from Hacker News

Demon-Haunted World

by drabiega on 9/5/17, 8:00 PM with 282 comments

  • by jordigh on 9/6/17, 3:25 AM

    There is so much "Stallman was right" in all of these examples... non-free software always manages to eventually sneak in malicious anti-user features, where the user has no recourse. At least with free software there's always the fundamental freedom to fork. You think systemd is a Red Hat plot to destroy Linux, then go use Devuan. You don't trust what Google could be doing with Chrome, take your pick of alternatives:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_(web_browser)#Communi...

    Plus, people tend to act more morally when they think they might be watched, whether they actually are watched or not.

    Whenever someone refuses to show source code I always think, "what are you hiding in there?" There's usually something.

  • by Nomentatus on 9/6/17, 3:33 AM

    This isn't a new demon-haunted world, this is the old, demon-haunted world before nineteenth-century progressive politics, back when "milk" that wasn't half chalk still might have a fish in it (see famous Thoreau quote on evidence.)

    We aren't enforcing the laws we have and our grandfathers and mothers had. (Three guesses why.) Not on monopolies, contracts, patent misuse... nothing.

    Just this week I and Hearthstone came to a stop - Blizzard's new policy insists on a credit card and that I owe them for purchases made if they leak the card no! I can't sign in to play "my" cards 'till I agree this is totally cool. Sure, the old policy said they could revise it as they liked, but the law says otherwise and always has. They don't care - it'll be years before the law is enforced against them, as it was with Steam and refunds.

    No cops - so to speak - on the beat, and Trump vowing to fire more regulators, that's what's changed. The number of potential demons is more of a constant.

  • by walterbell on 9/5/17, 9:05 PM

    See efforts to pass Right-to-Repair laws in several U.S. states: https://repair.org & https://ifixit.org/right

    From http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a2...

    "... farmers have worked on their own equipment "for decades, generations even." Brasch also pointed to the emerging DIY sources of information in the world as a way that farmers and others who want to make repairs can learn about their equipment: "You can go to a YouTube for something as simple as baking a cake to repairing or operating an item. I think that's the way the market is moving. We'd like this market to move with the rest of the world."

    This is one of the IP/copyright issues being negotiated in the new version of NAFTA (US, Canada, Mexico), as many farmers are affected.

  • by captaincrowbar on 9/5/17, 9:47 PM

    Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expensive to manufacture as they like to claim but it's still worth something. Why didn't they just put less ink in the cartridge to begin with (and maybe lie about how much was in it), instead of lying about how much was left toward the end of its life and throwing ink away?
  • by SubiculumCode on 9/5/17, 9:39 PM

    This is what I think about at the pump.

    More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky.

    If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced.

    If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasoline is dispensed, the dispenser will not know if a written record will be requested, and cheating the customer is riskier.

    Therefore, I always request a receipt if asked prior to dispensing my gasoline.

  • by zackmorris on 9/5/17, 10:58 PM

    Startup idea:

    Form a company that explores new markets in legal liabilities. It could bring lawsuits with little risk where the payoff could be billions of dollars. Off the top of my head:

    * Research whether channels were engineered into smartphones to allow water to leak in (since they have no moving parts and should self-evidently be watertight).

    * Find the planned-obsolescence parts in things like car doors that were engineered too thin or out of plastic so that door and window handles fail after a certain number of uses.

    * Find evidence that companies opted to use proprietary battery and charger form factors which drove up prices and prevented interoperability.

    ...the list is nearly endless. Most of these seem like they depend on research or whistleblowers. If the free market and regulations won't prevent this kind of widespread hacking then maybe lucrative opportunities could be found working within the courts!

  • by zaroth on 9/5/17, 9:48 PM

    Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s...

    The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU clock rate is programmed to progressively lower itself the longer it runs.

    Has anyone done the performance analysis on used phones to prove this isn't just my brain moving the goalposts as hardware improves, or apps just slowing down as they bloat, but that the old devices really and truly are running the same software significantly slower than when they were new?

  • by mirimir on 9/6/17, 2:16 AM

    > There must be anti-trust enforcement with the death penalty – corporate dissolution – for companies that are caught cheating.

    This was the norm in the US until the late 1800s. Indeed, corporations had to act in the public interest. And if they didn't, they were dissolved.

    But then, the railroad corporations got wealthy enough that they were able to buy favorable Supreme Court rulings. Basically, they got human rights. After former male slaves, but before women.

  • by adrianratnapala on 9/5/17, 9:32 PM

    Hmm, I suspect the article is not really news to the people who frequent sites like this, and perhaps not even to the readership of a science-fiction mag like locus.

