6 ms·

Stop infantilizing adults. Teach them computer safety.

by beeboobaa 3y ago

jimbokun 3y ago
The young and the old can have cognitive impairments making this very difficult.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Would you give them a gun or a knife? Do you think no one should be allowed to own a gun or a knife?
carlosjobim 3y ago
Cars have seatbelts, airbags, ABS, crumple zones, etc. Almost everybody has to use a computer for work and other stuff, and they are willing to pay for a safe and sound system. They are not interested in becoming full time Arch Linux root administrators just to conduct their daily business on their device. Just like almost none of the people who drive a car are full time mechanics and welders.
- piva00 3y ago
  > They are not interested in becoming full time Arch Linux root administrators just to conduct their daily business on their device. They don't need to if they don't want to. I'd be one of the users who are not inclined to transform my iPhone back into my days using Linux on desktop and suffering the pains of doing it. I do have the option to turn my computer into that if I want, I do not have that option for my phone even though it's just a computer. No one would be forcing users into doing that, it's about allowing the users who want that control over their own devices. You are attacking a strawman.
  - laborcontract 3y ago
    At what point should a private company be compelled to develop or expose APIs because you want to tinker around with their system?
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      My system, not their system, and since you're asking for a personal opinion here: immediately.
      - burnerthrow008 3y ago
        Well, you own the hardware, but not the software. So at least part of the system is not yours.
        ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        Since we're discussing prescriptivism (how things should be) rather than descriptivism (how things are in a subset of legal jurisdictions): I didn't force them to leave a copy of their code on my device, but I own every single bit of electricity and magnetism and metal and plastic within it. I thus have the right to flip 0s into 1s, and 1s into 0s, or smash the whole thing. It's mine. Redistributing anything, admittedly, might be somewhat related, but would be a different discussion. Any effort to disenfranchise me from those rights is, in my opinion, unethical. If a company were to try to do so under the guise of a semantic argument, I would find it even more distasteful.
        ambichook 3y ago
        own the hardware but cant do what we want on it, because we're forced to use the software
    - stale2002 3y ago
      Great question, which has now been answered by new laws like the digital markets act! The "point" at which such things should apply is when they are large enough that anti-trust laws and pro competition laws apply to them. IE: when they are very very large and are worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    You have that option, just buy another phone. Because there is no monopoly. Likewise if you want to install a non-Apple OS, there are thousands of different non-Apple models available for purchase. Apple offers security and convenience on their devices, which is why many people like them. Windows offers no security but some convenience, Linux offers security and no convenience. Like I said in another comment, if Spotify is not happy with Apple they can manufacture their own device and sell to consumers. People buy and use Apple devices of their own free will, and developers develop for their devices of their own free will as well. And there is plenty of competition in the market.
    - piva00 3y ago
      Sure, I will buy another phone and all the apps I paid for in 15 years of usage. It's very trivial and simple. I invested money in the ecosystem and now there's vendor lock-in, I'm bound to it unless the usage becomes so unbearable that the pain to change vendors is less than continuing the one I have, the pain threshold only grows for each passing year I'm invested in the ecosystem. Do you comprehend that? Opening a phone for others to develop apps on top does not encroach anywhere into Apple's sale of phones, it just creates a massive wall to guard against other competitors selling apps to their platform. They charge for the phone, and now they extract rent from something they sold through the App Store. Please, think deeper about this, you are missing the point entirely. > Like I said in another comment, if Spotify is not happy with Apple they can manufacture their own device and sell to consumers. No, they can't. That's not their business, they don't have the capital to develop and foster a whole 3rd platform of devices + OS just to move away from Apple's ecosystem, that's the whole point of developing a platform: creating a massive lever against competition because of network effects. Network effects are very hard to break from, hence why most major tech companies try to leverage that (look at Meta/Facebook, they are shit but still it's very hard to compete against due to their size). > People buy and use Apple devices of their own free will, and developers develop for their devices of their own free will as well. And there is plenty of competition in the market. There's only 1 competitor in the market: Android, manufacturers using Android are not 1 competitor each since none of them are providing a full platform, the platform is Android on top of some devices. Free will is a massive naïvete to throw here. Is there free will when there are no other options to reach a market? Is there free will for online sellers in the USA to not put their products on Amazon since you'll be living on the outskirts of the market without any meaningful way to penetrate into it if other competitors have an advantage simply by paying the Amazon tax and selling their products through Amazon? I think you are too naïve and ideological, that blinds you from understanding market forces and markets in general.
