Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet almost every example of malware in the article is a native app.
Electron is not native
It's more native than a web page.
Is an app in C# not native? Or Lua? or Python?
The rise of user-hostile software
271–280 of 303 posts
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worth noting that 'crypto' creates an opening for new ways to fund open-source development. Let's try not strangling that in its crib? We're approaching the 40th anniversary of the GNU Manifesto, and if the older funding models were going to take free software beyond the niches it's found, we'd see that by now.
Precisely. Payment processors gatekeeping the collection of small donations is soon to be a solved problem thanks to cryptocurrency. I mistrust anything that purports to enable something like this via centralised banking, primarily because it will let regulators of unrelated jurisdictions and large corporations/banks control and surveil the transactions. It's either crypto, or this.
I'm skeptical if the problem is technical about micropayments.
Let's assume we have some hypothetical zero fee universal payment platform. You CAN send a developer 3 cents because you like his work.
But now you've got the psychological barrier-- people don't want to think about spending 3 cents, even if they aren't bothered by the cost in the abstract. Then you need to make it a cultural norm-- that sending 3 cents is a legitimate gesture of gratitude and not unintentionally offensive or sarcastic.
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back up even farther, though - SO MANY PRODUCTS are literally indistinguishable outside of marketing. I think the issue is much deeper than "don't let marketing make product decisions". Browse through any app store - click a category, and it's a sea of apps that provide essentially the same capabilities. Just like your grocery store has a sea of jars filled with slightly varying salsa. So take the diagram in the arti…
> Customers asked for it: Check. > Customers would benefit from it: Check. The key is in what the word "it" means. The answers are positive if by "it" you mean "this category of product". They may very well be negative if by "it" you mean "our particular product". The customers want a jar of salsa. They don't want, and never asked for, your particular variation of a jar of salsa, essentially identical to 10 other var…
Customers didnt ask for an iPad but they sure bought the hell out of it
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#274Agreed on all points. Interesting to see this: > You can argue that all of this has existed for a very long time, back from the days of all kinds of toolbars and extensions that created multiple levels of address bar nesting in your web browser and taskbar. What I find ironic about the whole situation is, back then it was universally known that those toolbars and extensions are distributed by assholes. The whole soft…
It’s funny to find a product that you worked on mentioned in HN and being called an asshole by implication. :)
Around 2003(?) I worked for a search company that published that Dogpile toolbar. This was before browsers were doing web search from the url bar and when pop-ups were a big problem. The Dogpile toolbar was intended to bring web search to the browser and to also help cut pop-ups. It also include a news ticker fed by various RSS feeds from news sites. Strangely, the pop-up blocker would bark when it blocked a pop-up. Fortunately you could turn that off and I’m sure most users did right away.
It was not bundled with other software, did not install other software or change browser settings, and was not installed secretly. There was a menu option in the toolbar to uninstall it which removed everything. It didn’t spy on user activity or report anything back to the mothership. I can’t speak to the intent of the publishers of some of those other toolbars, but the Dogpile one was an honest attempt to produce a useful app and to promote our search site.
After the toolbar market became tainted by underhanded techniques we pulled the product, not wanting to be associated with that kind of behavior.
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
But even a significant portion of FLOSS can be legitimately called spyware. Firefox, Chromium, Docker (although Docker Desktop is no longer open source), Homebrew, Mattermost, Netdata, Bitwarden - all of these are common, popular FLOSS that embed spyware, oftentimes operating silently (other than a little notice at install time that the authors think constitutes informed consent). The spyware epidemic is real, and FL…
Wait, what did Bitwarden do?
https://github.com/bitwarden/desktop/issues/552
Downloads and execs unexamined code released by the devs, potentially backdooring your whole machine solarwinds-style.
It also divulges to MSFT (GitHub admins) all the IPs of Bitwarden users (even ones using a selfhosted API).
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back up even farther, though - SO MANY PRODUCTS are literally indistinguishable outside of marketing. I think the issue is much deeper than "don't let marketing make product decisions". Browse through any app store - click a category, and it's a sea of apps that provide essentially the same capabilities. Just like your grocery store has a sea of jars filled with slightly varying salsa. So take the diagram in the arti…
> Customers asked for it: Check. > Customers would benefit from it: Check. The key is in what the word "it" means. The answers are positive if by "it" you mean "this category of product". They may very well be negative if by "it" you mean "our particular product". The customers want a jar of salsa. They don't want, and never asked for, your particular variation of a jar of salsa, essentially identical to 10 other var…
I'm gonna use one of those examples that irks me personally. Do we really need 19 different formulations of fabric softener available in another 15 different scents from 12 different manufacturers?
I'd say it's a solved problem. Make - dunno - 3 different formulations (normal, sensitive, extra soft?), and provide the scents as small and separate ampules, and let the user mix and match the apple and cinnamon, and make the place smell of a bloody apple pie after a load of laundry for all you care. People are usually already familiar with those, and have their preferences, plus it would even be fun to experiment, and make one's own blends.
Anyway.... What I wanted to say is that I hate having too much choice (especially artifical one), and I specifically hate choice paralysis.
And I'm writing this as an European. Finding myself in search of a cereal, and ending up in a typical USican giant isle consisting just of a cereals is my idea of an nightmare. I thank the FSM for Lidl existence.
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. To keep being user-hostile and keep the user base, software needs to satisfy some requisites: being closed or depending on not reproducible proprietary services, or having no better competitors. A user-hostile software that happens to be useful and is open would be forked and cleaned in no time, or users would flee to the competition if there is any. The fact that the most user-hostile applications today liv…
An interesting counterexample is Cheat Engine, which loads adware with its download unless you pay on patreon or build from source.
I never used it, however that seems a good approach, if not by encouraging learning to build software instead of blind installing.
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#278Network effect. That is what I blame it on. Once people all have to go to the same place, they are trapped and the owner of that place can do what they like.
And what is the network effect really? The fact that people can't find each other easily on the network.
If we had an easy way to find each others devices directly I could send a "FB Post" directly to my friendship circle rather than via FB.
Maybe instead of a DNS we need a PublicKey IP address system.
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpretation always supersedes direct clarification by the person or group in question? Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are ther…
> I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. I see this kind of remark every now and then and I interpret it as 'when we agree I like what you write but when we don't you must be wrong'.
So let me be crystal clear then: You post good comments generally, usually with articulation on your position and reasoning behind it. In this case, you handwave the question away with "it's not that simple" but don't make any attempt to engage with the reason behind it.
You certainly don't need to engage with every comment made online, but my surprise comes from the lack of articulation on this issue. I am happy to learn and expand my own knowledge where possible. I won't however take certain assertions at face value, especially those that cast aspersions (esp. accusations of Nazism) in an environment whereby it's easy to throw people into a Kakfa trap, accusing them of being racist, sexist, misogynist, or some other piece of slander, without any proper evidence behind it other than personal opinion and interpretation.
Re: The rise of user-hostile software
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are eyeing at Muji, or dare I say IKEA. In the software world, to me Apple was that, until they gave up to become the 21st century Sony.
I've like Muji but find the pricing to be inconsistent. Some items pretty reasonably priced whereas some seemed pretty expensive for no reason.
I sometimes wonder if there is n’t import taxation involved in the disparities.
In Japan it’s mostly cheapish all over board, except for wood furniture which scrape the luxury range sometimes.