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We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

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Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#611

Post by rickdeckard »

betaby wrote: post #55

EU is dropping the ball here. Instead of mandating open hardware they trying to force companies to comply with random stuff, mostly censorship and spying. In theory EU can mandate open bootloaders like EU mandates USB-C charging, but they won't. Open hardware is the enemy of the EU, since that means everyone would be able to bypass the chatcontrol of the day.

> In theory EU can mandate open bootloaders like EU mandates USB-C charging, but they won't.

The EU cannot simply mandate random stuff, it needs to make a strong case and prove an economic benefit considering also the possible negative consequences.

Noone is forced to do business in the EU, so it always has to consider the cost and risk for a company vs. the overall benefit for a company of doing business in the EU.

Defining a mandate for "open hardware" is a MASSIVE undertaking, creating investment risks for innovators, potential security-risks for the entire EU, additional costs for development, maintenance, support for all manufacturers selling in that market.

What is the economic, technology-agnostic case in favor of open bootloaders which would make EU member-countries support such a regulation?

How much would a manufacturer be required to provide to be compliant? Continued operation even when the trust-chain is broken? Developer Documentation? compilable source-code? Hardware-warranty?

Should a car still be allowed to operate after it's unlocked? Should it behave somehow differently to ensure safety for its owner as well as others? How about an elevator? How about a Microwave?

What would be the tangible economic benefit of such a mandate to companies and citizens in the EU sector?

For a regulatory action, all of this needs to be described in an agnostic way, providing a clear path for a manufacturer to be compliant without creating too much burden on any party in the process.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#612

Post by Zak »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #76
wkat4242 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here. However the interests you mention aren't collective at all but very…

Its only the manufacturers interests because they dont want people to brick their phone on accident. Really theyre only a secondary party of interest, the real interested party is grandma/anyone who can fall victim to malware. Apples decision to ban sideloading is a huge part of how they became the most popular phone maker in the us

> Apples decision to ban sideloading is a huge part of how they became the most popular phone maker in the us

I'm skeptical. A robust permission model limiting the damage an ill-behaved app was surely part of it, as was the existence of a curated app store. The relative rarity of people directly installing apps on Android suggests Apple didn't really need to force the use of that curated store.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#613

Post by mlrtime »

walthamstow wrote: post #476
fragmede wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you recommend a password manager to everyone you know? What's the adoption rate?

I have tried repeatedly to get my wife to use the family 1Password account for things we will both need, with minimal success. She is reasonably technical, she writes SQL, but she just won't do it.

1Password is completely broken in android. I have barely a 50% success rate with it filling in passwords, I'm usually copy/pasting back and forth.

If there were anything better and as easy to use as Chrome, I'd switch.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#614

Post by intended »

worldsayshi wrote: post #555
Levitz wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. I wouldn't call it utopian, but I'd say we are way past "peak democracy" at this point. There was a time in which corporations did get broken up when too large, when we did understand that it's about serving the population first and accumulating wealth after that, when corporations influencing politics was widely seen as a negative. It doe…

There's no reason why democracy can't peak again and reach new heights. But that won't happen automatically. Personally I think there are technological preconditions for stable democracy that have recently been countered by authoritarian leaning technology. We need to invent counter technology to those things.

There is no authoritarian leaning technology. People figured out how to create 1984 while saying they defend free speech.

It is simply that, eventually, people learn how to use technology to their advantage.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#615

Post by mlrtime »

mcv wrote: post #574
josephg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents are getting old and they aren't tech savvy. The missing piece here is that I want my parents to have a computer they can safely do their banking on, without leaving them vulnerable to scams and viruses and the like. I like that they have iphones. Doing internet banking on their phone is safer than doing it on their desktop computer. Why is that? The reason is that the desktop PC security model is deeply fl…

Good point. The current security model of desktop OSs sucks. I was recently reminded of this by an issue at work. I'm used to devs having admin rights on their laptops, but here they closed that down: you have to request admin rights for a specific purpose, and then you get them for a week. I recently requested those rights again because I needed to install something new for a PoC I was working on, and that wasn't al…

It's not theater, your IT department just isn't implementing it correctly. I recently switched jobs and gave up one macbook pro for another (work issued).

Company A gave me sudo access and I could do anything I wanted.

