19 ms·

Taking a Stand in the War on General-Purpose Computing

278 points by Funes- 6y ago

mschuster91 6y ago
> And even so, Raspbian relies on Systemd, despite the privacy fears of many. While I do agree with Systemd bashing in general since it completely breaks with Unix design principles... this is the first time I have seen privacy as an argument?
- mrob 6y ago
  Assuming your distro hasn't fixed this antifeature, systemd sends your NTP and DNS requests to Google as a fallback if there's no other configuration or DHCP. Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23712434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23712434
  - superluserdo 6y ago
    >Assuming your distro hasn't fixed this antifeature I was under the impression that changing the default NTP servers was an expected part of bundling systemd in a distro?
- HeckFeck 6y ago
  The author may have the systemd-resolved privacy complaints in mind, where the systemd DNS daemon has Google's DNS servers hardbaked into the source code. It will fallback to Google DNS if the configured server is down. A few concerned individuals raised their worries in a ticket and were shut down for 'tinfoil hat reasoning' or something like that. It may be an extreme case, but many Linux users would rather not have any particular provider baked into core system services. Personally I'd rather know my DNS server is down or that I've misconfigured it, much more than I would have my system contact Google without my knowledge. Src: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/41c81c4a626fda0969fc09ddeb8addb7aae6e4d9/meson_options.txt#L221 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/41c81c4a626fda0969fc...
  - oytis 6y ago
    I mean. It's an open-source software. Those concerned can just use a patched version. Not even patched - this is fixed with a build flag - I'm sure security-oriented distributions have already specified the right one. As a last resort, you can always block requests to 8.8.8.8 with iptables.
    - Datagenerator 6y ago
      No need for firewall configuration, just: ip route add blackhole 8.8.8.8
    - sverhagen 6y ago
      Those concerned may be as much or more concerned about fixing this for the masses as they are about fixing it for themselves, hard to speculate on their motivations.
      - josefx 6y ago
        I would be more interested how much systemd made from selling its users tracking data to Google and if they didn't it would be interesting which idiot passed up a chance to secure a possibly sizeable budget increase by handing Google all that data for free. Mozilla got millions from making Google the default search and you can't tell me Google doesn't value the data it gathers from this, they have a tendency to kill under performing projects.
      - oytis 6y ago
        It's still not a reason to harrass a maintainer who already provided a convenient override to set it to whatever one wants. Maybe Ubuntu distro is a better place to get the "safe" configuration to the masses. It's a pretty rare phobia to be honest, and I think people who consider 8.8.8.8 a reasonable default are totally justified to. For those who don't agree there are plenty of options, that's how open source is supposed to work.
    - e2le 6y ago
      While it's possible for it to be patched out, the default behaviour of any application with similar scope to systemd should be to respect the users privacy. If every application required the user to "opt-out" of privacy infringing features, it would be a very time consuming and costly activity that only knowledgable users could do.
- giantrobot 6y ago
  Deep down in in systemd-resolved there's hard coded fallback DNS and NTP addresses. They're build-time options with defaults set to Google and CloudFlare. They only see is in catastrophic misconfigurations. They're also completely under the control of the distro which can set whatever defaults it wants. The anti-systemd brigade has translated this into "OMG LENNART SPIES ON MY DNS!!1!". There's cogent arguments to be made against systemd but the privacy angle is one of the weakest.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
  It's not the argument anyone else is going to make, but as an example... the last time I checked, ecryptfs had been rendered nonfunctional in Debian Buster because the current revision of systemd had made changes that made ecryptfs nonfunctional. Supposedly they're going to have a solution in systemd that'll be of equivalent functionality, but in the meantime, in debian, you're stuck with the systemd stack and not using software that systemd renders nonfunctional. So I had to back up, reinstall and encrypt the whole hard drive, including swap space, because that's how debian installers do it...
  - new_realist 6y ago
    And that’s all open source software. The benefits claimed by open source activists are overstated and illusory. You didn’t have control of your OSS software stack when it mattered.
- antattack 6y ago
  It's not about privacy per se, but rather giving away your personal information for free so google can make profit out of it.
- tyingq 6y ago
  They could mean the default setting of LLMNR=yes. Not sure why it's on by default.
- rgovostes 6y ago
  The author admits in the comments that they have no real basis for accusing systemd of violating privacy. > I think the problem many see with systemd is that it is a very large block of code that is hard to understand and modify. This makes it possible for unscrupulous organizations to hide things in systemd for spying on users. This also makes it more susceptible to hacking and less secure. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject to have a strong opinion about it. I just know that many Linux users strongly oppose it. In my view it's hard to take the author seriously with claims like this, and in the same paragraph praise for the Raspberry Pi as an open platform (it contains proprietary components). Edit: More egregiously, the author claims that iOS and macOS are based on Linux.
  - oytis 6y ago
    His stance on TLS is also quite... peculiar. I wonder if the author is a technical person at all.
walrus01 6y ago
This seems to have no real coherent message and confuses MacOS with Linux, which greatly reduces any credibility it might have.
deleted 6y ago
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hertzrat 6y ago
If the goal is to encourage the general public to use general purpose computers, then I suggest the community try to temp some good UX designers to take part in foss projects. I suspect they many UX people are not extremely informed about foss and it would benefit the community a lot to have a reputation for programs with great workflows
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  From the 2.0 version on, GNOME based many of their UI changes on research studies of what ordinary computer users want, chasing after the corporate desktop and tablet markets. The result was something that alienated many techies, but failed to see much mass-market adoption. I don’t think the problem is UI. I think the problem nowadays is that many people are so used to an Android phone (with Google Play Services and all apps sourced through the Play store) or iPhone that they are increasingly forgetting that ordinary computers exist at all.
  - jxy 6y ago
    THIS! It's the ecosystem. Niche phone OS is not going to dominate the market until they have a competing app store that as good as Android's or iOS's. People uses Adobe will forever bounded by whatever OS Adobe truly supports. People uses MS Office will forever bounded by whatever OS MS Office truly supports. Nobody really cares about UI. Everybody hates new UI. Once you are settled in the local comfort zone of the app that you use the most, nothing else would replace it unless that app goes out of support.
  - Funes- 6y ago
    Your argument reads like a fallacy (over-generalization): "UI/UX modifications were carried out on a single project with terrible results, so all UI/UX changes must be useless on any other project". Look at it this way (taking a decentralized network as an example): either one of I2P's two most used implementations (Java & C++) would greatly benefit from adding an informative configuration wizard to set speed limits, enabling or disabling features, help set up UPnP or manually forward ports, etcetera. Such a small addition would make wonders for adoption. UX improvements cannot be ruled out, especially not that hastily.
young_unixer 6y ago
The solution is to foster an appreciation of the values of freedom and independence in the population, not only with regards to computing, but about life in general (freedom of speech, freedom of press, economic freedom, etc). I've always admired how much the general population defends freedom of speech in the US. In the rest of the world, freedom of speech is constantly eroded with laws against "hate speech", because our cultures (latin american here) don't value freedom of spedch. If we could capture the appreciation Americans have for freedom of speech and extrapolate it to all areas of human activity, we would rest assured that our computers would keep being general-purpose.
- BEEdwards 6y ago
  Umm.. white nationalist tried to pull a coup a month ago. It's just possible that maybe, just maybe some speech isn't compatible with democracy...
  - trav4225 6y ago
    It's difficult to imagine anything more democratic than free speech.
    - BEEdwards 6y ago
      It looks good on paper and then in the real world people go "those guys that look different than you, they're the cause of all your problems and we should kill them/let us set up camps to kill them so you don't have to see it." That's what history has shown again and again. If you give free speech to people and groups who's express goal is to take away the power and speech of others they unironically will... The paradox of tolerance isn't some other world hypothetical it has been demonstrated again and again.
      - trav4225 6y ago
        This is the classic choice of liberty vs. security. Each has its pros and cons. Free speech may be abused, but that's the risk of freedom. And, in my mind at least, true freedom of speech is a necessary ingredient of authentic democracy. This is how I see it...
threevox 6y ago
> I have a mirror of cheapskatesguide.org on ZeroNet at https://127.0.0.1:43110/1CpqvBQWSzZSmnSZ58eVRA9Gjem6GdQkfw https://127.0.0.1:43110/1CpqvBQWSzZSmnSZ58eVRA9Gjem6GdQkfw Am I missing something, or is this guy trying to get people to visit his localhost?
- neilalexander 6y ago
  You’re missing something. You would need to be running the ZeroNet daemon on your own machine (presumably on the same port, if it’s not the default) for that link to work.
- sverhagen 6y ago
  That's apparently ohw ZeroNet works, from Wikipedia: > Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages.
- unicornporn 6y ago
  After ZeroNet is installed on your computer and you have it running on port 43110 you can visit his site using that link.
freeaswartz 6y ago
They have already won it is over. Op's post is 30 years too late. Please press F. "First it came for my shopping habits, and I did nothing because I didn't care. Then it came for my location data, and I did nothing because I didn't care. Then it came for my thoughts, and I did nothing because I didn't care. Then it came for my juices, and it knew exactly where I kept them."
enos_feedler 6y ago
I cant even get through a few sentences of this bullshit. They lost me on how Microsoft Apple and Google are blind followers of money
theurbandragon 6y ago
What say we bow to our overlords and hope they be benevolent?
fsflover 6y ago
Some companies fight on the side of users in this war: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881988.
cblconfederate 6y ago
This problem is real and important. My uncle who is a lawyer knew how to use dBase IV in the 80s. Nowadays young people, even university graduates, struggle to use a mouse. Scrolling is the pinnacle of competence it seems. We need people going back to buying PC. Thanks to corona, they do now. We should focus on those rich-capability apps and software
- afavour 6y ago
  > Nowadays young people, even university graduates, struggle to use a mouse I'm sorry, I laughed out loud at this. What are you talking about?!
  - spiznnx 6y ago
