What's novel is that the tech reports you to the authorities. Imagine your AV reporting you to the authorities for digital piracy, it's something that RIAA could only dream of back in the day. Now it's becoming a reality.
Just bought a System76 laptop. Happy birthday Linux!
Since they have had the ability and incentive to stop music piracy that way for at least a decade, and haven't done it, that should tell you something.
Sight Piracy as the reason, but get better conversion tracking for those sweet Ad clicks. We all know which companies would be drooling at the prospects of this.
Sadly this isn't hypothetical, Card companies have colluded with the data hoarders in the past for this exact purpose.
https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/how-to-turn-off-smar...
The free market serves only the masses. Everybody else can only hope to buy what they want.
If there will be unavailable goods or services, I will be forced to do without.
And they are NOT generally valid.
For example, I stopped listening to broadcast radio in the 1990s - I've never missed it and I've done without quite happily.
I stopped watch any of the mainstream TV networks in the 2000s - I've never missed it and I've done without quite happily.
I've never used a music streaming service to this day - I've never missed it and I've done without quite happily.
No one piece of media is SO VALUABLE that it's irreplaceable or necessary to have access to. NONE.
I'm not a slave to whatever emotional beast would DEMAND I live crappy music or music only available from streaming. It can always be substituted either with music from other sources or living without it entirely.
If Justine Bieber was wiped from existence, my life would not change one iota. Same goes for pretty much ALL other "artists" today - and that's made easier because most are pure garbage without any musical talent anyway. Want to put up barriers to entry preventing me from getting garbage? OK. Thanks, I guess?
It will turn out like the Saints football tickets - they can't even give them away.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/08/get-woke-go-broke-n...
you make this statement, but then you just have a bunch of examples where it is not specifically valid for you.
I'm not so optimistic.
How many people among Apple's users actually understand how evil this is, and among those, how many do really, actually care? People seem fine enough with Facebook's data vacuuming, why would they protest against Apple's "non-intrusive" scheme? They "don't hate children" and, of course, "have nothing to hide".
The issue, as has been brought up in one form or another in the numerous threads on the subject, is that people like their comfort (using smartphones) and there really isn't that much of a choice.
> The good news is running OSX made me lazy, and getting back into running a linux or freebsd laptop again is going to be fun.
And therein lies the rub. Many people wouldn't find doing this fun. They'd much prefer being able to watch Netflix in ultra high-def and not having to futz around with Nvidia's drivers or what have you.
I think they were being sarcastic, maybe not. Either way, you're right. And this is why WE need to be doing this so that it becomes a viable option.
Now is the time to get the open alternatives shored up, and to start creating a viable and concise pathway and ecosystem that we can recommend to “non-techies” who are looking for an alternative.
That can only happen if we start using this stuff now, and commit to donating some time and effort to take the deficiencies we find in our own use and make them better.
It’s fine to vent, and I hope to see people continue to call big tech out. But putting on a more positive mindset, this is actually an amazing opportunity we have to start creating the change we want to see.
2. Buy the best that exists today (ie System76)
3. Give monthly critical feedback every step of the way to open source hw/sw companies and their competitors about what you really need in the next version
4. Buy a Better world
Ask HN: Do you use Purism, PinePhone, or Fairphone? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28164208
Ask HN: Do you use a Linux-first laptop? (System76, Librem, Dell XPS Dev Ed) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28216287
System 76 are cool, but when the time comes we will build custom PCs for work. The "aura" and "coolness" of Apple is gone.
I admit that my decision to use only Apple computers in the office was irrational and tainted by emotional perception from the past. I almost puled the trigger for M1 Air and was planning to upgrade office Macbook Pro's to M1X. Not anymore.
If, and i doubt it in any reasonable time, you can replace all of apples ecosystem, including buying / renting of DRM media i would switch. until then switching is quite a big step back.
the problem is not lack of software so much as it’s lack of industry support.
Many of them know that the photos, videos, music from their old iPhone would be available in their new iPhone after they sign-in; But do they really understand what happened in-between to enable that, Should they even know that? That's what Apple is banking on.
It would be pragmatic to expect even technically equipped Apple fans to call-out Apple's latest hypocrisy and move away from the ecosystem. They didn't do it earlier, They didn't do it when it came to light that Apple knew that its contractors exploited child labor[1], They wouldn't do it now.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apple-knew-a-suppli...
