Oh, the irony of a site that has outsourced its censorship to its audience (like/. [1]) talking propagandistically about another site threatening comparably vague censorship of its users. The propaganda of the term "creator" in this context isn't copyright related, but it's still aimed at "elevat[ing] authors' moral standing above that of ordinary people" to justify another power, denying freedom of speech.
[1] Where posts have scores, low-scoring posts are hidden by default, users who score aren't allowed to explain a score because they can't post and score in the same thread, and where scores become arbitrary but are effectively used to keep corporate-friendly talking points ahead of critical or dissenting views.
Sometimes people don't want to see how the older free software movement (a social movement which advocates for the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) and the younger open source development methodology are philosophically different (1, 2) and that philosophical difference leads to radical differences on the ground. Objections to raising this difference tend to take the form of trying to make it look like any reminder of software freedom (which open source enthusiasts don't like because their philosophy was founded to reject software freedom) is being somehow rude. But time after time we see this difference in action and this article promoting Skype is no different.
Here a proprietary (non-free, user subjugating) program—Skype—is being advertised for use on what might be a free software system (unfairly referred to as a "Linux" system). No reminder of anything to do with software freedom except in a place where the proprietor thinks they can benefit from the conflation the open source philosophy was designed to achieve: "While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion." tries to get you to think of "open source" but not to the extent that one would wonder if even that group's weaker philosophy is going to be available to Skype's users by running Skype. No mention of GNU as in a GNU/Linux operating system; any mention of GNU is far too strong a reminder of the software freedom you're not getting with Skype. Better to stick to distracting technocratic details that are irrelevant compared with the profound problems of running Skype, details like the software's packaging. And to reinforce the notion that open source advocates will often abandon their own developmental philosophy if it gets in the way of a powerful proprietor, we get a quote from Canonical, an open source supporting company, further encouraging users to install the non-free communications software.
Nowhere will you find a reminder that not only is Skype non-free software (and that this alone carries horrible implications) but Microsoft is an NSA partner, and Microsoft changed Skype specifically for spying. Apparently the "seamless user experience" Canonical championed and the "high quality experience" Microsoft talked about doesn't include respecting a user's software freedom, their privacy, or the security of their computer.
Software freedom (a computer owner's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) is a viable cure for this just as it would have been a great way to thoroughly address the recent VW fraud where that company (and many other automakers) cheated emissions checking by having the software control emissions differently during testing than during regular car use. Fines, firings, and forcing automakers to accept returned cars in exchange for money won't fix these problems and they won't help car owners own the vehicles they ostensibly own. Software freedom can by allowing car owners to determine their own limit for how much they're willing to make their cars obey their will (including not leaking data about the car's use without their consent). This is ultimately an ethical issue (how should we treat people with regard to computers?) and yet another spying issue (spying is big business and turning a blind eye to software freedom is indistinguishable from letting abusive proprietors have their way).
It is, and this alone is a big reason why an organization keen on controlling its image favors shifting the control to their favor. This certainly includes a more censor-friendly forum over the typically quick turnaround of an unmoderated mailing list. Unmoderated mailing lists offer no means of cancellation, editing (including edits by non-posters such as sysadmins) and mailing lists typically send out posts to subscribers very quickly. Add in the use of Javascript for even more control over the user's computer by literally sending users code to run in the context of their user account (which every major browser dutifully does by default). Accessible archives are also under more server-side control with a forum: the server admins decide how much history they want to continue to publish and how accessible that is to indexers, whereas with mailing lists and netnews the users have a say.
So many other corporate media repeater sites are forums (/., Hacker News, reddit, every corporate news outlet, many so-called alternative news outlets, etc.). Mailing lists aren't as free speech friendly as netnews (particularly when one considers newsgroups carried by many netnews servers such as Usenet) but unmoderated mailing lists are typically more free speech friendly than web forums.
I'm not interested in a computer that runs on nonfree software, is network-capable, and running code I'm not allowed to fully understand, fix, alter, run only when I want, or share with others (in short, software freedom). I see no reason to trust the manufacturers, the proprietary software developers, or the distributors with my privacy and I see nothing in the ads for any of the devices to convince me otherwise (something I believe to be their job if they want me to buy their product).
I might find it convenient to have access to the information such a device can grant, but not at the cost of my privacy or my software freedom. I also don't have a problem with paying for respect for my privacy and my software freedom. But so long as that's not an option, there's simply nothing for me to consider. The high price and other technical shortcomings (small screen, hard-to-use touchscreen controls, etc.) are relatively minor details; issues that I can address myself with software freedom.
Nobody gets proprietary software for free as users pay with their software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software); Microsoft's nonfree software is no exception. No matter how little money Microsoft's nonfree software costs you, you'll end up paying with your freedom if you run it atop a nonfree OS such as Microsoft Windows.
