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Somewhat sandboxed scripting vs operating system is like coupon flyers vs notarized legal documents. Would you bank online via HTTP (vs HTTPS)? When I was doi

Somewhat sandboxed scripting vs operating system is like coupon flyers vs notarized legal documents. Would you bank online via HTTP (vs HTTPS)? When I was doing nodejs work, npm artifacts still weren't being signed. Sure, some people play in traffic. Doesn't mean we all should. People arguing against privacy & authenicity always remind me of a coworker who emphatically opposed password managers or any system whatsoever for managing secrets. Something something "single point of failure".

mindslight 6y ago
You seem to have referenced that example merely for a way of saying things should be secure, but I took it and tied it into a larger point about the futility of stronger identification. The thing about security is that it's inherently a multi party problem. Some party that is able to identify me is increasing their own security, but likely at the expense of decreasing my own security. You speak of authenticity, yet there is a good reason chat protocols don't stop at naive signatures, and actually increase their complexity for additional properties like repudiation. Sure, many activities prudently require a way to reasonably identify people and have an acceptable downside. And sometimes when individuals' security is broken, society benefits (eg DKIM being used to verify leaked email authenticity). But there are many more that do not need such things, and in fact doing so would harm our freedom (the examples I gave). You seem to be staking out the position that some sort of universal identity would be a good thing, including for casual Internet communication ("Bots, sock puppets"). I wholeheartedly disagree with this.
- specialist 6y ago
  > I wholeheartedly disagree... Nihilism. For future, maybe lead with that. Save everyone a bit of angst.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    I don't understand. Are you equating my position to nihilism? It's most assuredly not. If anything, technological determinism is closer to nihilism.

mindslight 6y ago

You seem to have referenced that example merely for a way of saying things should be secure, but I took it and tied it into a larger point about the futility of stronger identification. The thing about security is that it's inherently a multi party problem. Some party that is able to identify me is increasing their own security, but likely at the expense of decreasing my own security. You speak of authenticity, yet there is a good reason chat protocols don't stop at naive signatures, and actually increase their complexity for additional properties like repudiation. Sure, many activities prudently require a way to reasonably identify people and have an acceptable downside. And sometimes when individuals' security is broken, society benefits (eg DKIM being used to verify leaked email authenticity). But there are many more that do not need such things, and in fact doing so would harm our freedom (the examples I gave). You seem to be staking out the position that some sort of universal identity would be a good thing, including for casual Internet communication ("Bots, sock puppets"). I wholeheartedly disagree with this.

specialist 6y ago
> I wholeheartedly disagree... Nihilism. For future, maybe lead with that. Save everyone a bit of angst.
- mindslight 6y ago
  I don't understand. Are you equating my position to nihilism? It's most assuredly not. If anything, technological determinism is closer to nihilism.