4 ms·

Good points on both sides. But I am absolutely still in the camp that trusts Gimp way more than uploading photos to a random website.

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Good points on both sides. All the points are true, so we need to dig a little deeper and be more specific about what is at issue here. Online and Native are quite different trust and utility models. Web applications protect the execution environment owned and managed by the user. They do so at the cost of compromising some of the user's data, which must usually be processed remotely. The protection applies to most of the user's data. This trust tradeoff is iterated/ongoing, so that benefits and harms accrue over time. Native applications make a one-off trust transaction. "Is it safe to install on my device?". In the win situation the benefit is speedy and safe processing of all the user's data for all future time. If the user is tricked, then the loss is catastrophic, exposing potentially all of the user's data, perhaps silently/undetectably for considerable future time. That's a very simplified and perhaps naive distinction. Despite the pressures of surveillance capitalism, some web services are honest, TLS and GDPR work, and some users are sensible about what they share online. On the flip side we are seeing that devices come pwned from the factory, at the hardware or firmware level, which makes a nonsense of the whole "endpoint security" paradigm.
- eitland 4y ago
  > If the user is tricked, then the loss is catastrophic, exposing potentially all of the user's data, perhaps silently/undetectably for considerable future time. For offline users we also have malware detection and firewalls. Stopping outgoing connections can be be really effective, bjt of course: if one has doubts one probably shouldn't install.

4 ms·

Good points on both sides. But I am absolutely still in the camp that trusts Gimp way more than uploading photos to a random website.

by eitland 4y ago

nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Good points on both sides. All the points are true, so we need to dig a little deeper and be more specific about what is at issue here. Online and Native are quite different trust and utility models. Web applications protect the execution environment owned and managed by the user. They do so at the cost of compromising some of the user's data, which must usually be processed remotely. The protection applies to most of the user's data. This trust tradeoff is iterated/ongoing, so that benefits and harms accrue over time. Native applications make a one-off trust transaction. "Is it safe to install on my device?". In the win situation the benefit is speedy and safe processing of all the user's data for all future time. If the user is tricked, then the loss is catastrophic, exposing potentially all of the user's data, perhaps silently/undetectably for considerable future time. That's a very simplified and perhaps naive distinction. Despite the pressures of surveillance capitalism, some web services are honest, TLS and GDPR work, and some users are sensible about what they share online. On the flip side we are seeing that devices come pwned from the factory, at the hardware or firmware level, which makes a nonsense of the whole "endpoint security" paradigm.
- eitland 4y ago
  > If the user is tricked, then the loss is catastrophic, exposing potentially all of the user's data, perhaps silently/undetectably for considerable future time. For offline users we also have malware detection and firewalls. Stopping outgoing connections can be be really effective, bjt of course: if one has doubts one probably shouldn't install.