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The boiling frog of digital freedom

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Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#251

Post by anonym29 »

attah_ wrote: post #34
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, chrome and google in general are the first in line to cause problems. There are many browsers, many apps, many everything... you can switch whenever... but the DRM and attestation pushes with browsers (and mobile devices) means, that sure, you can use a different browser, but your bank, your streaming service, your newssite might not work unless you're using chrome with drm and hardware attestation. This is alr…

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.

My bank only allows me to do Zelle (instant p2p money transfer) via app, not that a browser would be incapable.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#252

Post by anonym29 »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #66
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. Some banks are phasing out code cards or SMS verification for 2FA, and the only way to get the second factor for logging into the online banking website on your computer, is to use the bank’s app on your phone.

> the only way to get the second factor for logging into the online banking website on your computer, is to use the bank’s app on your phone.

This is utterly false. Yubikey, TOTP-based solutions, there are options. It is a choice by the businesses to not implement those options.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#253

Post by no_time »

grishka wrote: post #102

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…

The requirement of a TPM in w11 will make companies throw millions PCs into shredders in 2025 with the EOL of w10.

Of course there will be enough PCs to go around for practically forever, but the march of time is not going in a direction that you and me will probably like.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#255

Post by marcosdumay »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #206
goku12 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I mean, any smart TV is a dumb tv once you don’t connect it to the internet?

Unless it refuses to turn on without the internet connection.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#256

Post by lapcat »

cachvico wrote: post #236
lapcat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. (Except for the part where you're not actually against of these changes in isolation. I was against all of them.) Notarization is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Mac lockdown. It was just another annoying layer atop the preexisting system of Gatekeeper and Developer ID. Also missing on the Apple side are crucial dates such as 2007, the introduction of the locked down iPhone, and 2008, the introductio…

> Rather, it was justified in terms of protecting the cell phone carriers I don't remember that at all. I do remember Jobs resisting the app store because he wanted everything to be a web app though (despite resisting the move to responsive web design). Can you provide a source for your claim?

> Can you provide a source for your claim?

"Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up" is literally a quote from Steve Jobs.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007/01/steve-jobs-knows-bes...

https://www.engadget.com/2007-01-11-jobs-confirms-iphone-is-...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/steve-jobs-the-iphone-and-open...

https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/0...

https://www.wired.com/2007/01/why-i-want-a-locked-iphone-2/

Of course this just proves another thing I said, which was "Many people seem to forget".

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#258

Post by marcosdumay »

mypastself wrote: post #76
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…

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.

Google just decreed that, starting 2 days ago, nobody may distribute software for my phone...

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#259

Post by kjrose »

drewcoo wrote: post #182
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 there were phones owned by AT&T attached to landlines in every home and business. Attaching your own phone and repairing the phone company's were not allowed. This seems a lot like the same business model you're saying didn't exist before. In fact, AT&T was more draconian. People can pay off their cell phones today. The old wall-tethered units had a monthly rental fee in perpituity.

So many folks don't seem to have remember this. IBM was also the same with the giant mainframes. Even now, if you have a power system, it's pretty much mandatory to pay an ongoing "service agreement" or very quickly you'll discover you have major issues.

I hate that the system has it where you don't own anything and you are supposed to be happy with it. But from a market perspective what else can they do? They need to make a regular income to pay for the development and such, but they also need to deal with the fact that a competitor who offers a freemium or product at a loss but where they can at some point in the future hide future costs will just naturally win.

Re: The boiling frog of digital freedom

#260

Post by pwg »

b112 wrote: post #212
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…

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.

The Atari (400/800, from the Warner Brothers ownership era) also had full schematics /available/ (you had to buy the 'technical reference manual') but they were available. And part of that tech. manual was a printout of the 6502 assembly for the ROM OS.

And if I remember correctly, the tech. manual was something like $20.00 (in circa 1984 dollars, roughly $58 today, and you got about 400 pages of paper, printed on both sides.

So while schematics did not "come with the product in the retail packaging" one could obtain them with only the trouble of ordering a ~$20 (at the time) "book".

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