    I think most people use laptops over desktops as their primary computer, so some younger people may have only used touchpads over mouses. Though I don't really pay attention to people's mousing skills.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    I assume they are referring to the now omnipresent tablets and phones that younger folks have grown up with in lieu of a home computer.
- evan_ 6y ago
  Does using a mouse have something to do with general purpose computing? Does a spreadsheet program? You should ask your uncle (who's a Lawyer by the way) if he was using a mouse to work with dBase IV.
- brutusborn 6y ago
  How can you struggle to use a mouse?
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    Many people dont know right click. many people never use laptops, or rarely, they own a $1000 phone and a $200 crappy laptop. You struggle if you ve never used it before
lowbloodsugar 6y ago
This is irrelevant. The general public has no interest in "General Purpose Computing". I am a nerd, but while I have an interest in a laptop that is general purpose, I have no interest in a phone that is general purpose. I want it locked down. I also have to keep my mom online, and tend to steer her towards her iPad rather than her iMac, because there's just been less tech support (on my part) required for it. General Purpose computing and Privacy have little to do with each other. There is more malware installed on General Purpose computers than there are iPhones. Facebook tracks you on your computer just as much as your phone. However, the phone is becoming a place where they can't track you, and there's little Facebook can do about it. Contrast with Sony found installing exploitable root-kits on PCs (to stop you copying CDs IIRC).
- guidoism 6y ago
  This exactly. I read the essay and said to myself “meh”. Having a phone that I can’t mess up is actually pretty dang nice. High performance computing is definitely locked down. An M1 Mac is pretty dang nice. But for general purpose computing you don’t need those fancy graphics. I’ve been thinking of microcontrollers as the equivalent of our 1980s general purpose computers more so than the rpi. The rpi still requires a lot of software. An mcu just works. And we can create a nice little gpu for it with an fpga. Big corporations aren’t locking you out of this world. They are actually helping you get this awesome stuff for pennies as a consequence of the massive supply chain.
- AgentOrange1234 6y ago
  Absolutely. I need a good general purpose computer to program on. But for my phone and family, I 100% want to outsource security and updates to someone competent.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  > The general public has no interest in "General Purpose Computing". But they do have an interest in their own well-being, and the well-being of society. I think the author's point is that widespread access to general purpose computing is a good thing for society in general, and that it will be a bad thing if access to general purpose computing disappears. The problems I see are (painting with a large brush) are that in general: - the public doesn't realize what a gift general purpose programming languages are, how much power they have to solve problems, and how much fun they can be - the public doesn't care to give children access to these systems who might otherwise grow up learning and appreciating them - the public doesn't understand that the ability to read and write code constitutes a literacy of its own and can profoundly impact how one thinks in a positive way But these problems are close corollaries of other problems with society in general: people don't read good books like they ought, people don't learn musical instruments or other skills as often as they should, and many people are forced to work so hard to pay for basic necessities that spending any time on productive leisure (what luminaries called "improving oneself" in prior centuries) is effectively impossible.
AceJohnny2 6y ago
> Apple has gone in the direction of net appliances I agree that, with "Apple Silicon", they have left behind anything that could reasonably be traced back to the "openness" of old desktop computers. New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. As the Star Wars quote goes, "Pray I do not alter [the deal] further". Sure, some people have managed to boot Linux on the ARM cores of the M1, but it's about as useful as pitching a tent in a corner of a stadium and declaring it useable housing. There is so much on the SoC that's closed and out of reach that I can only see the effort as misguided.
- AceJohnny2 6y ago
  Unfortunately, the consumer industry trend will be to follow Apple. I see little hope for competitive open computing devices. Ever since the Nokia N900, openness has consistently lost in the market against faster, slicker, more integrated competitors. Only in those markets where computing is a fungible commodity, i.e. servers, is the flexibility of openness any benefit, and even there it loses some autonomy to black-box "management engines". While these are still the most plausible vehicle for open computing, I only see them as appealing to a niche of amateurs buying cheaper refurbished machines. Some may tout stuff like the RasPi as a viable alternative. Sure, but with the understanding that the RasPi is a CPU riding along a beefy VideoCodec/GPU, which has taken years of (ongoing) effort to implement open drivers for, and the RasPi4 still remains 2x slower than my 15 year old laptop. In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing.
  - est31 6y ago
    I don't think much is changing when it comes to gaming PCs. They have been extremely modular and I see no trend for them to change. But when it comes to anything of mobile form factors, like laptops, I agree with you. Less and less ability to change and replace parts.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      But then again the gaming PCs are full of malware -- most game launchers can be very easily called that. Not to mention that part of them have been caught to install rootkits, or the more modest ones just don't allow the game to be started if you have Process Explorer running (they claim it's for preventing game cheats -- which doesn't work anyway). So while I have a gaming PC myself, I have long ago removed anything personally sensitive from it. I can't view it as a platform for open computing by any means.
theamk 6y ago
Does this war exists in the real life? Is there any evidence that "the lords of technology and their masters" are making any moves against IPFS and general computing? Because I see the opposite. For example Sony, one of the most proprietary companies, is now releasing source code and bootloader unlocker [0]. Could you imagine this 10 years ago? [0] https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/ https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/
- fsflover 6y ago
  Ues, it’s happening. For instance, Apple is attacking general-purpose computing consciously: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG-116-JU05-20190716-SD036.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG....
  - theamk 6y ago
    I don't see anything about general computing there, am I missing something? Apple still makes macbooks, and those have documented and well supported methods to disable all protections so that user code can be loaded. If you are trying to say that iPhone should be a general-purpose computer, then I am going to ask: "why?". There are different devices for different purposes. The phone does not need to be general purpose, and back in the day my Nokia had no software customizeability at all. And if you want a phone which can run arbitrary software, there are plenty of unlockable Android headsets on the market. It is like saying "Ford is attacking fuel-efficient cars" because they are making F-150 truck.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      > I don't see anything about general computing there, am I missing something? Did you already accept as a fact that phones are not general-purpose computers? But they should be! Here is an example: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 Androids force many restrictions on the user as well, even those with unnlockable bootloader. You can never run mainline Linux on them due to proprietary drivers depending on ancient kernels, which eventually leads to non-updatable electronic garbage. You can not change the operating system unless you have ancient Linux kernel under the hood. > It is like saying "Ford is attacking fuel-efficient cars" because they are making F-150 truck. But a general-purpose phone does not prevent you from using your phone and being secure. It only adds unlimited possibilities. Using your parallel, Ford is attacking the industry by creating car+truck, 2 in 1.
antattack 6y ago
I have to sound like a fatalist but today's software resembles yesterday's malware. It does not matter if you're running a general purpose computer if you have no control over 'your' applications or even OS (Windows 10). In addition, new privacy features such as HSTS and DNS over https, ESNI, etc degrade what control you had even further stopping you from even knowing what data gets out of your network and when.
- lxgr 6y ago
  > In addition, new privacy features such as HSTS and DNS over https, ESNI, etc degrade what control you had even further stopping you from even knowing what data gets out of your network and when. Inspecting these, on a machine you control, is still 100% possible – I do it all the time. Are you proposing we should go back to plain HTTP and DNS just to make tinkering easier? I'd argue that that would come at the expense of the vast majority of users.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    How do you know what you're inspecting is actually what is contained inside the request?
    - fomine3 6y ago
      Wireshark is OSS, any problems?
      - forgotmypw17 6y ago
        That does not mean you can verify that the encrypted content contains what is shown to you and only that. Let's not pretend that it does.
        moonshinefe 6y ago
        And how do you know some nefarious hacker didn't mess with your far easier to mess with unencrypted stream?
lxgr 6y ago
I'd argue that computing has never been more accessible than it is today. A Raspberry Pi costs less than an HDMI dongle for an iPad these days and there is more free educational material available on the web than ever before. When I went to high school and started becoming interested in programming, I was using Windows XP on my general-purpose PC back home, as were all my classmates – yet only two out of more than 20 ended up going into tech. I think articles like this commonly make the mistake of romanticizing the author's personal way of getting into tech and thinking it's the only way possible for others as well.
- PaulKeeble 6y ago
  Even the Raspberry pi has a few areas of concern with propriety firmware and closed codecs. It is not a completely open hardware platform, it does run code that no eyes can see.
  - oytis 6y ago
    Go Beaglebone then. The SBC market is enormous these days.
    - abewfbaew 6y ago
      Beaglebone is even worse, with a PowerVR GPU and blobs to make the PRUs work correctly. It's pretty difficult to find a device with completely open drivers, let alone open firmwares and memory initialization.
      - new_realist 6y ago
        That's because completely open drivers have no value even to tech. enthusiasts. If they did, vendors would offer them.
      - wishysgb 6y ago
        I do believe system76 laptops are almost completely open source other than the intel microcode.
Koshkin 6y ago
> listen to music and watch movies I guess that’s what they call “computing” now... Anyway, does my using of a GPC as an HTPC count? (Still, you can take my iPad from my dead, cold hands!)
uniqueid 6y ago
This essay a great example of online culture. So many stock received ideas: the 'shadowy elites' message, the Walter Mitty 'only we few dared to take the red pill' heroism, the conflation of freedom of speech with forcing a private company to host a photo of your asshole at no charge. We even get mentions of TS Eliot (guess Pound is too edgy) and Glenn 'my editor is oppressing me' Greenwald. In short, I did not enjoy it.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Your reading of this article is dramatically different from my own. - No "shadowy elites", these are big, well-known companies driving market trends is broad daylight. - Is it controversial to suggest that only a small portion of people are worked up about digital freedom? That seems self-evident to me. - Nowhere in the article does the author suggest anyone be forced to host anything (let alone butthole photos) -- if anything, he advocates the opposite: that users be empowered to host their own sites!
