Windows 10&#x2F;11 S is that path. Microsoft has walked it already; They just have to push the net wider over time.

A few weeks ago someone was posting links to a thing MS is trying to push, which would require signed code for local execution. It had a weird name but seemed like they’re trying.

Microsoft will absolutely go down this path, they just have longer commitments and product cycles.I’d guess in 5 years you’ll start getting friction for using AD, and heavy push towards cloud services first. You’ll probably have to subscribe to legacy features or migrate to Azure to use them.Their legacy systems management tool is a zombie product, and the replacement is Intune, which and an MDM solution which locks you out of your computer similar to Android or iOS.I’ll be retired, so IDNGAF, but in 15 years, Microsoft will be capturing all of the value they give you for free in windows. The future will look like a 1980s mainframe.

Weird last example, Windows is freer than Apple&#x2F;Google. There&#x27;s no path to locking down Windows like Android or iOS, half the world would break. Apple originated and normalized this, Google is following.

No, says the man in Hollywood - those cycles belong to the MPAANo, says the car manufacturers, those cycles belong to usNo, says the nerds in Redmond, your computer belongs to us

I&#x27;m two days into switching my Pixel 6 from Android to GrapheneOS. No issues so far. I haven&#x27;t set up my banking app, but it&#x27;s supposed to be supported.

Only runs on a handful of hardware, and still uses the binblobs from google for the hardware devices.

Forces users to directly give money to Google and to rely on Google&#x27;s OS underneath.

I think GrapheneOS focuses on privacy and security, not liberation. I think their pragmatic and narrow-minded approach is valid, it&#x27;s important not to conflate their scope with related issues they are unable&#x2F;unwilling to tackle.Personally, I think a usable pure Linux phone is required to weaken the desktop vs. mobile distinction and break the lock-in. This would additionally empower the desktop platform, confirm it as baseline.

You&#x27;ll run into a variant of the tragedy of the commons; without any kind of regulation or provable assertions from people taking part in common communication infrastructure, it&#x27;d be quite easy to ruin it for everyone.

You kind of can? The carrier network has no way to verify that your cellular modem is a real modem made by a real modem company, and not 3 SDRs in a trench coat standing on the top of each other.The sheer technical difficulty is what makes this kind of thing impractical.The network does validate that a SIM card is a real SIM card, but you can put a &quot;real SIM card&quot; in anything.

But how do we start a movement for these ideas? I feel like there isn’t awareness outside of niche circles and the public may not see the short term benefit. Meanwhile politicians are lobbied by the same corporations and won’t listen.

I don&#x27;t think the cellular network is the problem at all - everything except SMS and PSTN calls works on wifi. The problem is the apps. Netflix only runs on a verified bona fide electrified six car Google- or Apple-approved device; so do most financial apps (EU law requires them to) and basically everything else where the app developers are trying to get money off you (which is most apps). Some apps will refuse to play ads on a non-genuine device and then refuse to function because you aren&#x27;t watching ads. Play Store does its best to stop you installing its apps on a nongenuine device, but it has to support older devices without TPMs so it&#x27;s not fully locked down yet. Even YouTube has some level of attestation.

The primary problem is that we can&#x27;t build a phone and run it on a cellular carrier network. This is where legislation is needed.Apple and Google are still a problem, but they are a secondary problem.

AI kicks ass at a lot of &quot;routine reverse engineering&quot; tasks already.You can feed it assembly listings, or bytecode that the decompiler couldn&#x27;t handle, and get back solid results.And corporate AIs don&#x27;t really have a fuck to give, at least not yet. You can sic Claude on obvious decompiler outputs, or a repo of questionable sources with a &quot;VERY BIG CORPO - PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL&quot; in every single file, and it&#x27;ll sift through it - no complaints, no questions asked. And if that data somehow circles back into the training eventually, then all the funnier.

&gt;It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers.How is it going to do that without testing (and potentially bricking) hardware in real life?&gt;It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architecturesI don&#x27;t know why you would use an LLM to do that. Couldn&#x27;t you just distribute the binaries in some intermediate format, or decompile them to a comprehensible source format first?

This is one of the real canaries I watch on &quot;real AI&quot; for programming.It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers. It should be able to port code to new platforms. It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architectures.Sure seems we are very far from that, but really these are breadth-based knowledge with extensive examples &#x2F; training sources. It SHOULD be something LLMs are good at, not new&#x2F;novel&#x2F;deep&#x2F;difficult problems. What I described are labor-intensive and complicated, but not &quot;difficult&quot;.And would any corporate AI allow that?We should be pretty paranoid about centralized control attempts, especially in tech. This is a ... fragile ... time.

&gt;Restrictions can both help and hinder innovationI&#x27;m not sure innovation is really impacted when restricting the private sector. Traditionally, innovation happens in public (e.g, universities) or military spaces.

&gt; It&#x27;s just a question of what is overall best and fairest.If only it were so. But it&#x27;s not just that. It&#x27;s also a question of which section of society has the power to demand or prevent the creation of such a system.Whether enacting labor protections or the Magna Carta, these beneficial restrictions require some leverage. Otherwise what is overall beat and fairest won&#x27;t be coming up.

Remember, the law provides patent, copyright, trade mark, and NDA protection.While it would be a burden to require a degree of openness, it&#x27;s not like companies are all rugged individualists who would never want to see legal restrictions in the field.It&#x27;s just a question of what is overall best and fairest.Restrictions can both help and hinder innovation, and it&#x27;s innovation that in the ling run makes things improve IMO.

&quot;And that is what is wrong here. Even the smallest nation should be far more powerful than the largest corporation&quot;Since nations can be really small, I don&#x27;t agree.

Well, an umbrella for nations or a sledgehammer for companies.  I&#x27;d say just start shredding large companies left and right.

These are basics of capitalism.Company aims for profit.Bigger scale allows for better efficiency.So companies naturally grow big. The bigger they are, the easier for them to compete.Big companies have access to tremendous resources, so they can push laws by bribing law makers, advertising their agenda to the masses.There&#x27;s no way around it, not without dismantling capitalism. Nations will serve to the corporations, no other way around.There are natural boundaries of the growth scale, which are related to the inherent efficiency of communications between people and overall human capability. Corporations are controlled by people and people have limited brains and mouths. I feel that with AI development, those boundaries will move apart and allow for even greater growth eventually.

&gt; Google and Apple have more power than most nations.And that is what is wrong here. Even the smallest nation should be far more powerful than the largest corporation. But corporations are now more powerful than most nations, including some really big ones. So the only way to solve this is to for an umbrella for nations that offsets the power that these corporations have.The first thing you notice when you arrive at Brussels airport is the absolute barrage of Google advertising that tries to convince you that Google is doing everything they can to play by the rules. When it is of course doing the exact opposite. So at least Google seems to realize that smaller nations banding together wield power. But they will never wield it as effectively as a company can, so we still have many problems.

&gt; So let’s treat them like the state owned corporationsIf they were state owned, we could vote for how the profits get used and we would have larger budgets for healthcare and education.

&gt; Google and Apple have more power than most nations.Yep. They control our information - how we make it, what we are allowed to find, and what we can say. And they are large enough to not face real competition. So let’s treat them like the state owned corporations they are and regulate heavily. Smaller companies can be left unregulated. But not companies worth 500 billion or more.

Yes but in the phone space the sacrifice is too much. You often times forgo the ability to even participate in many aspects of society, e.g. banking. It&#x27;s not your typical &quot;rough around the edges open source alternative&quot;, it&#x27;s just not even a comparison.

Have at least two phones.  One with corporate OS for banking, commerce.  Another with user-chosen OS for experimentation, able to boot from external media.

