use of a proprietary program (when free alternative exist) mandatory in a course
- strong one here, peer pressure from the network effect of services such as iMessage, social networks, or even AirDrop
If anyone is in a position of influence for the next generation of society, please think about these points and at the very least make it possible to use FOSS alternatives and make users aware of the issues surrounding digital privacy and freedom.
2. Open Terminal
3. Run `sudo vi /etc/hosts`
4. Type `G$` (go to end of file)
5. Type `i`, left arrow, enter
6. Type `127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com`
7. Press esc then type `:x` then press enter
8. Restart
https://gist.github.com/nathanhleung/2ceeda4c743f2a1cf3d670c...
Some updated procedure.
sudo echo 127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com >> /etc/hosts
restart
sudo tee -a /etc/hosts <<< '127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com' sudo sh -c 'echo 127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com >> /etc/hosts' echo "127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com" | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts
sudo $(echo 127.0.0.1 oscp.apple.com >> /etc/hosts)
This trick has the same problem, $() has to be evaluated before sudo sees anything.
I see so many people flailing about here, and I've done it myself. So let's consider why these tricks don't work.
sudo is an ordinary command that accepts an environment, a series of words, and whatever filehandles it inherits.
Read /etc/sudoers to note that it's then munging its environment per the env_reset and env_keep directives.
man sudo notes that it's closing non-standard filehandles, by default.
And, by design, sudo doesn't want you to do clever tricks because it's trying to stop you from hacking the Internets.
Let's also look at what a shell is doing. All a shell really does is munge some environment vars, set up redirections, and ultimately fork itself and run commands.
All the redirection, command substitution, process substitution, etc. must take place either before or after the shell forks to run sudo. All the shell can provide to sudo is command line arguments, environment variables, and usually stdin.
All the shell can get from sudo is going to be a return code, and whatever it can capture from the stdout and stderr.
The 'echo foo | sudo tee -a path > /dev/null' trick works because we redirect stdin, and we delegate opening the file for append to the 'tee' command, which has now been run as the privileged user by sudo, and we ignore the stdout.
Likewise, if you want to read a privileged file, var=$(sudo cat foo) will work, because you get sudo's stdout.
You can try sudo sh -c 'arbitrary shell script', but it's not good general advice as shells are often banned as a security precaution.
Also, if you get curious and want to edit sudoers without locking yourself out by corrupting it, use 'visudo'. Note that it won't prevent you from locking yourself out by removing your own permissions! RTFM, take some notes, and experiment on a machine you have a root account on or can log in via single-user mode.
* only Apple's apps can write to it by default
* only signed third-party apps from the App Store linked to developer accounts in good standing can request permission to write to it
* you can lose your good standing by "abusing" write permission to /etc/hosts (e.g., by blocking access to Apple services)
I think it should be right arrow.
Doesn’t the success of the latter kind of undercut the former?
It is an immense effort to make proprietary hardware to work well, specially Apple hardware.
But there is already companies selling computers with linux pre-installed like system76, dell and others.
That's actually, just douchebaggish and evil if you think about it, a perfect HN comment :D
I'll upvote your comment for that :)
That being said, I'll probably just find another platform if that happens, some SBC that can run linux, heck, we're almost at the point where it's realistic to build a good-enough computer out of whatever Atmel chips you can get free samples of :)
https://linuxpreloaded.com/ has a nice list of shops that sell devices with linux preloaded. Purism, System76 and others also contribute code to the OS ecosystem which means purchasing from them helps the community at large.
You can also run Linux on your Mac and reduce e-waste. Check https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?view=search_computer&co... to see how well it is supported.
Is this substantiated somewhere? It seems like a big deal if there is any truth to it.
- backing up your iMessages: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428
- not being end to end encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
It's listed as being "encrypted in storage" and "encrypted in transit", which is a fancy way of saying "we use encrypted disks and TLS, all of which we have the keys for".
Further down on the page, they have a list of things that are end-to-end encrypted. iCloud Backups are not in that list.
It's not a secret.
On the other hand it’s true that iCloud backups are not encrypted. That’s a major problem. Worse in many ways since all your private documents, tax returns etc, are in there too.
But let’s not lie about iMessage not being end to end encrypted. It certainly is.