  - uniqueid 6y ago
    I posted a knee-jerk reaction, but I should have written nothing. The essay didn't warrant the pique. Besides, I did enjoy the lines about sitting down to watch Star Wars.
mr-wendel 6y ago
Religion hammered into me as a kid that anything you do for good will always be partial subverted by the devil. While I don't agree with that literally, I think the general principle is 100% correct. I've worked (and around) in many parts of the Internet (and precursors): dial-up BBS's, web hosting, VPNs, etc. It is virtually guaranteed that the better you are at upholding security and privacy the more certain you will (hopefully unintentionally) facilitate some absolutely dastardly shitbaggery. The kind you can honestly loose a little bit of your soul over. I do think standing up for these kind of freedom of speech principles are important. However, the bottom line is that if the solution doesn't embody a reliable way to address the problems it enables then an external entity will attempt to do it, along with whatever extra agenda it represents. You can't solve for freedom alone.
jpochtar 6y ago
General Purpose Computing is and ought to be an app on a user friendly internet device. An important app, but one of many. The fact that the internet device is actually a special-purpose simulator running on general-purpose hardware is an implementation detail. Even most programmers want to do other activities on their devices, like check their email. This should be co-equal with programming; anything you do in your coding environment shouldn't break your ability to get email. Is general-purpose-computing-as-an-app dying? No: repl.it for kids/consumers is great, there's an explosion of nocode/locode for consumers/businesses; and free tiers of the public clouds are available if you really really want to muck with linux.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  > General Purpose Computing is and ought to be an app on a user friendly internet device. An important app, but one of many. If "a user friendly internet device" here is code for "an internet device that doesn't provide its owner full control over it" then... no, absolutely not. Having control over your own device isn't just about learning to program. Certainly that's important, but it's not the whole story. The question is: what can you do once you've learned? If your device restricts what you're allowed to do, and you're at the mercy of the platform provider, the power dynamic between the user and the platform is hugely asymmetric.
zokier 6y ago
The problem is that most people don't seem to want do any computing, general purpose or not. They want 21th century version of telephone and cable tv, computing behind the scenes is incidental and implementation detail.
abeppu 6y ago
I think I have whiplash from the transition from starting by framing big tech companies as the villains, and then proposing the way to fight back is to buy lots of general purpose computers from ... big tech companies. Sure, support the companies that produce products you think should exist in the world. But that doesn't make you some kind of warrior, it just makes you one type of discriminating consumer. Giving them money is not exactly combat. I think the "right to repair" movement is an interesting avenue, which has had some meaningful successes which obligate companies to share enough information to allow users to wrest back some control of what they actually own, and interact meaningfully with the guts. What if we pulled lots of stops to lobby for this from multiple angles, and emphasize that if a company stops providing security updates to original software, "repairing" means providing an ability to use new software which isn't abandoned?
justicezyx 6y ago
I am not sure the authors did a careful study of the computing history. Computing as a way of human activity has always been evolving in the direction that the core platform technology moves up in the abstraction stack: * We first invented the abstraction concepts with close tie to physical items. I.e., people are counting their possessions in the literal mass. Or very basic abstract concept: using ropes for numbering. As a form of computing, it can only record limited information, and perform very little computing (addition subtraction). * Then fully fledged abstract concepts in human languages, which enables human mind as the major computing platform, plus various physical aids (papers, pens, etc.) * Then there are actual machines that perform certain computation with very limited scope. Mechanical computer etc. * Till the modern era we started the electronic computing. Then we have a primary device that can take over the computing task with minimal human involvement. Even just inside this era, the progressing has a long history that does not simply reduce to "general computing". The modern day computing platform is not CPU. It's the web. With CPU you cannot do much useful thing. It's with github, linux, and etc. that one can start quickly perform computing. This platform itself does not lend CPU much credits of being more important than any other components. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_rope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_rope [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#Ancient_and_medieval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#...
spaetzleesser 6y ago
As far as end user devices go, it's a mature industry now. Once a certain level of functionality has been achieved, the devices become more polished but also more locked down. Happened to things like cars, stereos and others before. I bet full self driving cars will be completely sealed and no tinkering or self repair possible. They will be as or less repairable as an iPad. Developer machines will probably soon be viewed as specialized devices that most normal users will not even know how to use. This is mostly ok. Most end users don't want or need general computing.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > Developer machines will probably soon be viewed as specialized devices that most normal users will not even know how to use. And such machines will have to be registered with the government, just you wait.
netcan 6y ago
>Between the two opposing forces are the non-technical masses. These are the online serfs who are completely unaware and will never become aware that their freedom... I actually agree with a the jist of this article, but this kind of attitude is inexpensive, and part of why this point of view has lost. The open society ideals of the early web were really important. We failed miserably at framing them adequately for public consumption. I don't think it's because "MOPs too stupid." I think we preferred our nerdy, esoteric, hairs splitting glossary of terms to a well framed lexicon that could serve as a basis for public understanding. The best we gave them was net neutrality... and we let the economists explain their own stupid version of it to politicians. Take all the social media problems atm... Politicians, regardless of their country, ideology or whatnot, almost all have completely stupid ideas in this space. There was an article on here recently: "protocols not platforms." It's as true about GPCs as it is about social media. Most HN readers can probably guess the content by the title. It's a vocabulary that badly needs to be in the general discourse, and we need to stop sucking at making it into a simple usable vocabulary.
tubbyjr 6y ago
I see a person of culture wrote this, any jab at SystemD be a good jab.
deleted 6y ago
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softwaredoug 6y ago
The market has shown us most users don’t want a “general purpose computer”? People explicitly want appliances that do something well, and a company that backs them. Users want what computers enable: to keep in touch with others and do work and play most efficiently. I remember the 80s and 90s and trying to help friends with weird MS Dos or Windows bugs or Windows driver errors. The general, unopinionated nature of these platforms made it harder for most people to do what they wanted. I’m not saying for some of us it’s not fun to have general purpose computers. But as a consumer model I’m not sure you could argue it’s ultimately successful. The computer and all its complexities is a “cost center” to the real outcomes most care about.
rsj_hn 6y ago
The war on general purpose computing is, as they say, real and spectacular. But this essay doesn't really get to the heart of the matter, which is that customer expectations are changing as computing finds its way into more applications and broader audiences. General purpose computing happened in the first place by sheer accident -- there wasn't a practical way for the OS vendor to control what was installed on a system. To create such a mechanism would require an enormous investment in trusted boot, code signing, and app sandboxing. Yet the security needs of operating systems, driven by customer expectations, are creating all the elements so that vendor controls becomes as easy as flipping a switch. That's how we got here, not by some vendor plot. Before, it wasn't possible. Now, it's possible, due merely to OS vendors responding to customer pressure for sandboxing infrastructure. And customers are really pushing and driving putting this infrastructure in place. Look at this security warning: https://github.com/javakeyring/java-keyring https://github.com/javakeyring/java-keyring People are complaining that the OS is not able to securely identify between two applications in the same user context. So they filed a bogus CVE, where the content of the CVE is basically "Linux is not an iPhone". It is a OS app sandboxing feature request, masquerading as a bug report to the keyring team. Read the belated reply from the gnome keyring folks, pleading with people to understand what the linux security model is, and that linux doesn't have the sandboxing capabilities that have been rolled out to other (paid) operating systems: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeKeyring/SecurityPhilosophy https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeKeyring/SecurityPhiloso... Yet people don't want to hear it. They are demanding that everything be turned into an iphone (in terms of app sandboxes) but they are also demanding that once the OS vendor has the power to install a chokepoint around all the apps, that they wont set up a little toll booth there as well. But IMO asking vendors to not exploit that for commercial gain is only going to be safeguarded by regulation, and that regulation will hand over to the government the power to decide what is and is not allowed to run. The moment the technical genie was let out of the bottle and OS vendors had the power to control who was running what, that spells the end of general purpose computing, at least from a "freedom" point of view.
vector_spaces 6y ago
I mostly agree with this article and I'd love to share it with my circle, but I can't get past the condescending tone this article uses towards non-technical folks. > These are the online serfs who are completely unaware and will never become aware that their freedom and their money is being stolen by their masters, the lords of technology, who they serve unwittingly with their data and monthly fees. These are the instant messaging and cat video addicts whose only concern is that computers be easy enough for toddlers to use. These are the techno-toddlers who refuse to grow up... Believe it or not there are plenty of extremely intelligent non-technical users who are aware of these issues. And comparing users who are unaware of these issues to toddlers (while at the same time comparing the cognescenti to rebel fighters, even if tongue in cheek) is incredibly obnoxious. Google, Facebook, and Apple invest ridiculous sums of money in the interest of making their platforms accessible in just about every way you can imagine (and many more you might not). If you want to have a single hope that your message will be heard, you have to think about accessibility (of your message). In particular, don't make people feel stupid. That is the kiss of death in the business of winning hearts & minds, and it's also the number one reason why I personally avoid most free software (and related) activist circles.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Agreed. Statements like "On one side are the lords of technology ... and the unseen ones who control them." don't help, either. It raises an antisemitism caution flag whether the speaker intended to or not.