    But I would like a nice readable article like that to appear in more mainstream publications. It should make a good story, being both true and sensationalist and important at the same time.

  • by Opossum on 9/6/17, 12:31 AM

    I'm surprised no one has mentioned Tesla in this context. Not only do they make it almost impossible to get a Tesla car repaired anywhere but their service centers, but they also collect a ton of data [1].

    [1] https://www.tesla.com/about/legal

  • by shmerl on 9/5/17, 9:21 PM

    Yeah, repealing DMCA 1201 and CFAA would be very useful.

    Also, conditional cheating reminded me The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

  • by letlambda on 9/6/17, 2:39 PM

    >instead, it tries to trick the reviewers, attempting to determine if it’s landed on a Car and Driver test-lot, and then switching into a high-pollution, high-fuel-efficiency mode.

    This has actually been the case for some time. The car magazine wouldn't just go borrow a car, they would get one directly from the manufacturer. And the manufacturer would send a ringer, a vehicle with an EPA test-exemption that doesn't have to comply with any emissions regulations.

    I suppose the era of Youtube car review channels is bringing that method to a close though.

  • by ehsankia on 9/5/17, 9:40 PM

    I'm curious about the WannaCry situation. If the killswitch was truly to detect being in a VM, could they still not have bought the domain and just left unresponsive, or even better, just generate a random new domain every single time.

    I guess they just didn't foresee someone buying the domain.

  • by eridius on 9/6/17, 1:15 AM

    > like the iTunes and Kindle ‘‘updates’’ that have removed features the products were sold with

    Anyone know what iTunes update he's talking about? I don't remember anything that fits this description.

  • by Dove on 9/6/17, 1:45 PM

    I wonder if we can require software to be open source for the same reason that food has to list its nutritional information and ingredients. Information asymmetry makes a deal unfair.
  • by mathattack on 9/6/17, 11:54 AM

    HP is an egregious cheater, and this kind of cheating is in the DNA of any company that makes its living selling consumables or service at extremely high markups – they do their business at war with their customers.

    This is a very strong statement. Asking for high margins puts you at war with your customers?

  • by titzer on 9/6/17, 8:43 AM

    This is an extremely important article.

    In a world populated by IOT devices full of software (as discussed previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15034955), we'll end up in a post-scientific world where the underlying rules that govern a device's behavior are so complex and arcane that we'll have little chance of reverse engineering how basic devices work anymore.

    I think in practice it will mean that devices become bricks relatively quickly, and when people realize they have been cheated, there will be a strong backlash: imagine "paleo diet" but for devices.

  • by otakucode on 9/6/17, 5:29 PM

    History repeats itself. Car makers tried to lock out third party parts decades ago. Claimed you only had a license to operate the vehicle, no ownership. Music and movie companies argued against First Sale doctrine similarly.

    Courts wouldn't have it. They will stop this too. Digital property will be declared property, not licenses. No limits on resale transfer or rental and the like. Companies will howl like stuck pigs. And it will benefit them, as well as consumers, tremendously.

  • by bluetwo on 9/5/17, 9:56 PM

    What I worry about is the regulations and certifications many other industries have to curtail cheating may someday be needed in our domain. I do not look forward to the day that happens.
  • by donatj on 9/6/17, 12:54 AM

    > Dieselgate killed people

    What? Is he being metaphorical or does he mean via the environmental impact? That's a stretch IMHO. Or alternately am I simply missing something?

  • by sshanky on 9/6/17, 5:46 PM

    Can anyone elaborate on his comment on this sort of technology "proliferating to smart thermostats (no apps that let you turn your AC cooler when the power company dials it up a couple degrees)?
  • by carapace on 9/6/17, 5:15 AM

    Systems of elements that can trust each other are more efficient than systems of elements that must expend energy to check each other.
  • by calinet6 on 9/6/17, 12:24 AM

    Hat tip to Carl Sagan reference in the title.
  • by hutzlibu on 9/6/17, 10:27 AM

    The bigger issue with this, than beeing cheated in the casino, to me is, the increasingly amount of technology around us, we depend on. In a few years robots in the household will be common.

    I really want to have my robot servant - but only if he really is MY servant and controlled by ME and not someone else, I do not trust ...

  • by visvavasu on 9/6/17, 3:58 AM

    Very nice article, thank you for sharing.
  • by MrZongle2 on 9/5/17, 10:26 PM

    FTA: "Dieselgate killed people"

    What's the source for this claim?

  • by dclowd9901 on 9/5/17, 9:25 PM

    Counterpoint: software such as thermostats that control our energy consumption or phones that lock themselves while you're driving are better if people can't consume in a responsible manner.

    Is it nanny-state? Yes, but maybe some people need a nanny.