Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex” • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#271

Post by joejerryronnie » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

nneonneo wrote: post #163

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not usually one for fanboyism (and I say this as a full time Linux desktop and Android user) but Apple really do seem to be trying to do right by their customers in most cases. Certainly more than the competition. I've been considering switching for a while, but it seems the quality of their hardware and to some extent their software has slowly been going downhill post-Jobs.

iTunes wasn't fantastic while Jobs was around, either. The first versions of OS X downright sucked. The build quality and aesthetic of the iPhone X rival anything from the Jobs era in my view, and the recent improvements on mobile performance have been nothing short of amazing. I feel like people get these rose-tinted glasses when they look back on past Apple products, like they were all 100% perfect or something. Tr…

My concern with a post-Jobs Apple is not their ability to iterate on existing product lines. I'm not confidant Apple can shift paradigms and disrupt whole industries the way the did under Jobs' leadership.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#272

Post by microcolonel » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

burtonator wrote: post #258

I'd like to think I'm one of the good guys here. I was one of the inventors of RSS and Atom and worked to push open content and social media. I started a social data search platform named Datastreamer ( http://www.datastreamer.io/ ) which is basically a petabyte-scale content indexing engine. We provide API feeds to search engines and social media analytics companies needing bulk data but don't want to have to build…

Ultimately, I think there are far too many actors involved to rely on the ethics of third parties to protect your privacy. If Saudi Arabia wanted to track down gays and apostates by mining the same data you did, they could do it themselves.

The first line of defense against this is, and always will be, not publishing so much information about yourself. They can not mine what you do not provide.

We can argue all day about the ethics of the conduct of companies and states looking at these data, but it's a non-issue if the data simply don't exist.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#273

Post by 9712263 » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:52 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #40

teekert wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get paid in the form of a free OS for your smartphone? Or free use of a video streaming platform?

>You can get paid in the form of a free OS for your smartphone? I paid full price for my phone, there was no warning or contract for me selling my data. I also do not remember a clear EULA about me selling or paying with my data, usually this EULAs are emphasizing that data is collected to give us better services not that is sold/shared with third parties.

Add to that, even Android is not so free. Google requires manufacturer to pay a premium to include Google Play Service, which is proprietary, and Android Support. This cost will be transfer to customer, so Android + Google Play bundle is not a free OS. It cost something, just not having a price tag to buy separately.

It means I paid for Google Play Service to be included in Android and they also required me to pay by personal information to use their cloud, which is fine, but I don't have a choice to opt out, or choose to pay Google and not selling my data. The problem is the implicit contract with no opt out or alternative payment to respect my privacy.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#274

Post by jnwatson » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:56 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #264

stephenr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy second hand iPhones. A 5S will still run the latest iOS, and with a new battery wont be under “performance management” mode, so it should be quite fast to use.

I'm open to this idea. I discarded it early on because I thought it would either be too expensive or be too "used" to run cleanly for another 3 years. Are you suggesting some official refurbishment route or just find them on Craigslist or Ebay?

I’m not sure you’d like it. I recent upgraded from a 5s with a new battery to a 7.

It was night and day in terms of performance. In particular, Siri works much better.

Developers assume the performance of the latest, so they don’t realize how slow things act on older devices.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#275

Post by scoon1329 » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #121

andy_ppp wrote: post #42

Seeing as Google pays Apple $12bn to be the default search engine on iOS devices I’m tempted to call hypocrisy here... http://fortune.com/2018/09/29/google-apple-safari-search-eng...

> I’m tempted to call hypocrisy here.. You can call it hypocrisy but it doesn't affect the validity of Tim Cook's argument [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

It may not affect the validity of the argument, but it may suggest something about the motivations of the person making the argument.

Each person's idea of where something sits on the spectrum of right and wrong differs.

If someone is being hypocritical, it can lead people to question the motive behind the words.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#276

Post by stephenr » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:57 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #264

stephenr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy second hand iPhones. A 5S will still run the latest iOS, and with a new battery wont be under “performance management” mode, so it should be quite fast to use.