&quot;This makes the point that the real battle we should be fighting is not for control of Android&#x2F;iOS, but the ability to run other operating systems on phones.&quot;Sometimes owner control, cf. corporate control, can be had by sacrificing hardware functionality, i.e., features, closed source drivers. Choice between particular hardware feature(s) working and control over the hardware in general.

&gt; To push further, Google and Apple have basically as much power as the US.If this is true then why is Tim Cook visiting Trump? Shouldn’t it be the other way around.

&gt; Google and Apple have more power than most nations.To push further, Google and Apple have basically as much power as the US.The UK going after Apple, only to get rebutted by the US is the most simple instance of it. International treaties pushed by the US strongly protecting it&#x27;s top corporations is the more standard behavior.Any entity fighting the duopoly is effectively getting into a fight with the US.

It is also equally closed, so not the champion you are looking for. It could still be a major player breaking the duopoly.

Well there&#x27;s Huawei&#x27;s Harmony OS. Can someone who knows what&#x27;s going on with that report in?  Is it anything close to an open platform?

What worries me is that Google has a fairly legit argument to say &quot;then Apple should as well&quot;. But we&#x27;ve accepted Apple&#x27;s status for so long now, a lot of consumers are stockholmed into thinking giving away control is the only way to have a good phone (evidence: see any thread discussing that maybe Apple should allow other vendors to also use their smartwatch hardware to offer services in non-smartwatch-hardware markets that Apple also offers services in. Half the users seem like they&#x27;re brainwashed by the marketing material they put out). I don&#x27;t know that we can convince the general public anymore that 1984 is bad (thinking of Apple&#x27;s own 1984 ad, specifically) and, without general public, there can theoretically also not be political willI was part of this problem. I&#x27;ve accepted what Apple is doing because I had Android. I didn&#x27;t think they&#x27;d come for me next so I didn&#x27;t speak up

The real battle is over Google selling the public on the notion that Android would be the &quot;open&quot; platform that allowed people to run anything they liked on their device, and then deciding to use anticompetitive means to take that freedom away.Without that fraudulent marketing, Android never would have crowded out other options so quickly in the marketplace.The solution is to either have Google back down on breaking its promise that Android would be open or to have an antitrust lawsuit strip Android from Google&#x27;s control.

There are power rankings where these top companies are considered more influential than many nations.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.realbusinessrescue.co.uk&#x2F;advice-hub&#x2F;companies-worth-more-than-countries" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.realbusinessrescue.co.uk&#x2F;advice-hub&#x2F;companies-wo...</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;29&#x2F;so-who-watches-the-watchmen" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;29&#x2F;so-who-watches-the-watchme...</a>
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2024&#x2F;sep&#x2F;23&#x2F;amazon-tesla-meta-climate-change-democracy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2024&#x2F;sep&#x2F;23&#x2F;amazon-tesl...</a>

&gt; let&#x27;s be real: Google and Apple have more power than most nations.Lets be real, they do not have more power than any nations. They have a lot of power in a few tiny silos that happen to make up like 90% of the mental space of a lot of terminally online folk.Heck they probably have less power than Coca Cola or Pepsi did during the Cola wars, or United Fruit Company at its height.Wake me up when Apple rolls a tank into red square or Google does anything but complain about national security legislation it then goes and assertively complies with.

I’m fairly sure the modem firmware on the Pixels was never open. There’s some hardware that will never have open firmware to it. Especially when that firmware deals with regulated airwaves like cell signals.

&gt;I don&#x27;t understand why mobile systems do not attract OS builders.My guess would be that it&#x27;s a continuously moving target. There&#x27;s no point in spending years working to support some weird integrated wifi adapter+battery controller when by the time you&#x27;re done the hardware is already obsolete and no longer being manufactured. Repeat that for every device on the phone. The only ones who can keep up with that pace are the manufacturers themselves. It&#x27;d be different if there was some kind of standardization that would make the effort worthwhile, though.

&gt; I don&#x27;t understand why mobile systems do not attract OS builders.Cellphones are not very useful as programming tools (too small), which is what Open Source excels at.Also, cellphones need to handle some annoying things, like it should always be possible and easy to call emergency services. Which is to say, the UI work seems stressful.

With the right trusted computing modules, it will be impossible. As far as I am concerned, the asahi developers are building on a foundation of sand because Apple could just  lock down the bootloader for the iMac laptops or whatever next generation

&gt; I don&#x27;t understand why mobile systems do not attract OS builders.They&#x27;re graphical consumer devices, the quality bar is so high nobody can reach it except huge well funded teams. It&#x27;s like asking why desktop Linux doesn&#x27;t still attract OS builders, or for that matter, why the PC platform doesn&#x27;t attract OS builders. Occasionally someone makes an OS that boots to a simple windowed GUI as a hobby, that&#x27;s as far as it gets now.A lot of these HN discussions dance around or ignore this point. When people demand the freedom to run whatever they want, they never give use cases that motivate this. Which OS do they want to dual boot? Some minor respin of Android with a few tweaks that doesn&#x27;t disagree with Google on anything substantial (Google accepted a lot of PRs from GrapheneOS people).Nobody is building a compelling new OS even on platforms that have fully documented drivers. There&#x27;s no point. There are no new ideas, operating systems are mature, it&#x27;s done, there&#x27;s nothing to do there. Even Meta gave up on their XROS and that was at least for a new hardware profile. Google did bend over backwards to let people treat phones like they were PCs but it seems regular Android is in practice open enough for what people want to do.

&gt; ability to run other operating systems on phones&gt; building those alternatives is basically impossibleFor smart people it is not impossible. Just few years ago, few folks wrote complicated drivers for completely closed hardware, and I&#x27;m talking about M1 Macbook.Google Pixel, on the other hand, was pretty open until very recently. I might be wrong about specifics, but I&#x27;m pretty sure that most of software was open, so you could just look at the kernel sources in the readable C to look for anything. You can literally build this kernel and run linux userspace and go from there to any lengths of development. Or you can build alternative systems, looking at driver sources.I don&#x27;t understand why mobile systems do not attract OS builders.

Apparently they just can&#x27;t live without Netflix and its even worth their freedom.

&gt; as the author acknowledges, building those alternatives is basically impossibleI don&#x27;t understand why everybody is ignoring existing, working GNU&#x2F;Linux phones: Librem 5 and Pinephone. The former is my daily driver btw.

This makes the point that the real battle we should be fighting is not for control of Android&#x2F;iOS, but the ability to run other operating systems on phones. That would be great, but as the author acknowledges, building those alternatives is basically impossible. Even assuming that building a solid alternative is feasible, though, I don&#x27;t think their point stands. Generally I&#x27;m not keen on legislatively forcing a developer to alter their software, but let&#x27;s be real: Google and Apple have more power than most nations. I&#x27;m all for mandating that they change their code to be less user-hostile, for the same reason I prefer democracy to autocracy. Any party with power enough to impact millions of lives needs to be accountable to those it affects. I don&#x27;t see the point of distinguishing between government and private corporation when that corporation is on the same scale of power and influence.

E fuses are needed so people can&#x27;t downgrade the device to old insecure software to exploit it. Without it or an equivalent like a secure monotonic counter how do you think such attacks be protected?

The hardware should not be equipped with undefeatable digital locks. Put a physical switch on the hardware (like Chromebooks have-- had?) to allow the owner to opt out of the walled garden.Also worrisome are e-fuses, which allow software to make irrevocable physical changes to your hardware. They shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to be modified except by the owner. (See Nintendo Switch updates blowing e-fuses to prevent downgrades.)

