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I had just about the opposite response. This article is pretty badly written and confusing, in a style I could describe as "software architecture porn". There's

I had just about the opposite response. This article is pretty badly written and confusing, in a style I could describe as "software architecture porn". There's a lot of descriptions of clever designs but very little demonstrated of real world use cases. Plus there's some pretty inflammatory and egregious statements, like this one is particularly bad: >Note: The very idea that the second one even became a dialog is surprising. Most UIs that predates this idiocy had trained users to route data using their own initiative and interaction alone through “drag and drop”, “copy and paste” and so on. It is a dangerous pattern in its own right, and a mildly competent threat actor knows how to leverage this side channel. The author is completely missing the point of the security model on those operating systems. I've read some of this author's previous writings and I get the impression that they've been working in a research silo for an extremely long time and not really stepping out to see how people actually use their computers. I wish they would come out of the cave once in a while to collaborate with other projects on something, instead of getting trapped in this pit of self-reflection and writing these falsehoods about other operating systems. For a point of reference, I had a look at your list and most of your desires are possible with MacOS and Linux today.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
> The author is completely missing the point of the security model on those operating systems. I don't think they are, they're criticizing the implementation and they're entirely right: dialog spam is annoying and teaches people to click without reading, and the mobile model of security popups is dialog spam because it is the equivalent of "are you sure you want to quit?" but in reverse, "are you sure you want to actually use the application?". > I had a look at your list and most of your desires are possible with MacOS and Linux today. Sure, but no one is doing things that way or making it simple and convenient. It's possible in the same way it is possible to use DOS as a daily driver in 2021. I've maintained for some time that what we need isn't new ideas, just to actually start using the good ideas we've already had, and Arcan is doing that in a lot of ways.
- BrightGlow 5y ago
  I don't think they're even remotely right at all. There is no possible way to make a decent security system in a GUI that doesn't involve dialogs popping up in some way. That's the essence of what a GUI is, if you don't like dialogs then you should probably not be using a GUI at all. Just to be clear here, the alternative suggested to showing a dialog seems to be to present the user some kind of MAC system, which are notorious for being confusing, complex, and really difficult to present to the user in a meaningful way. The way those usually work is that your application just quits immediately and the system pops up another dialog telling you to change the permissions elsewhere. In the best possible case, that's equivalent to asking "are you sure you want to actually use the application". If there is a way this interaction can be improved, neither you or the article really explained it well. That's why I can't really get behind these statements, but I'm open to changing my mind if it's explained well. It would be best to avoid the inflammatory and accusatory tone of the article, it weakens the argument. Don't get me wrong, dialog spam is a real problem, but the solution with that is to improve the dialogs, make them more meaningful and cut out the unnecessary ones. Not remove dialogs entirely. If I'm having a private conversation and I accidentally open an audio chat application then I'll say no, I don't want to use the application now. That's about as meaningful of a dialog as you can get. I used to be in denial about this myself because I'm a geek used to messing around with manually configuring SELinux and such, but the mobile model of security is actually really good. It works for the majority of users for the cases they're interested in without being too intrusive. That's the sweet spot you want to hit with security models. Remember these are single user systems as are most laptops in use today. I can't really agree with your second paragraph, I tried to use Arcan and didn't find it simple, easy to use, or convenient, nor did it have any remarkable ideas. It seems to be a re-spin of some really old failed ideas from the late 80s. But don't take it just from me, you should definitely try it out if you haven't yet. I'll agree that Linux in general is not simple or convenient, I also suggest trying to do all of your items with the latest MacOS if you haven't done it recently.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    > There is no possible way to make a decent security system in a GUI that doesn't involve dialogs popping up in some way. That's the essence of what a GUI is, if you don't like dialogs then you should probably not be using a GUI at all. Really? A GUI to you is just constant dialog boxes? That sounds like some kind of hell. There are a lot of mechanisms of interaction in a GUI that aren't "OK/Cancel" prompts. Let's take file permissions as an example. I have a text editor, or a paint program, or an audio editor, and I want to open a file and work on it. One way to ask for permission is the mobile model "give this application access to your documents?", which is garbage. Another way is to open a file dialog that is controlled by the OS and have it pass in a file of your choosing[0] thus granting permission to that one file by active choice, and yet another way would be to have the user drag and drop a file from a file browser into the application window (or onto its icon), again granting permission via explicit user action. As I mentioned in one of my original links, RiscOS even used drag and drop saving, whereby an application desiring to save a file gave you an icon to drag to wherever you want to store it, which again could be handled by the OS and this the application needs no write permissions granted to arbitrary locations. Let's try something other than files. How about cameras? You could go the mobile route "let this application use any and all cameras on your system now and forever?", or you could have a mechanism where by pressing a hotkey (or something) you get access to a devices panel where you can put a check mark on an individual camera you'd like to use, or you could do something more like Arcan where instead of selecting a device you instead pipe a video stream into the application which may or may not be originated by a camera, perhaps by using some kind of GUI composition method similar to a what you see in DAWs. Sadly this space is relatively unexplored as far as I can tell, with developers mostly preferring "Ok/Cancel" prompts, possibly because they require a minimum of effort on their part. > I can't really agree with your second paragraph, I tried to use Arcan and didn't find it simple, easy to use, or convenient, nor did it have any remarkable ideas. I have never used it and have not even have a Linux Desktop installed on any of my machines for about a year, so I can't say. I'm intrigued, but not yet enough to bother screwing with Linux Desktop again. I would generally agree that none of its ideas are remarkable, or rather that the only thing remarkable about them is how none of them are really new, yet they're still practically magic compared to the current paradigms. > It seems to be a re-spin of some really old failed ideas from the late 80s Some things fail not because they are bad ideas, but because they were before their time, had bad luck, bad marketing, or other difficulties unrelated to their worth. [0] I believe the Flatpak project engineered something like this [1] Maybe that's a dialog to you, to which I say that kind of dialog isn't the problem.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

