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This dumbing down and locking down on phones and computers, is really worring me. I'm a power user which have been using computers as a tool which I have been i

This dumbing down and locking down on phones and computers, is really worring me. I'm a power user which have been using computers as a tool which I have been in control of (more or less), but now things are really turning. Todays phones are in control of us as we lose more or more power of them. Living in Sweden, I am almost forced to use proprietary phones and software, just to live here. Any idea for what a free software enthusiast should do now that things I've loved to use are slowly being taken away from me, and being replaced by these devices contolled by these monopolies and governments?

lucb1e 6y ago
> forced to use proprietary phones and software, just to live here That sounds doubtful. What kind of "phones" and what kind of software does the Swedish government require you to use? Note that I agree with your general point of locking people and power users out of the hardware they are supposed to be the owners of, it's just that part that kind of detracts from the point (I'm going to go ahead and assume phones and software are not actually required).
- SahAssar 6y ago
  They are talking about BankID which is a national identification system that only runs on recent proprietery systems (mostly used on iOS and Android, but IIRC also supported in another version on MacOS and Windows). There is no linux version available (there used to be a few years ago IIRC), and using U2F or other security devices via open standards is not supported. It's a pretty OK system (for most people) made much worse (for some people) by not supporting standards they should have years ago. Yubikey is a swedish company, BankID is a swedish company, they both deal with identity online, how they have not actually managed to interoperate is beyond me. Basically it's a system that caters to the masses and does a pretty good job at that but it's very bad for the non-technical (who don't have a smartphone) and the very technical (who might not use the OS'es that they support). I expect more from a system that most people use to pay their taxes. There are also any number of security questions from the above, but I'll refrain from those.
rimliu 6y ago
Were you worried about dumbing down of phones 15 years ago? In the age of the rotary phones? Are you worried about dumbing down of your washing machine? Stop looking at phones as computers. Lots of things have CPUs in them, not all are general purpose computers. Your car probably has more CPUs than you imagine. General computing is waaaay easier today than ever.

lucb1e 6y ago

> forced to use proprietary phones and software, just to live here That sounds doubtful. What kind of "phones" and what kind of software does the Swedish government require you to use? Note that I agree with your general point of locking people and power users out of the hardware they are supposed to be the owners of, it's just that part that kind of detracts from the point (I'm going to go ahead and assume phones and software are not actually required).

SahAssar 6y ago
They are talking about BankID which is a national identification system that only runs on recent proprietery systems (mostly used on iOS and Android, but IIRC also supported in another version on MacOS and Windows). There is no linux version available (there used to be a few years ago IIRC), and using U2F or other security devices via open standards is not supported. It's a pretty OK system (for most people) made much worse (for some people) by not supporting standards they should have years ago. Yubikey is a swedish company, BankID is a swedish company, they both deal with identity online, how they have not actually managed to interoperate is beyond me. Basically it's a system that caters to the masses and does a pretty good job at that but it's very bad for the non-technical (who don't have a smartphone) and the very technical (who might not use the OS'es that they support). I expect more from a system that most people use to pay their taxes. There are also any number of security questions from the above, but I'll refrain from those.

rimliu 6y ago

Were you worried about dumbing down of phones 15 years ago? In the age of the rotary phones? Are you worried about dumbing down of your washing machine? Stop looking at phones as computers. Lots of things have CPUs in them, not all are general purpose computers. Your car probably has more CPUs than you imagine. General computing is waaaay easier today than ever.