10 ms·

Cory Doctorow: Freeing Ourselves from the Clutches of Big Tech

108 points by zwieback 3y ago

devaiops9001 3y ago
Government is not the answer here. Would like to see less advocacy for government and more working code from Doctorow.
zwieback 3y ago
comcom: competitive compatibility. Hadn't heard this term before but I like it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jeffbee 3y ago
A freedom that I desire more greatly is a durable liberation from having to see any more Cory Doctorow articles. Remember 20 years ago when this guy was telling everyone that Microsoft was going to use the TPM to prevent you from installing Linux? Did that happen?
- esafak 3y ago
  Was the scaremonger wrong, or simply effective in effecting change? Another contemporary issue: the Y2K scare.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    It was wrong. Only charlatans pretend that shouting about something that wasn't going to happen stopped the thing from happening.
    - Syonyk 3y ago
      Why are you asserting it "wasn't going to happen"? The whole Paladium trusted boot/"known OS environment"/etc stuff could very easily have gone down the path of "This hardware only boots Windows." Secure Boot has been a pain for a while, though at least you can turn it off. Nobody at the time (as far as OEMs) seemed to care the slightest bit about Linux, so the concern of "Only boots a measured Windows install, for your own security" seemed rather worth worrying about.
      - Muromec 3y ago
        Only boots into X due to TPM is the current state of affairs on certain devices. If anything, PC world is the only holdout where it doesn't happen.
      - c0l0 3y ago
        Palladium is coming again, and this time for real, with Windows 11 and its default "Secure"/Measured Boot (de facto) requirement - and all the infrastructure in place for Internet endpoints to attest that their peers have actually been booted that way.
  - adolph 3y ago
    Yes and no. As it turned out the problem wasn't with Microsoft and PCs but Apple and phones.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Did you or do you work for Big Tech? Not asking to doxx, but to surface potential bias. I can guess from your comment history, but attempting to assume most charitable interpretation and intent. I donate to the EFF because they pay Cory, and Cory attempts to contribute towards keeping Big Tech at bay. Let's not argue about Big Tech intent here; they would conquer the world if they could. The evidence around this thesis is...robust. (recent example of Microsoft blocking Firefox from FIDO2 auth in a very public way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38502340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38502340)
  - uoaei 3y ago
    It is fascinating how the "corporations are people" ideological bent has been internalized by so many. You see discussions all the time in these comments where people argue that "is" implies "ought" when it comes to the strategies and tactics implemented by (the people within) these powerful companies.
  - tetris11 3y ago
    Same. EFF is the one organization I will always send my money to
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      I belonged to the EFF for many years before they went Full Doctorow. I no longer support either EFF or EPIC because they have gone totally off the rails.
      - tetris11 3y ago
        That's certainly an interesting view. Can you expand on that? What were they doing before that they're not doing now, or doing more of under Doctorow's influence?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- trelane 3y ago
  > Microsoft was going to use the TPM to prevent you from installing Linux? Did that happen? Yes, but on ARM. https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequence/uefi/secure-boot https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequenc... https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequence/uefi/secure-boot/disable-secureboot https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequenc... Fortunately, that was forestalled on x86. Who knows if they'll ever stop signing the Linux Shim for "security reasons."
- c0l0 3y ago
  Actually, yes, they did so also on (some) vendors' x86 firmware: https://www.omglinux.com/boot-linux-modern-lenovo-thinkpads-bios-setting/ https://www.omglinux.com/boot-linux-modern-lenovo-thinkpads-... These default firmware settings will prevent "third-party"-MSFT-signed EFI binaries from loading - gee, I wonder why that distinction is suddenly necessary, too? :) In my view and experience, the threat model that Secure Boot and similar schemes to establishing a root of trust to assure that "noone (esp. not the owner) has tampered with this device" tries to protect against is VERY rarely relevant (to the owner of said device). The times that I have been inconvenienced or even prevented by that stuff from getting the software I, the owner of the device, want installed onto hardware that I paid good money for at a store/vendor have been numerous, however.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  Hah! You say King Henry the Fifth was a great strategist, but the French got stuck in the mud at Agincourt!
