5 ms·

From a security perspective, you shouldn't be using anything you don't control from the bottom up. That includes Windows and Signal. Full stop. But in a pragma

From a security perspective, you shouldn't be using anything you don't control from the bottom up. That includes Windows and Signal. Full stop. But in a pragmatic world, we can't have that level of security. You're reduced to deciding where you are willing to tolerate the security weaknesses. Obviously, no software or hardware will be 100% secure. But absent having an existential state level need to roll your own, you just have to pick from what's out there and accept that none of it is fully secure.

godelski 1y ago
I mean I agree but this also is acting like there's no alternative. Apple exists. Hell, Linux exists and is easy these days (see main comment). It's just unclear to me if your comment is implying that we should just roll over. If so, I vehemently disagree. If not, I'm actually not sure what you're saying and sorry if I'm misunderstanding.
- vel0city 1y ago
  > you shouldn't be using anything you don't control from the bottom up You absolutely do not control any Apple device from the bottom up. It is Apple software running on Apple hardware, tons of closed off secret stuff in there. And even then, you probably don't really control whatever Linux you installed from the bottom up. It's filled with code you didn't audit and validate, you're probably getting updates delivered on a regular basis by people you don't know, etc. And even then, where are you going to run that? On a modern x86 processor running all kinds of UEFI software and microcode with security coprocessors you can't directly interface in but can see all your memory and devices?
  - godelski 1y ago
    So what's your point? I don't get what you're arguing other than giving up. I'm sorry, but if someone wants to take a shit on me I'm not just going to submit to that fate. I'll try to get out. I don't know about you, but I'd rather step in shit than have it forcefully poured down by throat. At least with Linux, I know there are other people checking. People with expertise I don't have. People not incentivized by their own employer. Certainly this creates higher levels of trust than the closed source setting. If it doesn't, then your argument applies to literally any subject. Medicine, food, whatever. Let's not act like this is a binary setting, it is a spectrum. There are situations that are better than others even if they aren't perfect.
    - vel0city 1y ago
      My point is, practically speaking normal users have just as much "control" over their stuff whether it's running Linux or Mac or Windows in the end. It's pretty much impossible to truly control the whole stack from the bottom up, it's a pretty much impossible standard for normal people they created. > People not incentivized by their own employer. Tons of FOSS is written by people paid to write it a a part of their jobs. And I don't know why I'd trust a passion project of an amateur doing it for fun over a paid professional doing it. Maybe the guy doing it for free is better, maybe he isn't. Do you trust the guy giving medical advice over the internet on some random blog over the licensed paid specialist doctor you might otherwise see? Do you trust the pills made by a pharmaceutical company to actually be what it says on the box more than a guy handing out pills at a concert? After all that guy posting on the internet or handing out pills isn't being incentivized by their employer! And I wouldn't necessarily trust some random open source project over a similar closed source project if I'm not going to take the time to actually audit it myself. Just having the source code over there doesn't do anything for you if you don't read it. And besides, you're probably going to pull compiled binaries and aren't going to actually verify that build are you? And you're building it with what, a compiler you downloaded already compiled? You definitely validated that, right? You're right, it's a spectrum of choices one makes. But it's not like open source instantly makes something more trustworthy or more secure or something. You have the ability to do more to trust it, but it isn't inherently more trustworthy by just having the source available.