They want to know us as much as possible to sell advertising...
People need to stop saying this. This makes a claim that is beyond the speaker's knowledge and likely to be untrue as well as misrepresentative. Not only do we not know why the organizations that collect information about us do this, the organizations don't know all the reasons for which they'll use that data. Some data collection might initially be ad-related but the information collected has multiple purposes like everything else in life, but collected information might be just as valuable to target people for murder via drone, inquire about application preferences, or a variety of other uses serious and trivial. You think you're submitting a DNA sample for familial relation analysis but you've also handed over data showing a genetic predisposition for some disease which will become the reason why you'll be denied something you want. Your location data reveals your haunts and if you carry a tracker (aka cell phone or mobile) with you in your house, reveals something about what you do when you think you're alone in the privacy of your home.
Talking about selling advertising makes the data collection seem more innocent than it might be, doesn't recognize the multiple purposes of the collected information, and says nothing about the constant spying going on in people's daily lives (particularly where Google, publishers of the Android OS, are concerned). We should casually reinforce the need for privacy in our lives and the lives of others, not ignorantly reduce the perceived harm in constant data collection.
It's not clear to me how the article for this story or any of the articles the story links to accounts for ads that are a part of the show. I'm guessing the claim of "being saved" from advertising is flatly not true because the alleged surveying doesn't account for these ads.
I also question the veracity of the nameless source who allegedly said "Netflix is a godsend. We try to prevent our kids from watching too much TV, but we love being able to put them in front of a Netflix show and know weâ(TM)re mostly in control of what theyâ(TM)re seeing. We donâ(TM)t need our kids seeing repetitive ads for new toys or sugary cereals." partially because I don't trust anonymous sources in contexts where anonymity is unnecessary and partially because the whole article is indistinguishable from what I'd expect Netflix to say if they were advertising for themselves via an article.
That's another reason you're better off investing in free software, software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason. It's not the program that costs no money, it's the users that are free to make the program suit their needs. If the software were free software you could run it, hire people to improve it, learn programming (if you're not a programmer) to make improvements yourself, and share copies to help your community. I invest in free software and I recommend others do so too. We can liberate ourselves from so many abusive practices with software freedom.
Not just hands-free, or driver-free, or go-wherever-you-want free. But free as in beer: complimentary, gratis. Summon a car and travel for nothing -- that is, so long as you are willing to make a stop or two en route at sponsoring locations.
And free from privacy; what you do and say inside the car can be recorded and shared with an uncountable number of others who would otherwise have no idea what you did or said. The car you ride in is not your car, so you'll have no permission to inspect or modify the car to let you retain your privacy as you take an ad-sponsored ride. Your location log can be shared as well; people everywhere for all time can use that information to evaluate you for all sorts of things you didn't expect: your next job application, getting a loan, getting insurance, going out on a date, paying for goods and services, and more. We see this with DNA-based services that tell you about your family. The recorded information can and likely will outlive you, helping to form your legacy for generations of people you'll never meet (including people who will be born after you die). Contrary to what the Atlantic concludes ("This future might seem, at first glance, like a techno-utopian scenario. Yet little will have really changed. Like the Las Vegas cabbie, the goal of these systems will be to make profit for themselves.") this future is quite unlike anything humanity has had to deal with in such an organized fashion and there's more at stake than some organization's zeal for profit. There's a lot for you to lose when you don't value your freedom and your privacy.
Quite right, and free software is objectively better for security as well (you aren't allowed to vet nonfree software no matter how much skill and persistence you apply to that task; you aren't allowed to share your improvements to nonfree software either, so even if you find and patch a problem you can't help your community except to tell them to stop running nonfree software).
And free software is probably better for the environment as it lets people run usable older computers for longer avoiding the problem where people throw away usable older computers because the latest nonfree software won't work on them.
Mozilla certainly didn't handle this as well as they should have but it's important to keep sight of the bigger picture: switching to another comparable browser risks switching to a nonfree browser. I hope (for your own software freedom) you won't make that bad choice in a hasty emotional decision. That would be quite ironic: to give up on a free browser that can be made better because of an immature stunt ostensibly aimed at increasing user privacy.
Real user privacy simply cannot be had with nonfree browsers. No matter how willing and able you are, you aren't allowed to know what the nonfree browsers do, alter them to suit your needs, or help others by sharing your improvements. Don't throw out your own software freedom because of Mozilla's ill-handled stunt.
