Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

hugotunius.se

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

981–990 of 1001 posts

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

#981

Post by the_other »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #585
the_other wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So let’s treat them like the state owned corporations If they were state owned, we could vote for how the profits get used and we would have larger budgets for healthcare and education.

The US federal government alone (not including state and other local governments) spends north of $1 trillion dollars per year on healthcare. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... Another $1.3 trillion on wealth transfers from workers to non workers (including disability). And another $608B on wealth transfers from people with higher income to people with lower or no incomes. Alphabet and Ap…

I didn't suggest anything.

I asked "in what way the companies are state-owned?"

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

#982

Post by BlueTemplar »

jpfromlondon wrote: post #924
shawabawa3 wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you decide you don't want a relationship with either of those companies you will be extremely disadvantaged. Even more worrying is the inverse of this - if Google and/or Apple decide for whatever reason they don't want a relationship with you (aka they ban you for no reason) - you are completely screwed

from an incredibly trivial perspective I was thinking about this recently when I discovered all games operate as saas products now, if for whatever reason you're banned then you can no longer play the product you purchased, what happened to third party mplayer servers?

Not all games. The options are ridiculously more diverse there than for smartphone OSes or even for social media.

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

#983

Post by BlueTemplar »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #753
kristov wrote: post #641

I think the conversation needs to change from "can't run software of our choice" to "can't participate in society without an apple or google account". I have been living with a de-googled android phone for a number of years, and it is getting harder and harder, while at the same time operating without certain "apps" is becoming more difficult. For example, by bank (abn amro) still allows online banking on desktop via…

This. I really liked Huawei phones and I wanted to keep using them after the US forced them to part with Google, but after doing some research and finding out some of the everyday things I wouldn't be able to do due to not having the Google Play Services (I'm not even talking about not having a Google account!), I just gave up.

Which everyday things ?

At this point we programmers should make our voices heard and make it very clear that people still using platforms, or worse, forcing platforms on others, are collaborating with / are totalitarian extremists.

(Yes, this also means those of you still using GitHub, Discord, Reddit, YouTube...)

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

#984

Post by BlueTemplar »

josephg wrote: post #260
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…

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…

KISS : Have a separate device to do banking, and ONLY banking on.

(More tech savvy users could instead boot into a different partition.)

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

#985

Post by BlueTemplar »

GeekyBear wrote: post #458
Aachen wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What worries me is that Google has a fairly legit argument to say "then Apple should as well". But we've accepted Apple's status for so long now, a lot of consumers are stockholmed into thinking giving away control is the only way to have a good phone (evidence: see any thread discussing that maybe Apple should allow other vendors to also use their smartwatch hardware to offer services in non-smartwatch-hardware mark…

> What worries me is that Google has a fairly legit argument to say "then Apple should as well". Not a legal argument, since Apple never claimed the iPhone was anything else but a walled garden, and walled gardens are legal as long as you are clear that users will be buying into a walled garden from the start. (For example: Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox) Legally, the only thing you could do is change the law to make…

I'm willing to pretend that game consoles aren't general purpose computers –

(though not so much with Xbox any more due to the way how Microsoft is trying to bridge the gap with Windows)

− but I'm not willing to pretend that for the very personal computers that smartphones are.

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

#986

Post by BlueTemplar »

fluoridation wrote: post #307
vbezhenar wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ability to run other operating systems on phones > building those alternatives is basically impossible For smart people it is not impossible. Just few years ago, few folks wrote complicated drivers for completely closed hardware, and I'm talking about M1 Macbook. Google Pixel, on the other hand, was pretty open until very recently. I might be wrong about specifics, but I'm pretty sure that most of software was open…

>I don't understand why mobile systems do not attract OS builders. My guess would be that it's a continuously moving target. There's no point in spending years working to support some weird integrated wifi adapter+battery controller when by the time you're done the hardware is already obsolete and no longer being manufactured. Repeat that for every device on the phone. The only ones who can keep up with that pace are…

Well then, it should be more viable today, considering how innovations in the smartphone sector have dramatically slowed down compared to 2005-2015.