  - eropple 3y ago
    > No one would be forcing users into doing that, it's about allowing the users who want that control over their own devices. The moment this is a thing is when the social engineering attacks to get people to root their own phones, to set up untrusted app stores that firehose shitware down onto phones, etc. starts to happen. "I'm from Microsoft, you need to add the Microsoft Store to your iPhone, here's how." I get your concern, and in a world less built on open grift I would share it, but our esteemed tech brainlords have built a tech ecosystem that exists to enable scams. (Hell, I almost got popped a few months ago by a scam, and I tend to be pretty cautious about things.) Unless the opt-in mechanism is something like "open the phone and turn a jumper" or "buy a different model of the same phone" I genuinely think it's way too dangerous for the average target of a social-engineering attack. People buy iPhones to not deal with this shit as much as is possible; taking that away hurts a lot more people than it helps.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Hilarious, good one. How did you make the leap from "apple should allow people to install stuff if they wish" to "Arch Linux administrator"? Be real.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    They were being hyperbolic to illustrate a point. Sort of like how you keep bringing up guns, knives, and car safety in a conversation about phone apps, to illustrate your point.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 3y ago
Back when he was still alive, I had to turn on "Parental controls" on my parent's Mac Mini, to stop my dad from accidentally removing things from the Dock and being unable to put them back. It took him years to realise Google search results had a scroll bar, and it wasn't just the 3 items that fitted on the screen. He wrote simulation software for the radio propagation of military IFF transponders before he retired, and his idea of "computer safety" was therefore somewhere between "do not connect them to the internet" and "put them in a faraday cage".
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Okay, that's a nice anecdote. Is your point that no one should be allowed to have the freedom to install whatever they want on their devices because your parent was incapable of dealing with the responsibility? Do you also want to take away everyone's cars because of traffic deaths? That's far more serious than someone's parent installing malware on their shiny digital toys. What about taking away kitchen knifes? Those things sure are dangerous!
  - laborcontract 3y ago
    You're missing the point entirely. The idea of a "freedom to install" is incidental to what happened in the market which is that Apple made a platform that people felt secure and happy in. Consumers Apple's product to the extent that Apple became a dominant force in the market. That's the house they chose to live in. It's a house in which no knives existed. Now you're saying "let them put knives in, how dare you restrict them from having a knife!" whereas most consumers are saying "I like this house, wow living here feels great.". It's not a knife issue. You're trying to make it a knife issue. The success of the iPhone was never obvious from day one. To attribute Apple's success to monopolistic behavior and consumer oppression, rather consumer behavior and expression, is just denying reality.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      > It's still wild to me how they managed to get people to argue against the freedom to install whatever they want on their device.
ascagnel_ 3y ago
My dad, when was a kid, would bust out a soldering iron and he'd show me how to swap out the quartz timing crystals on digital wristwatches to repair them (or, for fun, make them intentionally run fast or slow). On occasion, he'd even do it on PCs to under- or over-clock them and make them last a little longer. By the time I was in college, he was on his way towards retiring, and knowing that I was into software, decided that I would be his IT support person. He went through various laptops and desktops (PCs, Macs, he even gave Linux a real try but gave up when he couldn't get his financial planning software to run on it), Android phones, etc. The one platform he liked using in his later years was iOS/iPadOS specifically because, in his words, "there's not a bunch of other s--- here, and I don't need to manage it". It's ease-of-use dovetailing with computer safety, and that's a _hard_ problem.

