As an example of government regulation driving this change, see [1].

This regulation of NSW, Australia considers rooted devices with extra non-Google/non-Apple approved security features such as a duress/wipe PIN (a standard feature of GrapheneOS[2]) as a "dedicated encrypted criminal communication device". How the device is being used doesn't matter. It's how it _could_ be used.

[1] https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190...

[2] https://grapheneos.org/features#duress

I don't know that it's that simple. Further down that section (1920) in reference [1] reads

"(3) A dedicated encrypted criminal communication device does not include-- (a) a device if-- (i) the device has been designed, modified or equipped with software or security features, and (ii) a reasonable person would consider the software or security features have been applied for a primary purpose other than facilitating communication between persons involved in criminal activity to defeat law enforcement detection,"

It's not automatic: depending on what a reasonable person thinks and the definition of criminal activity.

> applied for a primary purpose other than facilitating communication between persons involved in criminal activity to defeat law enforcement detection

Does the jurisdiction matter? For example, if an activist was using a device to do things in another country that would be legal in Australia but were crimes in the other country.

I doubt a judge would interpret the law that way.

I mean, in my country, it's increasingly unclear to me whether things like "loudly criticizing the executive branch" are now considered criminal. Recent executive branch statements on this issue seem to indicate that they may consider some critics criminal just for being critics. But it's hard to be sure. And so far, every critic they've threatened to arrest has also been accused of committing other crimes.

So "the government only considers a duress PIN illegal if it is used to facilitate crime" seems like a potentially tricky standard to apply.

I love how this statement could apply to so many different countries right now!

> depending on what a reasonable person thinks

But this is just legal fiction, so not a barrier to "automatic"

This is uncanny and worryingly specific, and I'm not a lawyer, but if you're not already under suspicion of being a criminal, then installing graphene doesn't match this definition I think

"This regulation will only apply to people who are already criminals" is a line that has never held

Suspect, they wrote, and that happens all the time. If you go into a store on the way home from work, and 99 days this works fine but the 100th day they want to look in your bag, but you can't show them confidential drawings of the Google Pixel 14 Max that you carry as part of your work, now they'll think you really did steal something and you went from no suspicion (spot check) to definitely a suspect and new things start to apply to you, e.g. if you leave without resolving the suspicion the police might have grounds to enter your house or search you when you walk out next time. The suspicion is based on being a suspect, not on any actual evidence (nobody saw you put anything in your bag)

I mean, you don't really have to speculate about what this is for, it's for an authority providing for lawful search, it seems pretty well-scoped, and similar to any old search warrant, which is not a new thing, really https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/deccd...

Basically, they're not really setting up for a blanket ban on personal security features, that interpretation is obviously catastrophizing. Not that there aren't hamfisted laws somewhere like this, but NSWs implementation seems OK I guess

We have mass surveillance already in all 5 eyes countries that assumes that anyone can be a criminal at all times.

At the pace of regulations we have, one day everything will be forbidden and we will all be criminals just for protecting our own wealth or security from these... yes, from these mafias.

And we will all rationalise it and believe it's normal and has always been like that.

Sad but true for so many people.

I could use a knife to chop meat, not people; I could use a car to commute, not as a high speed bullet; I could use a gun to eliminate pests, not to kill people. Just because I can use something to do something nefarious doesn't mean it should be banned, of we should not use Internet at all because it facilitates scammers.

It is always the human mind that dictates the action, not the tool. It is futile to try and ban the tool, and I bet 100% they knew that.

And the problems of government regulation are why we need empowerment through good open technology, not the protection of the other side of the over-concentrated power see-saw.

Microsoft has way too much of legacy software people use, banning it all overnight will not go well at all. They understand that as well.

They tried to pull a similar move with WinRT/UWP, but nobody wanted it, so now you can continue with Win32.

They would love to do so, but legacy compatibility is a major business advantage.

Microsoft mismanaged it but there was a potential parallel universe where they were successful at that plan and consumer versions of Windows would be locked to the Microsoft store.

They did a bunch of terrible inept rollouts with confusing technology for both users and developers and effectively shot themselves in the foot. But it did not have to go down that way.

Yep. They fumbled the ball on step 1 of demand aggregation and we got lucky there was nothing of value for the 99% of users that will blindly take the easy path.

> there was a potential parallel universe where they were successful at that plan and consumer versions of Windows would be locked to the Microsoft store.

Sounds like a nightmare universe.

I've got a hobby app in kotlin multiplatform with iOS/Android/Windows/WASM builds and while I have no issues with Apple's App Store or Google Play, I've had nothing but problems trying to support Windows Store.

