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Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

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Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#401

Post by WorldMaker »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #367
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this was already true. There is no reason the governments couldn't have required this tool to be built at anytime all along. Remember EARN IT where Senators said figure something out (like this CSAM tool) or they'll do it for Apple? The EU is similar, with upcoming draft legislation saying they have to do it if they don't figure something (like this) out.

Back during the FBI/Apple fiasco where the government was lobbying Apple to install a backdoor to unlock phones, Apple argued that their 1st Amendment Rights were being violated, that the government could not force them to write software (since software is speech, and the government cannot force you to say something against your will) One random article of many: https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/25/technology/apple-fbi-r…

Which is why CSAM is possibly a really interesting compromise/counter-argument. Supposedly, the only actual crime that the FBI has repeatedly sent warrants to Apple about have been child pornography/trafficking and it's an interesting stance for Apple to take here: "we'll address the actual and specific crime you seem most interested in, but will still not give you a generic backdoor".

Many of the arguments/fears about CSAM is that it can be widened to be a generic backdoor, but as you point out in the arguments Apple has already argued in court Apple doesn't seem to think a generic backdoor is a good idea and have strongly fought against it and CSAM seems to be entirely designed to not be capable as backdoor, and especially not a generic backdoor.

I absolutely understand the fears of false positives and whatever processes the FBI and other TLAs choose to do with the results from CSAM (though many of those concerns apply to everything the TLAs do regardless of what technical tools they have at their disposal), but I'm not sure that I understand all the fears that CSAM is a generic backdoor (in the making) given what Apple have revealed about how it is built and what Apple's quite explicit reasons seem to be to build it to entirely avoid building a generic backdoor and that everything about it seems a "thumb your nose at the FBI by doing what they ask explicitly for but not what they really want to build" by entirely building something that can't be used as a generic backdoor and is very specifically built to only a tiny explicit use case the FBI has asked for. At least from what I've seen so far.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#402

Post by timbit42 »

neverminder wrote: post #201

Desktop - Ubuntu 20.04. Everything works and my requirements are quite advanced - bunch of games on Steam, pro level audio production studio just to mention a few things. Laptop - Dell Precision 7750, Xeon CPU, 64 GB RAM, bought with Ubuntu pre-installed. Beast of a laptop, superior thermals, wipes the floor with a mac. Phone - Google Pixel. I consider that a lesser evil choice to Apple's walled garden. It's rooted,…

When you realize Snaps suck, you can switch to Linux Mint or Debian.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#403

Post by floatingatoll »

istingray wrote: post #233
mullingitover wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty flimsy analogy because we're not talking about criticism, we're talking about taking pretty onerous, inconvenient steps to avoid having CSAM detected on your devices. You might not have it on your devices, but if you tell someone you're doing all this the average knee-jerk reaction is going to be suspicion.

I don't refer to it as CSAM. I say I'm switching because of Apple's surveillance of my files so they can find stuff to report to the police. People get it.

Lying by omission isn't a good choice, because you're using a classic tactic of overstatement-by-framing that has been weaponized into standard police procedure to sway people into believing you. The truth is more precise:

"I'm switching because of Apple's surveillance of my files so they can find child porn to report to the police"

But that's also much less likely to win you converts to your cause, which is why we never see anyone saying it so clearly in these conversations. Which is more important to you, being completely honest about your beliefs, or evangelizing others to believe them too?

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#404

Post by Retric »

therealmarv wrote: post #397
Retric wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR specifically excludes law enforcement so it doesn’t apply here. The sad thing is Apple was legally required to allow law enforcement to search iCloud backups before they implemented this system, so nothing fundamentally changed. However, after this backlash you can bet other manufacturers will continue to hide what their actually doing.

As you've written... why there has to change something when it works already for law enforcement.

I think Apple was actually designing this system internally as an improvement in terms of privacy. Doing Perceptual hashing on the phones is more open and thus auditable than doing the same thing on their servers. They set things up to require multiple different images to match etc.

