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The boiling frog of digital freedom

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Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#101

Post by lifeisstillgood »

verisimi wrote: post #73
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #3

This rather heavily begs the question what do we mean by "freedom"? We don't mean anonymity. Acting in secret is not freedom - acting openly and not being persecuted or prosecuted is freedom. The solution is what it is in real offline life. A regulated legal framework that allows most and limits little, a open dynamic culture that accepts diversity and constant change. If we are worried that digital freedom will be t…

> We don't mean anonymity. Acting in secret is not freedom - acting openly and not being persecuted or prosecuted is freedom. So, if I openly state that I do not acquiesce to any government (all external force is immoral imo) - does that mean I am now free, and no longer subject to its laws, pay taxes, etc? So, I don't think your definition of freedom cuts it. Any answer that assumes 'government' as part of the answe…

I'm sorry but I maybe feeling "off" today, but we should all be beyond kindergarten political philosophy. Anarchy is what it sounds like - awful and not some middle class libertarian utopia.

Yes we need government. And these days we need government to roll up its sleeves and be government. We know you cannot arrange the bread delivery for London through one department but you can force privatised water companies to invest before dividends over periods of decades.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#102

Post by grishka »

One factor this ignores is that there already exist tens of billions of general-purpose computing devices capable of running arbitrary code. They aren't going to magically disappear. They've already been made and they can't be unmade.

Given enough nuisance, people would just stop upgrading. We've already seen this with Windows itself — I know people who are still, in 2023, using Windows 7 daily for the simple reason of hating everything that came after it.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#103

Post by MaxBarraclough »

mildmotive wrote: post #6

And it will keep getting worse as long as the majority of the population lack proper core values to oppose it.

It's not enough for the majority of people to oppose a trend. There are plenty of issues where trends continue despite scattered opposition from the majority.

Widespread activism could make a difference. If it becomes a major point of contention in elections, that could make a difference. These don't happen 'by default' though.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#104

Post by Kim_Bruning »

iuhaegpoinqhpoq wrote: post #84
perihelions wrote: post #55

The other day I read an HN comment that thought that when you buy consumer PC hardware, it comes with a ToS that limits your property rights as the owner. It's the kind of uncanny experience I run into more and more often lately: talking with people so immersed in our new normal of cyberpunk dystopia, they seem not to remember how things were in the before-times. So accustomed to exploitative corporate gaslighting, w…

> In the before-times, [...] You used to get full schematics along with the electronics you bought. And by "get", I do NOT mean that you'd have to ask for them. They'd be shipped WITH the products, on paper. It was a normal part of your purchase, just like the manual.

My first computer was a BBC B. The schematics were IN the manual!

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#105

Post by Wowfunhappy »

While I share the author's fear, the timeline they created doesn't really work.

1. Windows 10 S has mostly been a failure.

2. Web Environment Integrity, while horrifying, has not been rolled into Chrome! It's an early proposal. We should work to ensure it goes nowhere.

3. The above greatly pushes out the plausible timeline for events currently listed next to 2024, 2027, 2028, 2029, 2031, and 2032.

An aside, I don't find "Apple enforces notarization" to be significant, since it only applies to code-signed applications. It would be better to list "2012 – Apple blocks unsigned apps by default on Mac" and "2016 – Apple hides option to allow unsigned apps from the Mac GUI." The rollout of System Integrity Protection should be in there too. I'm personally not against any of these changes in isolation, but they are absolutely part of the slippery slope the author is trying to highlight.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I think the article would be more powerful if the content was more plausible. If you already agree this is a problem, the specifics don't matter, but if you're trying to show the pattern to someone new, the facts you present are important.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#106

Post by ume »

iuhaegpoinqhpoq wrote: post #84
perihelions wrote: post #55

The other day I read an HN comment that thought that when you buy consumer PC hardware, it comes with a ToS that limits your property rights as the owner. It's the kind of uncanny experience I run into more and more often lately: talking with people so immersed in our new normal of cyberpunk dystopia, they seem not to remember how things were in the before-times. So accustomed to exploitative corporate gaslighting, w…

> In the before-times, [...] You used to get full schematics along with the electronics you bought. And by "get", I do NOT mean that you'd have to ask for them. They'd be shipped WITH the products, on paper. It was a normal part of your purchase, just like the manual.

