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I am no connaisseur, just a guy who cares about privacy (in general and his in particular) who also happens to own an iPhone and wants to buy a Mac. This seems
by karimdag 9y ago
I am no connaisseur, just a guy who cares about privacy (in general and his in particular) who also happens to own an iPhone and wants to buy a Mac.
This seems pretty troubling, as I as well as many I suppose, trust Apple and think that they're one of the good guys. I know it's cliché but I think this is the part where "[..] live long enough to see yourself become the villain." applies.
The more important question, imho, then is: what can we do about it ? If nothing, what should be done ?
- unstatusthequo 9y agoWhat do you do? Windows world is worse. So is Android generally. Use Linux? How do you trust that? QubesOS? Pen and paper? If you walk outside, you’re on camera. Living off grid with no phone or computer seals the deal, but not very practical. I’m all about security and privacy, but everything is on balance with practically. If a three digit govt agency wants to find you, they have so many other ways than Apple.
- nixpulvis 9y agoWhy not trust Linux? No activation, full control over all the processes. Seems like a good solution for people who "care".
- Rjevski 9y agoUser experience and usability.
- nixpulvis 9y agoSure, but that has nothing to do with the notion of trust we're talking about here.
- irq 9y agoPerhaps, but if poor UX prevents a user from using an ostensibly more secure platform, then security of said platform doesn’t enter into the consideration at all.
- nixpulvis 9y agoYes, we're all well aware. That's NOT what I'm talking about though. I'm responding to "Use Linux? How do you trust that?". Please think about things before aimlessly countering someone's question.
- boudin 9y agoThat has nothing to do with trust and is highly subjective.
- andromeduck 9y agoIt's good in theory but in practice you'd need to spend a lot of time and money doing deep audits yourself, both hardware and software. That just really isn't a worthwhile investment for the vast, vast, majority of people. At the end of the day it all still boils down to trust based on reputation, incentives and oversight. Openness is important but no panacea.
- nixpulvis 9y agoWell at least the surface area of the audit is a LOT smaller than on macOS, Windows, etc.
- andromeduck 9y agoI really doubt that's the case if you use more than a few small apps which is the case for the vast majority of users.
- nixpulvis 9y agoMust I link a running process list of my Linux laptop vs my macOS laptop?
- davewritescode 9y agoHow do you know the process list is accurate for certain? The point is, there’s potentially back doors in everything, including the C compiler that built your Linux kernel.
- nixpulvis 9y agoWe've all read reflections on trusting trust... still my point stands, it's hard to argue that Linux is not lighter than the mainstream OSes.
- userbinator 9y ago
- r00fus 9y agoIt's not that you shouldn't trust it, it's that you could from security perspective easily shoot yourself in the foot. Does anyone know of a distro that focuses on usability and privacy"? Subgraph is still in alpha...
- nixpulvis 9y agoEither trust yourself, or trust someone else. (of course it's generally impossible to avoid some amount of trust in others.)
- gsnedders 9y agoHow many distros are shipping with ASLR now? Last I knew there were still major distros that weren't. Heck, do the common DEs sandbox their search indexing processes yet, given there's been various vulnerabilities there previously? Yes, okay, you have control, but when nobody implements relatively basic defence-in-depth mitigations that have been available on Windows (especially) and macOS for over a decade it's just sad and undermines the argument that its security is better.
- karimdag 9y ago> I’m all about security and privacy, but everything is on balance with practically. If a three digit govt agency wants to find you, they have so many other ways than Apple. Can't argue with that.
- userbinator 9y agoWindows before Vista/XP is quite good in terms of privacy in the "phones home" sense --- no activation and a fresh default install will remain absolutely quiet on the network. Activation started with XP (but easily cracked), and then Microsoft began increasing the noise and phoning-home crap shortly after that. I find it ironic that one of the features removed starting with Win7 was the network activity indicator in the system tray. Of course, recent Apple hardware and software has no indicators either. The opaqueness is unsettling.
- michaelmrose 9y agoThis is a false dilemma. If you walk outside and must necessarily put up with shopkeepers rights to record their premises we don't in turn invite people to publicly accessible webcams in our bedrooms/bathrooms. I'd say you use as much privacy respecting hardware/software as is feasible given your present use case and circumstances and progressively look to improve this situation funneling your money towards people and projects that respect you and your privacy in order to encourage people to build the things you need. If you already have expensive hardware that doesn't work with open source software I don't think it terribly reasonable to suppose you throw it in the trash for example. Just buy something better next go round.