Company B locks down everything, no sudo, no brew, nothing. But I do get a big VM with root to do anything I want. There is an approved "appstore" of many different varieties of IDEs/tools.

TLDR: Not having brew is not a problem, and /can be/ a better experience if done right.

It took a couple weeks to shift the mental model but I have no problems. The dev experience is quite good because they provide all the libraries you need to do your job.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#616

Post by wizzwizz4 »

lwhi wrote: post #566
safety1st wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only competition can provide a solution. We have lost sight of this principle even though all Western democracies are built on the idea of separation of powers, and making it hard for any one faction of elites to gain full control and ruin things for everyone else. Make them fight with each other, let them get a piece of the pie, but never all of it. That's why we have multiple branches of government, multiple partie…

In fact true competition is only possible via open standards, protocols and technology stacks. We need agreement to ensure the large corporations adhere to these.

We don't need agreement for this. In the past, hardware was limited, and you could only really implement one (maybe two) network stacks before things got silly. Nowadays, a software-defined radio can speak ten thousand protocols, for a lower cost than saving a cat video to your hard drive.

We only need that the standards are open, and described clearly enough for a schoolchild to implement, and that we are not prevented from adding additional protocol support to systems we acquire.

Hardware protocols are a bit different, but I actually dislike the USB-C standardisation. We already had better de-facto standards (e.g. small, "fixed-function" devices like feature phones and e-readers all use Micro USB-B for charging). Our problems were mainly "this laptop barrel charger is incompatible with this other laptop barrel charger", and proprietary Apple connectors.

The most important hardware protocol is power supply, which we can fix by requiring well-documented, user-accessible contacts that, when sufficiently-clean power is applied to them, will power the device. These could be contacts on the motherboard (for something designed to be opened up), or something like Apple's Smart Connector (without the pointless "I'll refuse to charge until you handshake!" restriction).

Requiring open, well-documented protocols which aren't unnecessarily-complicated is imo more important than requiring standard protocols.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#617

Post by mlrtime »

lentil_soup wrote: post #376
josephg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents are getting old and they aren't tech savvy. The missing piece here is that I want my parents to have a computer they can safely do their banking on, without leaving them vulnerable to scams and viruses and the like. I like that they have iphones. Doing internet banking on their phone is safer than doing it on their desktop computer. Why is that? The reason is that the desktop PC security model is deeply fl…

But you can choose, your parents can have a phone with the "lockdown" setting turned on and I can have it off if I want. How we expose and handle that setting is a UX problem we can solve. What's wrong with that?

Because parents typically have bad eyes and need big monitors, or they just want to be able to use a computer like we have been for years?

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#618

Post by Liftyee »

ozim wrote: post #497

Going to be contrarian. Why not build your own hardware and run your own software on it, instead of screaming at clouds of big tech. There is Fairphone as an example so it is possible to build/buy hardware directly.

> Why not build your own hardware

Haven't looked at this in depth, but designing and manufacturing a phone with a similar miniaturization level and performance to commercial models is a huge electronics/firmware/design engineering challenge. Additionally, often the datasheets for processors, etc. are difficult to obtain and/or under NDA.

Nothing a group of determined engineers with the funding and connections couldn't achieve, but it's no easy task. Fairphone required a few million $ to develop the first model.

Either way, developing software is hard enough - having to build hardware too moves the project toward "pipe dream" territory IMO.

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#619

Post by tpoacher »

tzury wrote: post #84

We need both options to coexist: 1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation 2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection This concept of "I should run any code on hardware I own" is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we s…

I know you weren't using it in this way, but I do appreciate the double meaning of the word "protection" here.

A.k.a, "nice google account you've got there, holding all your memories, emails, contacts, and interface to modern living; would be a shame if something happened to it because you decided to sideload an app ..."

Re: We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

#620

Post by arcbyte »

zmmmmm wrote: post #165

> In this context this would mean having the ability and documentation to build or install alternative operating systems on this hardware It doesn't work. Everything from banks to Netflix and others are slowly edging out anything where they can't fully verify the chain of control to an entity they can have a legal or contractual relationship with. To be clear, this is fundamental, not incidental. You can't run your o…

Perhaps we should pick a page from the example of radio and force all video content to be openly reproducible for a forced flat fee.
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