Hacker News Reader

Comment by rglullis | Hacker News Reader

Does it really matter?!

Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device?

Sorry to pick on you, but whenever I hear these sorts of questions I realize how shallow people can be, even those who are (supposedly) informed and smart enough to know better.

To be worried about the inconvenience of ~shorter battery life~ over fundamental freedoms is like failing the marshmallow test for tech people.

View on HN

1. The marshmallow test has been debunked (just like so many other flashy claims in the social sciences field, the science is questionable and the replication crisis is very real). So using it in a rant about how uninformed people are is itself a laughable irony.

2. Many of us simply do not agree that the use of an Apple computing device impinges on either our privacy or basic freedoms, or (more nuanced) that the marginal risk is so small that it’s not worth the moderately large inconvenience of shorter battery life.

1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers.

2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken. You can argue that you don't value this freedom over the convenience it brings you, but this is at best an admission of you being on (1).

> 1. It doesn't matter if the effects of the marshmallow test are true or not. The idea is just to illustrate how tech people are as weak-willed, short-term focused and plain "convenience-at-all-costs" as the general consumers.

Can you explain to me what the long term gain I could expect, exactly, by foregoing a MacOS laptop?

I have lots of computing devices; many are Linux, a couple are Windows, and I have an Apple laptop.

This follows two attempts at a Linux laptop, with crummier hardware in many ways, and many inconveniences from Linux-on-the-desktop sucking. It just works, and I have lots of battery life.

> 2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken.

Am I supposed to be a free software zealot? If my computer sucks, that also impinges on my freedom.

Yes, there may be some hypothetical ability to clone lots and lots of repos and do a lot of troubleshooting and cure one source of suck-- and then argue with upstream maintainers and kowtow until eventually my fix is accepted. When the sources of suck on Linux outnumber the sources of suck on MacOS by a reasonably high multiple, I'd rather keep the MacOS device in my bag than the other machines I have that run Linux.

If you're going to argue about some kind of collective loss by many people making the same choice as me-- that we all lose freedom, etc-- spare me. Tragedy of the commons, etc: not enough people are going to make the choice you're posing to have any significant effect.

> Can you explain to me what the long term gain I could expect, exactly, by foregoing a MacOS laptop?

You would not be contributing to an ecosystem controlled by a single entity who is increasingly abusing their dominance to extract more rent from consumers and other developers.

> You would not be contributing to an ecosystem controlled by a single entity who is increasingly abusing their dominance to extract more rent from consumers and other developers.

c.f.

> > If you're going to argue about some kind of collective loss by many people making the same choice as me-- that we all lose freedom, etc-- spare me. Tragedy of the commons, etc: not enough people are going to make the choice you're posing to have any significant effect.

So, I'd be using my market power to advocate for things that are disproportionately important to you at my own expense. That doesn't seem like "freedom".

I've been a Linux user and developer forever. For awhile, I was a kernel subsystem maintainer. I've walked the walk about making free software available and useful.

I also believe having a Mac laptop benefits me, and is worth the money, and that it is not morally corrosive. Can you please spare me the judgment that I'm "weak-willed" or stupid for my choice?

> not enough people are going to make the choice you're posing to have any significant effect.

A billion flies can not be wrong...

I am not personally affected by what you choose to use. I could give two shits about it and go on with my day.

It's you who stands to gain or lose - along with all those that make a similar choice.

> That doesn't seem like "freedom".

You are also free to stuff yourself with sugar, drugs, play russian roulette, sleep around with any willing consenting adult.

But no, being free to do X does not mean that X is morally virtuous. And you don't get to say "spare me of your judgement" and you shouldn't be expecting any sympathy if you have to face any consequences when things blow up on your face.

> A billion flies can not be wrong...

This willfully pretends not to understand the argument (I hope). My use of MacOS is not likely to make a big difference in the adoption of MacOS, and therefore ascribing all of the massive network effect of usage to me is a tad unfair.

> I am not personally affected by what you choose to use. I could give two shits about it and go on with my day.

OK. Personally, I'm doing quite fine with MacOS for my laptop. Thanks for your concern, but you don't need to call names and judge me over it. If you really don't care so much, you can spare us all the invective.

