The big difference is, if you make a fuzz, Apple or Microsoft won't send the secret police after you (not yet anyway), so I guess the only option left is organized outrage on social media (or flee the country to an uncertain future in the "Free West").
They're not secret police because they're not secret, and they're not police. But in the same way, even if you broke no laws, they will punish you all the same. Small people punishing other small people for angering their "betters".
Explain to me how this is better.
I wonder if you could post benchmarks of a "Big American Database" and get away with it.
"Benchmarking. Customer may conduct benchmark tests of the Services (each a "Test"). Customer may only publicly disclose the results of such Tests if it (a) obtains Google's prior written consent, (b) provides Google all necessary information to replicate the Tests, and (c) allows Google to conduct benchmark tests of Customer's publicly available products or services and publicly disclose the results of such tests."
I guess you'd get in trouble when you go to publish the results, but we probably would have heard about that by now if it ever happened with Google.
Put open source in the best possible light and highlight the DeWitt clause at the same time.
"e.Benchmark Testing. You may not disclose the results of any benchmark test of either the Server Software or Client Software to any third party without Microsoft’s prior written approval."
Hasty addition: I doubt random benchmarks would be threatened with legal action -- but the key is you are technically breaking your license agreement by posting a benchmark. I'm sure the likelihood of whatever DB company pursuing action depends on both the company, who you are, and in what avenue you posted your benchmark.
If you're well known, have a large audience, and publish a bad benchmark of Oracle DB, I would be very surprised if Oracle didn't contact you directly and demand some action.
This is only for B2C though.
It's all cost for me, none for them, just to make them behave decently in the first place.
The competitors could not respond with counter comparisons due to the first company's license, and so instead they added their own prohibitions to stop the first company.
Some of them just adopted the same blanket prohibition, but some were more subtle, going for reciprocity rather than prohibition--you could not publish benchmarks comparing their product to others unless you could grant or obtain for them permission to also publish benchmarks doing the same comparison. Some also required that you publish complete details of your testing so that it could be reproduced.
I don't know if anyone still uses the reciprocity approach. I'd expect that there would be plenty of loopholes that someone (Oracle?) could use to get around it that any big player using it would have given up and went for a straight prohibition.
Actually there is a good story behind it. See: "Larry Ellison allegedly tried to have a professor fired for benchmarking Oracle" [0] and the related HN discussion. [1]
[0] https://danluu.com/anon-benchmark/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333
Speeding is illegal but people do it all the time. Small time blogs posting a few numbers might not rise to the attention of the big dogs, but their license terms are clear and Oracle for sure has threatened action in the past.
macOS is nowhere near as bad as Windows. You can still use it without an Apple account, and there are no ads/spyware (unless you really want to pick straws) even if you do use an Apple account.
It's better than Windows, but it's still spyware.
PRISM is an internal codename for (not bulk! specific!) downloading of data direct from FAANG et al servers under FISA Amendments Act section 702. It's warrantless but is not bulk/mass surveillance. (Also, it technically is a "court order" as there is a secret rubber stamp "FISA court", but it doesn't require a warrant or probable cause, or allow for review/appeal because it's proceedings are classified.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intell...
Theoretically it's not supposed to be used against US citizens but Snowden has claimed that a secret interpretation in a secret court has decided that it can be.
https://www.eff.org/702-spying
They use it a ton, though, as it's the #1 most used source in the US IC. Apple turns over more than 30k user accounts of data under warrantless FISA orders each year, per their own transparency report.
That said, Apple has (in response to my blog post you linked) committed to a) encrypting that OCSP traffic in the next macOS, and b) deleting all of their stored logs.
That wouldn't have stopped the IC from monitoring all of that previous unencrypted traffic and logging it themselves, though, but that has nothing to do with PRISM/FISA. That's bulk collection, which is a different thing than PRISM.
We have to make general purpose computers secure or they die out except for servers and hobbyists.
We have to make GP computer users accept the inconvenience of security, or GP computers will die out.
I don’t think that’s a viable plan.