  - J5892 6y ago
    I would argue that assuming by default that "unseen ones who control them" is referring to Jews is closer to antisemitism.
    - vulcan01 6y ago
      The OP is simply recognising language commonly used by antisemites. They're not assuming by default.
nimbius 6y ago
>Some may point to the existence of the Raspberry Pi as a counter argument. "Here is a computer built by a small company that is designed for tinkerers," they might argue LOL. the Pi? its entire SOC is controlled by Microsoft ThreadX. if there were ever a better example of how the war on general purpose computing was won its the Pi. You only ever emulate or virtualize linux on it. the kernel is never aware of the threadx hypervisor and no open alternative exists. the officially supported OS developer just recently back-doored a repo and GPG key onto every one of them during an upgrade.
- ac42 6y ago
  Can you elaborate? AFAIK, the ARM on the PI is real silicon and controlled by Broadcom firmware via the VideoCore GPU. Where is the MSFT part?
  - justin66 6y ago
    The person you’ve responded to has confused a bootloader with... virtualization? There are some legitimate concerns about how open the RPi has made certain things, but you haven’t read a sane person’s critique of it above.
  - ac42 6y ago
    Interesting, the VC firmware is ThreadX based, indeed[1]! The number of platforms this runs on is absolutely mind-blowing (from an engineering perspective). [1] https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv
- Cieplak 6y ago
  Oh wow no kidding. Was not aware of that. This article [1] seems to be the primary source for that. Also kind of funny that the ThreadX wikipedia page [2] randomly links to Intel Management Engine. [1] https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-pi/ https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-rasp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX
sep_field 6y ago
First-world problems.
iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
I used to work in residential construction, and have done pretty much everything from foundations to electrical to roofing. And so generally, if something needs to be done on my house, even relatively major stuff, I do it, or I could if I wanted to. But there is a world of people who have no idea how to do even the most basic things, and there is a whole industry set up to extract money from them. So maybe not the best analogy but I see it the same way with computers, there has been a bifurcation between consumer tech that is designed to maximally extract money from the lay-public, and tech the way it is used by professionals, experts etc. The consumer world continues to drift away from the professional world, and I agree it's getting worse, but I think that's just a symptom of the tech becoming commercial. Open source has never been more active and widely used, I have more options to run more kinds of os/code on more kinds of hardware than I ever have before. So yeah, businesses have hollowed out the consumer version, same as if you hire a sears roofing crew to come do your roof, you are getting the minimum product for maximum cost. And that's a problem. But it's not necessarily an existential threat to our continuing to have computers we can use the way we want to.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Your analogy doesn't hold. If someone needs a new plug for their dryer, they might want to hire an electrician instead of doing it themselves. But they can hire any electrician. It doesn't have to be from the company who makes the dryer, whose electrician charges 30% above market and requires you to use that company's electrical panel which in turn requires you to use that company's stove and refrigerator and buy your electricity from their power company and pay your bills with their credit card whose agreement prohibits you from having any competing credit cards.
  - iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
    I agree you can find flaws in the analogy, but my main point is that there is a difference between how things are designed for "consumers" vs professionals. The electrician in your example sees the world and their options for fixing electrical problems very differently than the average condo owner. On the other hand, I was reading yesterday about the Tonal home gym (not picking on it or promoting it, just top of mind), which is a subscription based home gym appliance that you have to pay monthly for, and, pay to have their techs come and install it, and pay them to come re install it you move. So your example is actually getting closer to reality.
pabs3 6y ago
I note that even the Raspberry Pi is moving towards locked down devices, the RPi4 has an (easily cracked) HMAC blocking booting into the open source firmware and I hear more recent hardware editions have RSA signing support in the bootrom code. https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware/blob/master/docs/cracking-rpi4-hmac.txt https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware/blob/master/do...
Causality1 6y ago
I'm so weary of my smartphone choices being determined primarily by what features will be stripped from me. Losing the headphone jack, losing video-out, losing custom ROMs, losing root access, losing notification leds, losing fingerprint readers that can wake the phone, losing 1:1.5 screens and then 16:10 and then 16:9 and then 18:9 and then 19.5:9 screens until the blasted things are so pointlessly tall I can't reach the buttons with my thumb anymore.
another_comment 6y ago
I agree that general purpose computing is endangered. And that bothers me a lot. However, if you are going to take a stand for open computing, you are going to have to make sacrifices. You will have to give up a lot of conveniences. As a technologist you will have to give both time and money. Apple and Google are not going to give up their billion dollar industries voluntarily. You will have to stop giving them money. And you will have to stop using their services. My solution? I built myself a phone out of a Raspberry Pi 3 with a Touch Screen and a Logitech Headset. It does SMS/MMS and voice only. I've been using it for over a year now as my daily driver. I'm going to open source the code. Check out https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone for more details. Right now there is just a README out there, the real code exists in a private git repo. I'm reviewing the code and stripping out private details so I don't end up doxxing myself :) If you like the idea, please star the github project. I could use the encouragement. Thanks.
- spaced-out 6y ago
  > Apple and Google are not going to give up their billion dollar industries voluntarily. You will have to stop giving them money. And you will have to stop using their services. If you believe Apple and Google need to give up their cash cows, it's clear that's never going to happen by convincing people to make lifestyle changes. It's like trying to stop global warming by convincing people to stop driving their cars. That plan won't succeed, period. The only way is to get laws or regulations passed that force these companies to comply. For example, passing a law that says any device with an App Store must allow 3rd party app stores equal access to the OS. I'm not saying I want this law passed, but if you believe Apple and Google's business model needs to be stopped, a law like that is the only way it's going to happen.
  - another_comment 6y ago
    >> If you believe Apple and Google need to give up their cash cows, it's clear that's never going to happen by convincing people to make lifestyle changes. I'm suggesting people will stop giving money to Apple/Google when there is an alternative. And we, as tech folks, are going to have to build that alternative. >> The only way is to get laws or regulations passed that force these companies to comply. Google and Apple have billions to lobby Congress, so I'm not confident that will happen any time soon. I think undermining them from the bottom up with a cheap open source alternative is probably more practical.
zepto 6y ago
This article is a great encapsulation of why I think the whole Epic vs Apple and attempts to force Apple to allow alternative stores are a step in the wrong direction. They will only make people more dependent on what will still be a controlled platform. What will also happen is that the government will end up regulating the App stores, since it’s no longer just Apple running them. This is one step short of the ‘ban on general purpose computing’ mentioned in the article, but a badly written law regulating software distribution could easily mean that it is that too. I wholeheartedly agree with the calls to action, but I’d add one more: stop going along with companies like Epic and all this clamor about Apple as if they are freedom fighters, and instead call for them to invest in a foundation to pay for community work on a genuinely open mobile Linux. There are numerous corporations with many billions available to invest, e.g. Microsoft, Epic, Facebook, all of whom claim to want to be free of Apple’s control. The way to do is is them to pay for a real open platform that none of them own. It seems counterintuitive, but that is the real way to commoditize their complement (as was successfully done on the server) and devalue Apple’s Proprietary OS, which would be to all of their advantage. There is no reason such a platform shouldn’t be an excellent vehicle for games, and with first class SPA support no App Store would be needed at all. If we really want to lobby for regulation, it should be to force boot camp level of openness for the hardware, so that anyone would be free to run an open software platform on a tablet, phone or laptop. That would help any open platform compete fairly with proprietary ones without needing to regulate OS designs.
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  Boot camp level access isn't going to provide the documentation necessary to program those machines. It also impedes the pace of vertically integrated innovation that has been happening over the years. If Apple needed a public contract for open operating systems to build on top of, it would either slow down the roadmap, or break the open software regularly. It isn't just a money problem, it's a technical and human coordination problem that can't be solved with money. IMO, Google should have stepped up to build this right, but didn't. They built Android to defend against Apple not to invent a better future path. If there is something to regulate it is making super easy for consumers to have choice over Apple vs. something else. Regulate the need for easy adoption paths between mobile ecosystems. This creates a fair arena for a free market to fight for consumers without lock in.
pwang 6y ago
There is a factual inaccuracy in the article: Beaker Browser is not "actually under the control of governments and big corporations". It is an independent open-source project.
gautamcgoel 6y ago
"And even so, Raspbian relies on Systemd, despite the privacy fears of many." What the actual fuck? I'm no systemd shill but this sentence makes no sense in the context of this essay. How does systemd represent a loss of privacy foisted upon us by Google and Microsoft?
- davisr 6y ago
  Systemd, which handles DNS configuration, literally defaults to Google's DNS resolvers (giving Google each and every server that your computer tries to contact, and allowing Google to censor or redirect you elsewhere).
enos_feedler 6y ago
"Most bloggers get so little traffic on their personal websites that they see no point in continuing them, so they give up. Visit personal blogs and leave comments that let their writers know their efforts are appreciated." Sounds like a good idea, but in practice, at scale, this is exactly the kind of functionality that doesn't work without a closed platform to take care of things. Who deletes the spam comments?
auggierose 6y ago
I guess the title is inspired by a recent TV show ...