When the hardware is complicated enough that the software required to run it al all would take many millions of dollars to replicate, hardware freedom alone doesn&#x27;t cut it. Just like a modern processor needs mountains of microcode to do anything you&#x27;d actually want. And that&#x27;s without companies needing to obfuscate their hardware to avoid interoperability they don&#x27;t want.In practice, a whole lot software would have to be open source too so that the hardware is reasonably usable. The layers you&#x27;d need to let an iPhone run android well, or a Pixel phone to run iOS are not small.

First, we had bespoke computer systems where the hardware and software were tailored to solve specific problems. Then, as computers became commoditized, the hardware was more standardized and software interacted with it through an abstraction layer. Now, we&#x27;re circling back to heterogeneous hardware where software and hardware are tightly coupled for the best performance and power efficiency. Of course there&#x27;s always a trade-off. In this case, it&#x27;s flexibility.The smartphone does not consist of just one processor, it&#x27;s a collection of dedicated processors, each running custom algorithms locally. Sure, there&#x27;s software running in the application layer, but it&#x27;s playing more of a coordination role than actually doing the work. Just think of sending a packet over the internet and how different it is between a smartphone and a computer, how much more complex a cellular modem is compared to a network card.It&#x27;s less about software now and more about hardware accelerated modules. Even CPUs run primarily on microcode which can be patched after the fact.These patterns are cyclical. It will take a number of years before we return to standardized compute again, but return we will. Eventually.

Well, the line is drawn by the fact that hardware and software have intrinsic differences. It sounds like we&#x27;re on the same page about hardware -- with the software, should we not be bound by licenses in client&#x2F;server services (phones, consoles)? You are using someone else&#x27;s service with others, for some collective benefit like playing a game, and being bound to constraints on that software doesn&#x27;t seem that offensive. Modified clients can piss in the pool for others using the services and affect the network&#x27;s quality.Again, if you want to run purely OSS software with permissive licenses, that should be your prerogative. But you might miss out on the Play store. If you want to mess with Valve anti-cheat, you can&#x27;t connect to Steam games online. Etc. I think these companies do have a right to dictate software requirements for client code accessing their servers.But, you should be able to wipe those clients if you don&#x27;t care about them and play tux racer on Arch.

That&#x27;s an oddly legalistic line to draw. What if they start licensing the hardware too? Surely if we care about users being respected by technology, the line between software and hardware or between ownership and licensing is immaterial. These are all excuses to deny users the opportunity to do things they should be entitled to do, like installing arbitrary applications.

It&#x27;s a matter of ownership vs. licensing. You own the hardware you buy, but you license the software. I agree with the author that as long as you use that software, you should be subject to the constraints of the license.The key is that if you choose not to run that software, your hardware should not be constrained. You own the hardware, it&#x27;s a tangible thing that is your property.Boils down to a consumer rights issue that I fall on the same side of as the author.

You don&#x27;t own the hardware, it&#x27;s now a license just like the software..... problem solved.

If left to the generosity of companies to allow us to control the hardware we purchase then we will never be able to modify the hardware we purchase again. There are no inalienable rights that we, as humans, do not define and legislate ourselves. If we want unfettered control of the hardware that we purchase then we need to codify it into law.

I don&#x27;t think government should be involved here, but what they can do is (a) always provide alternatives where interacting with government doesn&#x27;t require a smartphone or apps, and (b) mandate the same for regulated or essential industries like banks and airlines etc.I&#x27;m not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware&#x2F;OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.

People have been running modded firmware and custom computers in their cars for a long time and it seems you haven&#x27;t even noticed.

Conversely those are some of the devices that make me question the principle “I should be able to run whatever code I want on hardware I own”.Cars are increasingly controlled more via code than driver, but that (hopefully) goes through certification and oversight processes. Lane control, collision detection, self parking, self driving features - should people be able to hack these systems? Do we want people running their own collision detection routines that are less sensitive, because the stock option keeps slowing them down so much everyday when they drive past a school?I imagine many of us here have encountered a computer that&#x27;s broken because the user installed a programe to &quot;make their machine faster&quot; which deleted important windows files or removed everything from the startup folder that the user needs to use. I&#x27;m sure I could make a lot of money with a programme that decreases the time it takes to recharge your EV. Might remove heat protections, run at your own risk! (And the risk of passengers, neighbours, pedestrians and anyone your share a road with...)I don&#x27;t care if you want to run code that can allow more nuances to the seat heating, but do I think that&#x27;s an important enough principle to also allow drivers to watch netflix on the in car display?TVs and home appliances are less concerning, but I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s users out there who&#x27;d like to disable the annoying &quot;don&#x27;t run the dryer when it&#x27;s full of lint&quot; lock out or stop their garage door from beeping at their car everyday, not realising that setting also keeps it from closing on top of neighbourhood kids or cats.I don&#x27;t know if there&#x27;s anyway to balance a reasonable right to tinker with a general right to live in a safe environment. I also suspect EU and US readers will have quite different takes on it - in part because of the current culture, in part because I think a lot of it is quite effected by geography. Live in dense housing and your neighbours ability to burn their house down is much more of your concern!)

Including cars, TVs, and home appliances -- those are the items I really want to hack.

Anyone who doesn&#x27;t agree with this is a collaborator and should be publicly shamed.

Agreed. Monopoly is the killer of the market engine that powers the positive sum society we all benefit from.Actually enforcing the anti-monopoly rules on the books would help, too.And while we&#x27;re making wishes, we could kill the VC-backed tech play by enforcing a digital version of anti-dumping laws.With those rules in place, we&#x27;d see our market engine quite a bit more aligned with the social good.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dumping_(pricing_policy)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dumping_(pricing_policy)</a>

Plenty of barriers around circumventing such obstacles hinge on IP legislation.

Not really sure what this has to do with running your own code, though.If a manufacturer makes a device locked down, it&#x27;s the technological protections preventing you from running your own code. Not IP&#x2F;copyright. Sometimes they get jailbroken but sometimes not.

The original copyright from the 1700s was 14 years. You could file for an additional 14 years after that. It was extended starting in 1909 until the monstrosity it is today.We&#x27;re far from the promotion of useful arts and sciences and instead guarding the likeness of a cartoon mouse.

The protection period simply needs to be adjusted downward to reflect the faster pace of change. Rewarding 1700&#x27;s technology pace today is asinine.

A lot of us get to live thanks to IP protections too. &gt;90% of Hacker News readers I&#x27;d say, including myself. Software development is all about IP, most of art too, and medicine, and chemistry in general. Who wants to pay people to develop software, or even design new hardware or medicine if competitors can take all that hard work for free?There may be alternatives to copyright and IP in general, but that would require dramatic changes to society, and maybe not in a good way. What you would get is essentially communism. Rejection of intellectual property is a form of rejection of private property, which is at the core of communism. Problem is, looking at past examples, it didn&#x27;t work great.

You can ignore laws on the dark web, but we still don&#x27;t have dark web alternative phone OSes.Except GrapheneOS, I suppose, but it&#x27;s still riding the coattails of Android. Police in some places assume you&#x27;re a drug dealer and arrest you if you have it, so it does qualify as &quot;dark web&quot;.

I think we really need to discuss whether IP&#x2F;copyright protections were a mistake.  A LOT of our &quot;modern&quot; problems stem from IP protections.  Whether that be not being able to own media, right to repair, DRM, censorship, a lot of monopolistic behavior, medicine prices, etc.  And no wonder, IP protection is government sanctioned monopoly, and it is generally recognized that monopolies are bad; is it such a surprise that government enforced monopolies are bad?

&gt; $50m to build a modern OS from scratchheh.