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Microsoft does install keys that you can't revoke on many computers, making it somewhat impossible to secure one's own computer against outsiders. Also, recent laptops have started shipping where 3rd party OSes are blocked by default. https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32066919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32066919 In my opinion, Cory is a treasure, a rare voice that consistent advocates for a development where humanity at large has the freedom to pioneer & advance the open electronic frontiers.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  > A freedom that I desire more greatly is a durable liberation from having to see any more Cory Doctorow articles. You know, it's really easy to just ignore articles that you're not interested in. Yet you chose to respond. Why? And your accusation - he was wrong about something 20 years ago - even if true, so what? I've been wrong about a thing or two in 20 years. And, while I know that pretty much everyone else also has been, I don't keep track of what people said 20 years ago so that I can point to it to show the world how wrong that person was. This almost seems like it's personal for you. If so, why?
adolph 3y ago
I much prefer Sivers' vision of tech independence[0] over Doctorow's vision of a law-regulation for every problem. They aren't necessarily incompatible with one another. Sivers is exit compared to Doctorow's voice (in the Exit, Voice, and Loyalty framework[1]). However, I think what Doctorow advocates is more likely to result in regulatory-capture than people-power. I think that capture is more likely to result in a world with higher costs in choosing forms of exit. 0. https://sive.rs/ti https://sive.rs/ti 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
- raziel2p 3y ago
  This works for certain things, like email and such - but it only works for very tech-savvy people, not the general consumer, and it stops working at a certain scale: One of the examples from the article is about car manufacturers (who also employ big tech like business methods). Good luck engineering your own car. Similarly, while I could pay 2-3 times more for a Fairphone or such, it'd be better if tech independence was available to everyone, including for consumer-grade smartphones. On a related note, I think devices such as Fairphone and Framework laptops prove that even without regulation, "free" (as in freedom) products are already more expensive, you don't need regulations to make that happen.
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  We are in such a connected age though. I do want to exit and start my own shit, but I don't want to walk away from all my friends and family who aren't into pioneering a new digital existence. Sure I can keep running my xmpp server & begging people to contact me over xmpp. But I'm going to miss all the life updates & chatter my friends are doing on Facebook or Instagram or Discord. The points in this article seem super spot on. The anti-cirumvention laws obstruct any kind of fair rise of an interesting alternative. We can walk away, but only if we are ok severing ties. Competitive compatibility is the relief we need to allow meaningful choices. The world of physical products allowed consumers a lot of property rights to the stuff they purchased, but in the cloud age these lords of the cloud have everything tightly sealed up in data-keeps and you likely stand 'in felony contempt of business model' (and are likely liable for these fines that start at half a million dollars for first infraction for just making the tool), if you do anything that isn't explicitly built into the app already. This shift from the world having some property rights to being ruled over from afar by contract law was pointed out by Mark Lemley, decades ago, and highlighted in the lovely Web scraping for me but not for thee, which points out that big companies all got their start off the exact sort of violations & scraping & mercenary-done competitive compatibility that would get you or I blasted out of the waters in a heartbeat. https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2023/08/web-scraping-for-me-but-not-for-thee-guest-blog-post.htm https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2023/08/web-scraping-f... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37264970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37264970 Exit is only interesting if it doesn't mean going off to live in a digital barrel. I absolutely fully agree, we need to own the means of connection. We fully need to bootstrap real alternatives. But if the alternative has to create a walk-away movement to succeed, that's a horrible thing. And, people everywhere should have some informational property rights. That there are digital system & cloud stuff involved shouldn't so fundamentally strip people of rights & freedom as it does.
