[HN Gopher] The War on General Purpose Computing (2015) [video]
___________________________________________________________________
The War on General Purpose Computing (2015) [video]
Author : tosh
Score : 399 points
Date : 2022-12-04 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (csclub.uwaterloo.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (csclub.uwaterloo.ca)
| tomxor wrote:
| > Because it's the nervous system of the 21st century. We've got
| to stop treating it like a political football.
|
| Remember this, when anyone brings up mindless arguments against
| encryption or promotes other policies eroding the internet.
|
| The internet is invaluable to modern society, in the same way
| that the wheel is... politicians don't fuck with wheels, even
| though they are invaluable tools for criminals and terrorists, no
| one would be stupid enough to risk breaking wheels. Politicians
| need to wake up and realise that the internet is not a toy.
| pfoof wrote:
| You are expecting too much from undeveloped brains of
| politicians
| jmyeet wrote:
| There is no "war" on general purpose computing. There is a clear
| realization that the vast majority of people cannot securely run
| and maintain an open computer.
|
| Perhaps more importantly, _they just don't want to_.
|
| People want appliances like smartphones. That's it.
|
| The more computers there are the more dangerous bad actors
| becomes and the higher the cost of negligence. Botnets, DDOS
| attacks, etc. the only real way to combat these is at the source
| and that's by taking away management of those devices from most
| users.
| postalrat wrote:
| Users like yourself.
|
| edit: I don't mean this as an insult. I wouldn't want people to
| read "most users" and assume they aren't in that group.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| People should not fear their government. Governments should
| fear their people.
|
| Perhaps the same should apply to vendors.
| samwillis wrote:
| As a Brit this is one of the things I find so strange about
| US culture, there seems to be a real fear of government and
| authority. It seems (to me) that people in the US fear their
| government will do things that damage their freedom and
| rights through malicious intent.
|
| I feel that here in he UK most people don't fear the
| government, they just think they are a bunch of useless
| muppets who have no idea what they are doing.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| And yet you can be jailed for a mean tweet and can't own
| firearms more or less. You have barely avoided (for now) a
| backdoor being forcibly installed onto every chat and
| messaging service, though you may still see required
| snooping on semi public platforms.
|
| It is the tyrants favor to be seen as useless and weak.
| samwillis wrote:
| > you can be jailed for a mean tweet
|
| No you can't. It's far more complex than that, you have
| to be a very bad person (or very VERY stupid repeatedly
| ignoring warnings) for that to happen.
|
| > can't own firearms
|
| Good! We don't want people to have them. (Only somewhere
| between 1-4% want weaker firearms regulations)
|
| > You have barely avoided (for now) a backdoor being
| forcibly installed onto every chat and messaging service
|
| True, and it was quite right for the intelligence
| services to lobby for that, that's their job. But our
| democratic system worked and it was prevented by the
| multiple levels of government. They will try again, but I
| trust the system will prevent it.
|
| > you may still see required snooping on semi public
| platforms
|
| And I wouldn't be surprised if there is general support
| for this in the UK.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| "the only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld
| fella buuuuurn."
|
| That was enough for one old man to get arrested.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| The US at least has provable history that it's intelligence
| organizations aren't completely incompetent and have
| already setup mass surveillance on it's citizens.
| rektide wrote:
| Your assertion would be worth considering if any alternative
| had been given even 1/1000th the effort the prevailing
| corporate-run paradigm has been given. Confident assertions we
| are where we are because this is what people want, when no
| alternative has been presented or tried, is ridiculous.
|
| Then you go on to assert that authoritarian control is the only
| viable option. Here we have counter examples! Systems like
| Pop!_OS are parallel efforts to desktop systems like mac or
| windows, not designed for masterful smart supernerds but just
| to ne viable desktops for all, without fiddling, with safe-
| enough defaults. It didnt take suborning users under corporate
| whip to get here. Windows & Mac also show general purpose
| computing is in the broad possible- would that phones have at
| least this much freedom. But they dont.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Right - you can't make conclusions that people's choices are
| the result of some revealed preference when there aren't
| viable alternatives readily available.
|
| I'm reminded also of our car-dominated cities in the US. In
| our current built environment, cycling isn't considered as an
| option by most because it doesn't feel safe. But cities
| around the world have shown that if you change the
| infrastructure such that it does, people will start cycling.
| The high car usage isn't a revealed preference, it's the
| result of a lack of other options.
|
| So too with tech. The only options typically available for
| smartphones are Android with Play Services and iOS, and while
| it's _possible_ to have Android without Play Services, you
| won 't find phones sold that way unless you're technical
| enough to know what to look for, in which case you can
| probably install it yourself. (And things break in weird and
| wonderful ways without Play Services, because much of what we
| now consider core functionality for a phone has been moved
| into it.) Effectively, for the typical user, it's not an
| option.
|
| Likewise with Linux desktops; they're more available than the
| phones mentioned above, but they're still not likely to be
| found where people typically buy laptops and desktops. You
| have to specifically go seeking them out, meaning the typical
| shopper doesn't even see them as an option.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Oh please, general purpose computing used to be all that was
| available, it used to be the mainstream. Mac, Windows, Linux,
| all of them are losing marketshare (or didn't have
| marketshare to begin with) and are locking down to match the
| UX of the newly favored mobile platforms.
|
| Even on mobile, you have locked down iOS vs open Android and
| what do consumers choose? Android used to be incredibly open
| and was badly losing to iOS (outside consumers who just
| couldn't afford it) as it was open to viruses and
| fragmentation. Google has since learned from that mistake.
|
| But there's always some other excuse. It's like communism,
| it's just never been tried, all those tries don't count
| because some aspect of reality got in the way. So what will
| it be this time? You don't like Google? Linux too hard to
| maintain? Say all the reasons that you consider way more
| important than general purpose computing and you'll have
| proved their point: users just don't want to.
|
| You know why companies put so much effort into locked down
| platforms? Because users pay them for it. Anyone, including
| you, is free to dump their effort into making general purpose
| computing great again, so why don't you do it? Say why you're
| not doing it back to yourself, it's the reason why no one
| else is.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| The is no "war" on free speech. There is a clear realization
| that the vast majority of people cannot properly say and hold
| correct opinions.
|
| Perhaps more importantly, _they just don't want to_.
|
| People want prescribed speech like being told how to think.
| That's it.
|
| The more people who can say whatever they want the more
| dangerous bad actors becomes and the higher the cost of
| negligence. Misinformation, hate speech, etc. the only real way
| to combat these is at the source and that's by taking away
| management of those words from most people.
|
| EDIT: apparently the /s needs to be explicit
| tAigoejfu wrote:
| Do another one, this time about free exchange of money and
| how people can't learn how to spend it only on approved
| things. Add something implying an equivalence between porn
| and terrorism.
|
| Which is why the HN crowd buys Apple trinkets, and claims to
| use Brave, because it makes them feel good about their stance
| on privacy. Yet that same crowd abhors cryptocurrency, but
| doesn't seem to mind increasingly strict US reporting
| requirements of practically any meaningful monetary
| transaction.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Perhaps if all that tracking was instead sold to users as
| way of preventing countries from bypassing embargoes or to
| ensure nobody is learning how to order drugs online that
| we'd all abhor Brave for the energy that it wastes or bad
| behaviour it allows.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| The worrisome thing is that a remarkable number of smug, self
| righteous elitists share your disgusting views of how certain
| self-appointed betters should herd the rest of humanity along
| "correct" lines. It's been a disgusting bane of our species
| for millennia under different guises and it only shifts its
| talking points over time. Never mind that this minority is no
| less prone to all the human shittiness and stupidity that
| anyone else suffers, only more damaging because they
| apportion power for themselves over many more things.
| jakeogh wrote:
| I agree with ya, but that's good satire. The kind that
| really cuts to the point.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I'm sorry, I didn't think I needed a /s at the end of this.
| I assumed it would be clearly understood to be a criticism
| of the parent's argument and not an endorsement of it.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Honestly sorry then. That one flew right over my head.
| And since some people really do think exactly that way,
| all the more believable.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| No worries.
|
| Yes, they are really are the same argument as you went
| into detail yourself.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The notion that corporations would turn down a lucrative profit
| opportunity in order to 'give people what they want' is rather
| naive. For example, the talk discusses the farmer who wasn't
| given root access to their John Deere tractor, to disable a
| faulty sensor - because that sensor was collecting data,
| sending it back to the tractor manufacturer, who was using that
| data as part of their crop futures trading strategy. If the
| farmer wanted that data themselves, they had to buy seeds from
| Monsanto!
|
| I can't imagine any farmer not wanting the option of shutting
| off remote updates and remote access, and just having complete
| control over the equipment they bought. This is particularly
| true for older hardware... i.e. many old computers will run
| Linux just fine even if Windows support was ended years ago.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Farmers also want free money, they want blackjack and hookers
| too. Can you give it to them?
|
| What farmers want means nothing if they don't pay for it. If
| there is some hidden wellspring of farmers who really want
| those options then any manufacturer who makes tractors with
| those options will easily steal lots of customers and profits
| from John Deere. That's what you might call a "lucrative
| profit opportunity".
|
| But it won't happen, because farmers don't actually
| prioritize it when buying tractors, they prioritize tool
| efficiency and are content to idly complain about this issue
| without putting any money where their mouth is. Go ahead,
| start a root-access tractor business, then customers will
| suddenly tell you 99 reasons why John Deere's tractor is
| still better than yours _because these telemetry options are
| some of the least important things when buying a tractor_ and
| practically no farmer will actually reward you for it.
|
| But sure, they _want_ it. They 'll even go as far as writing
| an internet comment complaining about it!
| ip26 wrote:
| I used to be someone who was happy to maintain multiple open
| computers. But as computers proliferate in our lives, it became
| ridiculous. I have between 10-15 full fledged computers I
| personally operate on a daily basis. I no longer have any
| interest in carefully tending to the needs of each one twice a
| week.
| nayuki wrote:
| This might interest you: https://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao
|
| > Personal Application Omnipresence, PAO. It's a theoretical
| computing model where your applications are available to you
| from any device.