The problem is that the end is then backed up to an unencrypted disk.
These two things are not equivalent. In one instance Apple can be compelled to provide access. In the other instance any man in the middle can intercept.
Please - there are real problems to criticize Apple for. Let’s not muddy the water with lies.
It also backs up the device's iMessage keys, to Apple via the network, automatically, using Apple keys. That's called key escrow.
The plaintext message content backup bypasses the end-to-end encryption entirely, providing the service-in-the-middle with complete plaintext.
Apple is the only "man in the middle" for iMessage - all encrypted iMessages transit their servers (using TLS, separate from the iMessage message encryption). Apple, via software changes, has gained possession of the user's iMessage key, and the message is no longer opaque to them when relaying it, and it is not end-to-end encrypted. The party in the middle (Apple) can read all of the messages, just as if it were two different TLS sessions to each user with no encrypted payload (the way most non-e2e messaging is implemented).
Alternately, if Apple, via software changes, has caused the plaintext message content to be relayed back to Apple post-decryption, it is no longer end-to-end encrypted, as the service in the middle is no longer zero-knowledge, and has come into possession of the plaintext.
If that's not a backdoor, I don't know what is.
EDIT: (responding to comment below, throttled)
From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303
> Messages in iCloud also uses end-to-end encryption. If you have iCloud Backup turned on, your backup includes a copy of the key protecting your Messages. This ensures you can recover your Messages if you lose access to iCloud Keychain and your trusted devices. When you turn off iCloud Backup, a new key is generated on your device to protect future messages and isn't stored by Apple.
So if you have "Messages in iCloud" enabled, it backs up your iMessage encryption key (Apple already has the ciphertext from the iMessage service). If you have "Messages in iCloud" disabled, it backs up the plaintext of the messages themselves from your device.
In both cases, Apple can read all of your iMessages, either because their software on your device gave them the key (iCloud Backup=on, Messages in iCloud=on), or because their software on your device gave them the plaintext (iCloud Backup=on, Messages in iCloud=off).
Is messages in iCloud on by default? I remember being asked.
Unless you are 100% certain that everyone you iMessage with has also done this, your conversations are still not reliably private.
Even then, Apple can silently inject additional escrowed wiretap keys into the keylist for one or both participants, although this is an active attack and can be detected by monitoring changes to the keylist for a given phone number or Apple ID provided by Apple's iMessage APIs.
What I was trying to say is that Apple is trying to make it as easy as possible for people to recover their messages, because this covers most peoples' threat models, which do not include protecting data from subpoena. Signal is great technology but the fact is it doesn't sync messages between devices because they haven't figured out how to do that in a way that's fully secure. This is a feature that tons of iPhone users want and are not willing to sacrifice for higher security. What am I missing?
But is this problem a problem just at the personal level? The big problem lies at a societal level. And does it then help that a few computer hackers are informed enough to make an important (and crippling) technical decision?
Is just conjecture about something they could do, or is there some evidence that they have done this?
No way to show from proprietary crap that whatever potentially bogus encryption iMessage clients pretend to have isn't bypassed on the server side. And Apple has historically been hostile to user privacy.
Users are the weakest link on the chain. They should be pre-emptively defended. Not the trillionaire companies. They should have the burden to prove - by providing the source and reproducible builds to their paying customers.
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/apple-fighting-privacy-imessag...
So far, LibreOffice covers the majority of cases for MS Office and the average person can get by. Firefox and Chrome are covered, video players are covered, and honestly, I don't know what the average non-technical user uses besides those. Getting Adobe products to really work well would also be a huge win.
I think the Linux desktop is mostly ready, there just needs to be a need for it at this point. Hopefully this is part of that need.
That list could easily keep going.
At the end for me its about having alternatives what matters so i can pick what to trust and what to control fully, probably thats part the Freedom that software can give to a material/physical world that isn't ours anyway.
You own the hardware -- a hunk of very expensive sand. But much of the stuff on the computer, whether software or content, you don't own. The OS belongs to Apple. The apps belong to ISVs and the books, games, movies, and music you download or stream belong to the publishers of those things. So you really have no right to any more functionality in the device than is advertised and provided; and not only that, but the various rightsholders are entitled to the protection of their rights.
