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Would you guys prefer we go back to the day where browsers weren't automatically updated? Oh but that's different right?

deleted 7y ago
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logicallee 7y ago
It is different, yes. Sometimes OS upgrades delete your mail: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-mail-app-catalina-wipes-deletes-email/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-mail-app-catal... So that's the world we live in. However I think you have a very good point and silent updates are an okay end-game, as they are with browsers. The stakes are very high, as they are with browsers. With browsers, here are the table stakes with auto updates: a silent update without a prompt could introduce a security issue to all users - web sites are untrusted and can send any html they want to browsers. Users browse websites they don't trust all the time. They click links willy nilly. I could put in any URL into this comment and you would click it, since you know you are on latest Chrome or Firefox and you know any zero day would be patched. You view HTML across a very hard security sandbox. So browser security issues could be instant p0wnage, and keeping everyone always updated introduces a huge baddie incentive on each latest update. There's no chance to fix it if everyone gets it. The update mechanism also needs to be harder than Fort Knox. I imagine the infrastructure for Chrome's update role outs has 10,000 human hours of security hours spent on it. The stakes are even higher with operating systems, though: people run local applications they may rely on and which could break. Here it is not so much security as functionality. The software was written against and tested against a certain version. A new version can behave differently. Software can't adapt to that, it's not live. With web sites, at least it's always being served. If it renders weird in latest chrome or firefox, there's a good chance it will get fixed. (The main reason for this would be if it wasn't compliant to begin with.) Web sites are always actively being served. If they're "dead" they're offline. Software running locally is already there. It may or may not be updated. It could be dead but people still use it. So the models are different but with very high stakes in each case.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

logicallee 7y ago

It is different, yes. Sometimes OS upgrades delete your mail: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-mail-app-catalina-wipes-deletes-email/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-mail-app-catal... So that's the world we live in. However I think you have a very good point and silent updates are an okay end-game, as they are with browsers. The stakes are very high, as they are with browsers. With browsers, here are the table stakes with auto updates: a silent update without a prompt could introduce a security issue to all users - web sites are untrusted and can send any html they want to browsers. Users browse websites they don't trust all the time. They click links willy nilly. I could put in any URL into this comment and you would click it, since you know you are on latest Chrome or Firefox and you know any zero day would be patched. You view HTML across a very hard security sandbox. So browser security issues could be instant p0wnage, and keeping everyone always updated introduces a huge baddie incentive on each latest update. There's no chance to fix it if everyone gets it. The update mechanism also needs to be harder than Fort Knox. I imagine the infrastructure for Chrome's update role outs has 10,000 human hours of security hours spent on it. The stakes are even higher with operating systems, though: people run local applications they may rely on and which could break. Here it is not so much security as functionality. The software was written against and tested against a certain version. A new version can behave differently. Software can't adapt to that, it's not live. With web sites, at least it's always being served. If it renders weird in latest chrome or firefox, there's a good chance it will get fixed. (The main reason for this would be if it wasn't compliant to begin with.) Web sites are always actively being served. If they're "dead" they're offline. Software running locally is already there. It may or may not be updated. It could be dead but people still use it. So the models are different but with very high stakes in each case.