|
| > My ideal for computing consists of applications that run on
| a central application server that I own. I want each
| application to be a single running instance to which I can
| connect and then interact with, from anywhere, from any
| device.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| anigbrowl wrote:
| (2011)
|
| And a bunch of these predictions never materialized. Subscription
| models are more widespread, but there's also more and better
| choices for opting out, and a much richer variety of development
| targets and ecosystems to mess around in.
| Garlef wrote:
| Ach. I don't know.
|
| I think that general purpose computing is simply changing.
|
| It's not going to be "A man and his Linux in a basement" anymore
| but rather "Let's run some code in a remote distributed
| serverless runtime". Cloud Excell for the masses.
|
| One part where we can already see this is how cloud environments
| like colab, hugging face, repl.it, etc remove some parts of
| maintaining a full installation of an OS. If you just want to
| write some python and run it on a GPU you don't have to buy a
| GPU, install drivers, etc anymore.
|
| We should be happy that we won't have to care about the bare
| metal (unless we want to).
| matlin wrote:
| The downside to this future is that it, being the shift from
| applications to services, means instead of your data living on
| your computer it is instead fragmented across a bunch of other
| random places.
|
| While most consumers don't really care and actually prefer the
| switch to everything being cloud-first, the stagnation it can
| cause for other developers is substantial.
|
| E.g. If I want to make a cool email client, I don't have to ask
| the user's permission to send and receive emails, I have to
| have Google's permission to access their machine and to make
| this compelling as Gmail, I have to then store all of my user's
| data on my own servers. This compared to me just writing a
| client-side application that has no server requirements is a
| huge bust IMO.
|
| My preferred future is where every user has their own server
| that can run general purpose applications. It would have all
| the benefits of the cloud (data available across all of your
| devices) and would grant developers more freedoms to create
| compelling experiences.
|
| The future, I want is that some high schooler could create the
| next Google Docs without having to compete with Google on large
| scale data infrastructure and security but instead on _user
| experience_.
| Garlef wrote:
| > every user has their own server
|
| I think we're on the same page.
|
| The only difference is that I think that the
| OS/Server/Filesystem is a big hinderance for many
| applications. I just want an environment where I can to
| execute arbitrary code.
|
| My version would be
|
| *> Every user has their own remote code execution
| environment.
|
| One good candidate for the near future would be serverless
| WASM runtimes backed by serverless databases. (But you'll
| still have to store your codebase in a file system.)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| We need a civic cybersecurity bill. Nor _for_ corporate interests
| but one written by the people to explicitly protect us _from_
| corporations and governments.
| generalizations wrote:
| We just need to sign an open letter that says what we, as
| developers, will and will not build, and what kinds of
| ostracism will result from not signing or not adhering.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I so _wish_ this would be a viable thing, but it 's not,
| especially right now. In a way, you can blame "STEM", right?
| So many people in here, someone would likely sell out.
|
| Law/Policy/Liability and whatever other methods one can get
| skin in the game are the only answer. Harmful software has to
| be _punished._
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but many, many devs out their
| (yes, even on HN) are more than happy to sell their soul for
| a salary bump.
| scottLobster wrote:
| I hope this is sarcasm, otherwise it's rather naive. This may
| shock you, but lots of devs are not on reddit or HN, and do
| not participate in OSS development. They won't even know such
| a letter exists unless someone higher up the nerd tiers told
| them. For such a letter to have any teeth we'd need a
| nationwide developers union to enforce it, otherwise it would
| be just more impotent righteous noise on the internet
| goosedragons wrote:
| A digital rights bill. No, you can't label that button "buy"
| and then turn around 6 months later and delete it from my
| account. No, you can't go out of business and just turn off the
| DRM servers without removing the restrictions. No, you can't
| just add DRM to physical crap so you can get a monopoly, etc.
| Yes, users have the right to format shift your crap. If you
| want them to rebuy to use on X device add something worthwhile.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > Yes, users have the right to format shift your crap
|
| Doesn't this require a change in copyright law? As far as I
| know, ripping a CD for personal use is still technically an
| unauthorized copy in the USA.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Ripping a CD is fine because there is no DRM. Ripping a DVD
| is illegal because it involves breaking DRM. Yes it would
| require a change but it should.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| My cybersecurity class dubbed it a "Bill of Bytes".
|
| The things you mention off the top of your head are just some
| of possibly 50 or 60 pressing issues relating to "consumer
| rights", trade and manufacture, intellectual property,
| information rights and privacy, digital sustainability,
| security and resilience.
|
| The time has come to collect them all into a coherent
| analysis and set out limits, principles and safeguards.
|
| Those most interested/invested in this will not be random Joe
| in the street (about whom most readers here will proclaim:
| "they don't care and therefore deserve no protection") - but
| developers. _Us_. Because without some guidance to protect
| our industry from ourselves it will spiral down over the next
| decade until "technology" becomes the second common rallying
| point, after environment, against which people organise.
|
| Like climate, I think we are at a potential turning point,
| with a window of opportunity, to decide whether digital
| technology will be part of the solution, or another part of
| the problem.
| ianai wrote:
| Defining, enforcing, and reinforcing property rights absolutely
| is within a government's purpose. So I agree that governments
| need to step up and modernize the law within the digital world.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Do you mean they should clarify I own my devices and data, or
| google/apple do?
| ianai wrote:
| Obviously the originator of the data should have original
| rights to it. It shouldn't be something that can be given
| away in a EULA without outright compensation and
| consideration.
| c7b wrote:
| > ...UK's David Cameron, who've joined in with the NSA and
| GCHQ...
|
| What year is the article from? David Cameron resigned as British
| PM in June 2016 and as MP in September. He since seems to have
| held a number of positions on charity and corporation boards, I
| couldn't find anything that would tie him to current political
| decisions.
| OJFord wrote:
| 2015, per the URL for the linked talk video.
| [deleted]
| Jenda_ wrote:
| Transcript of a 2011 version:
| https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
|
| The version linked here seems to be more about collected examples
| of such war, DRM, right to repair etc.
| dang wrote:
| Related threads. Others?
|
| _Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32224751 - July 2022 (87
| comments)
|
| _We will win the war for general-purpose computing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27859463 - July 2021 (178
| comments)
|
| _Taking a Stand in the War on General-Purpose Computing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26242991 - Feb 2021 (287
| comments)
|
| _The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24866279 - Oct 2020 (210
| comments)
|
| _Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing (2011)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19872364 - May 2019 (59
| comments)
|
| _Lockdown - The coming war on general-purpose computing (2012)_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335261 - May 2017 (96
| comments)
|
| _The coming civil war over general purpose computing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4436139 - Aug 2012 (98
| comments)
|
| _Lockdown - The coming war on general-purpose computing_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3448754 - Jan 2012 (46
| comments)
| jmclnx wrote:
| I did not view the video, but I believe "General Purpose
| Computing" is coming to an end. With everyone moving to Cell
| Phones plus the boot lockdown (Secure Boot) and things like Intel
| ME, TPM, future is not looking too bright. And I heard Microsoft
| is requiring some new addition to Chips that Windows will need
| which seems to be a kind of backdoor (I forgot what it is
| called).
|
| I am sure many people here have seen this, looks to me this is
| the direction society is slowly heading towards:
|
| www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
| teddyh wrote:
| More details can be had in _The Digital Imprimatur_ (from
| 2003): https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
| drivers99 wrote:
| We can still build our own computers and software from scratch
| if necessary.
| Jenda_ wrote:
| The problem is that you will need software/services that only
| run on the "trusted" platform. An early example of this are
| services that require "apps" that require Google Services on
| Android, detect rooting or even require remote attestation.
| drivers99 wrote:
| In that case we would need to use services (assuming they
| are actually needed) that respect freedom, or create them
| or find alternative ways to meet the same need.
| runjake wrote:
| Therein lies the whole point.
| Jenda_ wrote:
| It may be difficult, for example it may require starting
| a new bank, or outright impossible, when most people you
| need to communicate with (e.g. for business, or hobbies -
| but of course you can go living in the woods) are on some
| proprietary communication platform (think of
| WhatsApp/Facebook). Other times it may be "just" wildly
| inconvenient, e.g. when all taxi services, bikesharing
| and public transport in a given city will be available
| only through an "app". As another anecdote from real
| life, the 2022 AMS meeting
| (https://annual.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/2022/about-the-
| meeting/...) required "daily health survey" through a
| "CLEAR app" to attend.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I do not believe it is possible to watch high resolution
| content from Netflix on Linux.
| asmor wrote:
| TreeRingCounter wrote:
| > nobody really seems to care about locking you out of your
| own (non-mobile) device
|
| The "non-mobile" caveat is doing a _lot_ of work in 2022.
| >90% of computer time is on mobile devices.
|
| > I ask that you care about republicans banning actual
| physical books from schools as least as much
|
| This seems like a total non-sequitur. Why do you bring this
| up? In any case, the last 3-4 times I looked into one of
| these cases, the "ban" was actually just removing the book
| from the mandatory curriculum. There are also some at-least-
| as-severe "bans" from the left, like removing Huckleberry
| Finn due to racial designators that are considered offensive.
| The pressure to ban these books does not come from
| republicans.
| asmor wrote:
| > Why do you bring this up?
|
| One, because it is a much more immediate issue than
| hypothetical digital access restrictions to the "wrong"
| books. These books are being made unavailable _right now_.
|
| Two, because the FSF/GNU, as usual, has a huge blind spot
| for who they should advocate for. They always seem less
| concerned with a wide range of people having access to
| books or code (i.e. the supposed 90% of smartphone users)
| and more with _them_ (on a decade old libreboot laptop
| running linux-libre - something only a very dedicated
| individual will build or comission and accept the
| inconveniences of) having access to books. The book bans
| in, for instance, Texas are much more easy to circumvent,
| but affect many more people. Suppressing access to queer
| literature (for instance) for 80% of the population right
| now is much more dangerous than a hypothetical technology
| that could censor 99% tomorrow. Those 19% are probably not
| even worth chasing, because you already convinced a
| majority that this material doesn't exist.
|
| > In any case, the last 3-4 times I looked into one of
| these cases, the "ban" was actually just removing the book
| from the mandatory curriculum.