I feel like adding more laws for this kind of stuff won&#x27;t really stick. Like a pie-in-the-sky sort of thing. We can hem and haw about what the government should do all we want but like... I mean, the Digital Markets Act certainly made a HUGE impact. And the GDPR is definitely a net positive for society.I think the thing you brought up at the beginning is the most practical path forward, someone with the technical know-how and business acumen needs to start a company. Apple and Google are quite weak now, and there are lessons to be learned from the Librem 5 and PinePhone. If enough people try, someone will eventually break through.

It being difficult is different from it being possible. If a company wants to raise $50m to read all the documentation and build an alternative OS to run on this crazy piece of hardware, as the consumer I still benefit. If you&#x27;d prefer, let&#x27;s stick with repair? I also need all of that information to be able to repair my phone, but again, it wouldn&#x27;t necessarily be ME who repairs my own phone: I take it to a third-party expert who has built out their own expertise and tools.(Hell: I&#x27;d personally be OK without &quot;documentation&quot;... it should simply be illegal to actively go out of your way to prevent people from doing this. This way you also aren&#x27;t mandating anyone go to extra effort they otherwise wouldn&#x27;t bother with: the status quo is that, because they can, they thrown down an incredible amount of effort trying to prevent people from figuring things out themselves, and that really sucks.)

Its only the manufacturers interests because they dont want people to brick their phone on accident. Really theyre only a secondary party of interest, the real interested party is grandma&#x2F;anyone who can fall victim to malware. Apples decision to ban sideloading is a huge part of how they became the most popular phone maker in the us

&gt; I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don&#x27;t see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.However the interests you mention aren&#x27;t collective at all but very singularly the ones of the manufacturer only

There is already open source software for UWB, computational photography, various depth cameras, direct link WiFi, etc...Will it be as good as the iOS implementation? Probably not. But it&#x27;s hardly an impossible fact and not one that has to be done entirely over and over for every device. The Asahi folks showed it could be done despite hostile conditions.

Is it authoritarian to stop other people from being authoritarians?

Op here: The point I&#x27;m trying to make in the piece is that this is less authoritarian than the common suggestion that Apple and Google be forced to change how iOS and Android works. The piece is meant to be a juxtaposition to that idea.

Not to mention, it&#x27;s an authoritarian attitude, talking about forcing companies to support arbitrary software stacks

A very profitable instance of market segmentation

Your smartwatch is probably more powerful than some of your past computers too. Same with your DSLR camera. Even your smart fridge. These are specialized hardware+software gadgets designed to a particular purpose, which is very different from being a development platform. Same with a phone.

&gt; Because I did. How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone? Why are phones so inferior in this area?Apple and Microsoft are constantly working on fixing the issue with their appstores and requiring app signing in more places. The way industry going is to lock down more of laptops, than allowing phones to be like computers.

&gt;How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone?It kind of started because phones interact with phone networks and the network companies didn&#x27;t want hacked software mucking up their networks. I realise the baseband part is separate from the rest of the phone but it&#x27;s always been that way with every cell phone I&#x27;ve had over 30 years, that they are part locked down.Whereas none of the regular computers and laptops have been especially locked down.It would be cool if you could just connect your laptop to a radio and connect to cell networks but I don&#x27;t think any of them allow that?

&gt;“Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want.Because I did. How come I can do what I want with my computer, but not my phone? Why are phones so inferior in this area?My phone is more powerful than many of the computers I&#x27;ve had in the past, yet I need to jump through a million hoops to use it as a software development platform. Why?

That argues for opening up the hardware more, not closing down the software.In fact it further argues that the degree of vertical integration is monopolistic. Why should a Sony CMOS camera be tied to some Apple computational photography code only available in Apple firmware or iOS? What if I do not like that it makes up images that don&#x27;t exist? What if someone has a better method but now cannot bring it to market?Break it up and open it up. I assure you it can be done.

that has never been true, your phone contains a radio, governed by the relevant laws of your locale.

&gt;I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us &quot;hardware&quot;. The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.That when you buy a phone you&#x27;re also buying software components doesn&#x27;t change the fact that the phone is owned entirely by you. You&#x27;re not entering into a partnership to co-own the phone with anyone else, it&#x27;s entirely yours. No one should get to decide how you use it but you.&gt;But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.So the argument is that by taking a piece of electronics I paid for that is running on electricity I pay for, and making it run some arbitrary piece of software, I&#x27;m putting people&#x27;s lives at risk?

&gt; As someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900&#x2F;950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices againWhy haven&#x27;t we seen a spiritual successor to the N900? It&#x27;s a little strange to me that it&#x27;s cheaper than ever to produce hardware, even in relatively small quantities, but no one (AFAIK) is producing any geek-oriented phones like the N900. Linux hardware support gets better every year. It shouldn&#x27;t be terribly hard to have a factory produce a small number of open phones that can run Linux. They wouldn&#x27;t be any good without significant investment in phone-specific usability, but still.

&gt; It should be possible to run Android on an iPhone and manufacturers should be required by law to provide enough technical support and documentation to make the development of new operating systems possibleAs someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900&#x2F;950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices again, statements like this sound more than naïve to me. I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don&#x27;t see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us &quot;hardware&quot;. The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.Reading technical documentation on things like secure enclaves, UWB chips, computational photography stack, HRTF tuning, unified memory, TrueDepth cameras, AWDL, etc., it feels very wrong to support claims like the OP makes. “Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want. But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;righttocompute.ai" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;righttocompute.ai</a>

tbh I don&#x27;t even care about support, just give me the keysbut ultimately it doesn&#x27;t matter, if the market could bear the additional cost a competitor could emerge... but they barely do anywherehonestly at this point in life I think it would be easier to change society to be structured in a way to make the people running these companies want to give it to you

the Android change doesn&#x27;t impact your ability to plug in your own device and run your own code or someone else&#x27;s codethe change impacts closed source software distributed without verification which is by definition unknown so the &quot;want&quot; is not possible - i.e. you can&#x27;t know if you want to run it.

I agree that there&#x27;s a difference between just not supporting the device running other software, and actively preventing the device from running other software. The latter doesn&#x27;t serve anyone.

&gt;There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we&#x27;re only going to support thaexcept in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.

There are if you are willing to have two devices. One secure phone for banking, phone calls, etc. And a portable linux device for installing whatever you want on. Where installing malware doesn&#x27;t risk losing all of your money.

&gt; There are plenty of other devices out there...No there isn&#x27;t, and one of the main problems.

There is exactly one device produced in the entire US that can legitimately run graphene is in a usable way.Not a monopoly my ass.&gt; Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.Yes, what a splendid idea! Let me just invest a few billion I have lying around here. And maybe after that we can all take a spaceship to Mars and colonize it!Get real.Also, doesn&#x27;t even fucking matter. Guess what, let&#x27;s say I do invest the 10 billion dollars to make said device.Will my bank allow it? No. Why? Because Google says so. Google says &quot;no, that&#x27;s not attested&quot;It doesn&#x27;t matter if I make one device, two devices, or one trillion devices. Its still ALL Google. They decide everything.

+1. Smartphones aren&#x27;t a monopoly. GrapheneOS is a thing. More companies can build hardware for it if there&#x27;s demand. Not every piece of hardware needs to be general purpose computer.I&#x27;ve been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it&#x27;s not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app&#x27;s data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don&#x27;t have the technical literacy to have &quot;informed consent&quot; prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don&#x27;t mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.

I know I&#x27;m going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I genuinely think it&#x27;s OK for a device manufacturer to say: &quot;we are building this device to run this software. If you don&#x27;t want to run this software, then don&#x27;t buy this device. There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we&#x27;re only going to support that&quot;.I think that&#x27;s a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying &quot;you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it&#x27;s not our software, and even if it&#x27;s available elsewhere for less&quot;.I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.