Stop infantilizing adults. Teach them computer safety.

jimbokun 3y ago

The young and the old can have cognitive impairments making this very difficult.

beeboobaa 3y ago
Would you give them a gun or a knife? Do you think no one should be allowed to own a gun or a knife?

carlosjobim 3y ago

Cars have seatbelts, airbags, ABS, crumple zones, etc. Almost everybody has to use a computer for work and other stuff, and they are willing to pay for a safe and sound system. They are not interested in becoming full time Arch Linux root administrators just to conduct their daily business on their device. Just like almost none of the people who drive a car are full time mechanics and welders.

piva00 3y ago
> They are not interested in becoming full time Arch Linux root administrators just to conduct their daily business on their device. They don't need to if they don't want to. I'd be one of the users who are not inclined to transform my iPhone back into my days using Linux on desktop and suffering the pains of doing it. I do have the option to turn my computer into that if I want, I do not have that option for my phone even though it's just a computer. No one would be forcing users into doing that, it's about allowing the users who want that control over their own devices. You are attacking a strawman.
- laborcontract 3y ago
  At what point should a private company be compelled to develop or expose APIs because you want to tinker around with their system?
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    My system, not their system, and since you're asking for a personal opinion here: immediately.
    - burnerthrow008 3y ago
      Well, you own the hardware, but not the software. So at least part of the system is not yours.
      - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
        Since we're discussing prescriptivism (how things should be) rather than descriptivism (how things are in a subset of legal jurisdictions): I didn't force them to leave a copy of their code on my device, but I own every single bit of electricity and magnetism and metal and plastic within it. I thus have the right to flip 0s into 1s, and 1s into 0s, or smash the whole thing. It's mine. Redistributing anything, admittedly, might be somewhat related, but would be a different discussion. Any effort to disenfranchise me from those rights is, in my opinion, unethical. If a company were to try to do so under the guise of a semantic argument, I would find it even more distasteful.
      - ambichook 3y ago
        own the hardware but cant do what we want on it, because we're forced to use the software
  - stale2002 3y ago
    Great question, which has now been answered by new laws like the digital markets act! The "point" at which such things should apply is when they are large enough that anti-trust laws and pro competition laws apply to them. IE: when they are very very large and are worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
- carlosjobim 3y ago
  You have that option, just buy another phone. Because there is no monopoly. Likewise if you want to install a non-Apple OS, there are thousands of different non-Apple models available for purchase. Apple offers security and convenience on their devices, which is why many people like them. Windows offers no security but some convenience, Linux offers security and no convenience. Like I said in another comment, if Spotify is not happy with Apple they can manufacture their own device and sell to consumers. People buy and use Apple devices of their own free will, and developers develop for their devices of their own free will as well. And there is plenty of competition in the market.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Sure, I will buy another phone and all the apps I paid for in 15 years of usage. It's very trivial and simple. I invested money in the ecosystem and now there's vendor lock-in, I'm bound to it unless the usage becomes so unbearable that the pain to change vendors is less than continuing the one I have, the pain threshold only grows for each passing year I'm invested in the ecosystem. Do you comprehend that? Opening a phone for others to develop apps on top does not encroach anywhere into Apple's sale of phones, it just creates a massive wall to guard against other competitors selling apps to their platform. They charge for the phone, and now they extract rent from something they sold through the App Store. Please, think deeper about this, you are missing the point entirely. > Like I said in another comment, if Spotify is not happy with Apple they can manufacture their own device and sell to consumers. No, they can't. That's not their business, they don't have the capital to develop and foster a whole 3rd platform of devices + OS just to move away from Apple's ecosystem, that's the whole point of developing a platform: creating a massive lever against competition because of network effects. Network effects are very hard to break from, hence why most major tech companies try to leverage that (look at Meta/Facebook, they are shit but still it's very hard to compete against due to their size). > People buy and use Apple devices of their own free will, and developers develop for their devices of their own free will as well. And there is plenty of competition in the market. There's only 1 competitor in the market: Android, manufacturers using Android are not 1 competitor each since none of them are providing a full platform, the platform is Android on top of some devices. Free will is a massive naïvete to throw here. Is there free will when there are no other options to reach a market? Is there free will for online sellers in the USA to not put their products on Amazon since you'll be living on the outskirts of the market without any meaningful way to penetrate into it if other competitors have an advantage simply by paying the Amazon tax and selling their products through Amazon? I think you are too naïve and ideological, that blinds you from understanding market forces and markets in general.
- eropple 3y ago
  > No one would be forcing users into doing that, it's about allowing the users who want that control over their own devices. The moment this is a thing is when the social engineering attacks to get people to root their own phones, to set up untrusted app stores that firehose shitware down onto phones, etc. starts to happen. "I'm from Microsoft, you need to add the Microsoft Store to your iPhone, here's how." I get your concern, and in a world less built on open grift I would share it, but our esteemed tech brainlords have built a tech ecosystem that exists to enable scams. (Hell, I almost got popped a few months ago by a scam, and I tend to be pretty cautious about things.) Unless the opt-in mechanism is something like "open the phone and turn a jumper" or "buy a different model of the same phone" I genuinely think it's way too dangerous for the average target of a social-engineering attack. People buy iPhones to not deal with this shit as much as is possible; taking that away hurts a lot more people than it helps.
beeboobaa 3y ago
Hilarious, good one. How did you make the leap from "apple should allow people to install stuff if they wish" to "Arch Linux administrator"? Be real.
- ziddoap 3y ago
  They were being hyperbolic to illustrate a point. Sort of like how you keep bringing up guns, knives, and car safety in a conversation about phone apps, to illustrate your point.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ben_w 3y ago