|
| "especially on those from historically marginalized
| backgrounds who are watching their _library shelves_
| emptied "
|
| https://pen.org/report/banned-usa-growing-movement-to-
| censor...
| asmor wrote:
| this comment was about Pluton. Mobile is an entirely
| different beast.
|
| But that aside, the extent of the "lockdown" outside of
| recent Huawei shenanigans always seems to be limited to
| which corporations can put their services on a device under
| which rules. Not which books you can read.
| Jenda_ wrote:
| > Mobile is an entirely different beast.
|
| Why would desktop vendors not follow the same pathway? To
| me, it looks like it is only a "tradition" (desktop
| computers are from an era when it was deemed normal to
| tinker with your OS) and the paradigm can shift.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| They're very different markets with very different needs.
| The market share of PCs will fall, relative to phones,
| but never vanish, and as it falls the casual users will
| leave, leaving an even greater concentration of
| tinkerers.
|
| There are hundreds of millions of passionate hobbyists of
| various types who use PCs specifically _because_ of their
| deep versatility, including all of the nascent coders
| that the big corps depend on for their next generation of
| dev hires. Abandoning them would be like automakers
| abandoning the transport truck market because it 's not
| as big as the family car market. They would lose a bunch
| of money, and money is the bottom line.
| Jenda_ wrote:
| You are right that the business depending on the
| "tradition" is way bigger than I anticipated.
|
| > There are hundreds of millions of passionate hobbyists
| of various types who use PCs specifically because of
| their deep versatility
|
| I think there would be lots of hobbyists tinkering with
| smartphones...
|
| > including all of the nascent coders that the big corps
| depend on for their next generation of dev hires
|
| This is something I sometimes worry about: I think most
| of current developers/sysadmins/hackers started by
| tinkering with their computer, playing with snippets of
| HTML/Python/shell, and therefore we will get much less
| coders in the near future, as kids are moving to devices
| which do not allow such easy tinkering? (yes, I know
| there are smartphone apps that provide some
| functionality, but I think it's generally less
| accessible)
| asmor wrote:
| Because it is extremely disruptive to the entire
| platform? Windows has been keeping decades old APIs on
| life support for the sake of business customers. This
| would quite literally be the opposite move.
|
| These two ecosystems have not converged in the past 20+
| years, why would they now?
|
| Also, somehow most Android vendors still provide
| bootloader unlock keys.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _> 90% of computer time is on mobile devices._
|
| But >90% of _that_ time is used for consumption and
| communication, in which case an appliance that prioritizes
| security over hackability is the right answer for non-
| technical people. In the relatively few cases where a
| mobile general-purpose computer is necessary, there are
| many suitable mobile devices -- laptops, rooted tablets,
| Linux phones, etc.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > The "non-mobile" caveat is doing a lot of work in 2022.
| >90% of computer time is on mobile devices.
|
| Sure. But I don't feel robbed of the ability to do general
| purpose computing so long as my device for general purpose
| computing allows me to do general purpose computing. Even
| if my locked down phone stays locked down. I want my phone
| to be a locked down appliance and I bought it _because_
| it's a locked down appliance, not despite that it was.
|
| The question is perhaps: is it a problem that we have 2
| classes of devices (mostly open like PCs, and mostly closed
| like everything else from consoles to phones cars), and
| that we need the first kind less and less?
|
| That's certainly happening. But for me to consider
| something a war on general purpose computing I'd need to
| see actual attacks on my ability to use my general purpose
| computing devices. Not merely that I'm given more options
| to use _other_ devices.
| haswell wrote:
| This trend towards simpler and simpler abstractions is
| everywhere.
|
| We see it in the development world as well, with
| languages provide ever higher abstractions, and
| frameworks providing ever more opinionated approaches to
| solving things.
|
| This happens not because of some war against writing
| ultra high performance code in assembly, but because
| developers don't want to deal with assembly on a daily
| basis.
|
| My phone is a device that needs to just work. My
| desktop/laptop are devices that needs to let me do
| whatever I want them to.
|
| Too often, people in our community conflate the two and
| conclude nefarious intent, when what we're seeing are
| market forces at work and the creation of products that
| the market demands.
|
| This isn't to say that we should not be vigilant, but I
| agree with what you're saying here - these trends are not
| by themselves evidence of a war on general purpose
| computing.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > Too often, people in our community conflate the two and
| conclude nefarious intent, when what we're seeing are
| market forces at work and the creation of products that
| the market demands.
|
| I find it hard to ascribe it all to "market forces" when
| it's also aided by legislation like the DMCA. Anyway if
| the EU Digital Markets act someday opens up App stores,
| we'll see _more_ market forces at play and can see
| exactly what consumers truly want.
| haswell wrote:
| These aren't mutually exclusive though. There absolutely
| are forces that we should be worried about.
|
| My point is that despite these concerns, there are
| completely natural and understandable reasons for many of
| the trends we're seeing that are unrelated to those
| concerns and don't necessarily imply progression towards
| an environment hostile to general purpose computing.
| saurik wrote:
| The vast majority of people do not buy devices because
| they are locked down. In fact the idea that someone buys
| a phone because it is locked down and not because it fits
| in their pockets and has a radio on it is so disingenuous
| as to defy the intelligence of the reader. You only ever
| see that take on Hacker News (or similar tech forums)
| where people who are vested into this world defend their
| decisions.
|
| On the contrary--and I can say this with some air of
| authority--normal people bristle at restrictions they run
| into and when given the opportunity to escape those
| restrictions do so in large numbers. Despite the
| ridiculous amount of complication and even risk involved
| with jailbreaking one's phone, we had something like 12%
| of people with an iPhone jailbreaking them at some point
| (and, no: it had little to do with piracy, and even the
| United States Copyright Office agreed with that: people
| wanted functionality that wasn't being provided).
|
| The reality is: people at best buy these devices without
| understanding that they are locked down or at worst
| _despite_ them being locked down. The business model of
| selling a locked down device is just so enticing that it
| has become hard to find devices that maintain high
| quality that aren 't locked down, particularly at low
| price points. The only reason there seem to exist any
| anymore is because there are a handful of people at
| Google--and specifically Google--who have decided to
| defend the world from this fate.
|
| And even they aren't perfect. Virtually the entire
| category of ultrabooks seems to have fallen to
| Chromebooks, and I seriously had to sit around for an
| hour _soldering_ to create a special magic USB debugging
| serial bypass cable that I use to essentially _jailbreak_
| these things so I can run actual-Linux on them.
|
| And that's really what is going to be your fate: the
| concept of a general purpose laptop is going to slowly
| die off and you are going to find yourself with fewer and
| fewer options that cost an arm and a leg vs. the
| ridiculously cheap alternative devices that will start to
| have better hardware or different design tradeoffs and
| you are also going to switch.
|
| The mere existence that "sure, I can still spend a small
| fortune to obtain a general purpose computer" doesn't
| somehow prevent our fate, particularly given that these
| arguments tend to come from anti-DRM "nut jobs" like Cory
| and I who will point out that your general purpose
| computer is cool and all but if it isn't allowed to
| connect to the same networks or busses (think HDMCP) as
| the locked down devices then we are still losing
| something important: we aren't claiming you won't be able
| to build a computer, only that it won't be useful anymore
| :(.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > You only ever see that take on Hacker News (or similar
| tech forums) where people who are vested into this world
| defend their decisions.
|
| Outside of places like HN and similar you get blank
| stares if you ask the question of what people think about
| the closedneas or openness of their device. If you
| clarify that (say) they would perhaps like to use an app
| from a different source, it's again blank stares.
|
| I of course wouldn't actively _mind_ if it was much
| easier to sideload an app on iOS, but if there was e.g
| some openness push that required multiple app stores to
| not just be available but also that all be equally
| prominent (like the browser or media player thing in
| Windows) then I'm completely convinced that it would be a
| disaster for users. More freedom, cheaper, but fractured
| and insecure. I'm not sure it's a net positive. And I'm
| sure my dad would be more confused.
|
| > the concept of a general purpose laptop is going to
| slowly die off and you are going to find yourself with
| fewer and fewer options that cost an arm and a leg vs.
| the ridiculously cheap alternative devices that will
| start to have better hardware or different design
| tradeoffs and you are also going to switch.
|
| I believe this too. And while I don't much like this
| future, I don't really have a good answer. I don't think
| the answer is to somehow require any appliance to be more
| open. It seems misdirected.
|
| That PCs will be expensive and niche is probably true.
| They'll go back to where they started before the home
| computing revolution, to be professional tools for
| content creators, developers, scientists and similar.
| It's not the PC that's threatened, it's the cheap home PC
| that's threatened. Not the workstation or video editing
| rig.
|
| But the thing about the cheap home PC for web browsing,
| photo organization and light word processing is that it
| was never really a good tool for the job. It was a
| malware ridden crash prone slow machine that we (the HN
| people who now tell our relatives to get iPads or
| ChromeBooks for browsing) had to fix around the holidays.
| akkartik wrote:
| Normal people bristle at restrictions they run into --
| but also apps that take advantage of the freedoms granted
| them. The early value of browsers and AJAX was precisely
| that the browser was locked down. "Nothing to install" is
| valuable because of this. So I think both of you can be
| right. "Buying devices because it's locked down" only
| seems disingenuous if the locking down is for oneself.
| rfoo wrote:
| If the user can choose to unlock their devices, it's the
| users themselves locking down the device and it makes
| sense to say "Buying devices because it's locked down /
| can be locked down".
|
| Otherwise, it's not "Buying devices because it's locked
| down", it's "I have no other choice but buying locked
| down devices".
|
| The browser is something running on top of an open
| general purpose computing device. In this case, it's the
| user (who decided to run a browser instead of native
| apps) decided to lock themselves down and it's totally
| different.
| akkartik wrote:
| Sure. You're not disagreeing.
|
| People want control and people want safety without having
| to think about it all the time. I think we haven't found
| the best technical solution to this tension, and we're
| stuck on a local optimum of "ignorance is bliss." Ideal
| would be something people can learn at their own pace
| over time -- and still not think about most of the time.
| You know, what the word "abstraction" is supposed to
| mean.
| [deleted]
| fsflover wrote:
| > The "non-mobile" caveat is doing a lot of work in 2022.
