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The boiling frog of digital freedom

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Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#211

Post by EGreg »

Aleklart wrote: post #149
EGreg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at this list, open source software is the only thing that can help save us from this future. Whenever a corporation takes control of a widespread open source software (eg Oracle buying MySQL) it is forked by the community (MariaDB). If you don’t have access to the source code, you can’t fork it. And ALL the Web 2.0 platforms of today (on which we have our public forums) won’t give you their back-end software.…

Amazing, not a single mention of FLOSS.

You may have missed this part further down in the economics section: Stallman’s Free Software Movement is more like a gift economy, or perhaps “distributism” (a 19th-century Christian economic system). Those are actually really good, but to pay for resource use in the ecosystem we need an accounting system, and that’s utility tokens.

I believe that decentralized movements need to be named properly. If Stallman named it “Liberating Software” instead of “Free Software”, his movement could have attracted a lot more devotees from the wider open source movement.

Similarly, I believe (my personal viewe) thay if BLM had simply called themselves BLAM (Black Lives Also Matter) their message would have been crystal clear and would have attracted far less controversy and much more support across the political spectrum, avoiding such rejoinders as “All Lives Matter.” In fact it rolls off the tongue better and stronger: BLAM!

When starting a decentralized movement, the naming is crucial as it affects positioning long after it has become bigger than those who began it.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#212

Post by b112 »

0xEF wrote: post #169
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.

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…

This blew my mind as a younger person who took an interest in repairing tube radios from the 30's & 40's.

My Commodore64 had full motherboard schematics in the manual, and I had a 90s tube TV with schematics inside the back of the case.

This change, lack of docs/schematics has happened over a mere 20 years.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#213

Post by devsda »

b3orn wrote: post #87

> 2027: Non-WEI compliant websites are marked as "insecure" by Chrome and Safari. Accessing them requires confirmation through a "yes, I accept the risk" dialog box. Did I misunderstand WEI? It's an API a website can use to confirm that a client is "authentic", so shouldn't this rather be "Goodle/Apple/Facebook/... drops support for Non-WEI compliant browsers".

Think of it as a way for Google coercing websites into implementing WEI.

Any site can be marked as insecure if it doesn't block non wei compliant devices.

You may ask why does that make a website insecure? They can give any number of reasons that can be silly, made up or outright lies as long as they are able to convince larger public.

For example, they can claim that a site that allows shady(read wei non-compliant) clients is more susceptible to hacking and can be a threat to your data and your devices as well. Therefore it is insecure.

This may come across as silly to techies, but it can sound reasonable to people who don't understand the web in general.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#215

Post by b112 »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #188
0xEF wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't say they are intentionally spiteful, just that modern electronics are complex enough, especially highly integrated stuff like smartphones, that the OEM's suppliers would be unhappy if detailed schematics were released. Since they would not be willing to guarantee on the record that they are correct, nor would they want stuff impinging on actual trade secrets to be revealed.

Trade secrets are not secret once in the wild, and are immediately invalidated as a result.

Schematics for things sold, are never trade secrets.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#216

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

jacquesm wrote: post #48
max_ wrote: post #21

We need a new philosophical movement for computer technology. The Stallman movement failed because it was not practical for business applications. At the end of the day, coders & hardware manufacturers need to eat just like accountants, plumbers and doctors. Technology can't rely 100% on altruism. What we need is something close to the Ethical standards of the Stallman movement, but also compatable with business owne…

> The Stallman movement failed The stuff you read on hn... Seriously, you think it failed? I think it succeeded wildly beyond anything anybody imagined at the time, to the point that very large entities threw everything and the kitchensink at it to try to make it fail. Which exposed them for the criminals they were. We don't need anything that is more compatible with 'business owners' than what we've got. What we nee…

[flagged]

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#217

Post by bboygravity »

0xEF wrote: post #169
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.

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…

It's all about milking and rent-seeking: greed.

Every device/vehicle/system now needs to be connected to the internet and needs you to download an app.

Is that for the consumer? No. That's for the manufacturer.

For milking be reselling your data and/or spying on you and/or charging extra because they can and/or the capability to turn any device into literal trash by not providing updates or bug fixes to a half-baked alpha software that it shipped with.

Blame your government. There could and should be laws against that or at the very least incentives to prevent it.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#218

Post by Macha »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #105

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 f…

One of the big Windows 10 S problems is back in Windows 11, though.

1. You buy a device with Windows 11

2. The out of box experience demands you add a Microsoft account to proceed past it. There are workarounds for this, but mostly they are getting shut down.

3. You can't even get into the UEFI to install another OS without signing up to a MS account, because the UEFI is accessed via an OS level advanced startup option rather than the "press delete at bios screen" of the past

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#220

Post by superkuh »

stavros wrote: post #109
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.

I can't even read scientific journal articles (on their journal sites) anymore because the big publishers are putting themselves behind cloudflare walls that just don't work in any browser I try. Pretty much my only access these days is waiting years for it to get on sci-hub or in some of the sciences, finding it on arxiv.
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