I still have the circuit diagram (paper copy) that shipped with my Acorn Atom in, ahem, 1981. Didn’t ask for it!

(Edit: with the help of the circuit diagram we did make a simple mod to one of the output ports of the device)

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#107

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #42
max_ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many applications, phones, computers do people use that are Stallman compliant?

The Linux Kernel. But answering the “it failed”. Not really. It exists and is a choice on most license dropdowns and is a famous one. People should really default to GPL rather than more permissive licenses and hot take… should also default to closed source. And make open source or non GPL a conscious choice. The reason is GPL gives you more ability to commercialise since it gives you the copyright holder more of an…

> The reason is GPL gives you more ability to commercialise since it gives you the copyright holder more of an edge over let’s say Amazon Inc who has decided to accept your license to bundle it with a cloud service and extend it. They are obliged to release their source code to their customers.

Not if it's GPLv2 or non-AGPL - and even then what you're describing is the opposite of the underdog-moral-problem a lot of smaller cloud services or database/infrastructure providers are facing whereby Amazon (et al.) simply offers your product or service as their service, which is allowed by all versions of the GPL because Amazon doesn't care about the source-code: they care about charging a premium for access to a hot open-source project without contributing anything back to the actual project maintainers. That's (unfortunately) an argument for going closed-source, or at least having to reserve copyrights/licenses for operating the software as a service for another company.

I imagine it's like being Sherlocked by Apple, except Apple was using your work all-along.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#108

Post by seangrogg »

jasode wrote: post #94
attah_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then switch from these services while they are still only a few. Revenue is a language they understand. I never understood why anyone would even want a banking app though; there is nothing int can do that a website can't. The browser war can at least still be won or settled; mainstream apps are a lost cause outside the legal arena. Edit: and by switching i don't mean going to some tinfoil grayweb nonsense. Go to thei…

>I never understood why anyone would even want a banking app though; there is nothing int can do that a website can't. A mobile phone app can let users "deposit paper checks from home" without ever driving to the bank branch by taking a photo of the check with the smartphone camera. Last time I looked into it, a desktop website couldn't enable check deposits with a webcam. (EDIT: I don't mean technically not possible…

My credit union let me deposit checks via uploaded picture on browsers back around 2008ish. Don't get me wrong, I did this by taking a picture from my phone and emailing it to myself to upload - the smartphone UX simplifies that. But this is a trail long since blazed.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#109

Post by stavros »

tomp wrote: post #100

> Youtube, Gmail, Spotify, banks and a few other major websites start using Google's WEI API for internal user reputation scoring, forcing non-compliant browsers through more captchas. You forgot the biggest threat: CloudFlare

I have a much easier time getting my sites off of Cloudflare than my content off YouTube.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#110

Post by grishka »

iuhaegpoinqhpoq wrote: post #84
perihelions wrote: post #55

The other day I read an HN comment that thought that when you buy consumer PC hardware, it comes with a ToS that limits your property rights as the owner. It's the kind of uncanny experience I run into more and more often lately: talking with people so immersed in our new normal of cyberpunk dystopia, they seem not to remember how things were in the before-times. So accustomed to exploitative corporate gaslighting, w…

> In the before-times, [...] You used to get full schematics along with the electronics you bought. And by "get", I do NOT mean that you'd have to ask for them. They'd be shipped WITH the products, on paper. It was a normal part of your purchase, just like the manual.

Not only schematics, but what amounts to a complete service manual. You were expected to troubleshoot and fix things yourself back then.
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