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Thank you for such an honest and in-depth reply. The CSAM stuff was definitely one of my biggest issues with Apple as well. It felt like none of their other pri

Thank you for such an honest and in-depth reply. The CSAM stuff was definitely one of my biggest issues with Apple as well. It felt like none of their other privacy efforts really mattered if they were willing to backdoor the device itself. It turned me off to their products as well. And your blog post had a lot of good points about Microsoft and Intel as well. There really is nobody left eh? One of the alternatives I'm looking at is to just use the laptop as a thin client and offloading heavy tasks to a home server. Still can't be too thin a client, just in case I have poor network, but it seems like one of the best ways to get portability + privacy + power nowadays. But I'm also trying to be careful to do proper threat modeling [1] so that I don't burn out, as the rabbit hole goes very deep. Overall it's great to hear from others that they are able to de-Apple their lives, it makes me think maybe I don't really need that M1 after all :) Though it's true that the direction of personal devices and the war on computing [2] is rather disheartening. [1]: https://www.privacyguides.org/basics/threat-modeling/ https://www.privacyguides.org/basics/threat-modeling/ [2]: https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-purp.html https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-...

Syonyk 4y ago
> There really is nobody left eh? Linux, on the most open hardware you can find? That's about all I'm willing to use anymore, and if that closes, I'll find something else to do with my life. I keep coming back to, "I cannot defend modern consumer electronics from any ethical starting point I pick." They're built on the backs of slave labor, using materials extracted in "What toxic sludge pile about to collapse?" conditions, used to extract behavioral data for tech overlord profits (I've never been a tech overlord, but I certainly have worked for some of those companies over the years), and then get burned in third world countries when they're artificially obsoleted because you ought to buy a new one for more profits. Yay? > Still can't be too thin a client, just in case I have poor network, but it seems like one of the best ways to get portability + privacy + power nowadays. It depends what you're doing, but I don't really need much power "on the go" in my life anymore. The PineBook Pro is remarkably useful for portable light use, and at $200 and "way more open hardware than anything x86 or Apple," it's not a bad little system. It's also quite repariable, though they're less durable than I'd really prefer. > But I'm also trying to be careful to do proper threat modeling [1] so that I don't burn out, as the rabbit hole goes very deep. The rabbit hole goes very deep indeed. The threat modeling is hard when the very foundations of modern computing (process isolation) are cracked and crumbling. If you told someone that VMs were a hard isolation boundary in the Haswell days, you'd have been quite wrong (L1TF). You just wouldn't have known it for a few years yet. The burnout is real, and I'm not convinced it's a bad thing, really. There are a lot of deep technical types I know in my general peer group (call it "mid 30s to mid 40s, have grown up with this stuff, have done it professionally their entire post-college lives") who more and more want no part of what we call consumer electronics, and are doing things like "buying plots of fruit trees" and "no longer carrying smartphones." There will be an entire group of "gentleman farmers who run oddly Amish-seeming farms" in the next decade, and they'll be former security and low level tech types. The threat modeling from a security perspective is hard, but from a behavioral surplus perspective, it's simple enough: "If there is a way something can be collected, it is being collected. If you can't envision a way something can be collected, odds are very good that someone smarter than you has been paid very well to figure out how to collect it anyway." Buy some Field Notes pocket notebooks, carry those instead of a smartphone. I now regularly go out for entire days without a cell phone on me, and with a mechanical watch. It's nice, and I suggest getting in the habit. > it makes me think maybe I don't really need that M1 after all Vote with your wallet. If you object to Apple's CSAM stuff with your words, and buy a M1 with your actions, you don't really object that much - actions speaking louder than words and all. The forum attached to my blog has a small collection of people working through this stuff as well. You're quite welcome to join there!
prmoustache 4y ago
> But I'm also trying to be careful to do proper threat modeling [1] so that I don't burn out, as the rabbit hole goes very deep. I have never been applefied, but my exit from google and meta is also a statement (that I wish more people would do). Think of it as putting your money (or rather privacy) where your mouth is. As nice there devices seems to be, they are never perfect either (see complaints about the keyboard) and it is fairly easy to de-Apple. The same is much harder for Google and in some regions meta, mostly of whatsapp.

Syonyk 4y ago

> There really is nobody left eh? Linux, on the most open hardware you can find? That's about all I'm willing to use anymore, and if that closes, I'll find something else to do with my life. I keep coming back to, "I cannot defend modern consumer electronics from any ethical starting point I pick." They're built on the backs of slave labor, using materials extracted in "What toxic sludge pile about to collapse?" conditions, used to extract behavioral data for tech overlord profits (I've never been a tech overlord, but I certainly have worked for some of those companies over the years), and then get burned in third world countries when they're artificially obsoleted because you ought to buy a new one for more profits. Yay? > Still can't be too thin a client, just in case I have poor network, but it seems like one of the best ways to get portability + privacy + power nowadays. It depends what you're doing, but I don't really need much power "on the go" in my life anymore. The PineBook Pro is remarkably useful for portable light use, and at $200 and "way more open hardware than anything x86 or Apple," it's not a bad little system. It's also quite repariable, though they're less durable than I'd really prefer. > But I'm also trying to be careful to do proper threat modeling [1] so that I don't burn out, as the rabbit hole goes very deep. The rabbit hole goes very deep indeed. The threat modeling is hard when the very foundations of modern computing (process isolation) are cracked and crumbling. If you told someone that VMs were a hard isolation boundary in the Haswell days, you'd have been quite wrong (L1TF). You just wouldn't have known it for a few years yet. The burnout is real, and I'm not convinced it's a bad thing, really. There are a lot of deep technical types I know in my general peer group (call it "mid 30s to mid 40s, have grown up with this stuff, have done it professionally their entire post-college lives") who more and more want no part of what we call consumer electronics, and are doing things like "buying plots of fruit trees" and "no longer carrying smartphones." There will be an entire group of "gentleman farmers who run oddly Amish-seeming farms" in the next decade, and they'll be former security and low level tech types. The threat modeling from a security perspective is hard, but from a behavioral surplus perspective, it's simple enough: "If there is a way something can be collected, it is being collected. If you can't envision a way something can be collected, odds are very good that someone smarter than you has been paid very well to figure out how to collect it anyway." Buy some Field Notes pocket notebooks, carry those instead of a smartphone. I now regularly go out for entire days without a cell phone on me, and with a mechanical watch. It's nice, and I suggest getting in the habit. > it makes me think maybe I don't really need that M1 after all Vote with your wallet. If you object to Apple's CSAM stuff with your words, and buy a M1 with your actions, you don't really object that much - actions speaking louder than words and all. The forum attached to my blog has a small collection of people working through this stuff as well. You're quite welcome to join there!

prmoustache 4y ago

> But I'm also trying to be careful to do proper threat modeling [1] so that I don't burn out, as the rabbit hole goes very deep. I have never been applefied, but my exit from google and meta is also a statement (that I wish more people would do). Think of it as putting your money (or rather privacy) where your mouth is. As nice there devices seems to be, they are never perfect either (see complaints about the keyboard) and it is fairly easy to de-Apple. The same is much harder for Google and in some regions meta, mostly of whatsapp.