lasermike026 3y ago
Stop buying and using cars. Cars are the worst, most destructive invention in human history. Want global peace? Stop driving cars and burning oil. Want to save the environment? Stop driving cars and burning oil. Want to bring life back into your community? Walk. Want to get healthy and get into shape? Walk. Want to commute? Bike and take public transit. Want to take control of your life and dump these disgusting corporations? Don't buy, don't drive, and don't burn oil.
- idopmstuff 3y ago
  What about the large number of people who live in places where this isn't possible?
  - thejohnconway 3y ago
    The problem is that cars made it possible for people to live in those sorts of places, cheaply enough. Not a solution, just an observation. If cars weren't really a thing, people would live in denser communities with walkable services (I include rural communities in this. Pre-car villages are pretty dense, and have, you know, things like shops, etc.).
    - tayo42 3y ago
      Is that really true? We were getting around with horses before cars. You have to go back real far to get to a point where we weren't getting around faster than walking
      - eesmith 3y ago
        Horses aren't that much faster than walking. Horses can go about 30 miles/day. (That's the reason the Spanish mission towns in the US west were spaced about 30 miles apart.) That's also about what people can walk in a day (Appalachian Trail through-hikers do about 3 miles per hour). Now, trained trail horses can go far further in a day, but they require specialized training, food, and care, making them a very expensive plow-horse or cart-horse.
vitiral 3y ago
I agree with the problems, however the solutions seem far fetched. 90% of these "solutions" are that the government will save the day with decisions that benefit its citizens and it's own bottom line. That doesn't represent reality and I don't see how you could get there from here.
- nadermx 3y ago
  In some sense the government, which occasionally is run by sensible people, does save the day. Take Portland Oregon, or Curitiba Brazil as examples. They saw gains in multi modal design that benefited all citizens, not just the privileged elite who can afford the luxury of mono transit design.
  - gretch 3y ago
    Maybe this doesn't apply to your govt, but I live in the US and I don't have any confidence in the govt to "fix" tech related problems and get e.g. right to repair right. Why? Because they can't even solve the classic problems in front of them. Primarily healthcare. Healthcare is a thing that affects everyone. It's a problem as old as time. And it's vital to life. If the government can't get this right, what chance is there that we can trust them to regulate something like right to repair.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Right to repair has a simple solution. Apply a 100%, 1,000%, or whatever percent necessary excise tax on manufactured products. With a sufficiently high premium for new products, consumers will automatically start prioritizing device longevity and/or repairability when making their purchasing decisions. Solving the supply/demand/patent/changing demographics/liability issues of healthcare seem far more complicated.
      - nickff 3y ago
        I don't support this idea, but a percentage-based tax may actually cause the opposite effect (from what you describe as your goal). A flat tax (fixed number of dollars) is more likely to achieve your aims, and has actually been implemented with that result in the past. The example that comes to mind for me is the United Kingdom's flat tax on French wine (a long time ago).
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
archsurface 3y ago
People won't even switch from chrome to firefox. The apathy is revolting.
- verdverm 3y ago
  Why do you assume it's apathy and not a conscious choice?
- ishanmahapatra 3y ago
  For me, the reason I keep a Chromium browser around is because government websites sometimes just don’t work on anything other than bog standard Chrome.
- surge 3y ago
  People used to say the same about IE. Most people don't think about it. I just Brave personally.
openthc 3y ago
