The boiling frog of digital freedom

Post by echelon » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #174

guy4261 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I wonder if there was a way we could take the other path. Keep manufacturing solid, long lasting products but also being financially sound. Regulation. Fun fact: this is still possible! It's a little harder – it'll have to be steadily introduced, in multiple countries at once (so we don't break international trade), starting in the areas where it's cheapest to produce lasting equipment (so enforcement doesn't take…

Post by carapace » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 1:26 PM UTC

MarketingJason wrote: post #172

iuhaegpoinqhpoq wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wonder if gaming consoles had a big hand in this? Going back to Atari pong in the early/mid 70's and I don't recall if any of the major players (Magnavox, Atari, Coleco, Sears) included anything close to schematics.

Post by jfengel » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

yenwodyah wrote: post #192

GeekyBear wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. W…

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that a law with good intentions has prefaced a loss of freedom

Post by baq » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

goku12 wrote: post #196

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…

General purpose desktop computing isn't dead yet. It's still available - but barely. Now is the time to save it, or it will be gone soon. The same thing happened to TVs. There are nearly no 'dumb' TVs that doesn't do anything more than just display the video signal. All the 'smart' ('over-smart' is more appropriate) TVs out there take too long to start and they almost always phone home to their overlords. The really…

Post by dennis_jeeves1 » Sun, Sep 03, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

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…