I’ve seen countless HN and HN-alike folks talk about how they hold the root ssh keys to their kingdoms on a Mac that they’ve disabled SIP on, simply because it inconvenienced them one time (and not for genuine technological necessity).
If you can think of a way to change our collective minds, you have my support, but I’ve tried everything I know and essentially given up talking about such things on HN anymore. Everyone who understands is already doing the right things; everyone that isn’t talks as loudly as possible about their way of doing it, and swarm to shut down any suggestion that they should burden themselves with security.
Good luck.
There are many people that wants child rapists to get death penalty, a lot of people liked Bush, Trump or Putin, or believe some guy living 2000 years ago did wonderful things against the laws of physics. They are not really thinking about the consequences on society, they don't know how a computer work and what is going to happen if behemoths get in control of their entire life, which is well on its way.
Because a computer is not your regular run off the mill appliance. It drives the way people communicate, think, consume, are informed and monitored.
When even Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi jump on the bandwagon of "oh, we changed your configuration behind your back whether you like it or not," it's hard for me to have hope for the future. But Windows 11 is beyond the pale. As it is, I've already skipped Windows 8 and 10, and 11 is an even harder pass.
There are more options than ever before to avoid corporate lock-in nowadays. It just doesn't come to you - you have to go to it.
Also how's hardware support? Last time I used Linux on a desktop, admittedly a few years ago, I still had to futz around with wireless and video drivers routinely.
BUT, if you want to use a laptop then I believe the System76 or Dell XPS line of laptops (just be careful about the nostril camera models) are quite Linux friendly.
Edit: My main PC has an nvidia graphics card (GeForce GTX 1070) and I admittedly had to use the proprietary Nvidia drivers instead of the FOSS equivalent for better performance. Like you I had to fuss around a little to find a version that did not crash my system (I settled on nvidia-driver-460 for Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon kernel 5.4). I probably wouldn't go for Nvidia next time and do my homework before buying graphics hardware. But I can play Windows games using Wine and it uses the graphics card which was surprising for me! For anything else like wireless stuff I find that most hardware just works out of the box. I usually just look for the word "linux" somewhere in the description and then I know that it will work. And you usually don't have to install drivers for stuff like wireless cards / dongles, bluetooth, keyboards, and mice. It just works in my recent experience.
I still have a Linux workstation for big tasks, but XPS has been good enough to wean me off Macs ever since they introduced the touch bar, which was a hard pass for me.
Caveat:
I had to swap the radio in the first one due to driver issues, and I continue to experience occasional issues with Bluetooth, suspend and graphics rendering.
It's not all roses, but the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages (for me at least).
-Intel GPU in CPU (No firmware required/works even without)
-Or AMD GPU, Nvidia is not that linux-friendly. AMD GPU requires firmware-amd-graphics on debian
-Realtek wifi (I heard a lot of bad things about Broadcom). Requires firmware-realtek on debian
ps. Also, forget about iOS. Half the websites I try to use nowadays dont even work on Firefox on desktop and I need to use a chromium browser to get them to work.
I assume half is hyperbole, but even then, I can’t remember a single site (besides some experimental demos) that doesn’t work for me. What do you do that you encounter so many?
Turned out it was ulock-origin. Disabling it for those sites made the sites work. I’m not entirely sure exactly what JavaScript package was being blocked but try that .
The one that stole your data and was correctly blocked by ublock.
>disabling ublock
>not using NoScript
>F You
>switch useragent to chrome
>It works
Thank you Microsoft!
Are you sure they don't work because some parts are axed by an adblocker? I use only Firefox without any issues, except a few cases in which turning off or reconfiguring the usual adblockers does the job. And I keep uMatrix on, which blocks a lot of stuff by default.
I guess the open web is a bit better in this regard?
* VPN for network encryption
* Black hole filters for telemetry
* OS-like special purpose software running as admin to escape from default OS tooling (i.e browsers, game launchers)
* Throwaway accounts for all online services
* VMs for everything else
* A strong stomach to endure this burden
And patiently explaining windows and apple is not the way :)
I never personally met anyone installing a non cracked version of photoshop in windows.