| >90% of computer time is on mobile devices.
|
| Which is why I'm supporting GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and
| Pinephone.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > But in reality, nobody really seems to care about locking
| you out of your own (non-mobile) device.
|
| Sounds like the war has already been lost.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's pretty easy to go buy a completely unlocked computer,
| so the war is definitely not lost. Maybe if you only want
| to run Windows or MacOS. But even then, my MacBook hasn't
| yet refused to let me do something I wanted to do.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| My point was that if one feels the need to restrict the
| statement "non-mobile", then the war is already lost.
| Mobile phones are the most common computers used today.
|
| That said I'm glad that you personally have always been
| able to do what you want to do with your MacBook.
| jeffbee wrote:
| > This anxiety of an imminent all-encompassing wave of DRM
| where you can only run approved software on all your
| Windows/Linux devices has been going for more than 10 years.
|
| So much longer. Go read any of the warnings that Cory
| Doctorow has been writing for 20+ years about the _imminent_
| war against general purpose computing, how DRM will end our
| right to use our own CPU, and then look at the date lines,
| and then ponder whether literally any of his predictions have
| come true. Some people have made entire careers out of
| talking about this.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >So much longer. Go read any of the warnings that Cory
| Doctorow has been writing for 20+ years about the imminent
| war against general purpose computing, how DRM will end our
| right to use our own CPU, and then look at the date lines,
| and then ponder whether literally any of his predictions
| have come true. Some people have made entire careers out of
| talking about this.
|
| Can you say for certain that his writings didn't contribute
| to those predictions _not_ coming true?
| itsokimbatman wrote:
| Lisa Simpson has a rock she would like to sell you:
| https://youtu.be/xSVqLHghLpw
|
| I mean, yeah, I get it. I worry about general purpose
| computing going away too. I remember Stallman and
| Doctorow talking about this in the early 2000s and saw
| many iterations of this same thread pop up on Slashdot,
| HN, Digg, Reddit, etc. over the years.
|
| I dunno man, I guess I'm just skeptical over the dooming
| at this point. I think a bigger issue is less about
| whether we will be able to run whatever we want on our
| computer, and more that the internet has just become a
| cesspool of ads, clickbait, ragebait, and app sandboxed
| content that's not discoverable by search engines. I
| think you'll always have a fairly reasonable choice of
| computers to run whatever software you want on. But
| todays internet just isn't very fun anymore.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I work in the industry and all I see around me everywhere
| are skilled and talented people doing their level best to
| ship the best and most useful products to their customers
| at the lowest prices. The theory that the whole industry
| was scared off from its former evil plan by the TED talks
| of a bottom-shelf sci-fi author strikes me as highly
| unlikely.
| Nicksil wrote:
| >I work in the industry and all I see around me
| everywhere are skilled and talented people doing their
| level best to ship the best and most useful products to
| their customers at the lowest prices. The theory that the
| whole industry was scared off from its former evil plan
| by the TED talks of a bottom-shelf sci-fi author strikes
| me as highly unlikely.
|
| Your hyperbolic and insulting annotations degrade your
| assertion.
|
| >highly unlikely
|
| So, plausible?
| charcircuit wrote:
| >So, plausible?
|
| It's an impossible to verify claim. There is no way to be
| 100% sure what the answer is.
| blargke wrote:
| joenot443 wrote:
| As an aside, there's a very big world outside American
| politics, and many of us outside the US don't really care for
| it being brought into discussions where it's not otherwise
| relevant. Just my 2 cents.
| [deleted]
| asmor wrote:
| I wish it was that easy to keep separate. I'm not actually
| in the US either, but current attacks against queer people
| in the US have still inspired similar tactics and movements
| to form here[1]. I guess it's no surprised if Russian
| Oligarchs (like CitizenGo) are involved.
|
| [1] (in german):
| https://nitter.net/i/status/1599025215337811969
| phkahler wrote:
| General purpose computing was never really what the general
| public wanted. We might go back to general purpose computing
| for hobbyists.
| rfoo wrote:
| It is in our best interest to make the general public want
| general purpose computing (and make general purpose computing
| useful for them).
| antisthenes wrote:
| You're going to fight an uphill battle on that one.
|
| In my experience the general public's notion of "general
| purpose computing" is "Well, my phone can do everything I
| need, isn't that general purpose computing?"
| feanaro wrote:
| "Sick of being forced to watch pesky ads instead of the
| video you actually want to see? General purpose computing
| is the reason you can."
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| Lots of people i think would happily accept a global
| authoritarian regime as long as it told the right stories about
| how it was Making The World Better For Everyone <3
| bee_rider wrote:
| And another population that would accept such a regime as
| long as it was making the world a worse place for the sort of
| people they don't like.
| qu4z-2 wrote:
| I'm not convinced these are distinct populations.
| conradev wrote:
| I think it's important to understand why these trends are
| happening if you want any hope of reversing them. It's not just
| some incipient evil spreading its shadow over computing that we
| need to address. These technologies represent an advancement in
| the field, but the control of them is out of our hands.
|
| The components you are referring to confer a clear and
| important benefit to devices - a secure boot chain. This is the
| most foolproof way we know to prevent tampering or hacking a
| device.
|
| The problem is that some of these secure boot chains don't
| allow being overridden by users. Many do - the Pixel series of
| phones, the M-series of Apple laptops, and Windows S devices
| all allow "turning off" or "hijacking" their secure boot
| chains. The further problem if you can turn off secure boot is
| that these pieces of hardware often can't then be turned back
| on with a different secure boot chain - say, one based on open
| source software. Debian and NixOS and other OSes already have
| zero-trust ways of verifying the integrity of their software
| using reproducible builds, but they can't go the step further
| and have the hardware it is installed on do the same
| verification with some sort of signature.
|
| GrapheneOS has figured out how to do this, and it leverages the
| secure boot chain of the Pixel device. It is very cool and I
| think a nice symbiosis between the hardware and open source
| software: https://grapheneos.org/build#generating-release-
| signing-keys
|
| The next and more problematic part of what these technologies
| provide is _integrity_ , which is the guarantee that on top of
| the boot being secure, the software being run is from the
| manufacturer and it behaves as the manufacturer intends. A lot
| of functionality currently relies on this guarantee of
| integrity: anti-cheat software, DRM software (Widevine, HDCP),
| transit cards, credit cards, driver's licenses, etc. The
| technology manufacturers aren't building this software because
| they want to, but because they have to. The Original Sin for
| the iPhone was carriers: at the time in 2008 they were really
| worried about unlocking and tethering, and the prank of the day
| was to put a flashlight app into the App Store that allowed
| tethering via a proxy. Rights holders, carriers, game
| manufacturers, etc all pressure tech companies to use integrity
| to solve their problems.
|
| Many of these solutions have alternatives that don't require OS
| integrity: if the government issues signed digital IDs, for
| example, then it wouldn't matter what software is running on
| the phone. Some are tough and don't have alternatives, like
| anti-cheat and DRM. DRM in particular is a complex US legal
| issue: anti-circumvention is straight up breaking the law. No
| solution would be comprehensive without changing the law.
|
| Progress has been made, though! The fact that we have figured
| out ways of unlocking boot chains in a way that is acceptable
| to all of the large companies is awesome. Apple does it by
| being able to guarantee other secure boot chains on the device
| remain intact, and Google does it by ensuring the device is
| wiped. This took real engineering effort to do.
|
| It's important to push these companies to go further. An M1
| iPad is almost identical to an M1 MacBook in hardware, and yet
| Apple only allows the latter to run Linux.
|
| The comment is already a blog post, but another big problem is
| that these tools are great for anti-competitive purposes...
| which the government is increasingly taking a look at.
| martinflack wrote:
| > The further problem if you can turn off secure boot is that
| these pieces of hardware often can't then be turned back on
| with a different secure boot chain - say, one based on open
| source software.
|
| Is your statement meant to be inclusive of, say, all laptops?
| I was under the impression that one can setup a machine to
| boot using personal keys rather than Microsoft keys:
| https://www.dannyvanheumen.nl/post/secure-boot-in-fedora/
| conradev wrote:
| I don't consider UEFI Secure Boot to be on the same level
| as these other secure boot technologies because it doesn't
| help in the face of physical access to the machine.
|
| The process of being able to use your own keys is certainly
| cool, but it is less impressive if anyone with physical
| access to the machine can also do that
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > I think it's important to understand why these trends are
| happening if you want any hope of reversing them.
|
| Why? Because we let it happen. We keep buying these things
| that have this function as a feature. The answer is simple
| but it demands dedication and resilience.
|
| Simply stop buying them and using them. Yes, a boycott. There
| is no other answer because they are making ton of money doing
| things this way and the one;y way they will stop is if we
| stop making it profitable for them.
| conradev wrote:
| Boycotting is not a practical solution for so many reasons
| for so much of the technology we use every day.
|
| It represents a black-and-white way of thinking about the
| problem when the entire point I am trying to make is that
| everything is gray and if you work in technology you need
| to understand the different shades of gray better.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| You need across-the-board regulation, things like right-to-
| inspect-and-repair rules written into law, enforceable by
| independent parties via civil lawsuits in law courts - and
| that's because the entities involved have
| monopoly/monopsony power in the markets.
|
| At some point, it's like telling people who don't want to
| drink dirty water that they should boycott their one and
| only water provider.
| ip26 wrote:
| Why do you care if other people are using cell phones? You can
| still build your own general purpose computer, and even if
| Wintel no longer suits your needs, there are many other
| options.
| Jenda_ wrote:
| > looks to me this is the direction society is slowly heading
| towards
|
| It's not, notice how easily it was circumvented in the story.
| In reality, it would not be possible to lend Lissa the computer
| with books, because there would be continuous FaceID checking
| who is the real person staring at the screen.
|
| Also, in the story, "ten percent of those fees went to the
| researchers who wrote the papers", that would be a great
| upgrade for the current world.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I oddly disagree. I mean the trend is definitely there, but
| last time I checked unRaid can deal with TPM ( so clearly there
| is an interest from motivated individuals to defeat that trend
| ), cell phones are actually even more interesting as they were
| kinda locked in to begin with and we are slowly seeing
| competition from non-duopology sources ( purism, pine ) and
| degoogled OSs..