278 points by Funes- 6y ago

> And even so, Raspbian relies on Systemd, despite the privacy fears of many. While I do agree with Systemd bashing in general since it completely breaks with Unix design principles... this is the first time I have seen privacy as an argument?

mrob 6y ago
Assuming your distro hasn't fixed this antifeature, systemd sends your NTP and DNS requests to Google as a fallback if there's no other configuration or DHCP. Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23712434 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23712434
- superluserdo 6y ago
  >Assuming your distro hasn't fixed this antifeature I was under the impression that changing the default NTP servers was an expected part of bundling systemd in a distro?
HeckFeck 6y ago
The author may have the systemd-resolved privacy complaints in mind, where the systemd DNS daemon has Google's DNS servers hardbaked into the source code. It will fallback to Google DNS if the configured server is down. A few concerned individuals raised their worries in a ticket and were shut down for 'tinfoil hat reasoning' or something like that. It may be an extreme case, but many Linux users would rather not have any particular provider baked into core system services. Personally I'd rather know my DNS server is down or that I've misconfigured it, much more than I would have my system contact Google without my knowledge. Src: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/41c81c4a626fda0969fc09ddeb8addb7aae6e4d9/meson_options.txt#L221 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/41c81c4a626fda0969fc...
- oytis 6y ago
  I mean. It's an open-source software. Those concerned can just use a patched version. Not even patched - this is fixed with a build flag - I'm sure security-oriented distributions have already specified the right one. As a last resort, you can always block requests to 8.8.8.8 with iptables.
  - Datagenerator 6y ago
    No need for firewall configuration, just: ip route add blackhole 8.8.8.8
  - sverhagen 6y ago
    Those concerned may be as much or more concerned about fixing this for the masses as they are about fixing it for themselves, hard to speculate on their motivations.
    - josefx 6y ago
      I would be more interested how much systemd made from selling its users tracking data to Google and if they didn't it would be interesting which idiot passed up a chance to secure a possibly sizeable budget increase by handing Google all that data for free. Mozilla got millions from making Google the default search and you can't tell me Google doesn't value the data it gathers from this, they have a tendency to kill under performing projects.
    - oytis 6y ago
      It's still not a reason to harrass a maintainer who already provided a convenient override to set it to whatever one wants. Maybe Ubuntu distro is a better place to get the "safe" configuration to the masses. It's a pretty rare phobia to be honest, and I think people who consider 8.8.8.8 a reasonable default are totally justified to. For those who don't agree there are plenty of options, that's how open source is supposed to work.
  - e2le 6y ago
    While it's possible for it to be patched out, the default behaviour of any application with similar scope to systemd should be to respect the users privacy. If every application required the user to "opt-out" of privacy infringing features, it would be a very time consuming and costly activity that only knowledgable users could do.
giantrobot 6y ago
Deep down in in systemd-resolved there's hard coded fallback DNS and NTP addresses. They're build-time options with defaults set to Google and CloudFlare. They only see is in catastrophic misconfigurations. They're also completely under the control of the distro which can set whatever defaults it wants. The anti-systemd brigade has translated this into "OMG LENNART SPIES ON MY DNS!!1!". There's cogent arguments to be made against systemd but the privacy angle is one of the weakest.
cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
It's not the argument anyone else is going to make, but as an example... the last time I checked, ecryptfs had been rendered nonfunctional in Debian Buster because the current revision of systemd had made changes that made ecryptfs nonfunctional. Supposedly they're going to have a solution in systemd that'll be of equivalent functionality, but in the meantime, in debian, you're stuck with the systemd stack and not using software that systemd renders nonfunctional. So I had to back up, reinstall and encrypt the whole hard drive, including swap space, because that's how debian installers do it...
- new_realist 6y ago
  And that’s all open source software. The benefits claimed by open source activists are overstated and illusory. You didn’t have control of your OSS software stack when it mattered.
antattack 6y ago
It's not about privacy per se, but rather giving away your personal information for free so google can make profit out of it.
tyingq 6y ago
They could mean the default setting of LLMNR=yes. Not sure why it's on by default.
rgovostes 6y ago
The author admits in the comments that they have no real basis for accusing systemd of violating privacy. > I think the problem many see with systemd is that it is a very large block of code that is hard to understand and modify. This makes it possible for unscrupulous organizations to hide things in systemd for spying on users. This also makes it more susceptible to hacking and less secure. I'm not knowledgeable enough about the subject to have a strong opinion about it. I just know that many Linux users strongly oppose it. In my view it's hard to take the author seriously with claims like this, and in the same paragraph praise for the Raspberry Pi as an open platform (it contains proprietary components). Edit: More egregiously, the author claims that iOS and macOS are based on Linux.
- oytis 6y ago
  His stance on TLS is also quite... peculiar. I wonder if the author is a technical person at all.

walrus01 6y ago

This seems to have no real coherent message and confuses MacOS with Linux, which greatly reduces any credibility it might have.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hertzrat 6y ago

If the goal is to encourage the general public to use general purpose computers, then I suggest the community try to temp some good UX designers to take part in foss projects. I suspect they many UX people are not extremely informed about foss and it would benefit the community a lot to have a reputation for programs with great workflows

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
From the 2.0 version on, GNOME based many of their UI changes on research studies of what ordinary computer users want, chasing after the corporate desktop and tablet markets. The result was something that alienated many techies, but failed to see much mass-market adoption. I don’t think the problem is UI. I think the problem nowadays is that many people are so used to an Android phone (with Google Play Services and all apps sourced through the Play store) or iPhone that they are increasingly forgetting that ordinary computers exist at all.
- jxy 6y ago
  THIS! It's the ecosystem. Niche phone OS is not going to dominate the market until they have a competing app store that as good as Android's or iOS's. People uses Adobe will forever bounded by whatever OS Adobe truly supports. People uses MS Office will forever bounded by whatever OS MS Office truly supports. Nobody really cares about UI. Everybody hates new UI. Once you are settled in the local comfort zone of the app that you use the most, nothing else would replace it unless that app goes out of support.
- Funes- 6y ago
  Your argument reads like a fallacy (over-generalization): "UI/UX modifications were carried out on a single project with terrible results, so all UI/UX changes must be useless on any other project". Look at it this way (taking a decentralized network as an example): either one of I2P's two most used implementations (Java & C++) would greatly benefit from adding an informative configuration wizard to set speed limits, enabling or disabling features, help set up UPnP or manually forward ports, etcetera. Such a small addition would make wonders for adoption. UX improvements cannot be ruled out, especially not that hastily.

young_unixer 6y ago

The solution is to foster an appreciation of the values of freedom and independence in the population, not only with regards to computing, but about life in general (freedom of speech, freedom of press, economic freedom, etc). I've always admired how much the general population defends freedom of speech in the US. In the rest of the world, freedom of speech is constantly eroded with laws against "hate speech", because our cultures (latin american here) don't value freedom of spedch. If we could capture the appreciation Americans have for freedom of speech and extrapolate it to all areas of human activity, we would rest assured that our computers would keep being general-purpose.

BEEdwards 6y ago
Umm.. white nationalist tried to pull a coup a month ago. It's just possible that maybe, just maybe some speech isn't compatible with democracy...
- trav4225 6y ago
  It's difficult to imagine anything more democratic than free speech.
  - BEEdwards 6y ago
    It looks good on paper and then in the real world people go "those guys that look different than you, they're the cause of all your problems and we should kill them/let us set up camps to kill them so you don't have to see it." That's what history has shown again and again. If you give free speech to people and groups who's express goal is to take away the power and speech of others they unironically will... The paradox of tolerance isn't some other world hypothetical it has been demonstrated again and again.
    - trav4225 6y ago
      This is the classic choice of liberty vs. security. Each has its pros and cons. Free speech may be abused, but that's the risk of freedom. And, in my mind at least, true freedom of speech is a necessary ingredient of authentic democracy. This is how I see it...

threevox 6y ago

> I have a mirror of cheapskatesguide.org on ZeroNet at https://127.0.0.1:43110/1CpqvBQWSzZSmnSZ58eVRA9Gjem6GdQkfw https://127.0.0.1:43110/1CpqvBQWSzZSmnSZ58eVRA9Gjem6GdQkfw Am I missing something, or is this guy trying to get people to visit his localhost?

neilalexander 6y ago
You’re missing something. You would need to be running the ZeroNet daemon on your own machine (presumably on the same port, if it’s not the default) for that link to work.
sverhagen 6y ago
That's apparently ohw ZeroNet works, from Wikipedia: > Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages.
unicornporn 6y ago
After ZeroNet is installed on your computer and you have it running on port 43110 you can visit his site using that link.

freeaswartz 6y ago

They have already won it is over. Op's post is 30 years too late. Please press F. "First it came for my shopping habits, and I did nothing because I didn't care. Then it came for my location data, and I did nothing because I didn't care. Then it came for my thoughts, and I did nothing because I didn't care. Then it came for my juices, and it knew exactly where I kept them."

enos_feedler 6y ago

I cant even get through a few sentences of this bullshit. They lost me on how Microsoft Apple and Google are blind followers of money

theurbandragon 6y ago

What say we bow to our overlords and hope they be benevolent?

fsflover 6y ago

Some companies fight on the side of users in this war: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881988.