Back when he was still alive, I had to turn on "Parental controls" on my parent's Mac Mini, to stop my dad from accidentally removing things from the Dock and being unable to put them back. It took him years to realise Google search results had a scroll bar, and it wasn't just the 3 items that fitted on the screen. He wrote simulation software for the radio propagation of military IFF transponders before he retired, and his idea of "computer safety" was therefore somewhere between "do not connect them to the internet" and "put them in a faraday cage".

beeboobaa 3y ago
Okay, that's a nice anecdote. Is your point that no one should be allowed to have the freedom to install whatever they want on their devices because your parent was incapable of dealing with the responsibility? Do you also want to take away everyone's cars because of traffic deaths? That's far more serious than someone's parent installing malware on their shiny digital toys. What about taking away kitchen knifes? Those things sure are dangerous!
- laborcontract 3y ago
  You're missing the point entirely. The idea of a "freedom to install" is incidental to what happened in the market which is that Apple made a platform that people felt secure and happy in. Consumers Apple's product to the extent that Apple became a dominant force in the market. That's the house they chose to live in. It's a house in which no knives existed. Now you're saying "let them put knives in, how dare you restrict them from having a knife!" whereas most consumers are saying "I like this house, wow living here feels great.". It's not a knife issue. You're trying to make it a knife issue. The success of the iPhone was never obvious from day one. To attribute Apple's success to monopolistic behavior and consumer oppression, rather consumer behavior and expression, is just denying reality.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    > It's still wild to me how they managed to get people to argue against the freedom to install whatever they want on their device.

ascagnel_ 3y ago

My dad, when was a kid, would bust out a soldering iron and he'd show me how to swap out the quartz timing crystals on digital wristwatches to repair them (or, for fun, make them intentionally run fast or slow). On occasion, he'd even do it on PCs to under- or over-clock them and make them last a little longer. By the time I was in college, he was on his way towards retiring, and knowing that I was into software, decided that I would be his IT support person. He went through various laptops and desktops (PCs, Macs, he even gave Linux a real try but gave up when he couldn't get his financial planning software to run on it), Android phones, etc. The one platform he liked using in his later years was iOS/iPadOS specifically because, in his words, "there's not a bunch of other s--- here, and I don't need to manage it". It's ease-of-use dovetailing with computer safety, and that's a _hard_ problem.