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Why _should_ you have to disable this feature? Sigh. My point: opting out should be much, much easier.
by keyle 6y ago
Why _should_ you have to disable this feature? Sigh.
My point: opting out should be much, much easier.
- bangonkeyboard 6y agoAll you need to do is to know about the linked page and have it open on another computer, disable some initial disk protections, reboot into recovery while holding down some unmentioned key combinations, disable further restrictions by typing in cryptic Terminal commands that don't match the public names of the features they affect, reboot again, type in more cryptic commands as root to modify deeply nested system files and perform filesystem voodoo, and then reboot yet again with an optional prayer. Repeat for every OS update. What could be easier?
- sjwright 6y agoThe easier it is to opt out, the more likely it is for sketchy developers to guide tech-novice users through that process, the more likely it is for malicious actors to take advantage of those who opted out.
- pfortuny 6y agoFirst boot: “Do you wish Apple to receive ... for your security?” Most users will say yes. Technical ones at least can say no. Easier than setting up bluetoooth.
- tinus_hn 6y agoActually the OS asks these questions already.
- pjmlp 6y agoWhen OS X was introduced, asking on Apple forums how to run as root was almost a daily question. Most consumers don't care about security, making it easy to disable just opens the floodgates of their systems.
- rubatuga 6y agoYeah but as a counterpoint, most Hacker News users have used Linux at one point, which lets you run commands like `rm -rf /` as root. I think it's fair to allow power users to easily disable these protections.
- ilikepi 6y agoIronically, coreutils introduced[1] a requirement to add `--no-preserve-root` to `rm -rf /` way back in 2003, so that particular example doesn't really support the counterpoint you're trying to make. EDIT: clarity [1]: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/34e3ea055721ecc72e6f636700e8ba7b58069c65 https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/34e3ea055721ec...
- eps 6y agoThat's because it was abused to troll inexperienced users. "How do I do X? Just run this as root." Sometimes slightly disguised, but more often not.
- TazeTSchnitzel 6y agoI think the bigger problem is it is not very hard as a power user to unknowingly try to delete /
- tjoff 6y agoAnd will you even be able to do it tomorrow? Fighting the OS you are running is an uphill battle that gets tiresome real quick.