The MSIX installer format is horrendous to deal with and the certification process for new releases on Windows Store is always far too long and in the cases they do find issues the reports of the issue that they log are entirely worthless.

I ended up just pulling the app off the Windows Store entirely and making it a downloadable *.msi installer. While the extra layer of presumed integrity of the app being on the Microsoft Store would be nice it wasn't remotely worth the effort for the tiny amount of people who were using the Windows version in the first place, especially given the app is free.

That's funny because I don't presume anything on the Windows store has integrity and feel safer downloading the MSI from the official source.

this is literally just an xbox lol

Well, no, that was never the plan, except in the heads of conspiracy theorists.

> Microsoft has way too much of legacy software people use, banning it all overnight will not go well at all.

A lot of legacy software was killed off with the move to 64-bit Windows. Consumers survived that and for businesses registering their software with MS isn't a problem. They're already handing Microsoft all of their company email, their documents, their spreadsheets, etc. and paying Microsoft for the privilege. MS doesn't care at all about consumers.

Was it? WOW64 runs 32-bit software fine enough. Or are you talking about 16-bit applications?

MS is now competing against businesses that see their users as profit centers. (Google, Meta, Apple)

Windows was never going to go another way than this.

Users who care about hardware and/or software freedom should be on linux.

They can just require hash of legacy binaries sent to Microsoft and rubberstamped back. Eventually they'll have a near comprehensive list of legacy binaries in common use, and move to block unknown binaries in circulation as "malware".

Microsoft basically already has this (and has for the last ~20 years) as SmartScreen.

When was the last time you opened your start menu?

The malware excuse is just a palatable false pretense. "We have to protect granny!" Of course, she is getting fleeced by plain scam calls, not somehow sideloading apks onto her idevice, but the truth doesn't help advance their narrative.

My mother in law is constantly worried by some Google Ads in random apps that her phone is hacked...

Did she ever get anything side loaded like that? I have downloaded malware by mistake before. Not once were they allowed to proceed with installation. The only way I got anything side loaded was if I installed the first one (which is always Fdroid) deliberately via ADB after I enabled the developer mode.

No, her phone is clean. The point is GAds quite often are of questionable quality with bullshit scaring unaware people. But then as a solution G worry of grannies being tricked into installing APKs so they turn into gatekeepers of side loading completely for everyone - absurd.

Granny can get scammed using Anydesk, available on Google Play.

Imagine that methaphorical granny that in an instant catches fire and turns into ash if the governments and large corporations don't have complete control over our lives.

What a lovely granny that totally exists.

I suspect it's not grandma getting scammed by APKs, but people installing cracked versions of spotify/youtube/paid games.

> cracked versions of spotify/youtube/paid games

This doesn't make much sense to me.

To put the strongest face on it, by "cracked" youtube, you mean a version that shows the cracker's ads and maybe somehow generates extra clicks (or whatever) so they can get money out of it?

Cracked spotify? In my mind that's just like YouTube, almost entirely server-side. I guess you're talking about hijacking ads here, too? I feel like a "real" crack of Spotify would let you listen to music for free, but that should be impossible (unless their SWE's are incompetent).

no, cracked as in the ad-free premium versions, without paying for them

Those "cracked" versions often require extra permissions.

My favorite was a local "discover which on your contacts is on the leaked Covid quarantine list[1]" scam app. It claimed that the extra permission dialogs are just fearmongering by Google, who is in cahoots with big pharma, and wants covid to spread to sell more medications.

[1] In fact, no such leak has ever taken place, its existence was just part of the setup for the scam.

You are approaching as is the malicious developer was trying to add useful features for the users.

But in practice, these “apps that lookalike popular apps” are not intended to just be adware-less versions of the popular apps. They are frequently “hide the ads, inject the malware with more permissions” Trojan horses.

I think there is likely a dual motive from Google where they both want to stop malware _and_ stop people blocking youtube ads. The malware problem is real though.

Yes but using a real problem as a vehicle for increased control and permission is, in it of itself, a Trojan horse.

Google is doing the same thing the fake apps are doing. Real problem: bad ads. Solution: cracked app. Trojan: too many permissions, steals data.

Google: problem: bad apps. Solution: advanced Google DRM. Trojan: too many permissions, steals data.

They mean apps like SmartTube, Vanced, Instander, Spotify Premium Mod which block ads or grant other premium features for free.

> I predict Windows will end up going this route before Google backtracks on it.

It will not happen in the next 10 years. Right now people would just make generic launchers and then use them to manually load and execute any binary they please. Options include just writing your thingy in a scripting language and run it in node.exe, python.exe, or compile it to WASM, use native bindings of a scripting language, abuse a random verified electron app, etc etc.