      - thombles 1y ago
        Bingo. Furthermore, the annoying things that MS does are predictable and usually not directly harmful. Yeah they want telemetry, they want to encourage me to use expensive autocomplete everywhere, but ultimately the range of bad stuff is "oh dear the corporation is trying to upsell me nonsense I have to turn off", not "my OS is the combination of thousands of distinct software packages where I have to trust literally everybody with code execution... I sure hope this keeps working out".
      - godelski 1y ago
        I think you're misunderstanding what I'm trying to argue. There's important context to what we're talking about: Linux. The argument is not: "Having source code makes it trustworthy" The increase in trust is primarily driven by unaffiliated experts. The open source part makes that easier, but is not what explicitly drives the trust. ***The multi-party verification is what drives trust.*** > practically speaking normal users have just as much "control" over their stuff whether it's running Linux or Mac or Windows in the end. No one is arguing against this. I even agree with you. I brought up the difference in trust by third party due to this. The level of trust is different. While /control/ may be the same /trust/ is not. It does not matter that FOSS is written by people that are paid. It matters that people that are not paid look at it and investigate it. Or even paid by a different party. Paid or unpaid is not the critical variable here. Look at it this way: In a closed source ecosystem, do you trust an organization that has had a 3rd party audit MORE THAN one that hasn't? Of course you do! It isn't complete trust, and certainly you may wish to (and should) scrutinize the third party auditors to ensure that they aren't just acting as "yes men", but the level of trust objectively increases. Certainly this should continue to increase as the number of parties grows. That's because the likelihood that these parties are "on the dime" decreases. > Do you trust the pills made by a pharmaceutical company to actually be what it says on the box more than a guy handing out pills at a concert? This is significantly different from the scenario we're discussing... Let's rephrase Which pills would you trust more to do what they claim to do?: 1) Pills made by a pharmaceutical company and tested by the pharmaceutical company 2) Pills made by a pharmaceutical company and tested by the pharmaceutical company, tested by third party organizations (medical and governmental) from multiple countries and have received recommendations from various organizations with no direct ties to the pharmaceutical company that developed the pills Clearly we trust #2 more. You'd be insane not to! It'd require a much more complex environment for that to be lest trustworthy with such high amounts of conspiracy that you may as well trust nothing that you can't verify yourself. But in that setting you can't trust your own knowledge because you aren't able to derive everything from scratch either. You literally can't trust the knowledge that you read in a book, on the internet, or anywhere if there is that level of conspiracy. But clearly we don't believe in that ludicrous scenario. Certainly there are a lot of shit FOSS out there that is no better than the drug dealer in your example, but we're talking about fucking Linux, not a random GitHub project by some uni student. Certainly I don't trust that one! But that one doesn't have multi-party vetting and is far from the type of software we're talking about. I hope we're on the same page now.

