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You really want them to? It'll be the end of jailbreaking, and another step towards the dystopian digital totalitarianism Stallman warned us about. [To those

You really want them to? It'll be the end of jailbreaking, and another step towards the dystopian digital totalitarianism Stallman warned us about. [To those who think there will still be alternatives: do you not think they'll also follow, under the threat of being called "insecure" and "unsafe"?]

jazzyjackson 2y ago
What does jailbreaking have to do with memory safety? I thought the cpu that will only boot signed binaries was the end of jailbreaking I, for one, would appreciate a device that isn't riddled with memory bugs that are exploitable principally by nation states; one might say buggy code is the backdoor free software folk are so paranoid about
- supriyo-biswas 2y ago
  Most jailbreaks and rooting software rely on some exploitable bugs to gain their initial foothold and install/modify files onto the system.
saagarjha 2y ago
You’re talking about a depressing future and all I’m hearing is a depressing present where you think the best way to fight for software freedom is to ensure people get hacked rather than, like, actual policies designed around giving control back to users. I can think of few things less empowering than software that is designed to be intentionally worse for an auxiliary side benefit because we can’t get our act together and figure out a real way to manifest what we actually want.
- bakugo 2y ago
  > you think the best way to fight for software freedom is to ensure people get hacked rather than, like, actual policies designed around giving control back to users It's just being realistic. Obviously, it would be great if there were laws guaranteeing the users' right to have full control over devices they've purchased, but I think most people have accepted that this ship has sailed. So we can only really hang on to the little control we still have, which is usually achieved without the manufacturer's permission.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    No, that’s just being stupid. There are thousands of people in Europe petitioning right now to give people freedom to run games even after the company that runs them shuts down. People are working on accessibility technologies that help put computers in the hands of more people than ever before. Countries are slowly turning the screws on companies who abuse their monopolies to make worse products for people. Meanwhile ‘userbinator thinks the best way to ensure software freedom is to argue on an Internet forum about why everyone should use C. BTW: Stallman is brought up too which is actually very relevant for why this is such a losing argument: jailbreaks are cool and all but today they are basically irrelevant for the average user. This is just like Stallman fighting for GPL is nice but only really for people who compile their software themselves. People like the ability to have control over their software but going about it from the perspective of a software engineer who can write code or hack things is very exclusionary.

jazzyjackson 2y ago

What does jailbreaking have to do with memory safety? I thought the cpu that will only boot signed binaries was the end of jailbreaking I, for one, would appreciate a device that isn't riddled with memory bugs that are exploitable principally by nation states; one might say buggy code is the backdoor free software folk are so paranoid about

supriyo-biswas 2y ago
Most jailbreaks and rooting software rely on some exploitable bugs to gain their initial foothold and install/modify files onto the system.

saagarjha 2y ago

You’re talking about a depressing future and all I’m hearing is a depressing present where you think the best way to fight for software freedom is to ensure people get hacked rather than, like, actual policies designed around giving control back to users. I can think of few things less empowering than software that is designed to be intentionally worse for an auxiliary side benefit because we can’t get our act together and figure out a real way to manifest what we actually want.

bakugo 2y ago
> you think the best way to fight for software freedom is to ensure people get hacked rather than, like, actual policies designed around giving control back to users It's just being realistic. Obviously, it would be great if there were laws guaranteeing the users' right to have full control over devices they've purchased, but I think most people have accepted that this ship has sailed. So we can only really hang on to the little control we still have, which is usually achieved without the manufacturer's permission.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  No, that’s just being stupid. There are thousands of people in Europe petitioning right now to give people freedom to run games even after the company that runs them shuts down. People are working on accessibility technologies that help put computers in the hands of more people than ever before. Countries are slowly turning the screws on companies who abuse their monopolies to make worse products for people. Meanwhile ‘userbinator thinks the best way to ensure software freedom is to argue on an Internet forum about why everyone should use C. BTW: Stallman is brought up too which is actually very relevant for why this is such a losing argument: jailbreaks are cool and all but today they are basically irrelevant for the average user. This is just like Stallman fighting for GPL is nice but only really for people who compile their software themselves. People like the ability to have control over their software but going about it from the perspective of a software engineer who can write code or hack things is very exclusionary.