> The author is completely missing the point of the security model on those operating systems. I don't think they are, they're criticizing the implementation and they're entirely right: dialog spam is annoying and teaches people to click without reading, and the mobile model of security popups is dialog spam because it is the equivalent of "are you sure you want to quit?" but in reverse, "are you sure you want to actually use the application?". > I had a look at your list and most of your desires are possible with MacOS and Linux today. Sure, but no one is doing things that way or making it simple and convenient. It's possible in the same way it is possible to use DOS as a daily driver in 2021. I've maintained for some time that what we need isn't new ideas, just to actually start using the good ideas we've already had, and Arcan is doing that in a lot of ways.

BrightGlow 5y ago
I don't think they're even remotely right at all. There is no possible way to make a decent security system in a GUI that doesn't involve dialogs popping up in some way. That's the essence of what a GUI is, if you don't like dialogs then you should probably not be using a GUI at all. Just to be clear here, the alternative suggested to showing a dialog seems to be to present the user some kind of MAC system, which are notorious for being confusing, complex, and really difficult to present to the user in a meaningful way. The way those usually work is that your application just quits immediately and the system pops up another dialog telling you to change the permissions elsewhere. In the best possible case, that's equivalent to asking "are you sure you want to actually use the application". If there is a way this interaction can be improved, neither you or the article really explained it well. That's why I can't really get behind these statements, but I'm open to changing my mind if it's explained well. It would be best to avoid the inflammatory and accusatory tone of the article, it weakens the argument. Don't get me wrong, dialog spam is a real problem, but the solution with that is to improve the dialogs, make them more meaningful and cut out the unnecessary ones. Not remove dialogs entirely. If I'm having a private conversation and I accidentally open an audio chat application then I'll say no, I don't want to use the application now. That's about as meaningful of a dialog as you can get. I used to be in denial about this myself because I'm a geek used to messing around with manually configuring SELinux and such, but the mobile model of security is actually really good. It works for the majority of users for the cases they're interested in without being too intrusive. That's the sweet spot you want to hit with security models. Remember these are single user systems as are most laptops in use today. I can't really agree with your second paragraph, I tried to use Arcan and didn't find it simple, easy to use, or convenient, nor did it have any remarkable ideas. It seems to be a re-spin of some really old failed ideas from the late 80s. But don't take it just from me, you should definitely try it out if you haven't yet. I'll agree that Linux in general is not simple or convenient, I also suggest trying to do all of your items with the latest MacOS if you haven't done it recently.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  > There is no possible way to make a decent security system in a GUI that doesn't involve dialogs popping up in some way. That's the essence of what a GUI is, if you don't like dialogs then you should probably not be using a GUI at all. Really? A GUI to you is just constant dialog boxes? That sounds like some kind of hell. There are a lot of mechanisms of interaction in a GUI that aren't "OK/Cancel" prompts. Let's take file permissions as an example. I have a text editor, or a paint program, or an audio editor, and I want to open a file and work on it. One way to ask for permission is the mobile model "give this application access to your documents?", which is garbage. Another way is to open a file dialog that is controlled by the OS and have it pass in a file of your choosing[0] thus granting permission to that one file by active choice, and yet another way would be to have the user drag and drop a file from a file browser into the application window (or onto its icon), again granting permission via explicit user action. As I mentioned in one of my original links, RiscOS even used drag and drop saving, whereby an application desiring to save a file gave you an icon to drag to wherever you want to store it, which again could be handled by the OS and this the application needs no write permissions granted to arbitrary locations. Let's try something other than files. How about cameras? You could go the mobile route "let this application use any and all cameras on your system now and forever?", or you could have a mechanism where by pressing a hotkey (or something) you get access to a devices panel where you can put a check mark on an individual camera you'd like to use, or you could do something more like Arcan where instead of selecting a device you instead pipe a video stream into the application which may or may not be originated by a camera, perhaps by using some kind of GUI composition method similar to a what you see in DAWs. Sadly this space is relatively unexplored as far as I can tell, with developers mostly preferring "Ok/Cancel" prompts, possibly because they require a minimum of effort on their part. > I can't really agree with your second paragraph, I tried to use Arcan and didn't find it simple, easy to use, or convenient, nor did it have any remarkable ideas. I have never used it and have not even have a Linux Desktop installed on any of my machines for about a year, so I can't say. I'm intrigued, but not yet enough to bother screwing with Linux Desktop again. I would generally agree that none of its ideas are remarkable, or rather that the only thing remarkable about them is how none of them are really new, yet they're still practically magic compared to the current paradigms. > It seems to be a re-spin of some really old failed ideas from the late 80s Some things fail not because they are bad ideas, but because they were before their time, had bad luck, bad marketing, or other difficulties unrelated to their worth. [0] I believe the Flatpak project engineered something like this [1] Maybe that's a dialog to you, to which I say that kind of dialog isn't the problem.