Bingo. They may not be as fast or feature complete but they do work.

Yeah but those times were easy. Now drivers are binary blobs and firmwares basically.

Open source drivers are the overlooked heroes that make everything work. If linux hadn&#x27;t had all these drivers written or ported to it (think of your intel NICs) the OS would be dead in the water

Command+F &#x27;drivers&#x27;0 resultsThese things are never thought through. Sure, Apple could unlock the whole thing, tell everyone to go nuts. Who&#x27;s writing the damn drivers? Apple&#x27;s certainly not obligated to open source theirs, I also can&#x27;t imagine them signing someone else&#x27;s. So we end up with a bunch of homebrew drivers, devices crashing, getting pwned, and the dozens of people who install a third party OS on their iPhone write furious articles that get voted up to the front page of HN.

Flexibility is usually inverse of security

The article is a discussion about google‘s android app processes becoming more strict and the authors opinion that that’s terrible.My comment is an argument against sideloading for phone devices because there’s a lot of nefarious behavior in these types of apps by comparing apples process because Apple is the other operator in this duopoly of phone operating systems. Sorry that was not clear.

What does this have to do with the article?

The fact that I go to McDonald’s and they play a recording every time asking me for an app code. Or I go to Petsmart and they give me all kinds of discounts for installing their app. Or Reddit barely works unless you install their stupid app. There is clearly some invasive behavior happening with apps on phones that doesn’t seem to happen on computers the companies are so insanely motivated to get you to install their freaking appThe difference is I bought the device so I don’t care if you feel restricted as a developer. I’m just saying as a user I feel protected by having someone review the apps that are going on my phone and denying ones they feel suck.I’m also a developer however I don’t write phone apps

&gt; There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple.Reading this comment as a user and developer in one person, it&#x27;s so weird to see this disjointed picture of developers and users. You should have rights and feel unrestricted as a user but I shouldn&#x27;t? Have you considered that being a developer is about the same as being a writer instead of a reader? We&#x27;re the same...&gt; I don’t want my computer to become a walled gardenWhy not? I don&#x27;t think I can articulate an answer to the &quot;I don&#x27;t feel restricted&quot; remark earlier better than you can probably do yourself by seeking what it is that rebels against these walls

There’s something weird about it. My phone needs to be hyper secure, and a lot of companies went to monetize that and introduce insecurities with their software.That’s why I love my iPhone, but I’m not super happy about what happens with my Mac.There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple. Apple keeps the app developers from doing things I don’t like for the most part. I don’t feel very restricted.But I don’t want my computer to become a walled garden. It’s only OK for my phone.

Google does still let you sideload though. The publisher has to submit ID but other than that, there are no restrictions.

Side loading is absolutely not equal open bootloader!

Eu has the Digital Markets Act and what google is doing is illegal in Eu.
Gatekeepers must allow people to side-load software by regulation.Makes me think that google did this now since trump has been criticizing the DMA, so now they feel empowered by their leader to break the law

&gt; In theory EU can mandate open bootloaders like EU mandates USB-C charging, but they won&#x27;t.The EU cannot simply mandate random stuff, it needs to make a strong case and prove an economic benefit considering also the possible negative consequences.Noone is forced to do business in the EU, so it always has to consider the cost and risk for a company vs. the overall benefit for a company of doing business in the EU.Defining a mandate for &quot;open hardware&quot; is a MASSIVE undertaking, creating investment risks for innovators, potential security-risks for the entire EU, additional costs for development, maintenance, support for all manufacturers selling in that market.What is the economic, technology-agnostic case in favor of open bootloaders which would make EU member-countries support such a regulation?How much would a manufacturer be required to provide to be compliant? Continued operation even when the trust-chain is broken? Developer Documentation? compilable source-code? Hardware-warranty?Should a car still be allowed to operate after it&#x27;s unlocked? Should it behave somehow differently to ensure safety for its owner as well as others? How about an elevator? How about a Microwave?What would be the tangible economic benefit of such a mandate to companies and citizens in the EU sector?For a regulatory action, all of this needs to be described in an agnostic way, providing a clear path for a manufacturer to be compliant without creating too much burden on any party in the process.

EU is dropping the ball here. Instead of mandating open hardware they trying to force companies to comply with random stuff, mostly censorship and spying. In theory EU can mandate open bootloaders like EU mandates USB-C charging, but they won&#x27;t. Open hardware is the enemy of the EU, since that means everyone would be able to bypass the chatcontrol of the day.

Because you’re in a tiny minority and it’s more important that more people be protected from malware.Buy a specifically open phone, and support that market segment.

That is understandable, most people are not technical but the few who has a need for it should have an option for it.As a developer I write apps for myself and I side-load them. Why take away my right to do so, just because other people can&#x27;t then nobody should?

I think the bank should be able to discriminate, they should be allowed to say they only work on locked devices, surely.It’s a security measure, particularly as we place more responsibility on banks to prevent their customers being defrauded.

Nothing prevents that the device is locked by you instead of the &quot;store&quot; or even that the device has a &quot;safe&quot; mode that has to be explicitly disabled by the user in a non obvious way like connecting the device to a computer and running a command or so.The only important thing is for the bank, Netflix and co to not be able to discriminate. But again nothing would provide the bank to offer a setting for the user to restrict where it can use it&#x27;s banking app if it was not discriminatory. But we know well where this goes, in the end if you don&#x27;t enable it

&gt; always inform them of the consequencesThis would be about as useful as telling the cat why he can’t go out right now. The words would not be understood, as they won’t be by probably 90% of humanity.&gt; If they want to…They don’t. Categorically. The only reason they would try is because they are being scammed with offers of getting something or cajolement entreating them to allow it.&gt; Why should you have control what they can or cannot do?Me? I’m not asking for control. I’m saying that most people aren’t equipped to understand the threats they face, even in the face of explanation or warning, and their use-cases are comprehensively covered without it. My parents are old. My brother ends up with any PC he owns full of malware and viruses. The current status quo serves them and many millions of other people very well, and we need to be very cautious when arguing to rip this away in the name of our freedom - to them it only represents freedom to be exploited.&gt; Should experts in other fields also be able to control over what their layman family member…Experts in other fields determine the extent of what all laypeople may do legally all the time. Or do you live somewhere that there are zero restrictions on (for example) gas plumbing or work on electrical systems?

You provided an alterative solution yourself. Make protection harder to disable, so non-tech savvy users can&#x27;t disable it easily, always inform them of the consequences of disabling it and make it that it&#x27;s only needed in exceptional cases (there a lot of room for improvement here).If they want to climb over the protection fence, they should be able to do it as they clearly WANT to do it. Why should you have control what they can or cannot do? (Unless they are your kids.) Should experts in other fields also be able to control over what their layman family members are allowed to do?

I want my less tech savvy family members to be able to buy locked-to-the-company-store hardware, that they can’t run other things on, as it protects them from one avenue of scams and hacks. This protection can and will be worked around if it can be easily disabled.Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.

I seriously doubt they can restrict sideloading through Google play services.But if they do then it’s worse than what I thought.

It likely won&#x27;t be safe - they&#x27;re probably going to enforce it through a Google Play Services update rather than an Android update, which means all previous Android OS versions after 5.0 (Lollipop, released in 2014) will be hit with the changes. In order to bypass that you&#x27;d need to install a Custom ROM or stop using and uninstall the Google Play Store entirely (since it&#x27;s not possible to selectively disable just this).Android uses Google Play Services updates to update some features or security without relying on manufacturers to update the OS and drivers.

