Your Computer Isn't Yours • Hacker News Board

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#331

Post by onikolas7 » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:23 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #124

est31 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are totally right that Linux is only a single digit percentage in user share if you look at all computers deployed world-wide. However, in the developer sphere, GNU/Linux is way more represented. In the Stack Overflow 2020 survey, 26% of people said they were using a Linux based OS [0]. This number has been gradually increasing over the years so further growth is expectable. It's less than one percent less than t…

Every company I've worked at for the last 10 years has developed exclusively on macOS. Linux is fine, but it doesn't just work, and it needs to in order to gain a foothold not just in the developer community but with the general public -- that's the lesson Android has taught us. Until it does it will not budge the numbers. It just won't. The real apologism here comes from the Linux community, who believes that by vir…

Let me counter with my own anecdote.

Every researcher I've met in the last 10 years needs some version of Linux to get their job done effectively. Largely because tools like Python/Numpy have replaced stagnated (due to years of monopoly) tools like Matlab and they are much easier to setup and use on Linux.

Mind you, I am not talking just computer scientists. Biology, physics, maths, all use linux based setups.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#332

Post by wffurr » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:24 PM UTC

szc wrote: post #271

sliken wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all sounds well and good. But why not just use signed binaries? Have a user editable keystore that includes the accepted signatures. The default would be apple, installing chrome would require accepting the Google signature, photoshop would require the adobe key. Then users could add their own for brew, firefox, or whatever community software they would use. This would give good protection against hackers, and n…

Mac users can already add any certificate to the Apple keychain and authorize them for code signing. The outage today, which what was being written about in the article, was caused by the OCSP.APPLE.COM service not responding. The OCSP service was likely being used to validate if an Apple Developer certificate was still valid. Operating a "trusted" Certificate Authority generally requires operating under some rules.…

Actually, Firefox is going to start sending a CRL 4x daily in lieu of OCSP.

Chrome hasn't supported OCSP since 2012, and publishes CRLSets instead.

OCSP is considered bad by at least Chrome and Firefox due to leaking side channel information in exactly the way the article describes.

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/01/21/crlite-part-3-s...

https://www.imperialviolet.org/2012/02/05/crlsets.html

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#333

Post by novaRom » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:26 PM UTC

Why other countries tolerate this spying on their citizens? Why Apple, Google, and Microsoft products are still allowed say in Europe?

Do European politicians understand that they and their descendants are owned by another country?

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#334

Post by marvin » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:26 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #308

eznzt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you expect us to do, install Linux and spend days configuring the touchpad? Computers are a tool we use to do our work. Setting up the computer cannot become a job by itself.

Use mouse. It works out of the box and more convenient anyway.

The exceptionally good touchpad on the macbooks are almost half the reason you’d buy the machine in the first place.

Wish it was as good on the alternatives. Hopefully it works 100% out of the box, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#335

Post by wayneftw » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:26 PM UTC

lorenzhs wrote: post #320

unnouinceput wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am most efficient at my desktop. The sheer screen estate allows me to organize my work better than on any laptop, Apple or not. I have 2 laptops, bought them to my kids for this times when online school is a must. I tried to do some work, didn't like the small screen.

The Mac Mini is a desktop computer, it's just much smaller than your typical desktop tower. It doesn't have a screen or keyboard built-in. It's not a laptop. It's a box you connect your screen to. How is this relevant?

The Mac mini contains a laptop-grade CPU, RAM and mainboard that lacks expansion.

The only thing that makes it not a laptop is the form-factor.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#336

Post by crististm » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:27 PM UTC

forest_dweller wrote: post #90

zepto wrote: post #59

For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor. The general issue of other people (I.e. Apple et al) having a lot of control over your computer, is entirely valid even if some of the points in the piece are exaggerations. The problem is that people want it that way. They are in fact correct that computers are scary and too complex for them…

This is the same sort of logic that some people have that people shouldn't be allowed to make choices in life because they "might get it wrong". People should be allowed to make their own choices in what they believe to be their best interests and they should be allowed to get things wrong. > For most people, if there computer was ‘theirs’, it would be that way for about 10 minutes until it was pwned by a bad actor.…

All your recent comments are dead. Don't bother. It's unfortunate that contrarian opinions are silenced but this is the result of another walled garden

