2 ms·

That is certainly a convenience that is gained by renting something, but (1) the significance of that convenience is minimal compared to the threat of the compa

That is certainly a convenience that is gained by renting something, but (1) the significance of that convenience is minimal compared to the threat of the company taking away what you've bought, intentionally or not, and (2) paid backup services exist. It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money.

jstummbillig 3y ago
> It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. You would probably reconsider if you spent more time around the, to this day, ocean of outdated and unmaintained-until-physical-failure-windows-2000ish-servers sprinkled throughout fairly touchy parts of our society, connected to the, gasp, internet. > It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money. If I have to chose between Google and a free ticket to built vast botnets on perpetually legacy, unmaintained infra, I will, until further notice, gladly have the former every time and let legislation take it from there.
- howenterprisey 3y ago
  I'm confused. We're talking about video games and other digital media. You would put those on an external drive or similar. Why would the vulnerabilities of such a solution have any overlap with windows 2000-era servers used for infrastructure? What does infrastructure have in common with personal backups?
- ang_cire 3y ago
  Except that I can control whether the server I run is up to date, or internet-connected, or has appropriate NACLs, whereas I know firsthand that most large companies do not meet patching SLAs, or have properly-configured security controls. This is a tech space; if you work around security, you know that someone's home computer is going to usually be harder to hack than a big corporation that has an attack surface a million miles wide. Maybe I can phish you and get on your machine, but maybe not. But I can definitely phish at least one person at a big company, and usually many more. Your home machine doesn't have an ssh key buried in a git repo's commit history, or in a public S3 bucket, etc. Most large-scale botnets running on consumer machines target either IoT or routers, both of which are difficult for consumers to patch, so that's more bad business security once again, than bad consumers. > choose between Google and a free ticket to built vast botnets on perpetually legacy, unmaintained infra My god, what a false dichotomy. Yes, every computer not run by Google is running freshly-installed, never-been-updated Windows 95, but Google is totally absolutely positively doing better than all the others in the same space. /s

jstummbillig 3y ago

> It is far from obvious that people renting things instead of owning them makes our collective data a lot more safe. You would probably reconsider if you spent more time around the, to this day, ocean of outdated and unmaintained-until-physical-failure-windows-2000ish-servers sprinkled throughout fairly touchy parts of our society, connected to the, gasp, internet. > It seems to me that the data would be a lot more vulnerable to companies deciding to make (more) money. If I have to chose between Google and a free ticket to built vast botnets on perpetually legacy, unmaintained infra, I will, until further notice, gladly have the former every time and let legislation take it from there.

howenterprisey 3y ago
I'm confused. We're talking about video games and other digital media. You would put those on an external drive or similar. Why would the vulnerabilities of such a solution have any overlap with windows 2000-era servers used for infrastructure? What does infrastructure have in common with personal backups?
ang_cire 3y ago
Except that I can control whether the server I run is up to date, or internet-connected, or has appropriate NACLs, whereas I know firsthand that most large companies do not meet patching SLAs, or have properly-configured security controls. This is a tech space; if you work around security, you know that someone's home computer is going to usually be harder to hack than a big corporation that has an attack surface a million miles wide. Maybe I can phish you and get on your machine, but maybe not. But I can definitely phish at least one person at a big company, and usually many more. Your home machine doesn't have an ssh key buried in a git repo's commit history, or in a public S3 bucket, etc. Most large-scale botnets running on consumer machines target either IoT or routers, both of which are difficult for consumers to patch, so that's more bad business security once again, than bad consumers. > choose between Google and a free ticket to built vast botnets on perpetually legacy, unmaintained infra My god, what a false dichotomy. Yes, every computer not run by Google is running freshly-installed, never-been-updated Windows 95, but Google is totally absolutely positively doing better than all the others in the same space. /s