Sounds like the anti-trust case (heh) can be started as soon as the first locked-in computer rolls off the line.
The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
411–420 of 554 posts
Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normies pay the bills. Smart people are a surprisingly small minority. "No one in this world, so far as I know ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." - H. L. Mencken I know plenty of people, myself included, who lost money overestimating peoples intelligence.
All these folks trying to "pay their bills" have laid waste to a verdant field of possibility. Everything nice that they offer eventually gets changed or taken away. Yes, I'm bitter. We could have a much better world, one that actually empowers anyone willing to step up to the plate, but instead we grab all the low-hanging fruit so we can make them smile and step on workers' rights to deliver them burritos, instead.…
If smart people were smarter they’d open their wallets and support the things they like. Instead the reaction is often, why would I pay so much for something that I could build myself.
So the real market is for the very smart people and that’s an even smaller minority.
I built super advanced tech but was intentionally screwed over by my large corporate customers, just because they could, so I quit the industry and that super advanced tech doesn’t exist anymore. Unfortunately a lot of really cool things will live and die with me. I’ve fought the good fight and failed.
We can lament that people are not smarter but there isn’t anything we can do about it.
Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
That rapidly converges on "you can't buy a computer and use it", because economic interests favor trusted computing devices.
> That rapidly converges on "you can't buy a computer and use it", because economic interests favor trusted computing devices. I would rather argue that it converges to "you become more and more morally obliged to learn about hacking (and perhaps become a less and less law-abiding citizen) if you buy a computer and use it".
Your way rapidly turns into "I was shot by a SWAT team for running a program I legally own"
Yea, maybe we shouldn't live in the US, or other authoritarian nations, but few of us have options like that.
Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#414What is to prevent school WiFi from one day requiring a Pluton assertion that your Windows PC hasn’t been tampered with before you can join the network? Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom. The power of the authoritarian corporatocracy to force you to use only the (entire) systems they control. It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Sta…
This is almost the entire thesis of Zero Trust Networking principles. Somehow, the user AND the device need to attest to validity during the authorization process.
"Validity" for a device can mean many things (latest patches, is running anti-virus software, among other things).
A general user probably doesn't need to attest to these things. I would argue that anyone trying to access a corporate or some other organization's network SHOULD be required to attest to these things given the cyber threat landscape. The caveat: those same entities should provide or heavily subsidize the platforms they require (work computers). It's their IP at risk. I'm not so naive to think they would actually do this with BYOD initiatives, unfortunately.
For personal users on personal devices, I agree this might go too far (but some principles like MFA are best practices).
Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#415What is to prevent school WiFi from one day requiring a Pluton assertion that your Windows PC hasn’t been tampered with before you can join the network? Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom. The power of the authoritarian corporatocracy to force you to use only the (entire) systems they control. It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Sta…
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Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#416nowadays 98% of things implying "security" are actually unwanted products, protections for "the other side" or trivial distortions of reality where, conveyed by "security" itself, the user himself becomes the product - no, I don't need protections for the side channel, I never asked for them - no, I don't need a unique identifier, who is the demented person who asked you for it - no, I am not going to glitch the powe…
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Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#417Interesting naming. "Microsoft Hell God". Pluto (Greek: Πλούτων Plouton, "giver of wealth", Pluton in French and German) the most common name for the classical ruler of the underworld. Plouton was one of several euphemistic names for Hades, described in the Iliad as the god most hateful to mortals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_(mythology)
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Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#418The NSA and other three-letter US agencies will be all inside this chip, or have side-channels to the firmware update mechanism, obviously. A secure operating system means nothing if the hardware itself cannot be secured, and the case for a new, trusted, transparent manufacturer of Intel-compatible CPUs and hardware in general grows stronger.
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Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did they actually ban the books, or did they merely ban their usage in K-12 instruction with the news outlet rounding that up to a book ban for dramaturgical reasons? Not that a ban in school instruction is necessarily good (though, I would guess, not nearly as rare), but the actual full-fledged ban that DRM could aid in enforcing, which would prevent you as an individual from reading a book you want to read in _any_…
All Florida did was add a criteria to their selection process to disallow books that include Critical Theory/Critical Race Theory or their praxis in the teaching of math, etc. Every state selects which text books can be used by their schools so if Florida "burns books" then by definition every single other state does too. Where are the text books in California that teach math using Biblical stories and imagery? Obvio…
Of course, bible stories would be inappropriate because superstition and religion have no place in schools. We're supposed to educate students about reality.
But there's nothing wrong with teaching students how they can use math to understand social problems and complex real-world issues. Math is a great tool for thinking about things like income inequality, climate change and economics.
Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
> From the USA, we get news of banned book in some states. When I read that, my head goes back to my european history, and I reach the Godwin point very quickly. Books are not banned, just not used in the classroom anymore. While the reasons for it may be wrong, it's something that happens constantly all over the world. No one prevents children or adults to read those books at home. Banning books could mean that owni…
Banning their use in classrooms is lesser but still a step on that path, and the same Republicans trying to do that are not going to stop at schools after they win but will rather see that as an invigorating first step in a long campaign. For example, book sellers in Virginia are currently fighting a lawsuit against an attempt which would ban private sales: https://www.virginiamercury.com/2022/07/06/free-speech-group…
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