Even remotely getting to the point where locking Windows down to that degree would be possible is going to take MS a long time, fighting friction from users all the way. The whole ecosystem would have to change drastically for that sort of control to even be possible and make sense.

> This is the future; partially fuelled by malware, partially fuelled by the desire for platform control, and partially fuelled by government regulation. I would say it’s really 50% platform control, 50% government regulation.

Malware is the excuse. Control is the goal. Extracting as much money from people while providing less actual value.

The saddest part is this is to the detriment of literally everyone except a couple rich owners of those companies. And everyone has the right to vote. But western democracy is so indirect the people who understand and care have no way to change the law because their signal is lost in all the noise by those who don't know or don't care.

If the vote came down to people in favor of walled gardens or in favor of forcing companies to open their platforms, with everyone else not voting, it would be a landslide. But there's no way to vote on it this way.

“western democracy is so indirect the people who understand and care have no way to change the law because their signal is lost in all the noise by those who don't know or don't care”

Wow, how fix (WITHOUT intelligence tests as voting requirement) :(

I don't think there's anything wrong with inteligence or knowledge tests. People obviously have wildly different abilities to make good decisions.

The real issue is that western societies are built on individualism and the is that everyone is equal when they are obviously not and this would expose the lie.

---

However, the real issue is that decisions are packaged together. People vote for a party which they agree with on a few issues (or just one) and the rest become the noise.

So we need to split voting by issue. You could have one vote to determine which issues people care about most, then have multiple separate parlaments - but there would need to be a mechanism to force them to only write laws for the specific issue which is hard.

---

We could also allow people to override the votes of their representatives. The more people vote directly, the less weight the representatives have.

I just want to say:

I am so sick of Google.

This is a monopoly with annual gross revenues bigger than all but 42 countries behaving this way.

They have conspired to control the web, browsers, mobile computing, and soon AI. It's sickening how much bad behavior they get away with.

They were able to use YouTube to bludgeon Windows Phone to death and become the de-facto mobile duopoly. Then they were able to get their shitty search engine on all the panes of glass, didn't care one iota about search quality (just ads), but were able to leverage their browser engine control to remove adblocking capabilities.

I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.

Sincerely.

> I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.

There's no chance of that under the current regime. It loves bribery and Google has the money to get whatever they want.

Yeah, it is so weird to read comments based on some assumption that the current government is aimed at any semblance of justice. I guess they're just still drinking the Kool-aid?

Trump was a breath of fresh air talking about frustrations with the status quo that other politicians wouldn't acknowledge. But the only reason he was bringing them up was to use as a cudgel to shake down companies to enrich himself. He will very most certainly go after big tech monopolies and break them up... iff those big tech monopolies don't put bribes into his pocket. As long as his pockets get fatter, then the status quo is just peachy. It's called "making a deal".

> I hope the DOJ/FTC split Google into a dozen companies.

This is just such an insane thing to say. It's like a Russian posting "I really hope our DOJ/FTC splits up Lukoil into a dozen companies!". But Russians don't post that because they're actually sensible.

control=surveillance

control is the entire point of the surveillance

This whole thing is getting totally out of surveillance!

Someone should hit surveillance-alt-delete!

This is the year of Linux on the Desktop!

I think the first thing Windows loses dominance in is Gaming, and that will be the beginning of the end.

Are there still people who like using Windows?

> Are there still people who like using Windows?

You are assuming that everyone knows about or ever experienced the alternatives. Windows way is the only way for many.

Linux is at 5% desktop market share this year, and I gave up on running windows games without steam a decade ago.

On average my game library works much better under Linux than Windows (Mac is a distant third — probably worse than FreeBSD).

Anyway, at 1 in 20, most people probably know someone that runs Linux.

Have you considered the possibility that those 5% may be concentrated in certain markets, since it's mostly accounted by steamos?

No I'm not. I asked if anyone likes Windows. These people presumably have no opinion, it's just a means to an end. The closest thing I think you'll get is "I liked Windows 7" or something like that.

Those replies corroborate my point, if you think about it. They would have had an opinion if they had seen the alternatives. They would at least wish that Microsoft stopped doing these annoying modifications. I would know, because I have a rather large circle of friends who use only Linux or BSD.

government unregulation

It's still government regulation. It's just that they have changed the target or regulation from commercial entities to regular individuals like you.

This would also mean eliminating WSL2.

They would just sandbox it to the point of unfitness for purpose.

Malware is the excuse. I went, without super skill, 40 years while only contracting two viruses ever (one was Kakworm, the other was inert at the time because I was an Amiga user who kept a copy of Scorched Earth on a floppy, which never infected my Amiga).