|
| The war is there, but it seems not all is lost just yet.
| als0 wrote:
| > And I heard Microsoft is requiring some new addition to Chips
| that Windows will need which seems to be a kind of backdoor (I
| forgot what it is called).
|
| It's called Pluton, and (scarily) there is not much public
| technical information about it.
| cokeandpepsi wrote:
| Intel should be figuring how to fix sleep on their chipset,
| the company is managed by idiots and we just injected them
| with billions of tax payer dollars so they can continue this
| b.s.
| moffkalast wrote:
| That doesn't sound too good. Last time some project was
| called Pluto it was a continuously radiation spewing nuclear
| ramjet.
| taftster wrote:
| Just some links for the lazy:
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/security/informati...
|
| https://www.howtogeek.com/779095/what-is-microsofts-
| pluton-s...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Note that none of this is technical information; it's just
| broad descriptions of the sort that you could've written in
| 2005. It's not clear in your links, but I think Pluton
| updates work like microcode updates.
|
| There's a nice quotation from the end of the How-To Geek
| article:
|
| > _As long as these measures don't prevent us from running
| software we actually want to use, Pluton is a welcome
| development._
| taftster wrote:
| Yeah, I wasn't trying to editorialize on this. I honestly
| didn't know about Pluton, so I just included a couple of
| links to newcomers like myself.
|
| Indeed, Pluton could be beneficial, assuming you are on
| the side of fully trusting the Microsoft ecosystem front-
| to-back. Or scary if you don't trust the old 'Softy.
|
| That being said, Apple's M1 architecture has a similar
| security chip installed as well. Some people legitimately
| want these walled gardens. We here at HN are probably
| more on the fringe side than the majority.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Very few people outside Microsoft _want_ these walled
| gardens. They want the guarantees that the walled gardens
| can give them.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's an eternal trade-off explored in much fiction. The
| Browncoats v Alliance in Firefly or the Rebel Alliance v
| the Empire in Star Wars, or the Vickies v anarchists in
| The Diamond Age, and many more. We want both the
| stability and humanity and safety of a cultured,
| controlled civilization, and the creative, exuberant
| culture that can be born out of periods of chaos. On a
| personal level, this implies we all want to live on the
| right side of the tracks, but have the option to party on
| the wrong side of the tracks.
|
| I think the rebels have to do better, to wit, they (we?)
| have to work smarter to make software that's just as
| functional but with far less code, so that it can be
| audited by an actual human being. Software engineers take
| a blase attitude about dependency bloat, but that must
| change. We also need to be ready to run on open hardware
| when it is released. Last but not least, we need to
| invent a way for the best hackers and geeks to sift
| through the software we run, people we trust to find
| flaws and exploits and not use them. I, for one, would
| gladly pay for this service, and I think thousands of
| others would, too.
| Eleison23 wrote:
| A QA friend of mine remarked that he was amazed that the loss
| of general purpose computing capability would be accomplished
| simply by a change in form factor.
|
| Smartphone OSes have propogated their own curated walled-garden
| app stores, and then the desktop OS vendors follow suit. Soon
| it will simply not be possible to install unsigned, uncertified
| software on your computer, and that will be the end of GPC.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| Which is why I desperately want someone to build a board
| using a Yosys/nextpnr-supported FPGA and having loads of RAM.
| Half a gig is a typical maximum for such boards - with access
| to more generous amount of RAM building an entirely self-
| hosting RISC-V based computer becomes plausible. OK it won't
| be fast, but it will be Free. (Of course that might not help
| much if the wider internet - or particular critical services
| - starts to require remote attestation...)
| Jenda_ wrote:
| I think such solution is not needed now -- even if all the
| vendors started selling only locked-down computers tomorrow
| (realistically I think the fastest transition may take 10
| years, you not only need to implement this at
| motherboard/CPU vendors, but also within all these
| corporations that have their own servers and thus depend on
| running custom OSes), you still have loads of current
| hardware that you can use until it breaks, let's say
| another 10 years. Should the problem arise in 2035, you
| will have completely different FPGA/ASIC possibilities
| available by then, and current FPGAs are no longer
| manufactured.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| I hope it's never needed - but I'm also alarmed by how
| quickly certain transitions are happening (perhaps I'm
| just feeling especially pessimistic about the rate at
| which we're sleepwalking into a tech dystopia because a
| fortnight after the local supermarket installed a bunch
| of self-checkout terminals, HSBC announced the closure of
| over 100 UK branches, including the one I use!) We
| already have Pluton-equipped laptops with the 3rd-party
| signing key disabled by default - it's not a huge step
| further to remove it entirely. So yeah, I hope it's never
| needed, but "hope for the best, prepare for the worst",
| and all that!
| eric__cartman wrote:
| I would love to see that come true in the future but sadly
| nowadays the best way to have a fully free system is to use
| older hardware and stock up in spare parts to keep it
| running until an alternative pops up. Or one of those
| workstations with an IBM POWER CPU, but the price point is
| out of reach for most consumers.
| Animats wrote:
| > Soon it will simply not be possible to install unsigned,
| uncertified software on your computer,
|
| Microsoft Windows has had that for a while. It's called
| "Windows S".[1] Only software from the Microsoft store can be
| installed.
|
| The lowest price laptops from Walmart run Windows S.
|
| [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/windows-10-and-w...
| jahnu wrote:
| Afaik you can switch out of S mode. You just can't switch
| it back on again.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/switching-out-
| of...
| Animats wrote:
| > Afaik you can switch out of S mode.
|
| Sometimes. For now. Machines in enterprise and school
| environments often have that option locked out.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Those by definition aren't your computers.
| DesiLurker wrote:
| for now!
| jorvi wrote:
| And yet with the EU taking a first stab at (smartphone) OS
| lockdowns, it's guaranteed most of the top comments here on
| HN are just buckets of vitriol being poured on it. As
| happened with the EU forcing a universal charging standard.
| Or privacy protections.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| It such regulation comes, it will be taking away freedom to
| take away freedom from the free market. Interesting
| concept, and interesting mental gymnastics will be done.
| jorvi wrote:
| Case in point.
|
| I cannot fathom how Americans can point at the EU
| successfully forcing phone manufacturers to switch from
| 40 different types of proprietary chargers (we used to
| have different chargers for different models within a
| phone series ffs) to 1 and say "wow fuck the EU for
| taking away the freedom that obligated me to have a
| dedicated charging drawer". That is the true mental
| gymnastics.
|
| Same with privacy. What sane human thinks "yes please,
| farm, process and store into perpetuity all the intimate
| data points of my life"..
| Panzer04 wrote:
| The issue is we were already down to 3 different plugs -
| micro-usb, usb-c and lightning. Most android phones are
| already usb-c, so it's a pretty blatantly targeted
| measure.
|
| I'm mostly concerned about it locking out the development
| of new standards that aren't USB, even if that was an
| unlikely development anyway.
| BryanA wrote:
| He gave an interesting follow-up talk as well:
| https://youtu.be/O_8J9rN1wug?t=477
| college_physics wrote:
| the outcome of that war depends, imho, largely on whether digital
| computing will continue evolving at breakneck speed or whether it
| will become commoditized, generic and (dare I say it), open
| source
|
| in the former case the current pattern of abusive oligopolies
| will persist as society continues being dazed and confused about
| the new toys and suspends critical judgement
|
| but we might be erroneously projecting the rapid developments of
| past decades (and the idiosyncratic events and actors that shaped
| them) into a future that is increasingly driven by other dynamics
|
| for one thing, the pace of innovation/adoption seems definitely
| to be slowing down facing a combination of technical and
| behavioral limits. a few more years without self-driving cars and
| regular space travel tourism and we might start having a second
| look at what has been the quid-pro-quo of all the tech hoopla.
| awareness of the dangers and pitfalls of surveillance capitalism
| (which is now the de-facto economic model through which computing
| is deployed) is diffusing, slowly but surely. finally, the
| ability of a tiny crowd of severely under-resourced hackers to
| maintain fully functional alternatives, whether that is the linux
| desktop, its huge collection of applications or the fediverse,
| shows to anybody that cares to look that there _IS_ an
| alternative.
|
| Once/if the TINA spell is broken revisiting the role of computing
| in society may get us into completely different directions and
| the suffocating status-quo may forever be a thing of the past
| cratermoon wrote:
| "the sunsetting of the consumer-welfare standard", as he writes,
| can't come soon enough.
| datalopers wrote:
| Where's the AI model to watch and summarize this talk into a
| couple of pages of written content?
| [deleted]
| jrexilius wrote:
| He's absolutely right and it is a very bad place to end up,
| despite the supposed convenience for consumers. There are a
| number of problems that create a bit of rock-and-hard place.
|
| We (consumers) want to hold vendors accountable for policing
| "hate speech", kiddie porn, or terrorism, and various other
| centralized exercises of power that align with personal political
| whims. We want convenience and constant new features. We want
| things to work smoothly. We sorta care about security, as long as
| its not inconvenient. And we don't want to pay up front for any
| of it. Better still for it to be free with some ads.
|
| Governments are legitimately concerned with terrorism, nation-
| state influence campaigns, industrial espionage, and law
| enforcement. They have to solve these problems, with constrained
| resources, in a technology environment that moves far faster than
| they can. They will push the regulation tools they have, as hard
| as they can, to solve these problems, if we let them.
|
| There are almost zero short-term consumer/voter/elected-offical
| incentives for free, open, secure, interoperable systems. In fact
| consumer, political, and financial incentives are all aligned,
| currently, towards centralization of power and walled gardens.
| And the Silicon Valley model really is eating the world.
|
| This is why open source has become so incredibly important. Open
| source hardware and networks doubly so.
| dbspin wrote:
| One minor correction - no one 'wants' ads. People are reluctant
| / unable to pay for the hundreds of daily services they use,
| given the death by a thousand cuts nature of subscriptions, and
| the failure of microtransactions to ever become a reality. So
| we tolerate ads (to a point). But no one actively wants ads.
| This isn't a social contract that was agreed to. In fact,
| enormous numbers of people go out of their way to avoid them,
| online and off - using ad blockers, arriving late to the
| cinema, 'pirating' media they already have 'legal' add riddled
| access to. Completely agree with you in relation to the bad
| incentives at work, but adverts are not a desires outcome
| either.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I agree with you almost entirely with one tiny caveat. The
| only time I am receptive to advertisements is when I am
| actively and intentionally looking for a product, service, or
| solution. But I share your assessment that the vast majority
| of the time advertisements and the tracking infrastructure
| around them are unwelcome.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's a terrible time to be receptive to advertisements!
| The ads are trying to get you to pick their particular
| product over their competitors, for reasons that have
| nothing to do with quality or suitability for your needs.
