And bugs, and DRM, and mass surveillance, and giving the power to the state to abuse even more of the tech, and giving police super powers, and giving bad actors (terrorists, assassins) the abilities to kill you with a virus, and the general concentration of power that this implies.
This is a terrible idea, and that's why I have mixed feelings about the robo taxi. On one hand, it's a great resource-sharing tech. On the other hand, all of the above.
It's a great point. As a geek I used to think those details don't matter, but it turns out language shapes society and how humans think way more than I understood.
We need to catch up on this because the people who know how to use language for propagandizing don't have the best intentions in mind.
But using the original term is not enough. We need to combat their word-twisting by upping them. We need a way to convey "their way of installing stuff by default is inferior and an attack on liberty".
Something like:
- direct install: installing as we always did
- caged install: installing through a locked store.
Maybe somebody better at marketing can find a good way to do this. In fact, we should have a whole site and community to organize together and shift the narrative on all nerdy things: formats, open web, DRM, patents, etc.
We have been weak on these points for so long because we care much more about solving tech problems than selling them. But openness is being eaten away under our noses. Has been for years.
Or the simpler explanation (which is probably closer to the truth): Stripe is a very popular company on HN as many people use them, their founders sometimes comment here and if they share their opinion on something people pay attention and upvote it.
It really boils down to if the individual cares about freedoms. Some hackers don't care about them, and some normies do. Both of them use centralized and restrictive services. But the former does it by choice, while the latter does it because they don't know any better. But those normies do take an action when they have enough information. How many ordinary people have participated in boycotts and cancelation of subscriptions against corporations in protest of exploitation or for digital detoxification?
It's partially our own failure to be loud enough and get them the information they need.
Firefox was always a geek thing, I've been using it since it was called phoenix and at its peak, it was mostly nerds installing that at schools, convincing their mums, etc, thanks to the adblock.
The only reason we are not all using edge is because google spend billions marketing Chrome in early 2000. They got the normies with brute forcing, because they could make money with it, not for making the world better.
Heck, they promoted google on the HOME PAGE of google search, an ad spot you can't even buy from google, with a pseudo notification, a format google uses for nothing else in ads.
They went full throttle.
But nobody is going to spend millions to promote decentralization. Because it's about concentrating less power.
HN has always been terrible at undertanding that, because while they argue about what browser to use, the average user can barely make the difference between an app and a website anyway.
>I've been using it since it was called phoenix and at its peak, it was mostly nerds installing that at schools, convincing their mums, etc, thanks to the adblock.
Are you talking about Netscape? Because that was installed on everything ;)
>because google spend billions marketing Chrome in early 2000
Open systems provide plenty of opportunity for smaller businesses to provide innovative and convenient services. What kind of innovation and experimentation other then getting more ads in are the gatekeepers that we have today interested in doing as long as there's no competition?
>You are one PRISM type request and one gag order from a silent update changinf that.
Wouldn't the bigger issue be that they can abuse the same thing to grab camera and or microphone from your phone? Probably more useful than airpods too, given that a phone's always on, unlike airpods.
Can you cite the law that says you may not do this?
There are obvious cases in Europe (well, were if you mean the EU) where there need not be criminal behaviour to maintain a list of people that no landlord in a town will allow into their pubs, for example.
Under the EU’s GDPR, any processing of personal data (name, contact, identifiers, etc.) generally requires a legal basis (e.g., consent, legitimate interest, contractual necessity), clear purpose, minimal data, and appropriate protection. Doing so without a lawful basis is unlawful.
It is not a cookie banner law. The american seems to keep forgetting that it's about personal data, consent, and the ability to take it down. The sharing of said data is particularly restricted.
And of course, this applies to black list, including for fraud.
Regulators have enforced this in practice. For example in the Netherlands, the tax authority was fined for operating a “fraud blacklist” without a statutory basis, i.e., illegal processing under GDPR: https://www.autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/current/tax-adm...
The fact is many such lists exist without being punished. Your landlord list for example. That doesn't make it legal, just no shutdown yet.
Because there is no legal basis for it, unless people have committed, again, an illegal act (such as destroying the pub property). Also it's quite difficult to have people accept to be on a black list. And once they are, they can ask for their data to be taken down, which you cannot refuse.
> The american seems to keep forgetting that it's about personal data, consent, and the ability to take it down.
I am European, nice try though.
It is very unclear that this example falls foul of GDPR. On this basis, Git _itself_ fails at that, and no reasonable court will find it to be the case.
This is a terrible idea, and that's why I have mixed feelings about the robo taxi. On one hand, it's a great resource-sharing tech. On the other hand, all of the above.