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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

#111

Post by stordoff »

Hasknewbie wrote: post #25

> "Thankfully, running a System Restore worked and the next update didn't have these problems, but since then I stopped allowing automatic updates" It is now possible to disable automatic updates in Windows 10? (Asking because forced updates is what made me switch to Linux in the first place.)

In Windows 10 Pro, you can with Group Policy. My machines are set to "Notify to install" - it's not ideal, as Windows Defender updates use the same path so it's triggered at least once a day, but a small system tray notification of "You need some updates" is an improvement over the more forceful notifications and unexpected reboots.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #108
Thriptic wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by throwaway2048 »

bhnmmhmd wrote: post #11

We were afraid that AI will take over and take away our freedom, but I think some companies have done a great job at ruining their products, and our lives as well.

corporations actually have most of the attributes people fear from AI (lack of concern about human values, optimizing for the values they care about at any cost, paperclip maximizer style, a vast amount of paralell and subversive power), its just that they are slow and inefficent.

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

#114

Post by marssaxman »

therealmarv wrote: post #109
CodeMage wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

> when thinking of Tesla cars.. they auto update their software remotely

That is one reason I will never buy one.

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

#115

Post by eksemplar »

cptskippy wrote: post #97
eksemplar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've uninstalled around 10 free to play games and apps that Windows 10 installed without asking in the past 6 months, so I'm not sure those slashdot people should be using windows as a good example of having control either despite that 30 years of backward compatibility. :)

Technically they're not installed, those are just shortcuts to install them. The issue isn't really one of backward compatibility but software design and function. As far as I know, Android maintains API compatibility all the way back to API v1. A simple app, like the calculator, written in API v1 should run on the latest Oreo device. An app requires a remote service to function must maintain compatibility with that…

That may be true, but I don't really want my operation system to auto install 138mb shortcuts for something I'd never want.

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

#116

Post by izacus »

ryandrake wrote: post #42
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…

You didn't mention the phone OS, but ... It's been a while since I was a 3rd party iOS developer, but I thought at one time having a "time bomb" or anything else that causes the app to basically do nothing is in violation of Apple's AppStore rules and would cause the app to get removed from the store.

That just happened on Skype installed on my iPad 2. So it's certanly not against AppStore rules.

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

#117

Post by schoen »

dustingetz wrote: post #99
radarsat1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. But.. > "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it". is an interesting choice of example. The anger at updates only really makes sense for apps that are entirely local to your hardware. As soon as you have an app where part of it runs on a server that you don't control, that logic goes out the window. They can stop your non-updated app from working with no effort, just by making the server API incompati…

It didn't have to end up that way. The data is behind a cloud API because data is a source of power and the API is a control point. Whatever data the uber app needs could have been on his phone or in a cdn close to his phone or in a cloud computer operating on the user's behalf instead of for Uber. The balance of power has shifted asymmetrically towards centralized entities, but it does not mean that is the only poss…

Yes, and as in your web example, the economic dynamics can sometimes point the other way, providing a strong incentive to maintain compatibility with an installed base that's not really under the service operator's control.

People providing services can argue a lot about the limitations for them of this situation and the advantages of having more control:

https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

http://paulgraham.com/road.html

(Analemma_'s comment elsewhere in this thread also expresses this.)

But it also comes at a cost to users' power and autonomy:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...

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

#118

Post by sli »

bhnmmhmd wrote: post #110
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?

Well ostensibly you'd want things like security fixes, in the very least.

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

#119

Post by yousir »

Analemma_ wrote: post #80
ryandrake wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anger is still valid because at the end of the day, the software (that used to work) no longer works due to a choice made by the company that makes the software. To the end user there is no difference between "making a breaking API change on the server" and "pushing a native update that disables the app". This may be the current sucky reality of SaaS, but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.

> but it could be fixed if the market demanded it. Meaning, effectively, that it will not be fixed. I understand the frustration. I work on a mobile application that, like Uber, relies on a lot of server-side communication and deliberately stops working if the client is out of date. And I do know that this sucks. But the reality is, our API is non-public, and so there is no pressure from anyone to maintain backward c…

> but it could be fixed if the market demanded it.

The market (my mom for example) is unaware there is a fix.

> there is no pressure from anyone to maintain backward compatibility.

You and your manager are both part of the problem. And the phone makers, because they invented a market place for shit companies that wants to ship unfinished software and push daily updates to their users to eventually reach a point where their API is stable.

There used to exist software developers who took great pride in (API) backwards compatibility. These days, where are they? My guess is they have been overrun by the a huge crowd of new people who have never maintained a backwards compatible API and who don't know how to. Management love fast-moving people who say "yes sir" and "not a problem sir".

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