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#337

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

II2II wrote: post #245

rsanheim wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pointed out a core problem here, and a common blindspot with the HN crowd: > continuing to use Apple/Google/Microsoft That is probably 98%+ of devices that most typical people use for everyday computing, across phone, laptop, and desktop. Whether it is an android device, an iPhone, a Dell laptop or a new M1 macbook you are beholden to a corporation that doesn't care about privacy. I would argue that Apple cares a…

> And before "have you tried this *nix distro??" comments appear, they are still too hard to setup and nowhere near as user-friendly for most people on an everyday basis. Uh, no. There are many reasons why people don't use Linux. The easy of setup and use lines are pure nonsense. Many Linux distributions have been easier to setup and use since at least the introduction of Ubuntu, and perhaps earlier. Just pop in the…

> In other words, it is perceived as harder because people make it harder.

If by "people" you mean "Linux Desktop developers". They have taken relatively simple things and abstracted them two or three times until they are so complex and fragile they need special programs and standards to automagically manage it all for the user. As soon as you step outside the box of what they expect (hey, why can't I install a program on a different disk than my OS?) it is revealed for the Goldbergesq garbage pile it is.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#338

Post by jrib » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:31 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #178

ThePhysicist wrote: post #143

What we poor souls didn't understand all these years is that we're effectively helping other companies to steal from Apple by running software that isn't distributed via their app store [1]. I think now that Apple has learned from iOS how profitable a walled garden business model is they are trying to bring that model to the PC world as well. Shipping hardware with their own processors is an important step in that di…

Good thing said hacker culture spent 15 years buying inflated laptops and desktops from them ultimately for convenience to give them the market presence to do this in the first place. Its the same thing with Windows. People will preach all day that they won't make any personal sacrifices to try to avoid feeding literal cancers that are eating the software industry and are shocked when said all consuming voids take aw…

Next laptop for me is going to be from a company that explicitly supports linux. Probably dell or lenovo.

A lot of people like to rag on Ubuntu. I agree with some of the criticisms. But the one thing they have done right is broker partnerships with hardware vendors like dell and lenovo.

https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystem...

https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-laun...

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#339

Post by the_only_law » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:32 PM UTC

pdkl95 wrote: post #247

emptysongglass wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's worse is the number of other posts with the top comments being vociferous defenses of these companies as if they needed these people to defend them or cared one iota for their welfare. It feels like it's Stockholm Syndrome on a mass scale. I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. They scream outrage when they're not allowed their t…

> I worry for Gen Z because they're tiny-mobile-device native. And the only usable tiny mobile devices are walled gardens. Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently en…

> Without the ability to grow up playing with system level software, combined with the software industry's unwillingness to pass on institutional knowledge to younger generations, I fear we are already on a path towards a civilization that loses a lot of the technological capability we currently enjoy.

Gen Z here. I tried to give manufacturers the finger and try to play with systems level software on modern PC's and ended up retreating after realizing, among other things, just how much modern computers are not for hackers. Everything feels like a "undocumented" (by which I mean the documentation is likely only accessible to OEM's and those with large business deals woth them) mess. Even when it is available, I'm too scared to touch it. I found something I wanted to try to to hack around with till I saw the license agreement I had to read in order to access the docs. I couldn't parse out the legalese, especially regarding open source works and I'm not consulting a lawyer to figure out if I can post some project I might hack together online under an OSS license. The few things that do get open sourced are incredibly half assed and you can still tell they're designed for corporations, not hackers (i.e. edk2)

Conversely, I have an old IBM XT compatible luggable sitting in my closet. The manual for that has the full BIOS source llisting. Nowadays I mostly just hack around woth old non-PC devices, but for the most part computing just isn't fun for me anymore.

Re: Your Computer Isn't Yours

#340

Post by julianlam » Fri, Nov 13, 2020, 12:33 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #301

eznzt wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you expect us to do, install Linux and spend days configuring the touchpad? Computers are a tool we use to do our work. Setting up the computer cannot become a job by itself.

Buy one of the many laptops that work out of the box with GNU/Linux. Vote for manufacturers with your money. It's not that hard. I haven't had to spends days configuring anything for over a decade.

My colleagues often joke that I have to recompile my kernel whenever I want to do something novel with my computer.

I play along, but I haven't compiled a single thing in years. I don't even think proper build tools are installed on my PC.