> You are also free to stuff yourself with sugar, drugs, play russian roulette

All of these things have likely and measurable short term harms to the individual doing them. Using Apple carries some risk of individual and systemic negative effects, but also some benefits (both individually and communally).

Note, this is true of all things. I just drove to school to teach some classes to kids. I could have died on the way. There are possibly even better moral choices of where I could spend my time that are given up (opportunity costs). But, I judged this is what I wanted to do and the benefits outweighed the risks.

> But no, being free to do X does not mean that X is morally virtuous.

I'm pretty sure that I've done way more to make open systems possible on the desktop than you. The fact that one thing I'm doing isn't moving the needle that direction (but isn't hurting it, either) should be OK. Otherwise, you should immediately stop all activity which isn't helping the cause of open-systems-on-desktop to avoid accusations of hypocrisy.

> you shouldn't be expecting any sympathy if you have to face any consequences when things blow up on your face.

Anyone deserves sympathy when things blow up in their face.

> My use of MacOS is not likely to make a big difference in the adoption of MacOS, and therefore ascribing all of the massive network effect of usage to me.

It's not all to you. But you are contributing to it, and you shouldn't be excusing yourself on the basis of "look at everyone else doing it".

> I'm pretty sure that I've done way more to make open systems possible on the desktop than you.

This is not a competition to see who is more virtuous or less of a sinner. It is just me arguing that using Apple products is a moral failing.

> you should immediately stop all activity which isn't helping the cause of open-systems-on-desktop to avoid accusations of hypocrisy.

I am not perfect and I am not free of sin. But at least I am willing to call a failing as such. The first step to redemption is to accept your own faults.

> But at least I am willing to call a failing as such.

I think there's room in the world for closed offerings and open offerings, and that they each have their own advantages and contributions to the world (and their own risks).

> The first step to redemption is to accept your own faults.

P'raps calling most of the world "weak-willed" (which I notice you've stealth-edited your prior comment to soften) and implying they may not be "smart" is going a bit beyond accepting your own faults and instead exposing others to harsh judgment for not valuing the things that you do.

This is not about "open offerings" and "closed offerings". It is specifically about how little it takes for people to give away their freedoms. To wit, ~battery life~.

> It is specifically about how little it takes for people to give away their freedoms.

You frame it that way -- most people don't.

I like having a MacOS computer. Lots of daily things work better. Including battery life.

Linux still exists and I still use it elsewhere. If Apple turns evil, I can move to having a Linux laptop again and just be slightly more miserable.

> If Apple turns evil

It is not a matter of "turning evil". They are already do "evil" things. It's just that you don't care because it doesn't affect you personally or the things that you consume from them.

> They are already do "evil" things.

I disagree. I think Apple has been a pretty good steward as a commercial vendor, with a few missteps. I have a pretty high degree of trust in them-- though my eyes are always open for any substantive problems emerging.

> 2. There is no argument here: if you can not control what and how your device operates, your freedom is being taken. You can argue that you don't value this freedom over the convenience it brings you, but this is at best an admission of you being on (1).

To illustrate something by exaggerating (one of) the numbers to make it crystal clear what I'm getting at:

A Mac that I don't fully control but has 12 hour battery life feels more free in practice than a fully-open platform with a 1-hour battery life. The latter leaves me less able to use the device for things I want to, and takes up more of my time hunting for wall outlets or just having a dead machine when I need one that's working. Time spent keeping my devices working does not feel like freedom, since I could have used that time for other things.

There's hypothetical freedom to do stuff I don't really care to do (audit or fiddle with my OS), then there's the actual range of liberty-of-action for stuff that I do care to do. Personally, I tend to favor the latter, strongly. The former's just a nice-to-have.

Point 2 is laughable.

>Are you really that careless with your privacy and your basic freedoms to the point that you make your choices based on the ~battery life~ of your computing device?

Not OP, but yes. In a laptop, battery life is the number one thing I'm looking for. That being said, Linux does fine when it comes to battery life in my experience.

You take a very extreme, all or nothing stance. The rest of us make trade offs.

You make trade-offs on dimensions that do not violate fundamental principles or when you are confronted with a situation when you need to choose the lesser of two evils.

"Inconvenience caused by a shorter-battery life" vs "patronizing a company that is systematically abusing its power to take away freedom from everyone" is not such a case that requires any type of trade-off to be made.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com