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I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

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Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#101

Post by gnicholas »

jimmies wrote: post #7

>In 2016, when I got a new phone, the default setting changed and I would just wake up to my device stating, "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it". I turned off auto-updates on my phone. So this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber home after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I opened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then it…

I remember being quite upset when Uber told me I had to update the app in order to use it. In recent years (at least on iOS), they now warn you that your version won't work in the near future. I suppose that if you don't use the app for a very long time, you might miss this warning window, but with my infrequent Ubering that hasn't happened yet.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#102

Post by neves »

Now I fell that I can't buy a piece of hardware or install a software that doesn't install an server and an update service. My powerful desktop machine has dozens of services, from Adobe, Google, Microsoft, Razer, Logitech, etc.

I must turn them all off by hand.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#103

Post by oblib »

Yeah, I feel that too.

After pressing the "later" button every time I picked up my iPhone for a few weeks Apple quit asking and updated the "iOS" this past month.

It has "new features" they keep telling me I need and I've been pressing buttons to ignore their "Learn how to use the new..." prompts since then.

With the exception of security updates I'd like very much if Apple left my phone alone but it's not really "my phone". I just have a license to use it and it says they can make changes to it.

The way that's been working for me does not entice me to buy new phones from Apple.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#104

Post by CodeMage »

therealmarv wrote: post #26

Auto Updates without user interaction is the biggest security benefit I can think of for a normal user. Yes you read that right. It's f*cking great that my parents can use an always up to date browser and OS and I don't need to worry if they have updated all their stuff. Update mechanisms like for Java and other stuff which pop-up and require user interaction are a thing most people will not get right. Actually I rea…

The whole car metaphor is a bit unfortunate. Most people who want to drive securely from A to B would be pretty freaked out by a bunch of strangers quietly upgrading their car's brakes in the middle of the night. And they would definitely be pissed off if their car suddenly refused to accelerate beyond 25 mph on a clear, straight, empty stretch of dry road in broad daylight just because the speed limit happens to be 25 mph there.

It's a matter of perception and ignorance. We've been trained, for lack of a better word, to perceive the execution of software on the hardware we own as something completely orthogonal to our ownership of that hardware.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#105

Post by therealmarv »

jimmies wrote: post #7

>In 2016, when I got a new phone, the default setting changed and I would just wake up to my device stating, "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it". I turned off auto-updates on my phone. So this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber home after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I opened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then it…

I have a very cheap phone which does not have a lot of space left for apps. So it became a habit for me to deinstall and install less frequently used apps only when I need them (e.g. I go on a trip). Actually it makes me feel better that apps like UBER are not installed when living mostly in a country where I cannot use them at all. Fun fact: You can use the same approach also on high end phones. Install less used apps only when you know you will need them. This way you also do not need to auto update less frequently used apps.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#106

Post by gnode »

jimmies wrote: post #96
raverbashing wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: find a nearby cafe (the mermaid one should do just fine). Step 2: ask someone for a charger and meanwhile use the wifi to update the app, also buy something from the cafe Step 3: enjoy the thing you bought for a bit while your phone charges and you now have a place to wait your Uber without freezing in the rain

You can say the same thing with people being pissed off about forced Windows updates that got in their way: They could go make a coffee. I might have made it more dramatic than it really was, but forced updates do make people upset. At least I don't have that problem with my Linux computer and I love it. It works exactly when I expect it to, and it updates exactly when I expect it to.

The problem isn't really manual control over updates here, so much as control over software. Many Linux systems are set to upgrade automatically, which is great for keeping secure from known vulnerabilities. Apps which aren't updated can still change in behaviour, such as Uber's update timebomb, contain hidden nasties, and the backends they use can change any time. Yet in the open source ecosystem someone can just fork your project if you take away features, or try to act against your users, as sometimes does happen.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#107

Post by bittercynic »

acomjean wrote: post #61
jim_dow_jones wrote: post #31

Richard Stallman was right. We didn't listen!

I heard Stallman talk at graduate school in the early part of this century. I though he was a bit extreme at the time, but over time I've come to appreciate his position. Having software be open and modifiable is really quite an amazing thing. those open building blocks lets us do amazing things with software quite easily. Its time for an open source desktop os and software to go mainstream. We realize that apple is…

For those who care about having OSS powered desktop/laptop, I think the situation isn't as bad as it's sometimes made out to be. Both Debian and Arch have worked very well for me, and been my primary OS for years.

It is frustrating that we still can't really get full control of the hardware, but at least from the kernel on up we can have pretty complete control of software.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#108

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

Thriptic wrote: post #98
michaelt wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto Updates without user interaction is the biggest security benefit I can think of for a normal user. Auto updates are a great security benefit, yes. So it's a shame so many companies shit all over auto updates by rolling out poorly tested changes that introduce new problems, and similar behaviour that motivates users to disable auto updates.

Agreed. You should be able to get automated security updates and optional feature updates.

Which would mean exponentially growing testing requirements on the part of the company delivering the updates.

"Should" in an ideal world doesn't equal "should" in a world with deadlines and limited resources. It's enough work to ensure that all the features work with ONE version of an app. If you had to also test every version of the app without this or that feature update installed, you just continually multiply the testing requirements by the number of optional features.

And don't say unit testing solves this problem. The problem is in INTEGRATION testing with the whole app, which 99% of the time can only adequately be done by making the build and having a human use it. Even automated integration tools won't find things like formatting errors and buttons too small for humans to click.

I'd like to continue to maintain ONE app, please, and not `n!` app permutations.

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#109

Post by therealmarv »

CodeMage wrote: post #104
therealmarv wrote: post #26

Auto Updates without user interaction is the biggest security benefit I can think of for a normal user. Yes you read that right. It's f*cking great that my parents can use an always up to date browser and OS and I don't need to worry if they have updated all their stuff. Update mechanisms like for Java and other stuff which pop-up and require user interaction are a thing most people will not get right. Actually I rea…

The whole car metaphor is a bit unfortunate. Most people who want to drive securely from A to B would be pretty freaked out by a bunch of strangers quietly upgrading their car's brakes in the middle of the night. And they would definitely be pissed off if their car suddenly refused to accelerate beyond 25 mph on a clear, straight, empty stretch of dry road in broad daylight just because the speed limit happens to be…

This argument can be also made positive. Imagine a new update (to be on your example, the new brakes) made the car safer and the saved your life because an accident could be avoided entirely. Otherwise you would be dead. It's not only negative...

Btw. when thinking of Tesla cars.. they auto update their software remotely ;)

Re: I've never felt less in control of my own hardware

#110

Post by bhnmmhmd »

jimmies wrote: post #7

>In 2016, when I got a new phone, the default setting changed and I would just wake up to my device stating, "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it". I turned off auto-updates on my phone. So this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber home after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I opened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then it…

Similarly, WhatsApp does the same thing.

As an end-user, I'd like things the way they are. If I'm used to the app and it works, why should I be forced to update the damn thing so that it keeps working?

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