To the creative class, there are few evils greater than piracy, and to allow for devices that can perform arbitrary computation without restrictions that protect their interests is to give free rein to Satan himself. Such devices are to authors, as the saying goes, like the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone. And most end users don't care how locked down or DRM'd their devices are. So this is the new reality.
In fact, it is not preposterous to imagine a world in which general-purpose computers are flat out ruled illegal by a court. The only thing that saved the VCR in the Betamax case was the fact that it could be used for time-shifting which, under very limited circumstances, could be considered fair use. A court may decide that in an environment where most users' computing needs are met by locked-down devices, those who sell devices that are not locked down are committing contributory infringement.
Really, if someone wants to get off the Microsoft/Apple financial/technology/control/they-own-your-technology-and-you-cant-always-make-your-own-decisions treadmill, I think you have to decide that slightly less inconvenience (if that) is worth having greatly increased trust and local control. And Debian (or maybe Devuan) Linux (then installing something like LXDE or XFCE) isn't perfect, but it is very easy to install and manage, IMO, and they have a great track record of stability (compared to others anyway), due to how to they manage security, freedom, and overall stability (for example, what you learn is likely to last a long time w/o having to relearn, relatively few bad surprises, excellent documentation, etc. I like OpenBSD, but if I couldn't, next would probably be Debian or Devuan for more reasons I have posted on HN at other times. Further opinions/links on these at my web site...)
Edit: I installed Debian for my wife and a number of other locals. It was easy. I recommend adding the package that installs automatic updates (as root: aptitude install unattended-upgrades), and setting "umask 0007" in the default profile, and learning a little, can recommend some other things. BUT: my wife (a public school special ed teacher) doesn't know about those things and doesn't have to. People can use it without "learning linux" or having more than 5 min or general orientation, just like they used Windows XP, to do all their browsing, whatever, thousands of free apps available, and then one can grow from there, at one's own pace! :)
"Let Windows track app launches to improve Start and search results". Defaults to on.
Its not clear whether that tracking is happening locally or being sent to MS, but given the utter lack of detailed information on what exactly this setting entails, I have to assume the worst.
The remarkable thing to me is that Apple is working so hard to distinguish itself from other competitors about how much they value privacy. Tim Cook famously said, "privacy, to us, is a human right [1]." I wonder how (or even if) they'll acknowledge this one and walk it back. Hopefully more articles like this will ring even more loudly.
Sending all this stuff via plaintext is just plain scary. I've never worked at Apple, but from my experience at other big tech companies, this would never pass a rudimentary security/privacy review (which surely this had, given the scale that this feature is operating at), which leads me to believe it's intentional.
On the other hand, given how badly it crippled people's computers, perhaps it was just really poorly engineered. I think Apple's response (or lack thereof) could be really significant. I don't own any Apple hardware, but am still keen to follow this story.
1. https://medium.com/@profgalloway/no-mercy-no-malice-apples-c...
* I can’t work because a 3rd party we use for code hosting / dep management is down * I can’t work because my laptop literally can’t run any programs due to a poor security program installed and required by the laptop manufacturer
I'm a Linux guy, but I certainly don't feel like I "own" my computer, what with my CPU and other hardware components being a black box.
This is why debate over cryptographic software is likewise moot, seeing as those algorithms are run on opaque hardware manufactured by major corporations.
Just "how" hard is it to break into a computer, sure the hard disk may be encrypted. How strong is the encryption? When Truecrypt when dark, that was a a sad day in the community.
But this just goes to show the sheer scale of Apple, and how much reach they have, that, even they, with all of their resources, talent, intelligence could not have foreseen their systems breaking up like this, over hash checking and providing a OSX update.
It really makes the whole scale of iphones, ipads and other apple devices out there really, scary.
It also highlights what you/I don't know about apple and the hardware I run.
Scary times in the world of tech, each advance we make, it seems ten steps backwards. All this discussion about human rights, but no discussion about keeping, securing and ensuring privacy.
Makes me wonder if it's all a distraction.
1. What do we do for family members embedded in the Apple, Google, Microsoft ecosystems? 2. How do we help move our companies and non-tech colleagues off of Windows and the Microsoft cloud behemoth?