godelski 1y ago

I mean I agree but this also is acting like there's no alternative. Apple exists. Hell, Linux exists and is easy these days (see main comment). It's just unclear to me if your comment is implying that we should just roll over. If so, I vehemently disagree. If not, I'm actually not sure what you're saying and sorry if I'm misunderstanding.

vel0city 1y ago
> you shouldn't be using anything you don't control from the bottom up You absolutely do not control any Apple device from the bottom up. It is Apple software running on Apple hardware, tons of closed off secret stuff in there. And even then, you probably don't really control whatever Linux you installed from the bottom up. It's filled with code you didn't audit and validate, you're probably getting updates delivered on a regular basis by people you don't know, etc. And even then, where are you going to run that? On a modern x86 processor running all kinds of UEFI software and microcode with security coprocessors you can't directly interface in but can see all your memory and devices?
- godelski 1y ago
  So what's your point? I don't get what you're arguing other than giving up. I'm sorry, but if someone wants to take a shit on me I'm not just going to submit to that fate. I'll try to get out. I don't know about you, but I'd rather step in shit than have it forcefully poured down by throat. At least with Linux, I know there are other people checking. People with expertise I don't have. People not incentivized by their own employer. Certainly this creates higher levels of trust than the closed source setting. If it doesn't, then your argument applies to literally any subject. Medicine, food, whatever. Let's not act like this is a binary setting, it is a spectrum. There are situations that are better than others even if they aren't perfect.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    My point is, practically speaking normal users have just as much "control" over their stuff whether it's running Linux or Mac or Windows in the end. It's pretty much impossible to truly control the whole stack from the bottom up, it's a pretty much impossible standard for normal people they created. > People not incentivized by their own employer. Tons of FOSS is written by people paid to write it a a part of their jobs. And I don't know why I'd trust a passion project of an amateur doing it for fun over a paid professional doing it. Maybe the guy doing it for free is better, maybe he isn't. Do you trust the guy giving medical advice over the internet on some random blog over the licensed paid specialist doctor you might otherwise see? Do you trust the pills made by a pharmaceutical company to actually be what it says on the box more than a guy handing out pills at a concert? After all that guy posting on the internet or handing out pills isn't being incentivized by their employer! And I wouldn't necessarily trust some random open source project over a similar closed source project if I'm not going to take the time to actually audit it myself. Just having the source code over there doesn't do anything for you if you don't read it. And besides, you're probably going to pull compiled binaries and aren't going to actually verify that build are you? And you're building it with what, a compiler you downloaded already compiled? You definitely validated that, right? You're right, it's a spectrum of choices one makes. But it's not like open source instantly makes something more trustworthy or more secure or something. You have the ability to do more to trust it, but it isn't inherently more trustworthy by just having the source available.
    - thombles 1y ago
      Bingo. Furthermore, the annoying things that MS does are predictable and usually not directly harmful. Yeah they want telemetry, they want to encourage me to use expensive autocomplete everywhere, but ultimately the range of bad stuff is "oh dear the corporation is trying to upsell me nonsense I have to turn off", not "my OS is the combination of thousands of distinct software packages where I have to trust literally everybody with code execution... I sure hope this keeps working out".
    - godelski 1y ago
      I think you're misunderstanding what I'm trying to argue. There's important context to what we're talking about: Linux. The argument is not: "Having source code makes it trustworthy" The increase in trust is primarily driven by unaffiliated experts. The open source part makes that easier, but is not what explicitly drives the trust. ***The multi-party verification is what drives trust.*** > practically speaking normal users have just as much "control" over their stuff whether it's running Linux or Mac or Windows in the end. No one is arguing against this. I even agree with you. I brought up the difference in trust by third party due to this. The level of trust is different. While /control/ may be the same /trust/ is not. It does not matter that FOSS is written by people that are paid. It matters that people that are not paid look at it and investigate it. Or even paid by a different party. Paid or unpaid is not the critical variable here. Look at it this way: In a closed source ecosystem, do you trust an organization that has had a 3rd party audit MORE THAN one that hasn't? Of course you do! It isn't complete trust, and certainly you may wish to (and should) scrutinize the third party auditors to ensure that they aren't just acting as "yes men", but the level of trust objectively increases. Certainly this should continue to increase as the number of parties grows. That's because the likelihood that these parties are "on the dime" decreases. > Do you trust the pills made by a pharmaceutical company to actually be what it says on the box more than a guy handing out pills at a concert? This is significantly different from the scenario we're discussing... Let's rephrase Which pills would you trust more to do what they claim to do?: 1) Pills made by a pharmaceutical company and tested by the pharmaceutical company 2) Pills made by a pharmaceutical company and tested by the pharmaceutical company, tested by third party organizations (medical and governmental) from multiple countries and have received recommendations from various organizations with no direct ties to the pharmaceutical company that developed the pills Clearly we trust #2 more. You'd be insane not to! It'd require a much more complex environment for that to be lest trustworthy with such high amounts of conspiracy that you may as well trust nothing that you can't verify yourself. But in that setting you can't trust your own knowledge because you aren't able to derive everything from scratch either. You literally can't trust the knowledge that you read in a book, on the internet, or anywhere if there is that level of conspiracy. But clearly we don't believe in that ludicrous scenario. Certainly there are a lot of shit FOSS out there that is no better than the drug dealer in your example, but we're talking about fucking Linux, not a random GitHub project by some uni student. Certainly I don't trust that one! But that one doesn't have multi-party vetting and is far from the type of software we're talking about. I hope we're on the same page now.