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| I want ads to a certain extent. Particularly when they are
| informing me of something that I likely want but wasn't aware
| of and which I wouldn't have stumbled upon without the ad.
| drdeca wrote:
| I agree, but also ads which are repetitive and which I can
| clearly communicate why I am not a potential customer, can
| be quite annoying.
|
| It would be nice, I think, if people who are shown ads
| could add tags to the adds for the type of product/service
| the ad is for, or other aspects of the ad (e.g. "this ad is
| horny"), and indicate classes of ads which they claim they
| would not be interested in, which, hopefully, advertisers
| would prefer to show ads for their products to people who
| would be potentially receptive.
|
| For example, I do not watch horror movies, and I don't
| think this will ever change. I find video ads for horror
| movies a little stressful (not like, in a way that is an
| actual problem for me, just unpleasant), and I think it
| would be to the advertiser's benefit and my own for their
| ads to be shown to someone else instead of me.
|
| Similarly with ads for fashion, or at the very least for
| women's fashion. I can imagine the possibility that there
| could be _some_ kind of clothing item where I'd be
| interested in buying due to an ad, though probably not
| anything advertised using the word "fashion".
|
| If ads are supposed to have the benefit of introducing
| potential consumers to goods/services that they might be
| interested in buying, why don't they allow users to provide
| more information about what they aren't interested in? It
| seems like it would be beneficial to all parties.
| est31 wrote:
| > if people who are shown ads could add tags to the adds
| for the type of product/service the ad is for, or other
| aspects of the ad (e.g. "this ad is horny"), and indicate
| classes of ads which they claim they would not be
| interested in, which, hopefully, advertisers would prefer
| to show ads for their products to people who would be
| potentially receptive.
|
| This exists already (at least to some extent):
| https://support.google.com/My-Ad-Center-
| Help/answer/12155451...
| emptybits wrote:
| > One minor correction - no one 'wants' ads.
|
| Yes, in 2022. I have ad fatigue. PTSD, even, from the
| onslaught and effort to avoid them.
|
| But I recall a time when I _enjoyed_ ads and actually looked
| forward to them and paid good money for magazines, and to a
| lesser degree TV, full of ads that somehow seemed informative
| and civilized and entertaining. Byte Magazine, The Computer
| Shopper (all ads! yet I paid for it!), Car & Driver, Popular
| Mechanics, Bicycling, you name it. I don't think this is
| nostalgia; I was informed and entertained. Never again, I
| suppose...
| narrator wrote:
| When ads are hyper-targeted to niche products offered by
| small businesses that I am a fan of, they are actually not
| bad. I like the ads on Facebook, but not as much on other
| platforms like TV since TV ads are just random pray and spray
| ads, usually by megacorps for things I'd never buy.
|
| Look at Dollar Shave Club. A tiny little company that was
| able to get to an insane valuation chipping away at the
| consumer mega corps because of targeted advertising and some
| good ads. I've heard that small consumer packaged goods
| vendors are having a tough time now that Facebook got their
| tracking shut down. The only people who can effectively
| market mass market stuff like that now are the megacorps like
| Unilever and Proctor and Gamble who can do multi-million
| dollar poorly targeted campaigns.
| svnpenn wrote:
| did you watch the video? Its about DRM, not really anything
| your comment is covering.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| > We (consumers) want to hold vendors accountable for policing
| "hate speech", kiddie porn, or terrorism
|
| There's still a large minority of us that sincerely don't.
| Spivak wrote:
| I the the way forward on this is to pass a national hate
| speech law and have it work kinda like the DMCA where
| platforms and people can submit complaints, and the people
| taken down can dispute in a public government process that
| has some accountability to the citizenry.
|
| Build up some case law about what is and isn't so it's
| applied uniformly and take stronger measures against repeat
| offenders.
| dhdh2747493 wrote:
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Expanding the DMCA model to speech in general! Ten years
| ago I would have been very surprised to see this take on
| HN.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think the calculus has changed a bit since then because
| we either have unaccountable megacorporations doing it or
| government.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "I think the calculus has changed a bit since then
| because we either have unaccountable megacorporations
| doing it or government. So let's give them even MORE
| power."
|
| On other, less-enlightened forums, this would earn you a
| .jpg of a dog cocking its head to the side quizzically.
| Spivak wrote:
| I was thinking the opposite, if they're gonna ban you for
| hate speech there has to be a formal complaint, with a
| reason and citing exactly the content, there is a formal
| dispute process and the final decision is made by someone
| not part of the corporation.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Why would you think government would be any less
| accountable? If anything, government has everything to
| gain from this.
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| Governments all over (including our own) have already
| gotten caught removing things that are directly relevant
| to transparency for modern systems. Crazy to think they
| can be relied upon to exercise these types of powers
| wisely.
| Spivak wrote:
| If your argument is that nobody can be trusted then
| that's fine, but I'm throwing my hat in with government
| over Facebook or Twitter if I have to choose. Because
| "everyone just drop it" doesn't seem like it's gonna
| happen.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| "Less unaccountable" is what I meant to write, but my
| point still stands.
| ok123456 wrote:
| No thanks.
| FpUser wrote:
| Count me in
| jakeogh wrote:
| That's ludicrous grouping the first (free speech) with the
| other two violent things. Quite a bit of effort goes into
| blurring these lines. It's not good.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY
|
| Note that assault (which could be words, threats to life for
| example) is already against the law, it's psychological
| warfare to make up a new term "speech I don't like" and
| parade it around (write long wiki articles, mfg consent etc)
| like it has meaning. It's a term in the same class as
| "conspiracy theory" and designed by the same class of social
| engineering experts.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I wonder how large that minority is, versus how loud it is.
| I've been to forums that had no moderation. Normal people do
| not talk that way and do not want to be around people that
| talk that way. Kiddie porn? FFS, get out of here, we do not
| want to see that.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes, but that minority is increasingly irrelevant.
|
| The people are now online and the people want this.
| jrexilius wrote:
| I wish the minority were larger, or large enough to have some
| market impact. Although it is perhaps growing in recent years
| to due fairly blatant abuses of power to push agendas.
| javajosh wrote:
| There is hope to grow that market impact! Imagine a service
| where the user could explicitly modify the algorithm to
| encourage different emotions in themselves, including hate
| if they want it.
|
| Such a service would make plain a simple truth we don't
| want to acknowledge: screens hold powerful sway over
| people, and algorithms hold sway over screens. That power
| (mood manipulation) can be used for good or evil. Maybe if
| people are given control over their own tools in this way,
| they can better appreciate the control that is exerted on
| them by others, and so better resist it.
| criddell wrote:
| If the site is ad supported, then the majority they care
| about are the majority of ad buyers and ad buyers
| definitely want moderation.
| hfbff wrote:
| Agreed. I don't want either (in general, there might be
| exception s). I obviously want to hold people (the people
| that actually have the kiddie porn, that are actually posting
| the hate speech) accountably for kiddie porn, inciting
| terrorism and even hate speech, but I don't generally want
| vendors to be accountable.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Why is this all-or-nothing for you? Surely, if someone
| posts CSAM on YouTube, or even Google Photos, they should
| remain accountable unto themselves to remove content that
| is both illegal and morally reprehensible? Or should
| someone's Google Photos be allowed to hold any amount of
| CSAM to the point where it's a de-facto private hard drive?
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Someone has to hold those people accountable though. Either
| platforms, or a centralized government entity.
|
| That's without getting into the issue of allowing that type
| of stuff to continue to exist on platforms if the ideal
| scenario is for Meta/Twitter/etc. To just not police their
| platforms at all.
| blue039 wrote:
| > Someone has to hold those people accountable though.
| Either platforms, or a centralized government entity.
|
| Or we could just say people on the internet are assholes
| and you need thicker skin. Would you be okay with
| government ID required to sign up to any website? If so,
| I can see why you have a vengeance complex.
| jfengel wrote:
| Why should they be held responsible for inciting terrorism?
| They're not injuring anybody.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| One could argue that they are indeed injuring people, by
| stochastic terrorism [1].
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_attack#Stoch
| astic_te...
| brazzy wrote:
| Because it still ends up with people killed.
|
| Free speech absolutism is poison for actual freedom.
| jfengel wrote:
| I agree. I think it needs a lot more thought than the OP
| was giving it, though of course that kind of sarcasm
| reads poorly on the Internet.
| throwup wrote:
| Throughout history vendors have generally not been
| responsible for the actions of their users. Nobody blames
| Sharpie if someone uses their markers to make a giant
| poster with hate speech. Nobody blames the USPS if someone
| mails a letter with a death threat. Nobody blames Verizon
| if somebody makes a phone call to bully their kid. Yet
| people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet with hate
| speech. This is a dangerous direction for the world to be
| moving in.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| It's not about who makes the tools, it's about what users
| want to see. Users don't want to see giant posters of
| hate speech on Twitter. If they do, they'll _stop using
| Twitter_. It just so happens that Twitter is the only
| tool that can make things users see on Twitter.
|
| People still don't blame Sharpie or USPS or Verizon.
| People have tried to blame WhatsApp, it doesn't stick
| because WhatsApp is private. The culture hasn't magically
| changed. Companies like Twitter know that when
| advertisers and users complain about hate speech, they're
| not just asking for Twitter to be held "responsible" or
| whatever that means, they're telling Twitter that they
| will _leave_.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Users don't see that stuff unless they want to.
| Advertisers don't care unless their ads appear next to
| it. And these platforms have pretty much solved this.
| E.g. Google search results contain the full cesspit of
| the internet, yet everyone advertises with Google.