People will try to spin that as "insecure" or worse, but how is a system with no open ports and zero unsolicited outbound network activity any more insecure than the invasively user-hostile spyware-ridden software today? It's because they are trying to "protect" users from themselves, which so conveniently means taking control away from them.
Many will argue they don't need or want that control --- but that also has consequences for those who do, as the minority slowly gets squeezed out; and when users realise how much they can't do anymore because of these restrictions, it will already be too late. That classic Franklin quote has gained a new meaning in these times.
Same here, but TBH, I am also starting to worry for large linux distros (eg ubuntu).
And there's of course the black box hardware it runs on.
However good luck getting decent Linux hardware support for any Mac >= 2016 and there is very little (probably zero...) chance of anything other than OSX running on an M1
I would still recommend getting comfortable enough with at least one or two other distro's that you can jump ship to if necessary.
My fingers are crossed. We'll know soon.
Also keep in mind Apple's M1 looks pretty awesome against Intel, even the i9. Not so much against the AMD Zen3. One of their biggest bragging points was single thread performance, which Zen 3 is rather close on.
It's just the nature of things, don't worry, healthy competition for the M1 is already in the pipeline.
In a world where Snap is ubiquitous, Canonical is in charge of software running on your devices, not you.
When you choose a distro, you choose that distro's install-and-update policy. If you prefer a different policy, choose a different distro.
I understand Linux Mint and Pop!_OS are like Ubuntu but without Snap, so they may be what you want. Personally I use Silverblue.
I cannot believe the incredible the feats of mental gymnastics that some people will perform in order to ensure that evil corporations stay in control.
How can someone who knows so much about illicit data collection still be using macOS instead of Linux for example? I wouldn't be surprised if the author also owns Apple (AAPL) shares by now.
People these days will support evil while claiming that they're merely hedging against it...
Be careful because you might tear a few neurons if you keep twisting your brain like that.
Sure some Apple like company could make a fork of RISC-v and then lock down the environment, spy on a user's network traffic, what binaries they run, etc.
In fact, Si-Five have implemented their own from scratch [1], because there was no existing RISC-V blessed way of doing these things. And their implementation is open, but nothing prevents anyone else from implementing a closed, fused implementation. Or taking the Si-Five implementation and using it to prohibit any modifications by end-users, like vendors already do with U-Boot. [2]
I already have in my hands a RISC-V microcontroller that can be locked down by the firmware developers to prohibit me from reading it out or modifying it [3].
And finally - even running your code on a RISC-V core is not enough to actually make a platform usable. You need documentation for every single peripheral around the core (and/or core complex). And even when you have that, implementation is still a lot of work. See: how much effort it was to do a decent Linux port onto the Tegra X1 on the Nintendo Switch, which is extremely thoroughly and publicly documented (in comparison to other platforms in this class, at least). And the only blocker there was secure/fused boot. Which again, RISC-V will not prevent.
[1] - https://riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/12.10-14.20-SiF...
[2] - https://www.denx.de/wiki/pub/U-Boot/MiniSummitELCE2013/U-Boo...
[3] - http://www.gd32mcu.com/data/documents/shujushouce/GD32VF103_... ; C-f security
Linux is still yours of course, but the if I value my labor at $100/hour (which is low) then a Linux machine will cost me in excess of $500/month to operate since I will probably spend at least 5 hours dinking around with little edge cases, driver issues, etc. That's really expensive compared to a Mac or a good Windows laptop when you average it out.
Oh, well. Apple is one of the worst lock-in minded companies with draconian policies. I'm surprised anyone expects anything else from them.
If you worry about having a computer that's yours, macOS should be the last thing to consider running on it. Starting with Linux could help.
>@patrickwardle lets us know that trustd, the daemon responsible for these requests, is in the new ContentFilterExclusionList in macOS 11, which means it can’t be blocked by any user-controlled firewall or VPN.
How does that work? I mean the not blocked by ANY user-controlled firewall or VPN? - is the phrase "ANY user-controlled" just modifying firewall or also VPN?
It's rubbish decisions like this (and app telemetry like the OCSP borking), the similar (ad driven) madness on android and the extreme telemetry on Windows, that makes Linux so important. It's the only platform which doesn't actively seek to control how you use your own computer.
