441–450 of 668 posts
I understand why people find Stallman irritating, but my word, he does tend to be right with terrifying frequency. (Come to think of it, that's probably part of _why_ people find him irritating.)
Since phones are nothing else than computers nowadays: I want a phone that I own! The mobile phones are by far more limiting and take away control of the owner. A simple example would be the possibility to edit the HOSTS file on Android. I am the owner and administrator of this device, yet I am unable to do basic controls of my device.
My gf asked me why her Android can't install new apps (gplay says it doesn't have enough space to install 14MiB app, phone says it has 200MiB free).
So I go to adb shell to see what's taking up space, df says 700MiB free on user data filesystem (so the stupid gplay app is lying). `ls` and `du` says permission denied almost everywhere.
To unlock/root the phone, it needs to be erased, or needs some apk installed (which doesn't work). Even Windows 95 20 years ago had less shitty debugging experience.
Just makes me glad I never bought a smartphone, personally.
Other time we needed access was just to back up the list of contacts. Also not possible without a stupid possibly closed source apk. It's not even part of adb backup. But many regular apps are allowed to steal your contact list and send it anywhere they want. Bleh.
"User hostile" doesn't even cut it, when you lose access to your data the moment app installation breaks, and can't get to your data via debug tools.
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It is an isolated peripheral in many smartphones. Whatever you do, there is of course a risk malicious code could break out of the isolation, true for your Ethernet proposal too.
Having a malicious device on the other other end of a Ethernet connection is much less of a problem than having a malicious device that can DMA into main memory, which is something the baseband in Apple/Android phones at least allegedly can do.
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It seems like a lot of these problems at the core stem from corporations or the government not being held accountable. How do we fix regulatory capture so these privacy issues are a non sequitur?
> How do we fix regulatory capture so these privacy issues are a non sequitur? by making the general populous care more about it, and force the electorate's hands.
I have a similar feeling, but with modern smartphones. Owning my computer is still relatively possible. I can build a computer from parts which I can choose, and have a choice in which operating system to install on them. Laptops are slightly more closed, but even on those I can choose the OS myself. Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all. I cannot choose any of the par…
Well it is early days but Librem and System76 (and several others like Pine64) are making huge headway in the open hardware space. I know there have been lots of failures in this area but I think we are getting to a threshold point where building on top of these companies acheivements is quite possible. Linux on Mobile and open EC and Coreboot etc. are all making rapid progress at the moment. I would still say we are…
This is literally something that NEVER crosses the mind of the average consumer. We should have a HackerNews version of "first world problems" and call it "HackerNews Problems". You now have a computer that is 10,000 times faster than one you had 30 yrs ago at half the price. Oh and it fits in your pocket. A lot of time and money went into creating that. Those people need to get paid. And yes you pay for it with some…
Should we call lead toxicity a "chemist's first world problem"? Should we call material flammability a "fireman's first world problem"? Equipment sterilization a "doctor's first world problem"?
We think about this, so that regular people don't have to. That's the point of specialization of labor. It's our moral duty to be aware of these problems, and to ensure end-users aren't hurt by these problems. As an industry, we've not only failed at this duty - we've been actively doing the opposite. Harming users of technology on purpose, making their lives worse in pursuit of extra profit.
It's not that users should care about whether or not they own their technology. Technology that isn't owned by the end-user, and actively exploits them instead, shouldn't be available on the consumer market in the first place.
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Because you need plugins on a mobile browser?
That was supposed to be an honest question with an honest answer. There was no need for a snarky remark. But yes, totally. The topic is about owning your own hardware/software combo - so having addons/customization is the definition of it.
Well, somewhat snarky. It's still a legimate question.
Why would one "need" plugins on a mobile browser? What kind of functionality that mobile Firefox doesn't provide?
>The topic is about owning your own hardware/software combo - so having addons/customization is the definition of it.
Well, the topic is about owing your computer. Which has some merit (even though owing is a kind of a weasel word: you do own it, even if the OS enforces this or that measure. You can sell it at any time, for example, break it and nobody will ask you to return it, etc.).
So, the real topic is "doing whatever you want with your OS, with the ability to disable all checks, protections, etc, install custom everything etc".
Which I can see the appeal in some cases.
For a mobile phone what exactly is the great appeal?
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Because you need plugins on a mobile browser?
Why would a mobile browser be different to a desktop one in this regard?
You usually view webpages in a very minimal interface, small screen, often on the go or leisurly, and with limited interaction on a mobile phone. So, aside from something like an adblocker (for which there are solutions), what would one use?
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I'll play the (intentional) Devil's Advocate here to present an alternative viewpoint. I like iOS, but not Android. Let me explain why. I personally love Linux, Unix philosophy (I'm even sometimes an old beardy zealot about POSIX standards and the old way ), and inherent customization possibilities. On the other hand, I don't want to manage my phone like a desktop or laptop computer, or a server because of a plethora…
I agree with you overall, but felt the need of commenting as I thought "Settings do not change spontaneously" was true as well but it is not! I just discovered the other day that you cannot turn off WiFi or Bluetooth. If you do try to disable either of them, they will be turned off but only for a day. The next day they enable themselves automatically. So much for not changing settings by themselves :)
I don't quite get what the author is talking about. There are some concerns about what proprietary BIOS firmware does, but otherwise pretty much any PC on the market can run whatever software (including the OS) the user installs on them. Or can the author only afford a smartphone?