However, the perception was very different.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#405

Post by neverminder »

gazby wrote: post #382
neverminder wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell Precision 7xxx line is easily the most advanced laptop with official linux support there is. Every person who bought it after I recommended this laptop was impressed. I've got Ubuntu 20.04 on mine and the only thing that doesn't work (yet) is the power button fingerprint reader which is a non-issue.

As a counterpoint there are a number of things I don't like: * I can only have Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs * They've removed all but one external indicator light (there used to be four), and its behavior is completely useless (there's no way for me to tell externally what the power state of my machine is) * They've killed the trackpoint * This is the second of this series I've owned where neither of the fingerprint re…

Well, some of those points are down to personal preference. I for instance always hated the trackpoint thing and I am fine with the new clean and simple keyboard approach.

Don't even get me started on Apple. If removing the physical Esc key is not the biggest ever fuck you to pro users, then I don't know what is.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#406

Post by imwillofficial »

macksd wrote: post #216
imwillofficial wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are less concerned about the Chinese government's reach vs. the NSA Wait what? You’re 180 degrees wrong.

Of the two, which government do I think is more evil? China's. Which government do I, a permanent resident of America, think could more immediately make my life harder by being able to invade my privacy? America's.

> Of the two, which government do I think is more evil?

But that's not what the original comment said.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#407

Post by mullingitover »

neverminder wrote: post #201

Desktop - Ubuntu 20.04. Everything works and my requirements are quite advanced - bunch of games on Steam, pro level audio production studio just to mention a few things. Laptop - Dell Precision 7750, Xeon CPU, 64 GB RAM, bought with Ubuntu pre-installed. Beast of a laptop, superior thermals, wipes the floor with a mac. Phone - Google Pixel. I consider that a lesser evil choice to Apple's walled garden. It's rooted,…

> Phone - Google Pixel

Pretty sure your photos are still getting scanned for CSAM anyway, then. Google Photos normally are backed up in their cloud, and they do scanning there.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#408

Post by Tagbert »

withinboredom wrote: post #186
tpush wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple hashes all of your photos offline [...] No, only the ones designated for upload to iCloud. > [...] it’s about governments forcing Apple to do things with this new weapon Governments can already force Apple to do any kind of scanning, "weapon" being built already or not.

Says who? Apple? How much is that worth?

If Apple were going to lie about this process, they didn't need to announce it and go into so much detail at all. They could have just kept it quiet the way the current server side CSAM scanning is done by others already. The legal and market impacts of Apple lying would be severe.

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#409

Post by TylerLives »

timbit42 wrote: post #402
neverminder wrote: post #201

Desktop - Ubuntu 20.04. Everything works and my requirements are quite advanced - bunch of games on Steam, pro level audio production studio just to mention a few things. Laptop - Dell Precision 7750, Xeon CPU, 64 GB RAM, bought with Ubuntu pre-installed. Beast of a laptop, superior thermals, wipes the floor with a mac. Phone - Google Pixel. I consider that a lesser evil choice to Apple's walled garden. It's rooted,…

When you realize Snaps suck, you can switch to Linux Mint or Debian.

Why switch the OS instead of just removing snaps?

Re: Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

#410

Post by gorgonzolachz »

josteink wrote: post #110
karlzt wrote: post #50

Desktop: Arch Linux Phone: Pinephone At the end of this article: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7e77y/the-dollar149-smartph... "But even without those changes, this device could be enough to kickstart a Linux-driven mobile revolution."

> Phone: Pinephone Talking as a Pinephone (and iPhone 12) owner, I think the software is starting to show promise, but the SoC is nowhere beefy enough. If I’ll go this route fully and make a Linux-phone my daily driver, I’d seriously consider the Purism Librem 5 instead.

I'm on the other side of this; I don't use my phone for anything more than messaging, light browsing/videos, and social feeds, so what I really want is more battery life.

Last I checked, both purism and pine64 are struggling with this.

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