We make software for the regulated cannabis space; we work with government agencies. Despite years of folks indside and outside the industry telling these government regulators to NOT use expensive single-use RFID tags -- they've been plowing forwared with it since 2014. The lobbiest and industry had their ear and the indivudual voices of reason couldn't effect change. How can government make good choices for the citizen when their is money in their ear? How can the citizens become a louder voice than the money-in-the-ear? In one case; we spent like a year with an agency working on design goals for a track-and-trace system. At the end, they had only one conclusive finding -- use algorithimic IDs for a distrubted/federated type system; they even stated in the findings to use 128bit IDs (eg: ULID/UUID). Then when they implemented their system; that wasn't indidcated as a requirement and the other soft-findings from their year long study were completely ignored.
zer00eyz 3y ago
... That’s because William Shockley was more or less a Nazi. ... (“The Treacherous Eight,” in tech lore) This whole section is just a bit off, I feel like cory's political agenda is bending the story. They would have stayed and worked with him but not for him, they tried... They weren't "treacherous" they were traitorous. As for the whole non compete MA vs CA... well the boston area is loaded with all sorts of labs, doing all sorts of drug dev still. The non competes make more sense in that industry, where projects take years, and you dont want anything to slip out before your patent is filed. Bad for one kind of tech, good for another kind... it was a choice. Cory used to be great, he was fresh and pithy. Hes got a Stalman like zelosy now, without the monotonic message.
- pineaux 3y ago
  Yeah, thats logical. He sees things getting worse and sees he was too reasonable in the past. "Maybe if I am more zealous and less reasonable, I might be able to be part of a less-worse future." It's a biased way of seeing things, but very understandable.
DrDroop 3y ago
Why does Cory Doctorow hate us so much, and why do we let him get away with this? We invite him to be the speaker at prestigious conferences, give him the keynote slot, just so we can all hear him lecture us on the evils of the companies we all work for, and that pay us so we can feed our family. Forget about Saudi Aramco, I the intellectual property lawyer thinks big tech deserves more mind shares in the big evil corp conspiracy. What needs to be done about this is what I can do about this, decades, I tell you, decades of refactoring intellectual/property/contract law.
- WolfeReader 3y ago
  "My company gives me a salary, therefore its behavior should not be criticized." Is that a pretty accurate summary of your post?
  - DrDroop 3y ago
    Yep, it is not just a accurate summary of my post, I say for it, it does it better.
earle_wa 3y ago
For small to medium size hardware companies that want to make their products easy for customers to repair and tinker with, and at the same time make it difficult for competitors to to copy the design, what are the options? Adafruit has succeeded here, I think mostly due to the great online community, innovative support, and the large volume of products they offer. But some Kickstarters have been ripped off by Chinese firms, sometimes before the Kickstarter even ships. I see a few options: - Build a brand and community around the product(s) - Lock the firmware down and make tinkering available through the use of an API or scripting (less flexible as firmware cannot be open sourced, and doesn't allow for better repair and tinkering) - File and enforce patents (expensive) - Tie to a cloud based service, i.e. Philips Hue (annoying if that's not the main product being sold) If others have put more thought into this would be happy to hear your thoughts, or read any resources you are aware of.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Adafruit has succeeded here, I think mostly due to the great online community, innovative support, and the large volume of products they offer. Yes to all of that. I'd also add that they benefit from being a company that doesn't make you feel like you need a shower after doing business with them.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Always an enjoyable read from Doctorow. Noticed this that stood out; > "emotional (or financial) strain of knowing ..." As an astute observation about which few care to "psychologise". Namely, that beyond simple profit, the blind reason of markets, and business just being business, there's a lot of plain bloody-minded egotism out there in the corporate world. There's folks who will destroy value and opportunity, not because it's "competitive" or "necessary", but because it pleases them. And they throw their toys out of the pram if anyone threatens their lunch or questions their entitlement to have it. We don't acknowledge or talk enough about the /emotional/ landscape in the tech world. That is a serious blind-spot when you have people like Musk and Bezos in the mix.
- raziel2p 3y ago
  Discussion point: Is this exclusive to the tech world? Or occurring more often?