As they roll over to their own silicon, it is going to evolve from being a closed system to being a really really closed system.
Twenty three years ago, Apple briefly flirted with a completely different future with the PowerPC/CHRP architecture. Briefly. At that time, I did not see them heading off in the direction that they have.
Wake up, people. Free software is the last line of defense we have left before technological tools are completely taken away from us, and we all have to live our digital lives at the behest of Giant Megacorps.
Is that a work around? Maybe there is a simple device that could route a mac’s own ethernet connection back to itself through USB and then you can set up a filter that exports through the ethernet.
If someone could make such an easy to attach/setup device, it might a good business opportunity.
Hang on, this only happens on first run of the binary, right? It caches the hash afterwards? This statement is incorrect unless Apple are sending logs to the server (i.e. of every cache hit). Can somebody confirm?
Discussions here seem to have had several thousand comments without obtaining this basic info. It would be good to know, I would think?
If what the author says is true, I cannot see how anyone can take Apple's claims of "privacy as a human right" seriously. Purchasers have no right to privacy that can be asserted against Apple, who apparently needs to know how, when and where each customer is using the computer he/she bought. The company should be held to task for making such claims.
I still have an old Mac G4 with OS9. It is not connected to the internet. Safe to say no one at Apple cares how, when or where I am using it, and that's how it should be. It is astonishing how overzealous this company has gotten. As Nancy Reagan once said, "Just say No."
I have automatic updates enabled because I trust the vendor who makes my distro to act broadly in my interests. If I discover they've done something I don't like, I can switch to a different vendor and get mostly the same software from them instead.
The answer to your question is that these people trust Apple. I don't understand why.
Had a lot of trouble with Gatekeeper, signing, notarization and stapling it in the past. I'm so sick of it.
I like my Linux. It has it glitches but it seems to like me also.
It's not that the piano is not really mine it's that the sheet music is no longer really mine which is a travesty.
In this case, you could many 3rd party OS vendors supplying the host machines. Dumb terminals could get competitive.
as a many-years linux laptop user I have had this choice for many years
I'm not your huckleberry, but I'll certainly buy from you. Any margin in the hardware these days?
I will never go back and I won't take a job where I am forced to use a mac or windows computer unless I have to economically.
Maybe let's get an Apple's response first on these issues? It's not these issues and implications are small, but shouting from very beginning is not a good way to start a reasonable discussion whether this is a beta feature or something apple now will include permanently and why.
Then you can allow or deny domains or apply blocklists.
Shamless plug, my ROM DivestOS [2] is available and takes source seriously with most scripts being GPLv3 [3].
Furthermore it appears that they are mixing incompatible license HOSTS sources for their blocker. And according to their FAQ the are shipping devices with the bootloader left unlocked, just like /e/.
How awful.
And to your last point, NetGuard is available [4].
[0] https://iode.tech/en/iode-solution/ [1] https://gitlab.com/iode/ota [2] https://divestos.org/ [3] https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile [4] https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard
However on select devices you can successfully relock the bootloader with DivestOS installed, as it is properly signed [0] and enables verity on supported devices.
Other alternatives that support relocking are GrapheneOS [1], CalyxOS [2], #!OS [3], and RattlesnakeOS [4]. They too do not sell devices.
[0] https://github.com/Divested-Mobile/DivestOS-Build/blob/maste... [1] https://grapheneos.org/ [2] https://calyxos.org/ [3] https://github.com/hashbang/os [4] https://github.com/dan-v/rattlesnakeos-stack
> I’ve one on order, and I will investigate and report on this blog.
This computer is an outrage! I've rushed to give the manufacturer a lot of money!
Thus saith DMCA. The battle was lost when it become possible for arbitrary things on your computer to be declared a "copyright protection" and thus to be made off-limit to you under the harsh penalty of the law. This is what created walled gardens, locked down devices, etc. and made Apple and Google probably the biggest beneficiaries of DMCA and really made them into those large monsters.
we've been here for a very long time!!!
the only computer that is "yours" is a raptor talos II.
Why? For security, of course, and you'd get a million people defending it.
Do European politicians understand that they and their descendants are owned by another country?
