401–410 of 568 posts
I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…
I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…
The main mistake is that you compare, emotionally at least, Apple to an institute. But it's not, it's a commercial company. "We" never had or should have had any trust in commercial companies - maybe besides small ones as someone else noted here.
The problem is that as a society we allowed a few commercial companies to become such an inherent part of our lives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe it is unethical to work on weapons technology any more than I believe it is unethical to be member of the armed forces. We live in a world with bad actors, so some amount of work on defense is necessary for survival. However, I also believe you are responsible for the consequences of the technology you create. If you decide to work on smart bombs and because of a bad government those end up killing in…
It seems to me that your second paragraph directly and immediately contradicts your first. I don’t think both of those can be true simultaneously, unless you somehow consider “having blood on your hands” to be ethical.
If you're working on weapon systems that (you know or expect) will be just be directly used for murdering[1] innocent civilians, then you're endorsing murdering innocent civilians.
If you don't know where on that scale things are, then you're reasoning under uncertainty, and your ethics are going to have to deal with that.
0: technically most of those would actually be manslaughter, going by the usual definitions, but a: not all, b: that's not a verb.
1: nope, just murder
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A PDF document with a specification is not even close to "open source code". There is no way to know whether the specification actually matches the implementation.
> There is no way to know whether the specification actually matches the implementation. That would be true even if Apple suddenly decided "oh these folks on HN want to see the code for that tracing component, better open source our complete OS". I've seen assurances that parts of this will be open sourced as far as they can but I honestly don't see how that matters. You have, as is a general tradition, a description…
I have compiled some of the apps on my phone myself so I know that the result does in fact come from the same source code. That may not work in the case of iOS devices, though.
> And you always have the closed source blob of whatever BTLE chipset your device uses which you can mistrust.
That is a good point and it'd be great if that chipset could also be open sourced but one step at a time.
> That would be true even if Apple suddenly decided "oh these folks on HN want to see the code for that tracing component, better open source our complete OS".
You are correct if it was simply open sourcing the OS. If it was possible to compile and install the OS ourselves, that would completely change the game.
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I have four arguments as to why google are behaving this way with regards to this data. I’ve no idea which, if any, they operate by: 1. It’s actually crap and they don’t want their advertisers to know that their ads are sold based on crap quality data/don’t want the backlash of doing a poor job helping 2. Most people at google care a lot about privacy (either in the secret kept between you and google sense or the mor…
I work at Google but don't have any visibility into this project, nor do I speak for Google on this. My uninformed guess is that the answer is more precisely: 5. They very much want this project to succeed so that it can save lives. They know privacy concerns are (rightly) an existential threat to the success of the project, so they are trying to address those by drawing this firm line. It's not 1 or 3 because anyone…
is that really all there is? they are showing you everything? theres no shadow profile?
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That claim is worthless when the software is closed source. It's impossible to verify.
Actually the claim is worth a big payday if you can prove Apple lied. One leak of customer data and Apple is screwed.
Yes, the Equifax incident really showed us how data leaks ruin companies.
I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…
> feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust The main mistake is that you compare, emotionally at least, Apple to an institute. But it's not, it's a commercial company. "We" never had or should have had any trust in commercial companies - maybe besides small ones as someone else noted here. The problem is that as a society we allowed a few commercial companies to become such an inherent p…
Edit: But then again, if there was an option to opt out that would be great too. Got to give people options!
I have to say, working at Apple and knowing all the hard work that goes into this and making sure your data stays private while also being able to combat this disease, it's very frustrating to read a lot of the comments here. I can understand why the public is skeptical, but I feel like as a society we've swung so far away from institutional trust that now nothing good can actually emerge. The anti-vax movement is a…
I think the notion of trusting any company over a certain size is crazy - I wish people would stop anthropomorphizing companies that way. Basically, I can trust specific people if I feel that I know their character, and by proxy I might trust a company that these people have significant control over. Once a company reaches a certain size, any power that individual employees wield will have been diluted to microscopic…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can someone please explain to me how a “libertarian” like Peter Thiel could start and run one of the most anti libertarian companies? What are his beliefs, exactly? I mean besides “zero to one” and “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”? I wonder how much effect he had on Zuck early on. He was the first big check in. Seems it was a great match there.
There's libertarians, and then there's libertarians. Thiel is a huge fan of Hans Hermann-Hoppe, who writes things like: "In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea unde…
Do you have any references showing Thiel believes these words you quoted?