cblconfederate 6y ago

This problem is real and important. My uncle who is a lawyer knew how to use dBase IV in the 80s. Nowadays young people, even university graduates, struggle to use a mouse. Scrolling is the pinnacle of competence it seems. We need people going back to buying PC. Thanks to corona, they do now. We should focus on those rich-capability apps and software

afavour 6y ago
> Nowadays young people, even university graduates, struggle to use a mouse I'm sorry, I laughed out loud at this. What are you talking about?!
- spiznnx 6y ago
  I think most people use laptops over desktops as their primary computer, so some younger people may have only used touchpads over mouses. Though I don't really pay attention to people's mousing skills.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  I assume they are referring to the now omnipresent tablets and phones that younger folks have grown up with in lieu of a home computer.
evan_ 6y ago
Does using a mouse have something to do with general purpose computing? Does a spreadsheet program? You should ask your uncle (who's a Lawyer by the way) if he was using a mouse to work with dBase IV.
brutusborn 6y ago
How can you struggle to use a mouse?
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  Many people dont know right click. many people never use laptops, or rarely, they own a $1000 phone and a $200 crappy laptop. You struggle if you ve never used it before

lowbloodsugar 6y ago

This is irrelevant. The general public has no interest in "General Purpose Computing". I am a nerd, but while I have an interest in a laptop that is general purpose, I have no interest in a phone that is general purpose. I want it locked down. I also have to keep my mom online, and tend to steer her towards her iPad rather than her iMac, because there's just been less tech support (on my part) required for it. General Purpose computing and Privacy have little to do with each other. There is more malware installed on General Purpose computers than there are iPhones. Facebook tracks you on your computer just as much as your phone. However, the phone is becoming a place where they can't track you, and there's little Facebook can do about it. Contrast with Sony found installing exploitable root-kits on PCs (to stop you copying CDs IIRC).

guidoism 6y ago
This exactly. I read the essay and said to myself “meh”. Having a phone that I can’t mess up is actually pretty dang nice. High performance computing is definitely locked down. An M1 Mac is pretty dang nice. But for general purpose computing you don’t need those fancy graphics. I’ve been thinking of microcontrollers as the equivalent of our 1980s general purpose computers more so than the rpi. The rpi still requires a lot of software. An mcu just works. And we can create a nice little gpu for it with an fpga. Big corporations aren’t locking you out of this world. They are actually helping you get this awesome stuff for pennies as a consequence of the massive supply chain.
AgentOrange1234 6y ago
Absolutely. I need a good general purpose computer to program on. But for my phone and family, I 100% want to outsource security and updates to someone competent.
TimTheTinker 6y ago
> The general public has no interest in "General Purpose Computing". But they do have an interest in their own well-being, and the well-being of society. I think the author's point is that widespread access to general purpose computing is a good thing for society in general, and that it will be a bad thing if access to general purpose computing disappears. The problems I see are (painting with a large brush) are that in general: - the public doesn't realize what a gift general purpose programming languages are, how much power they have to solve problems, and how much fun they can be - the public doesn't care to give children access to these systems who might otherwise grow up learning and appreciating them - the public doesn't understand that the ability to read and write code constitutes a literacy of its own and can profoundly impact how one thinks in a positive way But these problems are close corollaries of other problems with society in general: people don't read good books like they ought, people don't learn musical instruments or other skills as often as they should, and many people are forced to work so hard to pay for basic necessities that spending any time on productive leisure (what luminaries called "improving oneself" in prior centuries) is effectively impossible.

AceJohnny2 6y ago

> Apple has gone in the direction of net appliances I agree that, with "Apple Silicon", they have left behind anything that could reasonably be traced back to the "openness" of old desktop computers. New Apple systems are locked down from the silicon up, and you only get to do what Apple lets you do. As the Star Wars quote goes, "Pray I do not alter [the deal] further". Sure, some people have managed to boot Linux on the ARM cores of the M1, but it's about as useful as pitching a tent in a corner of a stadium and declaring it useable housing. There is so much on the SoC that's closed and out of reach that I can only see the effort as misguided.

AceJohnny2 6y ago
Unfortunately, the consumer industry trend will be to follow Apple. I see little hope for competitive open computing devices. Ever since the Nokia N900, openness has consistently lost in the market against faster, slicker, more integrated competitors. Only in those markets where computing is a fungible commodity, i.e. servers, is the flexibility of openness any benefit, and even there it loses some autonomy to black-box "management engines". While these are still the most plausible vehicle for open computing, I only see them as appealing to a niche of amateurs buying cheaper refurbished machines. Some may tout stuff like the RasPi as a viable alternative. Sure, but with the understanding that the RasPi is a CPU riding along a beefy VideoCodec/GPU, which has taken years of (ongoing) effort to implement open drivers for, and the RasPi4 still remains 2x slower than my 15 year old laptop. In other words, there is no viable consumer market for open computing.
- est31 6y ago
  I don't think much is changing when it comes to gaming PCs. They have been extremely modular and I see no trend for them to change. But when it comes to anything of mobile form factors, like laptops, I agree with you. Less and less ability to change and replace parts.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    But then again the gaming PCs are full of malware -- most game launchers can be very easily called that. Not to mention that part of them have been caught to install rootkits, or the more modest ones just don't allow the game to be started if you have Process Explorer running (they claim it's for preventing game cheats -- which doesn't work anyway). So while I have a gaming PC myself, I have long ago removed anything personally sensitive from it. I can't view it as a platform for open computing by any means.

theamk 6y ago

Does this war exists in the real life? Is there any evidence that "the lords of technology and their masters" are making any moves against IPFS and general computing? Because I see the opposite. For example Sony, one of the most proprietary companies, is now releasing source code and bootloader unlocker [0]. Could you imagine this 10 years ago? [0] https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/ https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/

fsflover 6y ago
Ues, it’s happening. For instance, Apple is attacking general-purpose computing consciously: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG-116-JU05-20190716-SD036.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG....
- theamk 6y ago
  I don't see anything about general computing there, am I missing something? Apple still makes macbooks, and those have documented and well supported methods to disable all protections so that user code can be loaded. If you are trying to say that iPhone should be a general-purpose computer, then I am going to ask: "why?". There are different devices for different purposes. The phone does not need to be general purpose, and back in the day my Nokia had no software customizeability at all. And if you want a phone which can run arbitrary software, there are plenty of unlockable Android headsets on the market. It is like saying "Ford is attacking fuel-efficient cars" because they are making F-150 truck.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    > I don't see anything about general computing there, am I missing something? Did you already accept as a fact that phones are not general-purpose computers? But they should be! Here is an example: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 Androids force many restrictions on the user as well, even those with unnlockable bootloader. You can never run mainline Linux on them due to proprietary drivers depending on ancient kernels, which eventually leads to non-updatable electronic garbage. You can not change the operating system unless you have ancient Linux kernel under the hood. > It is like saying "Ford is attacking fuel-efficient cars" because they are making F-150 truck. But a general-purpose phone does not prevent you from using your phone and being secure. It only adds unlimited possibilities. Using your parallel, Ford is attacking the industry by creating car+truck, 2 in 1.

antattack 6y ago

I have to sound like a fatalist but today's software resembles yesterday's malware. It does not matter if you're running a general purpose computer if you have no control over 'your' applications or even OS (Windows 10). In addition, new privacy features such as HSTS and DNS over https, ESNI, etc degrade what control you had even further stopping you from even knowing what data gets out of your network and when.

lxgr 6y ago
> In addition, new privacy features such as HSTS and DNS over https, ESNI, etc degrade what control you had even further stopping you from even knowing what data gets out of your network and when. Inspecting these, on a machine you control, is still 100% possible – I do it all the time. Are you proposing we should go back to plain HTTP and DNS just to make tinkering easier? I'd argue that that would come at the expense of the vast majority of users.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  How do you know what you're inspecting is actually what is contained inside the request?
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Wireshark is OSS, any problems?
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      That does not mean you can verify that the encrypted content contains what is shown to you and only that. Let's not pretend that it does.
      - moonshinefe 6y ago
        And how do you know some nefarious hacker didn't mess with your far easier to mess with unencrypted stream?

lxgr 6y ago

I'd argue that computing has never been more accessible than it is today. A Raspberry Pi costs less than an HDMI dongle for an iPad these days and there is more free educational material available on the web than ever before. When I went to high school and started becoming interested in programming, I was using Windows XP on my general-purpose PC back home, as were all my classmates – yet only two out of more than 20 ended up going into tech. I think articles like this commonly make the mistake of romanticizing the author's personal way of getting into tech and thinking it's the only way possible for others as well.

PaulKeeble 6y ago
Even the Raspberry pi has a few areas of concern with propriety firmware and closed codecs. It is not a completely open hardware platform, it does run code that no eyes can see.
- oytis 6y ago
  Go Beaglebone then. The SBC market is enormous these days.
  - abewfbaew 6y ago
    Beaglebone is even worse, with a PowerVR GPU and blobs to make the PRUs work correctly. It's pretty difficult to find a device with completely open drivers, let alone open firmwares and memory initialization.
    - new_realist 6y ago
      That's because completely open drivers have no value even to tech. enthusiasts. If they did, vendors would offer them.
    - wishysgb 6y ago
      I do believe system76 laptops are almost completely open source other than the intel microcode.

Koshkin 6y ago

> listen to music and watch movies I guess that’s what they call “computing” now... Anyway, does my using of a GPC as an HTPC count? (Still, you can take my iPad from my dead, cold hands!)

uniqueid 6y ago

This essay a great example of online culture. So many stock received ideas: the 'shadowy elites' message, the Walter Mitty 'only we few dared to take the red pill' heroism, the conflation of freedom of speech with forcing a private company to host a photo of your asshole at no charge. We even get mentions of TS Eliot (guess Pound is too edgy) and Glenn 'my editor is oppressing me' Greenwald. In short, I did not enjoy it.