Plus the fact that these things happen with such popular products increases the problem's visibility (look at the score of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25073010 and this) and is the most likely way to drive some change in the long run.
I find the idea of telling people, even technically capable ones, to "just start using Linux" laughable.
First of all because to reach the same level of popularity, usability and availability of "good" 3rd party apps would require a company to start selling "good" prebuilt hardware with a "good", polished distribution preinstalled. Once such company becomes big enough it would still have to give in to requests from authorities such as the FBI. And if this company happened to be non American there would probably be a ban on importing these devices. So unless you want people to seriously purchase "libre" laptops and install a "libre" distro without ever coming into contact with any popular cloud service providers, you're out of luck.
Second because I was an Ubuntu and Debian user and advocate for years during and a bit after college. Then I had the chance to work with a MacBook and there is absolutely no freaking way I'm going back to that mess. Just recently I had a colleague upgrade Debian and have an unusable paperweight because something broke with the bootloader or whatever. Had to flash a brand new image on a USB stick for him, on my Macbook...I buy my devices because I want to work with them, not on them.
There might be some hope with companies such as Purism (https://puri.sm) but there is really no reason to think they wouldn't end up just like Apple (or worse) should they ever start offering cloud storage services. Because the problem here is not technical, it's social and political. Even here in the EU we now have folks pushing for ending E2E encryption or placing backdoors. If that becomes reality any privacy friendly software will be outlawed. In short: this isn't a problem that individual for profit companies can or should solve. But it helps when a behemoth like Apple is involved.
EDIT: looks like the EU is simply setting up a sort of "task force" to discuss options when it comes to lawful access of supposedly encrypted data. The outcome might very well be that they conclude there is no way to support both strong encryption (which is one of the pillars of the document btw) and backdoors. Probably just to show they are doing "something".
The only viable OS at this point is Linux and even then you have to carefully select your distribution.
I suspect this has a lot to do with huge amount of EU funds going into Berlin-based initiatives to make it the new Silicon Valley. Creating a culture of antipathy, against SV. Well, obviously picking on the most obvious wrongdoing SV has as of late years; privacy.
I’m not sure the Berlin startup scene is responsible for originating much of the German skepticism around privacy issues. Germany has a long history with data protection laws, starting in the '70s.
“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.” ― Winston S. Churchill
I get that many in the hacker crowd don't like this, so the obvious solution is, don't buy those products.
But for everyone else, it's not this big downer of a problem. This is the only time this has happened to me personally, and probably to most, and the way it affected the machines has been pointed out by many to be a bug that will likely get patched. Will it still phone home to Apple? Probably. But if there is an outage, it will not likely cause problems like this in the future. And personally I don't care if my machine phones home to Apple. Life is too short and I get too many other benefits from using a mac to care about this.
People are confusing their own individual preferences for the technology they wish to own with the larger motivations of the masses.
I prefer them not to give them a chance to be evil, rather than trust them not to be.
You're right, life is too short to be upset about it, but at the same time, it's not something you should feel comfortable with.
That's a good way of putting it.
It's safe to say a sufficiently large company doesn't care about good and evil, or any other kind of moral question, pretty much by definition. They care about making money. They'll do anything legal they can for that goal, as well as continually test and push the boundaries of what is legal, and lobby for different laws at the same time.
A very small company might care about other values, but I simply don't see that happening when you get to the stage of venture capital and shareholders.
Edit: Likewise, a hungry bear isn't evil.
No, I don't think we are. We're lamenting the motivations of the masses.
Most people want something that 1) looks pretty, and 2) "just works". The advantages of something objectively better (let's assume there's a metric we can agree on) would have to be exponentially greater than the effort to make it work in order to make most people bother with the switch.
On top of that, it's a psychological defense mechanism to simply ignore bad things. Certainly if the effort to fix them is great.
And that gets us to "I don't care if I'm spied on."
Is Windows overall a better choice than mac? No, it's just different. Every Apple product I've owned has outlived products from other companies by an average of 2x, so I'm also saving a bundle in costs over the long term. (I used an iPhone for seven years before I upgraded to the iPhone 10, and my old iPhone still works perfectly but just doesn't support the latest OS).
I think the problem is that motivations widely vary and there is nothing wrong with choosing something that "just works" the vast majority of the time.