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

#987

Post by cnst »

degamad wrote: post #926
cnst wrote: post #912

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the majority of the banking apps without a Google Account on an Android through the Aurora Store: * https://f-droid.org/packages/com.aurora.store/ I've tried it, it works. With Apple, it's all far worse. On iOS, I've discovered that even some preinstalled premium apps, like Pages, Numbers, Keynote, GarageBand, iMovie, don't work unless you add an Apple Account to the system. But with Android, it's relativ…

For now, but Google wants to take that option away.

Actually, no, they don't quite plan to take that away yet. In this sub-thread, we're talking about installing 3rd-party apps without having an Apple Account or a Google Account as an end-user of the device.

What Google has recently proposed to trial next year in just 4 countries, is blocking of unverified apps, but all apps you install from Aurora Store are verified and signed directly through Google, so, they will not be affected.

Basically, even if the 2026 trial succeeds, and becomes worldwide in 2027 or later — both huge ifs to start with — as an end user, you could still install F-Droid, Aurora Store, and then any Google Play Store app without providing an ID, as long as F-Droid and/or Aurora Store developers themselves would be willing to undergo the procedure.

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

#988

Post by GeekyBear »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #985
GeekyBear wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What worries me is that Google has a fairly legit argument to say "then Apple should as well". Not a legal argument, since Apple never claimed the iPhone was anything else but a walled garden, and walled gardens are legal as long as you are clear that users will be buying into a walled garden from the start. (For example: Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox) Legally, the only thing you could do is change the law to make…

I'm willing to pretend that game consoles aren't general purpose computers – (though not so much with Xbox any more due to the way how Microsoft is trying to bridge the gap with Windows) − but I'm not willing to pretend that for the very personal computers that smartphones are.

Windows Phone was also a walled garden.

As was Windows RT on the original Surface tablet.

Nobody is forced to buy into a walled garden.

In those examples, nobody did.

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

#989

Post by BlueTemplar »

Aachen wrote: post #395

The author doesn't seem to understand that you don't need your PlayStation 5 to travel, pay your rent, or authenticate to government services. That's the fundamental difference and why it is valuable that Android is open I agree that there is currently no expectation for Sony to open up their OS to run just any software (such as pirated games). Nobody said that. There should be an open widely supported mobile OS beca…

> You'll have to forfeit popular messengers that your family, friends, landlord, etc. are on; no more mobile banking; extra fees to use online banking at all; extra fees to legally use public transport; no downloading of episodes or music from streaming services for offline use; no phone calls depending on your country's 2G status; etc.

Some of these issues are overblown (depending on your situation), and we better take a stand on all of them now, or it will indeed be too late.

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

#990

Post by matheusmoreira »

josephg wrote: post #359
matheusmoreira wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think of the elderly This stuff is not just for the elderly and computer illiterate. It's for you as well. You think they're going to stop? You're giving up freedom for safety. You will have neither.

> It's for you as well. You think they're going to stop? No! Which is why I don't want every npm package I install to have unfettered access to my internet connection and to access all my files. If this is being exploited now, I might not even know! How sloppy is that! > You're giving up freedom for safety. At the limit, sure, maybe there are tradeoffs between freedom and security. But there's lots of technical solut…

It's not a technical problem. It's a social, legal and business problem.

Computers are subversive. They have the power to not only wipe out entire sectors of the economy but also defeat governments and militaries. If you let people run software freely, they can give themselves the power to do things like block ads and copy artificially scarce data at zero cost, directly impacting the bottom line of corporations. And that's when they don't run cryptography, cryptocurrency and anonymization software to escape government control.

So these businesses and governments have every reason in the world to usurp control of your computer. They want computers to only run software that's been authorized by them, so that you can do nothing that harms their interests.

It's not your computer, it's theirs, they're just letting you use it, and only if you follow company and government policy. And it's not at all about your security against external attackers in general, it's about their security against you.

It's got nothing at all to do with "capabilities". It's got everything to do with putting you in digital shackles so that you are forced to live in a dystopian cyberpunk technofeudalist digital fiefdom as a serf who pays and consumes in perpetuity.

Post reply on HN