As for the new Android restrictions I assume my Galaxy S20 will be immune to them because it&#x27;s not getting (major) updates anymore. I&#x27;ll continue using it as long as I can to avoid this. Does anyone know the most recent Galaxy phone that will be safe from this? I want to get a backup.

Because only a bunch of nerds would use it, your bank wouldn&#x27;t support running its shitty app on it, and it&#x27;s back to square 1.

Why not launch a new startup focused on building an open smartphone? This is HN after all, with the right pitch someone will throw money at it.

The line is definitely crossed if you jailbreak your phone. It seems pretty clear. Either you&#x27;re using the device as the manufacturer intended or not. If I take a device rated for 2m of water down scuba diving to 25m, it voids my warranty too.

It&#x27;s up to the manufacturer to prove that the software modification had a material impact on the issue being covered. Yes that&#x27;s expensive, yes that&#x27;s the point.

Imagine Lenovo refusing to service your ThinkPad because you&#x27;ve compiled your own kernel.Charging IC has NTC thermistor and battery absolutely must withstand the system running on 100% and then some.As for battery lifetime, batteries are cheap, unless you glue them to an expensive assembly and force people to replace whole assembly as phone vendors do.

As you said, this might be a complex one to figure out. I am biased because I tend not to use customer support services (with more of a &quot;figure it out&quot; approach) and am confident I could replace parts myself, though the latter might be harder with parts pairing today.Can see how people more interested in the software side of things would care about support from [parent company] though. &quot;Lose all support if you bypass our restrictions&quot; is the relatively straightforward approach, but the collateral damage might be quite high. In an ideal world, perhaps the network of third party repair services could take up the slack?

&gt; Companies aren&#x27;t obligated to support me doing thisWhere does one draw the line on support? If I jailbreak an iPhone, should I still get Apple customer support for the apps on it, even though they may have been manipulated by some aspect of the jailbreak? (Very real problem, easy to cause crashes in other apps when you mess around with root access) Should I still get a battery replacement within warranty from Apple even though I&#x27;ve used software that runs the battery hotter and faster than it would on average on a non-jailbroken iPhone?I feel like changing the software shouldn&#x27;t void your warranty, but I can see arguments against that. I probably fall on the side of losing all software support if you make changes like this, but even then it&#x27;s not clear cut.

&gt; I can see how it might be unreasonable to expect companies to publish documentation, build infrastructure, etc. to support running your own code on the hardware you own (which 99% of people will never need to do).Did you know that television schematics used to come with the documentation for the TV? Discussed not-too-recently on HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26996413">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26996413</a>

As other comments have pointed out, this statement (one I 100% support, BTW) is a little naive. I can see how it might be unreasonable to expect companies to publish documentation, build infrastructure, etc. to support running your own code on the hardware you own (which 99% of people will never need to do).However, I strongly believe that - should one choose to do so - you should not be stopped from jailbreaking, cracking, etc. manufacturer restrictions on the hardware you own. Companies aren&#x27;t obligated to support me doing this - but why should legislation stop me if I want to try? (You can easily guess my thoughts on the DMCA.)

Not defending Apple, but when they restrict sideloading it&#x27;s because they made both the software and the hardware. They didn&#x27;t exploit thousands of open source developers who basically worked for free making Android what it is right now, only to be hijacked by Google. I used to use Android but I did notice a huge decline around 2015, which was around the time when the Android creator left Google.

We can have both worlds.Just because there are some users that prefer such devices doesn&#x27;t mean that a technical user who can repurpose that device shouldn&#x27;t be allowed to.

&gt; It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymoreI think the core driver here is that most people don&#x27;t want a &quot;personal&quot; computer, they want a device that&#x27;s able to reliably accomplish tasks. Early computers gave users much more power and control but that also came with the responsibility to set up and maintain the system, which limited the userbase a lot. I&#x27;d argue a lot of the security is security from the user against themself - there is definitely some value in trying your best to make sure a user is unable to brick their phone no matter how much they try, because they&#x27;re likely going to blame you and ask you to fix it afterwards

100 percent agree.I’ve given talks on how various jailbreak exploits work in order to teach people how to protect their own software but also with the suggestion that we should be able to do this.It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymore. Devices you might not think of as PC’s… just are. They’re sold in slick hardware. And the software ecosystem tries to prevent tampering in the name of security… but it’s not security for the end user most of the time. It’s security for the investors to ensure you have to keep paying them.

Or stop treating Android as Linux for mobile but rather Windows for mobile and finally start pushing and supporting a 3rd major alternative like we have on desktop&#x2F;laptops.I would personally love to start contributing to a truly open alternative which doesn&#x27;t rely on Google being not evil anymore.

The inevitable conclusion of this battle is an acknowledgment that you never really own an iPhone or android in the first place, and the companies stop selling the hardware at all.  You’ll only be able to rent a device as part of your service plan.

Completely agree. This is a general issue with technology in general, if someone uses a new technology to their advantage and at your disadvantage, you are essentially forced to adopt said technology just to keep up. In that sense a lot of technological change isn&#x27;t voluntary. This also explains why a lot of open source&#x2F;proprietary software is always chasing each other to keep up.

Apple is a company, not a government. I haven&#x27;t traded my liberty for anything. Again, you can buy a different phone – that is where liberty comes into this equation.If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple&#x27;s security without bricking the phone, that&#x27;s a &quot;you&quot; problem.

Once you decide to trade your liberty for security, it becomes the norm and then no one has liberty.

Closed devices are secure, yes. Apps can use pinned https certs. Apple signs the binary. This ensures that when your personal data is exfiltrated, it will go undetected by malicious third parties such as yourself.

How do you enable administrator permissions on your Windows computer?

Nobody said that...You can keep your device enslaved to Apple all you want. You don&#x27;t have to use the administrator permissions on Windows if you don&#x27;t want them. Some of us do want freedomYou&#x27;ve got it completely backwards that having the option to control your hardware means you, as an individual, are impacted by anything at all if you don&#x27;t want to administrate your own device

Much harder to make a secure device that is resistant to getting pwn&#x27;d if you can run any code you want. I personally prefer my iPhone to be more secure than to be more open.Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.

That doesn’t benefit the corporations, so it’s communism.

If the user cannot be trusted to maintain the hardware and software, then the only responsible thing is to rely on the manufacturer to do so. In those cases, if the support is dropped you buy the newest device.

I&#x27;d argue that even the &#x27;safe&#x27; devices should at least be open enough to delegate trust to someone besides the original manufacturer. Otherwise it just becomes ewaste once the manufacturer stops support. (Too often they ship vulnerable and outdated software then never fix it.)

&gt; more stress tested and vetted by more peopleGrandma and grandpa aren&#x27;t reading the source code and certainly not up at a professional level. This is one of the core misconceptions of the &quot;free&#x2F;libre&quot; formulation of OSS.

The issue here is rarely whether the security features themselves are circumventable. It’s that at some point this turns into trusting users not to give malware apps permissions (whether that’s a dialog, a system wide setting, adding a third-party app store, etc.). Almost no users can usefully evaluate whether a particular bit of digital trust is a good or bad idea, so people will constantly get scammed in practice. If you’re thinking about ZNP as a solution, you’re not trying to solve the actual security problems of normal users.

I think this is a false dichotomy. Open hardware with open source software would be more protected simply by being more stress tested and vetted by more people. If you need even more protection you can employ zero-knowledge proofs and other trustless technologies. I have long been dreaming about some kind of hardware&#x2F;software co-op creating non-enshittifying versions of thermostats, electric kettles, EV chargers, solar inverters, etc, etc. Hackable for people who want it, simply non-rent-seeking for everyone else.