108 points by zwieback 3y ago

devaiops9001 3y ago

Government is not the answer here. Would like to see less advocacy for government and more working code from Doctorow.

zwieback 3y ago

comcom: competitive compatibility. Hadn't heard this term before but I like it.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jeffbee 3y ago

A freedom that I desire more greatly is a durable liberation from having to see any more Cory Doctorow articles. Remember 20 years ago when this guy was telling everyone that Microsoft was going to use the TPM to prevent you from installing Linux? Did that happen?

esafak 3y ago
Was the scaremonger wrong, or simply effective in effecting change? Another contemporary issue: the Y2K scare.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It was wrong. Only charlatans pretend that shouting about something that wasn't going to happen stopped the thing from happening.
  - Syonyk 3y ago
    Why are you asserting it "wasn't going to happen"? The whole Paladium trusted boot/"known OS environment"/etc stuff could very easily have gone down the path of "This hardware only boots Windows." Secure Boot has been a pain for a while, though at least you can turn it off. Nobody at the time (as far as OEMs) seemed to care the slightest bit about Linux, so the concern of "Only boots a measured Windows install, for your own security" seemed rather worth worrying about.
    - Muromec 3y ago
      Only boots into X due to TPM is the current state of affairs on certain devices. If anything, PC world is the only holdout where it doesn't happen.
    - c0l0 3y ago
      Palladium is coming again, and this time for real, with Windows 11 and its default "Secure"/Measured Boot (de facto) requirement - and all the infrastructure in place for Internet endpoints to attest that their peers have actually been booted that way.
- adolph 3y ago
  Yes and no. As it turned out the problem wasn't with Microsoft and PCs but Apple and phones.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
Did you or do you work for Big Tech? Not asking to doxx, but to surface potential bias. I can guess from your comment history, but attempting to assume most charitable interpretation and intent. I donate to the EFF because they pay Cory, and Cory attempts to contribute towards keeping Big Tech at bay. Let's not argue about Big Tech intent here; they would conquer the world if they could. The evidence around this thesis is...robust. (recent example of Microsoft blocking Firefox from FIDO2 auth in a very public way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38502340 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38502340)
- uoaei 3y ago
  It is fascinating how the "corporations are people" ideological bent has been internalized by so many. You see discussions all the time in these comments where people argue that "is" implies "ought" when it comes to the strategies and tactics implemented by (the people within) these powerful companies.
- tetris11 3y ago
  Same. EFF is the one organization I will always send my money to
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    I belonged to the EFF for many years before they went Full Doctorow. I no longer support either EFF or EPIC because they have gone totally off the rails.
    - tetris11 3y ago
      That's certainly an interesting view. Can you expand on that? What were they doing before that they're not doing now, or doing more of under Doctorow's influence?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
trelane 3y ago
> Microsoft was going to use the TPM to prevent you from installing Linux? Did that happen? Yes, but on ARM. https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequence/uefi/secure-boot https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequenc... https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequence/uefi/secure-boot/disable-secureboot https://openrt.gitbook.io/open-surfacert/common/boot-sequenc... Fortunately, that was forestalled on x86. Who knows if they'll ever stop signing the Linux Shim for "security reasons."
c0l0 3y ago
Actually, yes, they did so also on (some) vendors' x86 firmware: https://www.omglinux.com/boot-linux-modern-lenovo-thinkpads-bios-setting/ https://www.omglinux.com/boot-linux-modern-lenovo-thinkpads-... These default firmware settings will prevent "third-party"-MSFT-signed EFI binaries from loading - gee, I wonder why that distinction is suddenly necessary, too? :) In my view and experience, the threat model that Secure Boot and similar schemes to establishing a root of trust to assure that "noone (esp. not the owner) has tampered with this device" tries to protect against is VERY rarely relevant (to the owner of said device). The times that I have been inconvenienced or even prevented by that stuff from getting the software I, the owner of the device, want installed onto hardware that I paid good money for at a store/vendor have been numerous, however.
whatshisface 3y ago
Hah! You say King Henry the Fifth was a great strategist, but the French got stuck in the mud at Agincourt!
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Microsoft does install keys that you can't revoke on many computers, making it somewhat impossible to secure one's own computer against outsiders. Also, recent laptops have started shipping where 3rd party OSes are blocked by default. https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/60248.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32066919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32066919 In my opinion, Cory is a treasure, a rare voice that consistent advocates for a development where humanity at large has the freedom to pioneer & advance the open electronic frontiers.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
> A freedom that I desire more greatly is a durable liberation from having to see any more Cory Doctorow articles. You know, it's really easy to just ignore articles that you're not interested in. Yet you chose to respond. Why? And your accusation - he was wrong about something 20 years ago - even if true, so what? I've been wrong about a thing or two in 20 years. And, while I know that pretty much everyone else also has been, I don't keep track of what people said 20 years ago so that I can point to it to show the world how wrong that person was. This almost seems like it's personal for you. If so, why?

adolph 3y ago

I much prefer Sivers' vision of tech independence[0] over Doctorow's vision of a law-regulation for every problem. They aren't necessarily incompatible with one another. Sivers is exit compared to Doctorow's voice (in the Exit, Voice, and Loyalty framework[1]). However, I think what Doctorow advocates is more likely to result in regulatory-capture than people-power. I think that capture is more likely to result in a world with higher costs in choosing forms of exit. 0. https://sive.rs/ti https://sive.rs/ti 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty

raziel2p 3y ago
This works for certain things, like email and such - but it only works for very tech-savvy people, not the general consumer, and it stops working at a certain scale: One of the examples from the article is about car manufacturers (who also employ big tech like business methods). Good luck engineering your own car. Similarly, while I could pay 2-3 times more for a Fairphone or such, it'd be better if tech independence was available to everyone, including for consumer-grade smartphones. On a related note, I think devices such as Fairphone and Framework laptops prove that even without regulation, "free" (as in freedom) products are already more expensive, you don't need regulations to make that happen.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
We are in such a connected age though. I do want to exit and start my own shit, but I don't want to walk away from all my friends and family who aren't into pioneering a new digital existence. Sure I can keep running my xmpp server & begging people to contact me over xmpp. But I'm going to miss all the life updates & chatter my friends are doing on Facebook or Instagram or Discord. The points in this article seem super spot on. The anti-cirumvention laws obstruct any kind of fair rise of an interesting alternative. We can walk away, but only if we are ok severing ties. Competitive compatibility is the relief we need to allow meaningful choices. The world of physical products allowed consumers a lot of property rights to the stuff they purchased, but in the cloud age these lords of the cloud have everything tightly sealed up in data-keeps and you likely stand 'in felony contempt of business model' (and are likely liable for these fines that start at half a million dollars for first infraction for just making the tool), if you do anything that isn't explicitly built into the app already. This shift from the world having some property rights to being ruled over from afar by contract law was pointed out by Mark Lemley, decades ago, and highlighted in the lovely Web scraping for me but not for thee, which points out that big companies all got their start off the exact sort of violations & scraping & mercenary-done competitive compatibility that would get you or I blasted out of the waters in a heartbeat. https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2023/08/web-scraping-for-me-but-not-for-thee-guest-blog-post.htm https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2023/08/web-scraping-f... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37264970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37264970 Exit is only interesting if it doesn't mean going off to live in a digital barrel. I absolutely fully agree, we need to own the means of connection. We fully need to bootstrap real alternatives. But if the alternative has to create a walk-away movement to succeed, that's a horrible thing. And, people everywhere should have some informational property rights. That there are digital system & cloud stuff involved shouldn't so fundamentally strip people of rights & freedom as it does.

lasermike026 3y ago

Stop buying and using cars. Cars are the worst, most destructive invention in human history. Want global peace? Stop driving cars and burning oil. Want to save the environment? Stop driving cars and burning oil. Want to bring life back into your community? Walk. Want to get healthy and get into shape? Walk. Want to commute? Bike and take public transit. Want to take control of your life and dump these disgusting corporations? Don't buy, don't drive, and don't burn oil.

idopmstuff 3y ago
What about the large number of people who live in places where this isn't possible?
- thejohnconway 3y ago
  The problem is that cars made it possible for people to live in those sorts of places, cheaply enough. Not a solution, just an observation. If cars weren't really a thing, people would live in denser communities with walkable services (I include rural communities in this. Pre-car villages are pretty dense, and have, you know, things like shops, etc.).
  - tayo42 3y ago
    Is that really true? We were getting around with horses before cars. You have to go back real far to get to a point where we weren't getting around faster than walking
    - eesmith 3y ago
      Horses aren't that much faster than walking. Horses can go about 30 miles/day. (That's the reason the Spanish mission towns in the US west were spaced about 30 miles apart.) That's also about what people can walk in a day (Appalachian Trail through-hikers do about 3 miles per hour). Now, trained trail horses can go far further in a day, but they require specialized training, food, and care, making them a very expensive plow-horse or cart-horse.

vitiral 3y ago

I agree with the problems, however the solutions seem far fetched. 90% of these "solutions" are that the government will save the day with decisions that benefit its citizens and it's own bottom line. That doesn't represent reality and I don't see how you could get there from here.

nadermx 3y ago
In some sense the government, which occasionally is run by sensible people, does save the day. Take Portland Oregon, or Curitiba Brazil as examples. They saw gains in multi modal design that benefited all citizens, not just the privileged elite who can afford the luxury of mono transit design.
- gretch 3y ago
  Maybe this doesn't apply to your govt, but I live in the US and I don't have any confidence in the govt to "fix" tech related problems and get e.g. right to repair right. Why? Because they can't even solve the classic problems in front of them. Primarily healthcare. Healthcare is a thing that affects everyone. It's a problem as old as time. And it's vital to life. If the government can't get this right, what chance is there that we can trust them to regulate something like right to repair.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Right to repair has a simple solution. Apply a 100%, 1,000%, or whatever percent necessary excise tax on manufactured products. With a sufficiently high premium for new products, consumers will automatically start prioritizing device longevity and/or repairability when making their purchasing decisions. Solving the supply/demand/patent/changing demographics/liability issues of healthcare seem far more complicated.
    - nickff 3y ago
      I don't support this idea, but a percentage-based tax may actually cause the opposite effect (from what you describe as your goal). A flat tax (fixed number of dollars) is more likely to achieve your aims, and has actually been implemented with that result in the past. The example that comes to mind for me is the United Kingdom's flat tax on French wine (a long time ago).