ForHackernews 6y ago
Your reading of this article is dramatically different from my own. - No "shadowy elites", these are big, well-known companies driving market trends is broad daylight. - Is it controversial to suggest that only a small portion of people are worked up about digital freedom? That seems self-evident to me. - Nowhere in the article does the author suggest anyone be forced to host anything (let alone butthole photos) -- if anything, he advocates the opposite: that users be empowered to host their own sites!
- uniqueid 6y ago
  I posted a knee-jerk reaction, but I should have written nothing. The essay didn't warrant the pique. Besides, I did enjoy the lines about sitting down to watch Star Wars.

mr-wendel 6y ago

Religion hammered into me as a kid that anything you do for good will always be partial subverted by the devil. While I don't agree with that literally, I think the general principle is 100% correct. I've worked (and around) in many parts of the Internet (and precursors): dial-up BBS's, web hosting, VPNs, etc. It is virtually guaranteed that the better you are at upholding security and privacy the more certain you will (hopefully unintentionally) facilitate some absolutely dastardly shitbaggery. The kind you can honestly loose a little bit of your soul over. I do think standing up for these kind of freedom of speech principles are important. However, the bottom line is that if the solution doesn't embody a reliable way to address the problems it enables then an external entity will attempt to do it, along with whatever extra agenda it represents. You can't solve for freedom alone.

jpochtar 6y ago

General Purpose Computing is and ought to be an app on a user friendly internet device. An important app, but one of many. The fact that the internet device is actually a special-purpose simulator running on general-purpose hardware is an implementation detail. Even most programmers want to do other activities on their devices, like check their email. This should be co-equal with programming; anything you do in your coding environment shouldn't break your ability to get email. Is general-purpose-computing-as-an-app dying? No: repl.it for kids/consumers is great, there's an explosion of nocode/locode for consumers/businesses; and free tiers of the public clouds are available if you really really want to muck with linux.

ryukafalz 6y ago
> General Purpose Computing is and ought to be an app on a user friendly internet device. An important app, but one of many. If "a user friendly internet device" here is code for "an internet device that doesn't provide its owner full control over it" then... no, absolutely not. Having control over your own device isn't just about learning to program. Certainly that's important, but it's not the whole story. The question is: what can you do once you've learned? If your device restricts what you're allowed to do, and you're at the mercy of the platform provider, the power dynamic between the user and the platform is hugely asymmetric.

zokier 6y ago

The problem is that most people don't seem to want do any computing, general purpose or not. They want 21th century version of telephone and cable tv, computing behind the scenes is incidental and implementation detail.

abeppu 6y ago

I think I have whiplash from the transition from starting by framing big tech companies as the villains, and then proposing the way to fight back is to buy lots of general purpose computers from ... big tech companies. Sure, support the companies that produce products you think should exist in the world. But that doesn't make you some kind of warrior, it just makes you one type of discriminating consumer. Giving them money is not exactly combat. I think the "right to repair" movement is an interesting avenue, which has had some meaningful successes which obligate companies to share enough information to allow users to wrest back some control of what they actually own, and interact meaningfully with the guts. What if we pulled lots of stops to lobby for this from multiple angles, and emphasize that if a company stops providing security updates to original software, "repairing" means providing an ability to use new software which isn't abandoned?

justicezyx 6y ago

I am not sure the authors did a careful study of the computing history. Computing as a way of human activity has always been evolving in the direction that the core platform technology moves up in the abstraction stack: * We first invented the abstraction concepts with close tie to physical items. I.e., people are counting their possessions in the literal mass. Or very basic abstract concept: using ropes for numbering. As a form of computing, it can only record limited information, and perform very little computing (addition subtraction). * Then fully fledged abstract concepts in human languages, which enables human mind as the major computing platform, plus various physical aids (papers, pens, etc.) * Then there are actual machines that perform certain computation with very limited scope. Mechanical computer etc. * Till the modern era we started the electronic computing. Then we have a primary device that can take over the computing task with minimal human involvement. Even just inside this era, the progressing has a long history that does not simply reduce to "general computing". The modern day computing platform is not CPU. It's the web. With CPU you cannot do much useful thing. It's with github, linux, and etc. that one can start quickly perform computing. This platform itself does not lend CPU much credits of being more important than any other components. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_rope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_rope [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#Ancient_and_medieval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#...

spaetzleesser 6y ago

As far as end user devices go, it's a mature industry now. Once a certain level of functionality has been achieved, the devices become more polished but also more locked down. Happened to things like cars, stereos and others before. I bet full self driving cars will be completely sealed and no tinkering or self repair possible. They will be as or less repairable as an iPad. Developer machines will probably soon be viewed as specialized devices that most normal users will not even know how to use. This is mostly ok. Most end users don't want or need general computing.

dane-pgp 6y ago
> Developer machines will probably soon be viewed as specialized devices that most normal users will not even know how to use. And such machines will have to be registered with the government, just you wait.

netcan 6y ago

>Between the two opposing forces are the non-technical masses. These are the online serfs who are completely unaware and will never become aware that their freedom... I actually agree with a the jist of this article, but this kind of attitude is inexpensive, and part of why this point of view has lost. The open society ideals of the early web were really important. We failed miserably at framing them adequately for public consumption. I don't think it's because "MOPs too stupid." I think we preferred our nerdy, esoteric, hairs splitting glossary of terms to a well framed lexicon that could serve as a basis for public understanding. The best we gave them was net neutrality... and we let the economists explain their own stupid version of it to politicians. Take all the social media problems atm... Politicians, regardless of their country, ideology or whatnot, almost all have completely stupid ideas in this space. There was an article on here recently: "protocols not platforms." It's as true about GPCs as it is about social media. Most HN readers can probably guess the content by the title. It's a vocabulary that badly needs to be in the general discourse, and we need to stop sucking at making it into a simple usable vocabulary.

tubbyjr 6y ago

I see a person of culture wrote this, any jab at SystemD be a good jab.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

softwaredoug 6y ago

The market has shown us most users don’t want a “general purpose computer”? People explicitly want appliances that do something well, and a company that backs them. Users want what computers enable: to keep in touch with others and do work and play most efficiently. I remember the 80s and 90s and trying to help friends with weird MS Dos or Windows bugs or Windows driver errors. The general, unopinionated nature of these platforms made it harder for most people to do what they wanted. I’m not saying for some of us it’s not fun to have general purpose computers. But as a consumer model I’m not sure you could argue it’s ultimately successful. The computer and all its complexities is a “cost center” to the real outcomes most care about.

rsj_hn 6y ago

The war on general purpose computing is, as they say, real and spectacular. But this essay doesn't really get to the heart of the matter, which is that customer expectations are changing as computing finds its way into more applications and broader audiences. General purpose computing happened in the first place by sheer accident -- there wasn't a practical way for the OS vendor to control what was installed on a system. To create such a mechanism would require an enormous investment in trusted boot, code signing, and app sandboxing. Yet the security needs of operating systems, driven by customer expectations, are creating all the elements so that vendor controls becomes as easy as flipping a switch. That's how we got here, not by some vendor plot. Before, it wasn't possible. Now, it's possible, due merely to OS vendors responding to customer pressure for sandboxing infrastructure. And customers are really pushing and driving putting this infrastructure in place. Look at this security warning: https://github.com/javakeyring/java-keyring https://github.com/javakeyring/java-keyring People are complaining that the OS is not able to securely identify between two applications in the same user context. So they filed a bogus CVE, where the content of the CVE is basically "Linux is not an iPhone". It is a OS app sandboxing feature request, masquerading as a bug report to the keyring team. Read the belated reply from the gnome keyring folks, pleading with people to understand what the linux security model is, and that linux doesn't have the sandboxing capabilities that have been rolled out to other (paid) operating systems: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeKeyring/SecurityPhilosophy https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeKeyring/SecurityPhiloso... Yet people don't want to hear it. They are demanding that everything be turned into an iphone (in terms of app sandboxes) but they are also demanding that once the OS vendor has the power to install a chokepoint around all the apps, that they wont set up a little toll booth there as well. But IMO asking vendors to not exploit that for commercial gain is only going to be safeguarded by regulation, and that regulation will hand over to the government the power to decide what is and is not allowed to run. The moment the technical genie was let out of the bottle and OS vendors had the power to control who was running what, that spells the end of general purpose computing, at least from a "freedom" point of view.

vector_spaces 6y ago

I mostly agree with this article and I'd love to share it with my circle, but I can't get past the condescending tone this article uses towards non-technical folks. > These are the online serfs who are completely unaware and will never become aware that their freedom and their money is being stolen by their masters, the lords of technology, who they serve unwittingly with their data and monthly fees. These are the instant messaging and cat video addicts whose only concern is that computers be easy enough for toddlers to use. These are the techno-toddlers who refuse to grow up... Believe it or not there are plenty of extremely intelligent non-technical users who are aware of these issues. And comparing users who are unaware of these issues to toddlers (while at the same time comparing the cognescenti to rebel fighters, even if tongue in cheek) is incredibly obnoxious. Google, Facebook, and Apple invest ridiculous sums of money in the interest of making their platforms accessible in just about every way you can imagine (and many more you might not). If you want to have a single hope that your message will be heard, you have to think about accessibility (of your message). In particular, don't make people feel stupid. That is the kiss of death in the business of winning hearts & minds, and it's also the number one reason why I personally avoid most free software (and related) activist circles.