But if you definitely need photoshop (case: you are a real comercial designer/photographer)is best to get a Mac, you can get 5 years out of it if you tweak it a bit. I just find mac is going the wrong way just to make more money and that is the world we live in!
- Vote for a political party which creates laws to protect privacy
- Donate to companies like Signal, Noyb.eu, EFF who had success fighting for user privacy
Why is this off the table? This is precisely what you do. The other thing you do is tend your own garden and not worry about what operating system other people use.
With almost all OS updates I find the focus of new features are things that I never use even on my personal machines as a regular user, though I recognize many people do use these features. Computers are appliances for most people. Steve Jobs vision is coming to full fruition. Smart phones just had to show how it could work. And for most people computers are infinitely more usable and less scary today.
With that being said, I do think Windows 11 looks quite nice and there are a lot of little quality of life improvements. Also the removal of the awful tiles in the start menu will save me time from removing each tile one by one, so I can’t be all mad here.
I imagine if you have Windows 10 Pro you can upgrade to 11 Pro for free. I also wonder if the consumer version of Windows 11 just starts becoming truly free because Microsoft knows they will make money on search, subscriptions, and enterprise.
If it's not too late to radically alter our economic system to combat climate change (which I certainly hope it isn't) I think we can fix tech by almost extension.
The solution is to stop being a passive spectator and to start making proactive decisions. To make proactive decisions, you will need to decide what is important to you since you will never find the perfect solution. (There never was a perfect solution in any domain, only better and worse ones for a particular situation.)
If you've decided that you need Windows, that's fine. You will have to deal with the consequences of that particular decision, but it does not have to dictate every decision that follows. You can still choose applications that don't impose some sort of consumption model, require online accounts, or depend upon telemetry. I don't know what the situation is like for commercial software under Windows (surely there are some vendors who respect privacy), but there are always open source alternatives to consider. Feel free to choose according to your circumstances. If you're a graphics designer who needs Adobe products for your job, but can get away with LibreOffice for administrative tasks, then choose that mixture. Even though your decision won't put any pressure on Adobe, someone else's decision may (e.g. an office worker who uses Office 365 and Inkscape).
The way I see it, there are two big problems with the computer industry today: people don't like to acknowledge competing products that may better serve their needs when there is already a dominant player, and those who are aware of the alternatives are rarely willing to support them. In effect, this problem is partially the making of consumers who have been behaving as passive spectators.
For information, you can bring your phone with you everywhere but it is hard to do so with a laptop, so a phone wins. Phones are also easy to use for calls/messages and video, where the camera is actually better than anything available on a laptop.
A few people might want to balance their budgets, but it is also pretty easy to do on your phone, as your bank probably has an app that you can use and if not, your phone is plenty fast to do that.
Gamers might be the last who cares about the more powerful computers, but even then dedicated gamer phones exist, so maybe that niche is also slowly aging out as new gamers grew up with phones.
If you want some sort of solution, I think having a really good Linux build that works and which can be deployed on laptops in the moment a person gets too tired of windows is always a solid idea.
The tech monopolies want their tithe. That's why you can't buy Photoshop or office anymore.
Soon you won't buy Windows, you will simply rent it forever. One day you won't own your phone or computer either. It's far more profitable to extract rent from your customers indefinitely when you're the only game in town.
The government needs to step in. By a great many metrics were living in another 30's gilded age, robber barons and all.
Windows basically does not exist for home users except a few Western countries, and even there it's just due to inertia.
I've had great success with Ubuntu for non-technical users. For games you get a game console or play something in the browser. For everything else Ubuntu will do just fine.
Same with macOS... Regular folk have no reason to buy macOS. It's pure class signaling at this point.
Of course, there are business tools on each of these OSes, but if you make money with Adobe tools might as well buy the Pro OS.
I know that this post is peak HackerNews hipsterism/"old man yells at cloud," so I want to try to make it constructive: what can be done, at this point? What is the strategic move, beyond something like going with Linux or BSD for personal use? Is it too late and we've entered "hope for the best" territory?
Edit: To clarify, I do already use Linux, which wasn't clear from my initial wording. It's just that I worry it isn't "enough."