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The boiling frog of digital freedom

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Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#161

Post by layer8 »

dTal wrote: post #147
layer8 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apps shouldn’t be web apps anyway. Local-first apps should be the default, in the context of digital freedom. The only exception being self-hostable web apps.

I see your point, in the sense that local software is in theory more permanent, more reliable. But the issue is more subtle that you are describing. Is the local-first program* free software, or proprietary adware? Is its sole function to communicate with some particular company's API? What is better for digital freedom, the Reddit website or the official "Reddit app"? If a company is going to be gating their API beh…

You are right, we also need open protocols. With Usenet or IRC or email (or even Reddit and Twitter until recently), local apps are perfectly fine, because everyone can write their own client if they want. That gives you more freedom than being stuck with a proprietary web app.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#162

Post by bluescrn »

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…

> This rather heavily begs the question what do we mean by "freedom"?

Freedom is what 'the bad guys' want, so good people must do everything they can to destroy it.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#163

Post by [deleted] »

guy4261 wrote: post #151
ume wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Your and others' comments on this thread remind me of a though I had lately. In the "before times", you would buy things that would last. So naturally, the companies that made them could not sell new products. Planned obsolescence was one natural outcome that we ended up with. An electrical engineers I know told me how designing a CPU that would last a lifetime is relatively easy compared to designing an equipment th…

[deleted]

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#164

Post by dalbasal »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #135
dalbasal wrote: post #126

I like timelines and other formalisations as of thinking/discussing about digital freedom... and I agree that this is a key freedom battleground in the coming decades (maybe centuries). Alongside this, I think it's worth keeping in mind gradual changes without discreet dates. For example, online copyright enforcement/existence has been on a complex, but directional journey over the 20 years. Same for "safety" and oth…

> For a short time copyright looseness made "mashups" a major musical genre I listen to remixes all the time. Not sure what you listen to but they're massive in electronic music.

Sure. Hiphop also still exists.

However, both genres have origin stories that's deeply intertwined with copyright litigation, enforcement and their development.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#165

Post by brandonmenc »

0dayz wrote: post #113

There are I think certain issues with this timeline, for starters I've yet to hear a counter proposal to drm to protect the artists work (the real issue is not even usually piracy but instead parasitic piracy and forgery, hence why copyright exist originally). Instead you'll hear anecdotes or idealistic arguments for why an artist have to gamble with getting money for their work. Similarly there are most likely valid…

> I've yet to hear a counter proposal to drm to protect the artists work

> Instead you'll hear anecdotes or idealistic arguments for why an artist have to gamble with getting money for their work.

This is the current state for nearly every single artist even with DRM, because things like DRM seem to almost exclusively benefit a handful of people at the rest of the world’s expense.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#166

Post by wincy »

passion__desire wrote: post #155
notsurenymore wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an old IBM luggable at one point that had the BIOS source listed in manual.

Well things are so complex now that if they provide you with source code, it would be so easy to make 0days.

Don’t you think in the long term this would result in better source code and hardened software, similar to what’s happened with the Linux source code?

Right now the NSA just has all the 0days instead.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#167

Post by GeekyBear »

ballenf wrote: post #136
mypastself wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which ownership rights do the sellers retain now that they didn’t previously? I’m not familiar with any ToS that permits a company to repossess your PC or parts of it. If you’re talking about manufacturers making their devices more difficult to repair or voiding warranties based on minor modifications, that doesn’t mean you can’t do what you want with the item. It just means you can’t force the company to fix or repl…

> I’m not familiar with any ToS that permits a company to repossess your PC or parts of it. I would call iCloud locking an embodiment of this. It's probably an unpopular example because people seem to broadly like it, but it does demonstrate the principal that the seller retains full control of the hardware and can "repossess" the device. The original purchaser does not receive a master unlock code. Even if locking y…

> I would call iCloud locking an embodiment of this.

Activation locks were required by law to deter armed theft.

> A new report from Reuters found that iPhone theft dropped by 50 percent in London, 40 percent in San Francisco and 25 percent in New York. The drops represent theft activity as measured during the 12 months following Apple’s introduction of the remote locking feature in September 2013 as part of iOS 7.

With iOS 8, Apple made its so-called said “kill switch” active by default, in accordance with California regulation, and that should help the rates of theft continue to trend downwards.

https://techcrunch.com/2015/02/11/apples-activation-lock-lea...

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#168

Post by couchand »

seangrogg wrote: post #108
jasode wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yes, this is one of those things that banks will sell as an add-on because capitalism. Credit unions will either just not have their act together on it (i.e. they contract with a bad service provider) or will have all kinds of useful stuff like this for free.

I really want a general-membership credit union with stellar technology, but I haven't found one yet. Does your credit union by chance offer open membership?

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#169

Post by 0xEF »

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.

This blew my mind as a younger person who took an interest in repairing tube radios from the 30's & 40's. One of the first things I realized was how generally easy it was to find schematics of popular brands and models. Some were even pasted right inside the radio shell!

I also hack and repair modern stuff, and it is so common to open up a product just to end up staring at an epoxy blob. User manuals hold no mention of service tips, but instead are near-useless "quick start" guides that might review functionality, if the manufacturer is feeling generous.

Modern tech seems so remarkably spiteful toward the consumer and consumers themselves just seem to roll with it. Sometimes I hear them use arguments like "Company X doesn't want Company Z making knock-offs" as though these knock-off manufacturers aren't already expert reverse engineers. I feel the locking down of consumer tech is more about forcing the consumer into a state of dependancy on the manufacturer than it is about protecting any intellectual properties. They conflate "repeate business" with customers being forced to return for repairs or replacements instead of willfully returning because they trust the quality and brand.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#170

Post by flangola7 »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #138
KirillPanov wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a values problem. The technical issues here are complex. Can you explain bootloader locking or remote attestation to your grandmother? Personally I think a better approach is to push the phrase "right to recycle and repurpose" as much as possible. People get that. Everybody personally has seen the unsettling amount of e-waste that passes through their ownership and into a landfill somewhere. Right…

How does it follow though. Bootloader locking and remote attestation don't stop you recycling devices or even repurposing them. They stop you changing the OS stack to an unknown one and then using them for the exact same purposes as before. That's much harder to explain and it boils down to in most cases, people still in love with the idea that one day a hacker/grassroots OS may become popular. Which is fun for devel…

>Bootloader locking and remote attestation don't stop you recycling devices or even repurposing them.

Not even close to true.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/43jywd/why-tens-of-thousands...

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