|
| The issue came when the news media decided that it was
| newsworthy that undesirables we're saying undesirable
| things on social media and blamed the platform as a
| whole. Now it's a pr issue for advertisers to be on the
| platform at all whether or not they are adjacent to
| undesirable content.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think the people who get harassed on Twitter, and have
| to spend a significant amount of their Twitter-using time
| dealing with that, would disagree with you.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Seems like this is solved by the block button.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| If I have to block a lot of people I might as well block
| Twitter.
| teux wrote:
| > Yet people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet
| with hate speech. This is a dangerous direction for the
| world to be moving in.
|
| Not to diminish the issue, but this is mostly an American
| problem as far as I see it. I realise these are also
| American companies, but conflating the entire world to be
| in danger is a bit disingenuous imo.
|
| MANY European countries (speaking from a Scandinavian
| perspective) don't suffer from this, and while there's a
| danger of American policies trickling down, that has been
| severely diminished in the past decade as there's a
| movement of all of us (that I've seen) sort of re-
| evaluating our admiration of the US that was built in the
| 90's - 00's.
|
| From the outside this isn't a direction the world seems
| to be moving in. Just more crazy US spiralling.
| nyolfen wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/twitter-
| claims-n...
| brantonb wrote:
| A counterpoint is that if the companies running these
| platforms are run by American companies, then their
| efforts to combat hate speech will be disproportionately
| focused on English language and American hate speech.
| This can allow it to flourish elsewhere.
| mrj wrote:
| Eh I mean, there's been a rise of extremism all across
| Europe. It's not quite accurate to say it's an
| exclusively American thing. Hate speech is rising and
| there's a case to be made that it's because extremists
| find each other on the internet (Doctorow calls it a
| "jihadi recruitment tool" in the article).
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/best-
| countries/articles/2021-02-...
| blue039 wrote:
| ...what if the rise in so-called "extremism" is a direct
| result of government policy leading to poorer outcomes
| for the average person. If you study history people tend
| to become tribal not long after life gets hard. If I was
| a government think tank I'd surely blame the internet
| long before I blamed my rent seeking laws that
| inordinately effect the average worker.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Unemployment is at all time lows. What exactly is getting
| harder for people?
|
| I agree that people have more and more sources triggering
| their fears and prejudices for a buck, which is making
| them angrier and angrier.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Fuel prices are at an all-time high, and fuel companies
| are posting record profits. Rent is at an all-time high.
| Mortgages are getting insane because we have double-digit
| inflation and insanely high interest rates. Saving are
| worthless because of double-digit inflation and insanely
| high interest rates not actually being passed on except
| where it benefits banks. Food prices are at an all-time
| high and farms are going to the wall because they're
| being paid scrap prices for everything they sell.
|
| Unemployment is at an all-time low? That's great, but
| people are working their backsides off and cannot afford
| to eat or heat their homes.
|
| In the UK we have had twelve years of the right-wing
| extremist Conservative government and their "economic
| austerity" to "right the ship". What this has meant in
| practical terms is that wages have not risen in twelve
| years, taxes have gone up and up and up, and public
| spending has gone down and down and down. We had the
| woefully inept Kwasi Kwarteng who blew PS60 billion off
| the UK's economy by raising taxes on the poorest and
| cutting them for the richest, collapsing most people's
| private pension pots. We went from roughly 40,000 people
| in the UK using food banks in 2010 when the Tories took
| power to 2.5 million people using food banks in 2022 -
| and these are not just "poor people" who the tabloid
| trash papers sneer at "well somehow they can afford
| mobile phones and TVs, why can't they afford food" - no,
| there are people on PS30-PS40k per year, who simply
| cannot afford to feed their families because they have to
| choose whether they keep the lights on, buy food, or pay
| their mortgage.
|
| The political right have over the past 20 years done
| incalculable damage to the world.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > What exactly is getting harder for people?
|
| Having a job that doesn't pay enough to afford to pay
| rent & utilities, buy food, pay off college loans. I
| could go on. Just saying unemployment is low doesn't
| capture the nature of the working poor. Barbara
| Ehrenreich's book _Nickel and Dimed_ covers this well.
| People who work in software and make six figures tend not
| to be squeezed to afford the basics, except perhaps if
| they have to live in one of the highest COL cities in the
| US, but there are millions in the developed world that
| hold 2-3 jobs and still barely afford living.
| logifail wrote:
| > there's been a rise of extremism all across Europe
|
| There's certainly a rise in talking about stuff being
| "extremist", but how much of this is genuine?
|
| The incentives (more outrage, more views, more clicks,
| more ads) don't exactly encourage honest reporting or
| even discussion on this.
| teux wrote:
| Definitely. Might have been unclear but I was trying to
| speak specifically about the "blame the platform not the
| people" mentality I was responding to.
|
| Fully in agreement extremism is on the rise and the
| internet aids this.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| IIRC wasn't social media used to destabilize several
| countries in Southeast Asia and Africa?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/25/business/ethiopia-
| violence-fa...
|
| That was Facebook, not Twitter, but this is not just a
| problem for America.
| Retric wrote:
| Regulating Twitter is little different than regulating
| say billboards:
| https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0553.htm
|
| Public airwaves (TV, radio) have have fines for breaking
| various rules even when it's a member of the public
| speaking live. Thus the classic tape delay and bleeps on
| all life content.
|
| Further back Newspapers, advertising, and letters to the
| editor etc where limited for so long that it was a
| constitutional issue in 1776.
|
| So having platforms is hardly a new thing. We have been
| debating such freedoms for so long it's part of various
| countries cultural identity.
| [deleted]
| pasquinelli wrote:
| twitter is a broadcaster, and it isn't new that
| broadcasters are responsible for what they broadcast.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A lot of these analogies are...bad. Does Sharpie know
| everything you write with one of their pens and store
| detailed metrics on the popularity of all your previous
| scribbles? Is Verizon operating a 1-1 calling service, or
| a global audio broadcasting platform? People absolutely
| do blame telcos for their failure to filter spam calls
| effectively.
| ip26 wrote:
| People blame magazines if they print adverts with hate
| speech. This isn't new to twitter.
| kelnos wrote:
| Magazines have full editorial control, though. Think of
| it like a fully-moderated platform. Nothing gets through
| without positive approval of the magazine editors. With a
| platform like Twitter, it's default-allow, and people
| have to see (and block/report) much of the bad content to
| get rid of it.
| ip26 wrote:
| Yeah, but as soon as there is a take down mechanism,
| anything on the site is implicitly endorsed, even if only
| weakly.
|
| _"You'll take down CSAM but not spam /incitement to
| violence/revenge porn!?"_
|
| Further, user reporting as your only form of detection
| doesn't scale well or protect your reputation.
| blue039 wrote:
| This is the reason there is a fight right now.
|
| You are correct if we treat social media companies as
| content curators. If we treat them as speech platforms
| you are wrong.
|
| Regardless of your belief a "speech platform" (email,
| etc) can and honestly should allow these things in the
| spirit of actual free speech. If it is a content curator,
| then yes, one can infer that by curating so-called hate
| speech they are indirectly promoting it.
|
| This difference is lost on people. Personally, with the
| amount of censorship and ads I am fine treating social
| media companies as curators and treating them
| appropriately. There are billions currently flowing into
| congress to stop this. Primarily from those social media
| companies that want to censor but still be called a
| "speech platform".
|
| People often conflate their feelings with law. There is
| no law stopping you from going into a park with a
| megaphone and spewing what some people may consider hate
| speech. Consider even how vague the term "hate speech"
| even is. If I "believe" in two biological genders this,
| according to some, is the same as denying the holocaust.
| To some, criticizing the effect asylum seekers from
| certain countries has had on my country is consider not
| only racism but "hate speech". We have to be extremely
| careful what we consider "hate speech". Because the
| current definition of "hate speech", "disinformation",
| "misinformation", etc all center around one idea: "things
| I don't like should be banned, and things I do like
| should be promoted". This is party-neutral. Both sides of
| the coin want the other side to be considered hate speech
| mongers.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Yet people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet with
| hate speech. This is a dangerous direction for the world
| to be moving in.
|
| I don't think Twitter gives a shit on what people think,
| but if advertisers complain then Twitter/YouTube will
| make sure to be very careful with what is allowed. I am
| not convinced by the arguments this advertisers have
| about not appearing on some "legal but bad" content" but
| is their money so they have the right to ask on what kind
| of content the stuff should appear.
| adra wrote:
| Just plain wrong. Twitter is a broadcast distribution
| platform, like newspapers, radio, and tv before them. You
| sure as hell blame the companies who broadcast content on
| their pulpits.
|
| You're welcome to hold that opinion for closed 1-1
| messaging platforms that don't have amplification
| features, but it's just plain wrong to assume that any
| platform that can amplify ones voice into the unwilling
| or ignorant and somehow be immune to this level of
| scrutiny. It's a farce and will certainly never end well
| for those that try.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| It's interesting that we usually look at the
| amplification problem with a very different eye than the
| "censorship" problem. They are really two sides of the
| same coin. Maybe we'd need less moderation if the
| platform wouldn't boost controversy? Not thought through
| at all. Just a thought I had while reading the
| discussion.
|
| Edit: I also think no discussion of censorship/moderation
| is meaningful without addressing the cannon of falsehood
| and stochastic terrorism. Those are massive, very real
| problems that must be addressed.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Yet people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet
| with hate speech._
|
| Probably because Twitter has already demonstrated an
| ability and desire to curate what people see in their
| feeds (all in the name of increasing engagement and
| pleasing their advertisers). So, naturally, people see
| this, and tell Twitter that if they're going to interfere
| to the degree they already are, then they must also help
| ensure the safety of their users, and deal with bad
| actors directly. In a way, this is Twitter's own fault.
|
| No one expects that Sharpie even has the _ability_ to
| police the use of their markers, let alone the desire or
| resources to do so. Most people don 't want the USPS
| reading their mail (and it's a federal crime to do so!).
| I think the Verizon example is where we're starting to
| get in a grey area, with telcos getting pushed to
| implement tools and protocols so people can verify calls
| are legitimate. That's more about the spam/scam problems
| with the phone system, not about stopping bullies, but
| it's a bit closer to that. A further issue is that most
| people hate phone calls, but love posting stuff online,
| so naturally they're going to focus on the thing they
| actually willingly spend their time doing.
|
| I think a further issue is that most people can't really
| opt out of USPS or the phone system, realistically. But
| if Twitter passes some threshold of toxicity for them,
| they'll just stop using it. Twitter (the company) doesn't
| want that, obviously, so it's in their interest police
| their platform.
| kashunstva wrote:
| One of the key differences, though, is that there is no
| biased amplification algorithm sitting on top of the
| Sharpie-generated hate speech posters. If vendors don't
| want to be in the business of policing content then they
| should stop differentially amplifying content. You can't
| manipulate the visibility of content and then claim no
| responsibility over what end-users see.
| spullara wrote:
| Depending on the location of the poster the host of that
| poster would be amplifying the hate speech. For instance,
| let's say it was on a billboard on a busy highway. Are
| they now responsible for it if they don't take it down
| quickly?
| cratermoon wrote:
| What if every time you used a sharpie and poster board to
| write hate speech, it was automatically uploaded to the
| internet and shared with anyone who followed the Sanford
| company?