Keep in mind one of these third parties would almost certainly be Meta (because users want their stuff), and that would almost certainly be a privacy downgrade.

&gt;big scary messageOpen question:Any idea on making it so difficult that grandma isn&#x27;t even able to follow a phisher’s instructions over the phone but yet nearly trivial for anyone who knows what they’re doing?

Consider the possibility of an evil maid type attack before a device is setup for the first time, e.g. running near identical iOS or macOS but with spyware preloaded, or even just adware.

This.We need a mobile bill of rights for this stuff.- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not be owned by companies after purchase.- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not have transactions be taxed by the companies that make them, nor have their activities monitored by the companies that make them. (Gaming consoles are very different than devices we use to do banking and read menus at restaurants.)- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not enforce rules for downstream software apart from heuristic scanning for viruses&#x2F;abuse and strong security&#x2F;permissions sandboxing that the user themselves controls.- The devices all of society has standardized upon should be strictly regulated by governments all around the world to ensure citizens and businesses cannot be strong-armed.- The devices all of society has standardized upon should be a burden for the limited few companies that gate keep them.

I like the way Chromebooks do things, initially locking down the hardware but allowing you to do whatever if you intentionally know what you&#x27;re doing (after wiping the device for security reasons). It&#x27;s a pity that there&#x27;s all the Google tracking in them that&#x27;s near impossible to delete (unless you remove Chrome OS).

Incorrect. For us as tech people this is an option. My older family members will definitely install malware and send all their data to China.Please don’t let me go back to the early days of the internet where my mother had 50 toolbars and malware installed

Incorrect.Choice 2. Empowered user. The end user is free to CHOOSE to delegate the hardware&#x27;s approved signing solutions to a third party. Possibly even a third party that is already included in the base firmware such as Microsoft, Apple, OEM, &#x27;Open Source&#x27; (sub menu: List of several reputable distros and a choice which might have a big scary message and involved confirmation process to trust the inserted boot media or the URL the user typed in...)There should also be a reset option, which might involve a jumper or physical key (E.G. clear CMOS) that factory resets any TPM &#x2F; persistent storage. Yes it&#x27;d nuke everything in the enclave but it would release the hardware.

&gt; Make it require a difficult&#x2F;obvious factory reset to enable, if you are concerned about someone being &quot;tricked&quot; into turning off the lockdown.Is there also a way to make it obvious to the user that a device is running non-OEM software? For example, imagine someone intercepts a new device parcel, flashes spyware on it, then delivers it in similar&#x2F;the same packaging unbeknownst to the end user. The same could be said for second-hand&#x2F;used devices.It&#x27;s potentially possible the bootrom&#x2F;uefi&#x2F;etc bootup process shows some warning for x seconds on each boot that non-OEM software is loaded, but for that to happen you need to be locked out of being able to flash your own bootrom to the device.

&gt; Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protectionThats fine! Just make sure it is possible for someone to take the same device and remove the locked down protections.Make it require a difficult&#x2F;obvious factory reset to enable, if you are concerned about someone being &quot;tricked&quot; into turning off the lockdown.If someone wants baby mode on, all power too them! Thats their choice. Just like it should be everyone else&#x27;s choice to own the same hardware and turn it off.

For security reasons it makes sense for them to be different devices. People and services may not want to allow insecure devices to communicate with them.

The issue with this is that inevitably the locked down devices, which will end up being 98%+ of the market, become required for ordinary living, because no-one will develop for the 2%.Open hardware is essentially useless if I need to carry both an open phone and a phone with the parking app, the banking app, messenger app to contact friends, etc.

On Steam Deck, you never even have to set a &#x27;sudo&#x27; password. You can have a safe managed experience and still allow a device to be open. Option 2 is ridiculous because it will just be exploited by companies and governments that want to control what you do or what content you see.

&gt; The problem isn&#x27;t that locked-down devices exist - it&#x27;s that we don&#x27;t have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.The problems is that vendors use &quot;locked down devices&quot; as an excuse to limit competition.Suppose you have a &quot;locked down&quot; device that can only install apps from official sources, but &quot;official sources&quot; means Apple, Google, Samsung or Amazon. Moreover, you can disable any of these if you want to (requiring a factory reset to re-enable), but Google or Apple can&#x27;t unilaterally insist that you can&#x27;t use Amazon, or for that matter F-Droid etc.Let the owner of the device lock it down as much as they want. Do not let the vendor do this when the owner doesn&#x27;t want it.

I don&#x27;t think it will convince you in any way, but the whole point is&#x2F;will be that it&#x27;s not your hardware, you&#x27;re paying for a perpetual license to use a terminal bound to someone else&#x27;s service.

You&#x27;re wrong.My hardware. My decision.

Government maybe rather than legislating big companies stores could not back up smaller open HW&#x2F;SW vendors? It seems we gave up increasing competition on HW and what is left is app store level...

&gt; The problem isn&#x27;t that locked-down devices exist - it&#x27;s that we don&#x27;t have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.Not for lack of trying. 
See for yourself<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_open-source_mobile_phones" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_open-source_mobile_p...</a>The list is not short.Plenty of companies have attempted this over the years but it’s not obvious that a big enough customer base exists to support the tremendous number of engineering hours it takes to make a phone. Making a decent smart phone is really hard. And the operations needed to support production isn’t cheap either.

No, we need to only have option 1, because if option 2 exists, things like banking apps will all only run on it and will refuse to work on option 1.

Open and hackable products have a niche user base, so these users get a niche set of options. The only way to get mainstream products to play to this tiny user base is to demand that all products be open and hackable by fiat. Otherwise, there’s no incentive from anybody involved (manufacturers, app developers, etc.) to give them something that can run both their banking app and some open source app they compiled themselves. There’s a lot of dancing around the security effects this will have on “normies”, and although there are plenty of armchair proposals I haven’t heard one that doesn’t obviously degrade into some sort of alarm fatigue as both legitimate apps and malware tell you to click though a dialog or flip a setting.

You realize you’re discounting 98% of the world’s population, right?

Do we need the second option to exist? The world is dangerous place. If you can&#x27;t figure out a computer perhaps you&#x27;re just unfit to participate in the modern economy.The existence of locked-down hardware eliminates the feasibility of open hardware through network effects. That is what is happening now.

Regardless of whether we expect manufacturers to let us run any code on the device, we should not restrict people from attempting to bypass the manufacturers limitations. That gives the manufacturer freedom to try and lock the device down but also the owner freedom to break those locks. Otherwise it worsens situations like the FutureHome scandal.

I was a kid once. The hackability of the devices I owned is what led me to this career. Let&#x27;s give our young ones a little more credibility.

If there is a big enough market for 1), shouldn&#x27;t it exist?The problem in my eyes seems to be that there isn&#x27;t enough capital interested to sufficiently fund 1) to compete and create a comparable product. Thus, at best, we end up with much inferior products which even people semi-interested in 1) are not willing to adopt due to the extreme trade offs in usability.

This is just insane. Lock the devices down by default, and allow the user to unlock them if they want. Why do we have to have Big Brother devices that &quot;benevolently&quot; restrict what you can run &quot;for your own good&quot;? Why can&#x27;t all phones have unlockable bootloaders? My phone has a big, scary &quot;DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU&#x27;RE A COMPUTER EXPERT&quot; warning screen to unlock the bootloader, and that&#x27;s fine.Why do we need devices we can&#x27;t unlock? Who is harmed by unlocking? This is the major point nobody has ever been able to explain to me. Who exactly does the big scary unlocked bootloader hurt? My parents have unlockable devices and they haven&#x27;t had all their money stolen, because they haven&#x27;t unlocked them.