brandmeyer 6y ago
Agreed. Statements like "On one side are the lords of technology ... and the unseen ones who control them." don't help, either. It raises an antisemitism caution flag whether the speaker intended to or not.
- J5892 6y ago
  I would argue that assuming by default that "unseen ones who control them" is referring to Jews is closer to antisemitism.
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    The OP is simply recognising language commonly used by antisemites. They're not assuming by default.

nimbius 6y ago

>Some may point to the existence of the Raspberry Pi as a counter argument. "Here is a computer built by a small company that is designed for tinkerers," they might argue LOL. the Pi? its entire SOC is controlled by Microsoft ThreadX. if there were ever a better example of how the war on general purpose computing was won its the Pi. You only ever emulate or virtualize linux on it. the kernel is never aware of the threadx hypervisor and no open alternative exists. the officially supported OS developer just recently back-doored a repo and GPG key onto every one of them during an upgrade.

ac42 6y ago
Can you elaborate? AFAIK, the ARM on the PI is real silicon and controlled by Broadcom firmware via the VideoCore GPU. Where is the MSFT part?
- justin66 6y ago
  The person you’ve responded to has confused a bootloader with... virtualization? There are some legitimate concerns about how open the RPi has made certain things, but you haven’t read a sane person’s critique of it above.
- ac42 6y ago
  Interesting, the VC firmware is ThreadX based, indeed[1]! The number of platforms this runs on is absolutely mind-blowing (from an engineering perspective). [1] https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv https://github.com/hermanhermitage/videocoreiv
Cieplak 6y ago
Oh wow no kidding. Was not aware of that. This article [1] seems to be the primary source for that. Also kind of funny that the ThreadX wikipedia page [2] randomly links to Intel Management Engine. [1] https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-pi/ https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-rasp... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThreadX

sep_field 6y ago

First-world problems.

iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago

I used to work in residential construction, and have done pretty much everything from foundations to electrical to roofing. And so generally, if something needs to be done on my house, even relatively major stuff, I do it, or I could if I wanted to. But there is a world of people who have no idea how to do even the most basic things, and there is a whole industry set up to extract money from them. So maybe not the best analogy but I see it the same way with computers, there has been a bifurcation between consumer tech that is designed to maximally extract money from the lay-public, and tech the way it is used by professionals, experts etc. The consumer world continues to drift away from the professional world, and I agree it's getting worse, but I think that's just a symptom of the tech becoming commercial. Open source has never been more active and widely used, I have more options to run more kinds of os/code on more kinds of hardware than I ever have before. So yeah, businesses have hollowed out the consumer version, same as if you hire a sears roofing crew to come do your roof, you are getting the minimum product for maximum cost. And that's a problem. But it's not necessarily an existential threat to our continuing to have computers we can use the way we want to.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
Your analogy doesn't hold. If someone needs a new plug for their dryer, they might want to hire an electrician instead of doing it themselves. But they can hire any electrician. It doesn't have to be from the company who makes the dryer, whose electrician charges 30% above market and requires you to use that company's electrical panel which in turn requires you to use that company's stove and refrigerator and buy your electricity from their power company and pay your bills with their credit card whose agreement prohibits you from having any competing credit cards.
- iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
  I agree you can find flaws in the analogy, but my main point is that there is a difference between how things are designed for "consumers" vs professionals. The electrician in your example sees the world and their options for fixing electrical problems very differently than the average condo owner. On the other hand, I was reading yesterday about the Tonal home gym (not picking on it or promoting it, just top of mind), which is a subscription based home gym appliance that you have to pay monthly for, and, pay to have their techs come and install it, and pay them to come re install it you move. So your example is actually getting closer to reality.

pabs3 6y ago

I note that even the Raspberry Pi is moving towards locked down devices, the RPi4 has an (easily cracked) HMAC blocking booting into the open source firmware and I hear more recent hardware editions have RSA signing support in the bootrom code. https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware/blob/master/docs/cracking-rpi4-hmac.txt https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware/blob/master/do...

Causality1 6y ago

I'm so weary of my smartphone choices being determined primarily by what features will be stripped from me. Losing the headphone jack, losing video-out, losing custom ROMs, losing root access, losing notification leds, losing fingerprint readers that can wake the phone, losing 1:1.5 screens and then 16:10 and then 16:9 and then 18:9 and then 19.5:9 screens until the blasted things are so pointlessly tall I can't reach the buttons with my thumb anymore.

another_comment 6y ago

I agree that general purpose computing is endangered. And that bothers me a lot. However, if you are going to take a stand for open computing, you are going to have to make sacrifices. You will have to give up a lot of conveniences. As a technologist you will have to give both time and money. Apple and Google are not going to give up their billion dollar industries voluntarily. You will have to stop giving them money. And you will have to stop using their services. My solution? I built myself a phone out of a Raspberry Pi 3 with a Touch Screen and a Logitech Headset. It does SMS/MMS and voice only. I've been using it for over a year now as my daily driver. I'm going to open source the code. Check out https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone for more details. Right now there is just a README out there, the real code exists in a private git repo. I'm reviewing the code and stripping out private details so I don't end up doxxing myself :) If you like the idea, please star the github project. I could use the encouragement. Thanks.

spaced-out 6y ago
> Apple and Google are not going to give up their billion dollar industries voluntarily. You will have to stop giving them money. And you will have to stop using their services. If you believe Apple and Google need to give up their cash cows, it's clear that's never going to happen by convincing people to make lifestyle changes. It's like trying to stop global warming by convincing people to stop driving their cars. That plan won't succeed, period. The only way is to get laws or regulations passed that force these companies to comply. For example, passing a law that says any device with an App Store must allow 3rd party app stores equal access to the OS. I'm not saying I want this law passed, but if you believe Apple and Google's business model needs to be stopped, a law like that is the only way it's going to happen.
- another_comment 6y ago
  >> If you believe Apple and Google need to give up their cash cows, it's clear that's never going to happen by convincing people to make lifestyle changes. I'm suggesting people will stop giving money to Apple/Google when there is an alternative. And we, as tech folks, are going to have to build that alternative. >> The only way is to get laws or regulations passed that force these companies to comply. Google and Apple have billions to lobby Congress, so I'm not confident that will happen any time soon. I think undermining them from the bottom up with a cheap open source alternative is probably more practical.

zepto 6y ago

This article is a great encapsulation of why I think the whole Epic vs Apple and attempts to force Apple to allow alternative stores are a step in the wrong direction. They will only make people more dependent on what will still be a controlled platform. What will also happen is that the government will end up regulating the App stores, since it’s no longer just Apple running them. This is one step short of the ‘ban on general purpose computing’ mentioned in the article, but a badly written law regulating software distribution could easily mean that it is that too. I wholeheartedly agree with the calls to action, but I’d add one more: stop going along with companies like Epic and all this clamor about Apple as if they are freedom fighters, and instead call for them to invest in a foundation to pay for community work on a genuinely open mobile Linux. There are numerous corporations with many billions available to invest, e.g. Microsoft, Epic, Facebook, all of whom claim to want to be free of Apple’s control. The way to do is is them to pay for a real open platform that none of them own. It seems counterintuitive, but that is the real way to commoditize their complement (as was successfully done on the server) and devalue Apple’s Proprietary OS, which would be to all of their advantage. There is no reason such a platform shouldn’t be an excellent vehicle for games, and with first class SPA support no App Store would be needed at all. If we really want to lobby for regulation, it should be to force boot camp level of openness for the hardware, so that anyone would be free to run an open software platform on a tablet, phone or laptop. That would help any open platform compete fairly with proprietary ones without needing to regulate OS designs.

enos_feedler 6y ago
Boot camp level access isn't going to provide the documentation necessary to program those machines. It also impedes the pace of vertically integrated innovation that has been happening over the years. If Apple needed a public contract for open operating systems to build on top of, it would either slow down the roadmap, or break the open software regularly. It isn't just a money problem, it's a technical and human coordination problem that can't be solved with money. IMO, Google should have stepped up to build this right, but didn't. They built Android to defend against Apple not to invent a better future path. If there is something to regulate it is making super easy for consumers to have choice over Apple vs. something else. Regulate the need for easy adoption paths between mobile ecosystems. This creates a fair arena for a free market to fight for consumers without lock in.

pwang 6y ago

There is a factual inaccuracy in the article: Beaker Browser is not "actually under the control of governments and big corporations". It is an independent open-source project.

gautamcgoel 6y ago

"And even so, Raspbian relies on Systemd, despite the privacy fears of many." What the actual fuck? I'm no systemd shill but this sentence makes no sense in the context of this essay. How does systemd represent a loss of privacy foisted upon us by Google and Microsoft?

davisr 6y ago
Systemd, which handles DNS configuration, literally defaults to Google's DNS resolvers (giving Google each and every server that your computer tries to contact, and allowing Google to censor or redirect you elsewhere).

enos_feedler 6y ago

"Most bloggers get so little traffic on their personal websites that they see no point in continuing them, so they give up. Visit personal blogs and leave comments that let their writers know their efforts are appreciated." Sounds like a good idea, but in practice, at scale, this is exactly the kind of functionality that doesn't work without a closed platform to take care of things. Who deletes the spam comments?

auggierose 6y ago

I guess the title is inspired by a recent TV show ...