This is the real threat here. Anyone can have data flagged at any time, by accident or maliciously. Like how any video can be flagged for copyright infringement and the creator is 'punished by the process' regardless of guilt/innocence. A possible fix would be to have severe financial punishments for every false claim (lets say a million bucks per instance). Imagine how careful the system would be designed if that were the case, verses the case where there is no punishment for false claims.
By doing surveillance on types of images, Apple is in effect implementing anti-virus - for ideas. That's only a bit hyperbolic, as the perceptual hash for a viral meme can be searched on, just like the material they're using as a pretext for it.
I could even see them announcing it at a launch. We should be concerned that the company has skipped its Black Mirror stage and jumped right into its Universal Paperclips endgame.
(I'm also appreciating the irony that people like me being angry about Apple announcing they're going to implement a version of what Google has already been technically able to do for the last decade, and what Microsoft has probably been doing in secret since even before then.)
You can't make these apps for iOS (NSFW!) https://sexgames.citor3.com/
And arguably, if you've tried apps like those in actual VR their impact doesn't come close in non VR. But, since Apple doesn't carry porn in the app store and doesn't allow other stores Apple is effectively banning thoughts.
iPhone=Disneyland, Linux=Real world
Because some cultures have a religious-inherited "sin-avoidance" problem, and e.g. try to ban alcohol, disney-fy public discussion, lose it if a tit is accidentally shown, and are "shocked" if somebody utters "fuck" in a late night show.
(It doesn't help that many of the "adult" population behave like children and throw a fit if their morality as to the above is "challenged").
Now, put these cultures, for historical reasons, in charge of technology platforms...
All of these, and more, turn into some state duty (in turn imposed on corporations) to handle moderation and control content in behalf of adult audiences (e.g FCC rules, Hayes code, Apple's ban of political, sex, etc apps, and so on).
This leads to the child-ification of the adult population, where the "adults" in charge know better and protect the masses.
___ begin translation ___
some (presumably christian) cultures consider it important to promote a societal standard of morality that encourages self-control as the basis for sustainably safeguarding individual liberty while being (increasingly more) tolerant of aberrant ways of self-expression.
As with every culture, its members defend their way of life and morals.
Put these cultures in control of technology platforms and you will see that they will attempt to strike the right balance between personal freedoms and public responsibility and even failing at that sometimes under pressure from various interests (commercial, the self-interest of spy agencies who want to make their job easier, post-modernist denial of christian cultural norms of morality and personal freedom, far left activism that seeks to dox, cancel, and censor all opposition)*.
___ end translation ___
*I'm pointing out some of the overtly anti-christian or worldview agnostic interests at play to highlight the highly oversimplified anti-traditionalist/anti-conservative/anti-christian slant of the parent comment.
Maybe just maybe we can have a nuanced conversation without all the finger pointing and scapegoating, and recognize that there's some legitimacy to each of these values that sometimes conflict with each other and figuring out the right balance is challenging.
Linux phones are only for the most masochistic of techies.
Average Joe who is uninformed about tech will just assume you get something for your money, and by that measure, iPhones must be the best.
I chose Android which comes with it's own problems, but I prefer the way it works, and literally everything about Apple rubs me the wrong way.
Well, what Apple did is squarely Black Mirror stage, nowhere near Universal Paperclips.
Should we call that anti-dissent? Or thought police?
So the ability to store child porn is what constitutes "de facto ownership" in your mind?
But why would they "use this tech to hunt down bitcoin owners"? They could just scan emails or photos directly. Doing it by way of neural hashes and vouchers seems like an absurdly complicated detour when they already own the OS and all the most commonly used apps.
Also , your photos are only scanned on their way to iCloud. Turn off icloud photos and nothing will be scanned.
Besides, the laws around child porn have always been different from other laws, they have preemptively scanned for that for as long as I can remember, without probable cause.
This same tech can (and will likely) be used to find the owners of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency wallets, honeypot tokens, community identities, and to provide profiling information to the company's political masters. The collisions in the hashing scheme mean that you can insert anything you want onto peoples devices and get them pulled into the legal system once it is flagged, where the process itself is the punishment. The whole scheme is too stupid to ever have been about reason, it's just pretexts and narrative, and this is as good a time as any to exit their ecosystem.
Apple really picked the wrong time to attempt this, as I do not see anyone who understands how evil this is ever forgiving them. The most charitable thing I can say about it is that they're probably just doing it as part of a deal to avoid anti-trust plays, where Apple plays ball with the feds and its parties, and the storm just magically passes them over. The good news is running OSX made me lazy, and getting back into running a linux or freebsd laptop again is going to be fun.