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Comment by NateDad | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry this hadn't generated any conversation here. This is a good story about the problems the rest of the non-technical world faces. The people at my kids' school can't even install a printer.... Hell, sometimes I have trouble with that. How are muggles supposed to do it? This is why we need computer education to start in first grade. Not just "how to use a word processor" but how the computer works, how to troubleshoot, what are common idioms for UI layout, etc. I don't know that we can reduce the complexity of computers down enough for existing users, but maybe we can educate all the new users.

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I read the essay differently. Jessica doesn't have time for that. It's not a priority for her. She is too busy trying to just get by. The computer is supposed to be a tool to improve her life, but for the moderate amount of utility it provides it has betrayed her by utterly violating her privacy. It did this because it is an evolved system with accumulated cruft, has no sensible minimal defaults, is hard to use, and more or less is a platform that works to "deliver" her to advertisers rather than a platform that works in her interest first. It's not even a complaint, it's just stating the way things are, and so when bad things inevitably happen why do we blame the user? I don't totally agree (I think these things are a fact of life for anything,) but I completely understand the argument.

I fully agree. This is a really good story giving us a honest insight into the perspective of a typical user these days. Things should just work. Similar as you also expect from you car. It needs _some_ attention, but the guy at the dealer will care for you for the nifty details.

I feel, that the "PC" world has utterly failed to care for it's user and that the mobile world does here a somehow better job though it comes with many (proprietary) restrictions.

But then the NSA came and these days trusting in other seems no longer to be a good advice at all.

The price of an open computing platform is that you spend time learning to maintain it.

The price of not having to learn is that you give up control to someone else. A manufacturer. An IT department.

Can't trust manufacturers. They push things to the device that break them. Can't trust app manufacturers either: they "share" information to marketers; this breaches your privacy.

Those who can do so ought to offer "family CISO" services. Like the 'family doctor' or the 'family accountant', they should be hirable by a family to manage their information security needs.

"The price of not having to learn is that you give up control to someone else"

Some people don't see that as a 'cost', which is what many people in the tech industry don't understand at all.

And those people are ripe for exploitation. So it goes.

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