AniseAbyss 3y ago

[dead]

archsurface 3y ago

People won't even switch from chrome to firefox. The apathy is revolting.

verdverm 3y ago
Why do you assume it's apathy and not a conscious choice?
ishanmahapatra 3y ago
For me, the reason I keep a Chromium browser around is because government websites sometimes just don’t work on anything other than bog standard Chrome.
surge 3y ago
People used to say the same about IE. Most people don't think about it. I just Brave personally.

openthc 3y ago

We make software for the regulated cannabis space; we work with government agencies. Despite years of folks indside and outside the industry telling these government regulators to NOT use expensive single-use RFID tags -- they've been plowing forwared with it since 2014. The lobbiest and industry had their ear and the indivudual voices of reason couldn't effect change. How can government make good choices for the citizen when their is money in their ear? How can the citizens become a louder voice than the money-in-the-ear? In one case; we spent like a year with an agency working on design goals for a track-and-trace system. At the end, they had only one conclusive finding -- use algorithimic IDs for a distrubted/federated type system; they even stated in the findings to use 128bit IDs (eg: ULID/UUID). Then when they implemented their system; that wasn't indidcated as a requirement and the other soft-findings from their year long study were completely ignored.

zer00eyz 3y ago

... That’s because William Shockley was more or less a Nazi. ... (“The Treacherous Eight,” in tech lore) This whole section is just a bit off, I feel like cory's political agenda is bending the story. They would have stayed and worked with him but not for him, they tried... They weren't "treacherous" they were traitorous. As for the whole non compete MA vs CA... well the boston area is loaded with all sorts of labs, doing all sorts of drug dev still. The non competes make more sense in that industry, where projects take years, and you dont want anything to slip out before your patent is filed. Bad for one kind of tech, good for another kind... it was a choice. Cory used to be great, he was fresh and pithy. Hes got a Stalman like zelosy now, without the monotonic message.

pineaux 3y ago
Yeah, thats logical. He sees things getting worse and sees he was too reasonable in the past. "Maybe if I am more zealous and less reasonable, I might be able to be part of a less-worse future." It's a biased way of seeing things, but very understandable.

DrDroop 3y ago

Why does Cory Doctorow hate us so much, and why do we let him get away with this? We invite him to be the speaker at prestigious conferences, give him the keynote slot, just so we can all hear him lecture us on the evils of the companies we all work for, and that pay us so we can feed our family. Forget about Saudi Aramco, I the intellectual property lawyer thinks big tech deserves more mind shares in the big evil corp conspiracy. What needs to be done about this is what I can do about this, decades, I tell you, decades of refactoring intellectual/property/contract law.

WolfeReader 3y ago
"My company gives me a salary, therefore its behavior should not be criticized." Is that a pretty accurate summary of your post?
- DrDroop 3y ago
  Yep, it is not just a accurate summary of my post, I say for it, it does it better.

earle_wa 3y ago

For small to medium size hardware companies that want to make their products easy for customers to repair and tinker with, and at the same time make it difficult for competitors to to copy the design, what are the options? Adafruit has succeeded here, I think mostly due to the great online community, innovative support, and the large volume of products they offer. But some Kickstarters have been ripped off by Chinese firms, sometimes before the Kickstarter even ships. I see a few options: - Build a brand and community around the product(s) - Lock the firmware down and make tinkering available through the use of an API or scripting (less flexible as firmware cannot be open sourced, and doesn't allow for better repair and tinkering) - File and enforce patents (expensive) - Tie to a cloud based service, i.e. Philips Hue (annoying if that's not the main product being sold) If others have put more thought into this would be happy to hear your thoughts, or read any resources you are aware of.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Adafruit has succeeded here, I think mostly due to the great online community, innovative support, and the large volume of products they offer. Yes to all of that. I'd also add that they benefit from being a company that doesn't make you feel like you need a shower after doing business with them.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Always an enjoyable read from Doctorow. Noticed this that stood out; > "emotional (or financial) strain of knowing ..." As an astute observation about which few care to "psychologise". Namely, that beyond simple profit, the blind reason of markets, and business just being business, there's a lot of plain bloody-minded egotism out there in the corporate world. There's folks who will destroy value and opportunity, not because it's "competitive" or "necessary", but because it pleases them. And they throw their toys out of the pram if anyone threatens their lunch or questions their entitlement to have it. We don't acknowledge or talk enough about the /emotional/ landscape in the tech world. That is a serious blind-spot when you have people like Musk and Bezos in the mix.

raziel2p 3y ago
Discussion point: Is this exclusive to the tech world? Or occurring more often?