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How crazy is it that getting root on your own device is an accomplishment? We're not living in Commodore 64 days anymore. The vast majority of people have to

How crazy is it that getting root on your own device is an accomplishment? We're not living in Commodore 64 days anymore. The vast majority of people have to be protected from themselves, or they'd all be following online instructions to delete files in Win32 to free up space. On HN, people know what they're doing, but for some reason complain as if every person on the planet has the same level of technical knowledge they do. They don't. People on HN like to moan about not being able to hack stuff because they think it gives them street cred. It doesn't. HN: "This product is awful! It has no security!" Also HN: "This product is awful! Its has security!"

TillE 4y ago
Right, the hard question is how do you prevent the spread of trojan horses which use basic social engineering? It's not difficult to get people to run a sketchy program and type their password into any old prompt. You need layers upon layers of security to mitigate this.
adra 4y ago
It is as it always was an attitude of trust and defaults. You can get locked down bootloaders that only load windows and specifically signed Linux distros. This is totally fine for the 99%, but still most bios allow you to drop into non-secureboot if you choose. They've given the trust that you're going to do so responsibly. No random is going to do this for lols. It's largely for enthusiasts and non-institutional professionals building their stacks. This is the have your cake and eat it too. Android has its "dev" mode, and most android phones allow for bootloader unlocks. Giving people to option to explicitly drop the security for their own reasons is great as long as the default is " idiot proof". Who's complaining about this model? Nobody
spookthesunset 4y ago
And honestly there are way cooler “raw hardware” things out there now that you can tinker with. ESP32 or even an Arduino can run circles around a C64 as far things you can do… (at least I can think of… who knows what my life would be like growing up around $5 microcontrollers with easy to use IO and whatnot…)
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Indeed, plenty of power, ESP32 even has more juice than a PC 1512, and we got plenty of games and other stuff on them.

TillE 4y ago

Right, the hard question is how do you prevent the spread of trojan horses which use basic social engineering? It's not difficult to get people to run a sketchy program and type their password into any old prompt. You need layers upon layers of security to mitigate this.

adra 4y ago

It is as it always was an attitude of trust and defaults. You can get locked down bootloaders that only load windows and specifically signed Linux distros. This is totally fine for the 99%, but still most bios allow you to drop into non-secureboot if you choose. They've given the trust that you're going to do so responsibly. No random is going to do this for lols. It's largely for enthusiasts and non-institutional professionals building their stacks. This is the have your cake and eat it too. Android has its "dev" mode, and most android phones allow for bootloader unlocks. Giving people to option to explicitly drop the security for their own reasons is great as long as the default is " idiot proof". Who's complaining about this model? Nobody

spookthesunset 4y ago

And honestly there are way cooler “raw hardware” things out there now that you can tinker with. ESP32 or even an Arduino can run circles around a C64 as far things you can do… (at least I can think of… who knows what my life would be like growing up around $5 microcontrollers with easy to use IO and whatnot…)

pjmlp 4y ago
Indeed, plenty of power, ESP32 even has more juice than a PC 1512, and we got plenty of games and other stuff on them.