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Yes, this is key.
|
| Also if you run a platform that ends up being used to say
| live-stream mass murders, it seems pretty reasonable that
| you would want to ban that. Ultimately companies are run
| by people. No one wants to work for a company that
| becomes a platform for that kind of horror.
| jb3689 wrote:
| People blame airports for letting people board with
| bombs, we blame pharmaceutical companies when someone
| switches the bottles with poison, we blame gun
| manufacturers for public shootings
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| The precedent was set when gun manufacturers started
| getting sued for the actions of their customers. It was
| all well and good _then_. Few bothered to express any
| concerns about where that kind of thinking would
| inevitably lead. Anyone who did was accused of being
| antisocial or worse.
| kelnos wrote:
| I personally don't think gun manufacturers should be held
| responsible for gun deaths, unless they are specifically
| marketing their guns to people who will use them to
| commit crimes. (And for the record, I am also super pro-
| gun-control, and would not be sad in the least if the
| second amendment were repealed, and states were allowed
| to make whatever gun regulation they wanted.)
|
| But I think the real reason gun manufacturers are getting
| targeted is because the people who have been victims of
| gun violence see no other recourse. Gun control in the US
| is mostly laughable, and it's politically difficult (if
| not impossible) to fix these sorts of problems. So the
| next natural step is to probe the system to see if there
| are any creative ways to change things. Targeting gun
| manufacturers with lawsuits is one of those
| possibilities.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| so is your point that suing gun manufacturers was a
| slippery slope to people being mad at twitter, because if
| so that's the lamest slippery slope i've ever heard of.
| blue039 wrote:
| > Anyone who did was accused of being antisocial or
| worse.
|
| To be clear they were not accused to of being anti-
| social. People who don't want gun manufacturers sued for
| what is done with their guns were called child killers,
| "sandy hook hoaxers", etc. The Bloomberg (yes, it was
| Bloomberg) money machine paired with the noise machine
| that is Mom's Demand Action has absolutely dominated the
| narrative around this.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, a not-so-vocal minority. People outside our echo chamber
| don't even know we care about this stuff.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's not the source that's the problem; we're drowning in open
| source.
|
| It's that power has shifted to centralized clouds and nobody
| has stepped up to make self-hosting as turnkey as open source
| is.
|
| We need an open source movement and ethos for DIY cloud
| hosting, if not shared resource fabrics.
| none8 wrote:
| eternalban wrote:
| This is fundamentally a political issue and any organized
| effort to counter the establishment's chosen path can and
| likely will meet with a political/legal response. The issue is
| central enough.
|
| I was musing to a friend the other day (in context of AI
| actually, not general access to computing) that Marx apparently
| missed a fork in the road in his linear idea of 'historic
| necessity' regarding the deterministic nature of social system
| transitions. Since technology, now cognitive technology, is
| such a huge amplifier of wealth, it now seems the Capitalist
| class can chart a way in the future that decouples from labor
| and assumes control over advanced technology. This path of the
| fork in the road will not end in a workers paradise ..
| tetris11 wrote:
| Here's a fun website that follows that train of thought to
| its natural conclusion:
|
| https://exterminism.com/
| eternalban wrote:
| What seems naturally conclusive can be held to be
| reflective of one's own predispositions unless it is
| accompanied by a compelling train of thought.
|
| So all we need now are the missing tracks of this train
| (and all the charming must-see stops along the way).
| serverholic wrote:
| The end goal should be open-source everything. Imagine a world
| where, for example, the schematics for farming tools are open-
| source and anyone can improve them and download them.
| Everything becomes a global collaborative effort.
| bitwize wrote:
| > We (consumers) want to hold vendors accountable for policing
| "hate speech", kiddie porn, or terrorism, and various other
| centralized exercises of power that align with personal
| political whims.
|
| Autres temps, autres moeurs. We live in a culture today where
| if you are not active in the fight against X, then you condone
| X, ipso facto. Back in the day, companies could legitimately
| claim that they were in the business of delivering a product,
| and others had the responsibility of policing against social
| ills. In today's era of corporate responsibility and ESG, that
| is no longer the case. Open source will be affected too, as
| open source cannot be sustained in a vacuum; it needs
| institutions, foundations, and corporate backers, all of which
| will be pressured to comply with "ethical source" guidelines.
| Xelynega wrote:
| I think you're putting the cart before the horse with the
| consumer-vendor relationship.
|
| Consumers don't want vendors to police content, vendors want to
| be a hub of content and policing content is the only way they
| can appease the diverse group of people they want to continue
| to grow. Consumers are perfectly happy to self-police content,
| the problem is that the models that allow for that make it a
| lot harder to discover content.
|
| With your comment of incentives I think youre placing the blame
| wrong again. The reason there's no incentives to create free,
| open, secure, interoperable systems is becausese capitalism
| places importance on prior ownership. There's a lot more money
| in being the standard that everyone has to pay a royalty to in
| the future than there is in giving out the standard for free
| and just being a user of it(see: meta and the metaverse).
| user3939382 wrote:
| GCP is like (at least in the US) our right to free speech or
| privacy. It's amazing but people either don't want it, don't
| care, or in any case aren't willing to fight for it, while on the
| other side, world-dominating govts/megacorps benefit from it
| disappearing - so it will.
|
| Ultimately I've accepted that if the People aren't willing to
| fight for these things, they don't deserve them.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Generations of kids being raised under surveillance from
| incubator thru high school don't have fashionable thoughts on
| privacy - who could have known?
|
| What percentage of HN parents have tracking on their kids
| phone?
|
| All of them.
| raegis wrote:
| > What percentage of HN parents have tracking on their kids
| phone? > > All of them.
|
| All phones have "tracking" in that they're on a cellular
| network, so they can be tracked by a cell phone company. My
| son's phone was stolen at his school recently, but we had no
| way to recover it. What tracking software do people use on
| their kids phone? Perhaps I can use it to recover the phone
| if the next one gets stolen. Apparently since I'm the only
| parent here who doesn't have tracking for his kids, I want to
| make your claim true.
| nerdponx wrote:
| People don't understand what they are losing, and it's easy to
| look the other way when everything seems fine from your current
| perspective.
| amalcon wrote:
| The idea that free speech is disappearing in the US is patently
| absurd. Check out the Sedition Act of 1918 if you'd like to be
| informed on the progress we've made. The speech clause of the
| first amendment is stronger than it was for about 75% of the
| existence of our country. There's been a somewhat weird trend
| lately of the free speech of corporations being prioritized
| over that of individuals, but people care deeply about that on
| both the left (opposition to the Citizens United ruling) and
| the right (opposition to content-aware acceptable use
| policies). Take a slightly longer view and it seems
| insignificant, next to literal prosecutions for handing out
| pamphlets opposing the draft.
|
| Same with general purpose computing: it's more accessible than
| at any time in history. Most people who use only a computing-
| based appliance like a smartphone today, simply _would not have
| had a computer_ twenty years ago. Meanwhile I can buy a new
| Raspberry Pi 4 (definitely a general purpose computer) for less
| than 25 hours ' minimum wage -- try doing that in 2002. The
| problem is not availability, or that someone is trying to quash
| it. The problem is that most people just are not interested.
| Those who are interested have at least as much access as they
| ever have.
| smitty1e wrote:
| > The idea that free speech is disappearing in the US is
| patently absurd.
|
| Lorie Smith's case[1] seems to argue otherwise. If the law
| can be used to compel speech, then the slippery slope to
| tryanny is well-greased.
|
| [1] https://restorationnewsmedia.com/articles/local-
| news/both-si...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| From 2015, I believe. This could be a good point to assess Cory
| Doctorow's assertions.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| I think we're continuing to march down that road in various
| ways, if you look at smartphones, iPads, even arguably MacBooks
| now, (I know enthusiasts have hacked their own Linux onto M1
| but still ... Not open)
|
| Hardware is still totally not open, period. Try buying a PC
| with an open source BIOS or CPU, you can't!
| Retr0id wrote:
| Linux on M1 wasn't a hack, apple allowed it to happen. There
| is certainly a lack of hardware docs (which is unfortunate),
| but apple did nothing to prevent users from being able to
| execute their own kernels, which I'm happy to see.
| runjake wrote:
| In fact, Apple helped it along, somewhat.
|
| https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1554395176025849856
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Get back to me when they upstream their drivers.
| est31 wrote:
| > Try buying a PC with an open source BIOS or CPU, you can't!
|
| https://support.system76.com/articles/open-firmware-systems/
|
| The "open firmware" marketing term is a bit of a misnomer
| here as there is probably plenty of closed source firmware in
| those devices in various components, but at least the BIOS is
| open source.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| 2011 even, I found this talk from him on YouTube from then:
| https://youtu.be/HUEvRyemKSg
| mjh2539 wrote:
| Unless someone waves their magic wand and makes it to where
| manufacturing microprocessors requires nothing but sand and
| electricity, things will go whichever way those with capital want
| them to go.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| (2015)
| dang wrote:
| I wish I'd seen this before spending 5 minutes tracking that
| down. Added above now. Thanks!
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