Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

locusmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 255 posts

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#31

Post by saghm »

rootusrootus wrote: post #13
f430 wrote: post #3

What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care . They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. It's the strongest example of consumer cultism. Absolute in their exceptionalism and ignorance. Similar problems discussed in the article are found in Tesla. The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exc…

> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. Alternatively, they know what's going on and approve of it. Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. If you are inclined to be anti-Apple-at-any-cost, then you will agree with the blog post. If you are a happy Apple user, you are inclined to go for the latter explanatio…

> Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort.

It does address the idea of this system being intended to combat malware in the fourth and fifth paragraphs. The point it makes is that there's nothing stopping it from being used against legitimate software too, other than the benevolence of the "warlord" who controls it, so you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#32

Post by cosmojg »

dmm wrote: post #26
nyolfen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fun reminder that canonical refuses to use tls on their repos

The packages you download can be easily inferred even transmitted over tls. What does tls buy you? That's the argument at least. You could always download them over tor.

I think the concern is more about man-in-the-middle attacks. Even then, though, doesn't apt verify the hashes of downloaded packages?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#33

Post by coldtea »

f430 wrote: post #3

What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care . They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. It's the strongest example of consumer cultism. Absolute in their exceptionalism and ignorance. Similar problems discussed in the article are found in Tesla. The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exc…

>What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. They simply do not care at all what's being done to them.

Or, you know, we're as informed (or more) than you, but have different priorities and opinions.

Other people that are not merely mindless sheep, where you and those agreeing with you are the only smart people? What a wild concept!

I've used anything, from 4 major unices of yore, to FreeBSD, a dozen of Linux varieties, Windows, and modern Linux.

I still enjoy macOS more and I agree with lots of the decisions taken in that ecosystem (not every one, but more than not).

You are free to buy something else.

>The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exceptionally well in authoritarian countries like China.

A non sequitur if I ever saw one...

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#34

Post by thombles »

Unfortunately the way he describes the "Ulysses Pact" is fantasy. He makes it sound like it would be just like today, except a savvy user could sideload Signal for example if Apple was compelled to remove it. What would _actually_ happen is a long list of companies would say "brilliant, we don't have to conform to the app store guidelines any more" and go sideload-exclusive. Within a matter of months it would be common for users to have both official and unofficial app stores, sowing widespread confusion, and UX would go to pot while apps run in the background, chew up battery and take advantage of undocumented/buggy APIs to track users or steal data.

The warlord analogy is a good one. It's a tough nut to crack. The only defensive mechanism that's actionable for the average user is to keep as much data as possible offline. Sure, if Apple wants to they can ship code that exfiltrates data off my external USB hard drive, but that's way beyond the threat model we're discussing today.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#35

Post by api »

jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

This is a really good point. The endless and often needless churn in software creates a treadmill effect, making it really hard for open source and smaller companies to keep up. It inherently favors large players with deep pockets able to employ vast numbers of developers.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#36

Post by breck »

We need to abolish IP Laws (aka "Imaginary Property" aka "Illogical Property" aka "Incongruent Property" aka "Invalidates Property Laws"—the other term is a big lie, don't repeat it). Not "reform". Not "compromise". Abolish.

If 2020 taught me anything, it's that society can come close to the brink pretty quickly. I thought there was an inevitable trend toward freedom, but recently think it's perilous. We need ideas to flow to create a more distributed, less unequal, world, and we need it now. We need to unshackle the people.

If anyone is working toward this, let me know how I can help (including funding). I'm supporting things like SciHub/LibGen and the like, but we need far far more organizers fighting to #EndIp, #AbolishCopyright, #AbolishPatents.

Trolls feel free to reply with the rote lies about how these laws make any sense. Anyone with a conscience doing something about it please get in touch and let me know how I can help!

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#37

Post by ericwood »

jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

This confuses me; the core of HTML is relatively unchanged since its inception and static HTML is fairly secure. PDF is notoriously complex and has had many security issues associated with it as a result. Regardless, if it's content you're producing I'm imagining it can be done securely with either format?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#38

Post by zepto »

saghm wrote: post #31
rootusrootus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care. Alternatively, they know what's going on and approve of it. Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. If you are inclined to be anti-Apple-at-any-cost, then you will agree with the blog post. If you are a happy Apple user, you are inclined to go for the latter explanatio…

> Consider that this blog post frames the issue as one of surveillance, instead of an anti-malware effort. It does address the idea of this system being intended to combat malware in the fourth and fifth paragraphs. The point it makes is that there's nothing stopping it from being used against legitimate software too, other than the benevolence of the "warlord" who controls it, so you're still just trusting them to p…

“you're still just trusting them to protect you and hoping they don't take advantage of it”

That is exactly what Apple’s customers are doing.

It actually a pretty normal feature of modern society to trust institutions or businesses not to take advantage of particular powers they have.

It’s really bizarre to call a business a ‘warlord’.

The converse, where we can’t trust any institution or business and we must all be fully equipped to individually defend our own interests on our own is a lot more like a warlord situation.

That said, I agree that the centralized model is bad and we need to develop technology that is both secure and decentralized.

But currently no such technology exists.

Everyone has to trust someone.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#39

Post by [deleted] »

hinkley wrote: post #29
codeulike wrote: post #18

Reminds me a bit of "Serving at the Pleasure of the King" - Coding Horror, 2011 https://blog.codinghorror.com/serving-at-the-pleasure-of-the...

> If Microsoft added a feature to Windows that duplicated a popular application's functionality, developers would be screaming bloody murder Jeff had already forgotten ten years ago that we did, in fact, scream bloody murder. They kept doing it. For decades. And now they wonder why there are people who will never cut Microsoft a break for anything.

[deleted]

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#40

Post by konjin »

coldtea wrote: post #30
konjin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares? We should not force the majority to be serfs so a minority is served.

You can very easily end up in that "minority". It's just an accident or disease away -- and if not, time and old age will get you anyway (presbyopia, motor decline, and so on).

I use a screen reader already. It is sad that you're so selfish that you can't imagine minorities would be willing to give up quality of life to improve it for the majority.
Post reply on HN