I know you weren&#x27;t using it in this way, but I do appreciate the double meaning of the word &quot;protection&quot; here.A.k.a, &quot;nice google account you&#x27;ve got there, holding all your memories, emails, contacts, and interface to modern living; would be a shame if something happened to it because you decided to sideload an app ...&quot;

You can have somr option burried in the settings, a 10yo kid would be able to think of this

People too stupid to use computers safely should be kept away from computers for their own safety. Giving that kind of person any kind of computer would be immoral by definition. They shouldn&#x27;t have phones at all, they&#x27;re just going to fall for corporate approved scams from Meta, Applovin, and Indian call centers.

In theory these 2 options seem like a sensible way to have a choice. But the average user is not going to own and carry 2 devices. We want to have all we need in a single device, and things like paying with your phone have become way too common by now to not have them.

Agreed and I think we&#x27;re already here. Hardware is so cheap now its trivial to have both multiple streaming devices and multiple open computer platforms. There are advantages to both and no way to compromise to have one device for everything.

Option 1 is a superset of option 2 - meaning, any hackable device can also be a locked down device because hackability means the power to do whatever.We don&#x27;t need option 2, period, and it shouldn&#x27;t exist.Just put the hackability behind a switch or something. If people turn it on, that&#x27;s on them.

We need both options to coexist:1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protectionThis concept of &quot;I should run any code on hardware I own&quot; is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we should not expect manufacturers of phones and tablets to allow anyone to run any code on every device, since this will cause harm to many users.There should be more open and hackable products available in the market. The DIY mindset at the junction of hardware and software is crucial for tech innovation - we wouldn&#x27;t be where we are today without it. However, I also want regulations and restrictions on the phones I buy for my kids and grandparents. They need protection from themselves and from bad actors.The market should serve both groups: those who want to tinker and innovate, and those who need a safe, managed experience. The problem isn&#x27;t that locked-down devices exist - it&#x27;s that we don&#x27;t have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.

I think fighting for the ability to write a custom OS for a phone misses the point.It should be possible to participate in the modern economy using standard technology.To this end, I think there should be a mandate that all govt and commercial infrastructure apps offer a progressive web app with at least feature parity with proprietary phone apps.Want me to use a phone to pay for lunch, EV charging, parking or a toll? Great. It needs to be doable with anything running firefox, safari or chrome.

It&#x27;s obvious you don&#x27;t understand what is written in those links. The capability security architecture breaks the false dichotomy of either having to have a fully locked down or open operating system, it provides the technical foundation to grant individual programs, and even parts of these programs, recursively, only the (data, filesystem, network) access and resource consumption (cpu, memory) rights that they need. This is not an opinion, this is a decades old technical solution that humanity ignores at its own peril. While I wouldn&#x27;t argue that it completely solves computer security, it allows programmers and users to minimize the attack surface of their systems.

Ok, so I&#x27;ve trigged quite a reaction with my phrasing. I&#x27;m very sorry about that.Put yourself in my place... Computer Security is a solved problem, and has been for decades, yet we find ourselves in an infinite loop of crises that result in ignorance of solutions. Maybe 5% of all discourse here on HN is about a problem we don&#x27;t have to have.How would you push the world to resolution?

Your opinion is not &quot;a gentle reminder&quot;, &quot;a friendly reminder&quot; or &quot;a public service announcement&quot;. It&#x27;s just your opinion and nothing more.

A gentle reminder to the readers here at HN that it doesn&#x27;t have to be this way. Computer Security is a solved problem[1], and has been so since the 1980s[2].
It&#x27;s my strong opinion that the only methods you&#x27;ve seen to this point[3-7] were deliberately chosen to be ones that don&#x27;t work, and make things worse in the long run.There&#x27;s no reason we shouldn&#x27;t be able to run what we want on our hardware, without having to trust anything other than the microkernel inside the operating systems.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Capability-based_security" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Capability-based_security</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Capability-based_operating_sys" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Capability-based_operating_sys</a>...[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;User_Account_Control" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;User_Account_Control</a>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;AppArmor" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;AppArmor</a>[5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Security-Enhanced_Linux" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Security-Enhanced_Linux</a>[6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Application_permissions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Application_permissions</a>[7] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trusted_Platform_Module" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Trusted_Platform_Module</a>

Interesting perspective but unfortunately with smartphones you&#x27;ll have cellular carriers lock down their bootloaders because of bogus &quot;security&quot; reasons.

Absolutely must have the right to run any software on hardware we own. It should be mandated for hardware built by large companies, who are soaking up the capital and labor that’s available. It’s sensible regulation.

We’ve got a solution to that.What makes you think you can own hardware, you fascist capitalist pig dog!

I think it is more a case of, at least provide the option to have another OS. Chances are that nobody else will be able to make it work but having it closed off before even getting a chance to try feels a little unfair to those that buy the hardware.

This feels like an arbitrary level of abstraction for how much control a user should have. When you buy a phone, you&#x27;re buying a combination of components designed and paired for that manufacturer&#x27;s software. Can the user potentially replace that software? Sure, but should they be expected to?If they just wanted hardware, they could buy their own and piece something together, if we&#x27;re exploring those kinds of hypotheticals. But buying an Apple or Android device is a different choice and I think, within that context, a user should be able to run the software they want.

The situation we have is fine. You can make hardware with features these people want, or you can make hardware with features those people want.

just turn it off in summer. it&#x27;ll be doom level 30 shortly.

So what? Should security features be illegal so people can more easily run their own OS&#x27;s on phones?

iPhones have a locked bootloader; it is impossible to run an OS not signed by Apple unless you find an exploit.

You already have that ability, afaik there is nothing stopping you or your friends from loading and running whatever software you want except your own technical ability.If you want the government to force other people to do the work to let you have your cake and eat it too, I can&#x27;t support that.

I mean you’re right but it seems like the equilibrium we’re heading towards is one where the opposite is true and our internet and society looks more like China’s. Principles unfortunately mean little in the face of societal and technological change, the only thing that matters is the resulting incentives.

&gt;why shouldn’t Netflix have the right to choose who they distribute content to?power asymmetry

It&#x27;s sort of antitrust adjacent. They are big enough to set market rules on the manner of distribution, like DRM and hardware-software lock-in, which doesn&#x27;t directly stifle competition in their field (only a little) but in another field, and the results are arguably anti-consumer. That sort of power should not be in the hands of a single company.

A non libertarian might ask: Is it good for society?

Really not a libertarian, but why shouldn’t Netflix have the right to choose who they distribute content to?  They negotiated conditions with the creators, why shouldn’t they be able to specify the DRM?  No one is forcing you to subscribe to Netflix.  Or even to buy an iPad.

&gt; In this context this would mean having the ability and documentation to build or install alternative operating systems on this hardwareIt doesn&#x27;t work. Everything from banks to Netflix and others are slowly edging out anything where they can&#x27;t fully verify the chain of control to an entity they can have a legal or contractual relationship with. To be clear, this is fundamental, not incidental. You can&#x27;t run your own operating system because it&#x27;s not in Netflix&#x27;s financial interest for you to do so. Or your banks, or your government. They all benefit from you not having control, so you can&#x27;t.This is why it&#x27;s so important to defend the real principles here not just the technical artefacts of them. Netflix shouldn&#x27;t be able to insist on a particular type of DRM for me to receive their service. Governments shouldn&#x27;t be able to prevent me from end to end encrypting things. I should be able to opt into all this if I want more security, but it can&#x27;t be mandatory. However all of these things are not technical, they are principles and rights that we have to argue for.

We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own