I'm open to this idea. I discarded it early on because I thought it would either be too expensive or be too "used" to run cleanly for another 3 years. Are you suggesting some official refurbishment route or just find them on Craigslist or Ebay?

I personally wouldn't buy something like this from a classifieds site. But that's because I expect you're just as like to get a cardboard cutout of an iPhone as you are an actual iPhone. If you've used these sites before and are comfortable with them, I'm sure there's options there.

I don't know what it's like in the US, but here (SE Asia) there is a massive market for second-hand smart phones/tablets, usually from places that also do repairs of such devices. Go to any shopping mall in Thailand and (usually on the top floor) there will be dozens of places with devices of varying age.

I don't think Apple's official refurbished stuff will be in the price range you're looking (they only have 7's from what I can see) but I'm sure you can find them somewhere.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#277

Post by MarHoff » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

mcbits wrote: post #231

MarHoff wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With DuckDuckGo you can always use the !g syntax to switch to google if first results don't suit you need. By my experience DDG usually provide way more appropriate answers when you are looking for a reference or a documentation entry. Google still is better for recently pushed contents like news and is still marginally better for finding result inside Q&A sites. After 1-2 years of DDG by default I tend to know in ad…

I don't know why so many DDG users use '!g' unless they're using Edge or just aren't aware that Chromium and Firefox both let you create an arbitrary keyword like 'g' for a search provider, which is a lot easier to type. Some of the other bang commands do look useful, though.

Guess I have a "localized" deformation as french keyboard include a ! character accessible without any key modifier, so it's actually pretty straightforward to use.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#278

Post by ocdtrekkie » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:00 PM UTC

johnsea wrote: post #151

stult wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would kill for a Linux phone, but until that happens I would settle for a phone that comes with root access (or at least allows technically capable users to get it) and let's me control my own data and device from the bare metal up. Because even if Apple has less incentive to exfiltrate data, I don't want to have to trust any company to do the right thing or to keep doing it.

You don't have to kill... but some compromises you'll have to do. Librem and (partly) Sailfish/Jolla give you much more control but they are by far not as polished/broad as iPhones or Androids. Here a link, maybe the Sailfish 3 version will get a bit more traction? https://together.jolla.com/question/191235/official-event-sa...

Can I buy a Sailfish phone ready to go that works on Verizon yet? The biggest thing about this niche OSes is you always have to flash them on a limited set of compatible hardware yourself, and they generally only work on GSM carriers.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#279

Post by jkestner » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #264

stephenr wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy second hand iPhones. A 5S will still run the latest iOS, and with a new battery wont be under “performance management” mode, so it should be quite fast to use.

I'm open to this idea. I discarded it early on because I thought it would either be too expensive or be too "used" to run cleanly for another 3 years. Are you suggesting some official refurbishment route or just find them on Craigslist or Ebay?

Swappa. A less shady eBay specifically for phones and like gadgets (though as it gets more popular, we'll see if it stays trustworthy). I've bought three used iPhones and an Apple Watch, never a problem.

Re: Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”

#280

Post by kyrra » Wed, Oct 24, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #245

Ensorceled wrote: post #194

The only problem is that Apple is the Mercedes of mobile devices. We really need a Honda and Kia version, a more affordable device that doesn’t track you. Apple is never going to give up their premium position.

It seems extremely hard to achieve that though. Creating a new smartphone hardware is very difficult and expensive. Creating a new smartphone OS and ecosystem is probably even harder. In order to have a proper "libre" smartphone you'd need to basically do both things. If behemoths like Microsoft couldn't pull it off I'm not sure how a newcomer could. I suppose the best path would be to create a new phone that could e…

If you want an example of how many people it takes to create a cellphone, Google bought HTCs Pixel phone team, which amounted to around 4000 people. This likely includes all the software engineers that do driver work as well, but it worth noting the size.

You can get away with smaller teams if you take the full package that Qualcomm gives (they do most or all of driver work for you). You saw what Essential Products was able to create with around 120 people, but they were heavily using work from other companies to launch it.