Those who were defending amazon.com's hardware+service to allow amazon.com to deliver items inside your home should remember this: software you don't exclusively control, can't vet, and aren't allowed to inspect, fix, or share (thus your willingness to do these things is moot) means you're not just trusting an unknowable number of people to open your door and do stuff in your home while everyone is away. Your home security and your privacy is also subject to security problems anywhere in the amazon.com system; people could come in and do stuff to your home without looking like they're breaking in (even though they are). It's unwise to create circumstances for a break-in that are indistinguishable from you letting them in.
Car owners modifying their cars? This can't be allowed because nobody would ever sell a car (and clearly businesses must be given primacy in society). Independent garages and individual car owners might learn things that let them offer repair and augmentation services, and then car sellers would be run right out of business. We need people buying new cars to railroad them into accepting features they might not like (built-in GPS that the customer isn't told about and is therefore unlikely to remove), not learning how their cars work so they can customize them. DRM defenders and other proprietary sycophants should be the first to complain that such behavior is "piracy" to avoid the customer becoming a "thief" (or some other smear words). We can't have people fully controlling the things they own!
The other new capability is the ability for administrators to block extensions depending on the features those extensions need to use. For example, an admin can block any extension that tries to use file system access, that reads or writes the clipboard, or that accesses the webcam or microphone.
In this description one is clearly supposed to trust a nonfree program (Google Chrome) to vet other software's access to the file system, clipboard, webcam, and microphone. But one has no good reason to call Chrome trustworthy. Users have no idea what the Chrome code is doing when it runs because that program is nonfree software. No matter how capable the user is, no matter how willing they are to research and fix problems, Chrome users are not allowed to help themselves by reading the complete Chrome source code, modifying said source code, or help others in the community by distributing Chrome code (whether modified or not). The only users allowed to do these things are the people one ought not trust because they're the proprietor. As a side issue that proprietor happens to be a spy organization. So one should wonder if administrators can block Google Chrome's access to these things too or perhaps that is best addressed by not running Google Chrome in the first place.
The Russiagate narrative aims at distracting you away from assigning Hillary Clinton full responsibility for her own campaign, restarting a cold war with Russia, and it's all based on stories that fall flat on inspection. Kaspersky's software is part of the anti-Russia hysteria and is properly dismissed out of hand not for being from Russia but for being nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating).
Consider what they're telling you in the article: "This allows independent experts to verify that our software has no hidden functionality, that it doesn't send your files to third parties, doesn't spy on you and fully complies with the end-user agreement". These "independent experts" do not include the users, no matter how willing or technically astute Kaspersky's users are. Furthermore these alleged experts are unknown to you, subject to change (not at your choice), and even they don't get their software freedom respected with the software. Also, it's quite easy to bamboozle anyone who doesn't get free software.
There's no reason to trust that one nonfree program will somehow "protect" you from the problems of malware. This has nothing to do with who wrote the software, what country the authors come from, or what they claim "experts" will vet. Proprietary software is often malware.
We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better...
But don't be fooled: one thing Apple remains firm on—Apple's customers don't deserve software freedom. Apple will continue to pursue its walled garden, ever restrictive practices built around DRM, proprietary software, app store censorship, and so on (see more about how Apple's malware adversely affects its users). The latest insecurity should not be taken as a sign that Apple's users deserve to fully own their computers. Apple will remain firmly in control over their users no matter how capable or willing they may be to want to run, inspect, modify the software, or share improvements to help make things better for their fellow Apple users. I'd like to be able to say to users: pay more for Apple because they sell you software freedom and that deserves extra money to help keep them in business treating you, the prospective computer owner, right. But I can't say that about Apple, so I recommend that you take your business elsewhere and do business with other distributors.
From what I gather so far, you're missing software freedom. Whether this is creation of an unprivileged account named "root" or granting admin privileges to anyone patient enough to "click on unlock a few times" (as the story intro claims), something is wrong. Are MacOS users still being denied the permission to inspect what's really going on in the source code, fix the problem, and distribute fixed code to others?
In the referenced twitter.com thread, Apple wants to "take a closer look at what's happening together" in an unpublished discussion ("Send us a DM that includes your Mac model along with your macOS version. We'll meet up with you there."). There are plenty of skilled programmers willing to help but without software freedom, this makes Apple look even worse than their lame attempt at seeing the problem which it's entirely possible only they have the privilege to really study, understand, and fix.
I don't like the speech ramifications of curtailing messages I don't like, nor would I choose to curtail your freedom to say what you did, but I also think the reasons why people smoke are far more complicated and require more compassion than can be addressed by calling them "stupid". Persistent messages telling people smoking is socially advantageous plus addictive chemicals engineered to keep users hooked are apparently a potent combination.
We do ourselves and the people suffering from a problem we seek to "fix" a disservice by belittling them. Real solutions won't come in the form of curtailing free speech or such namecalling. We could do a lot better to get the tobacco companies to fund health and recovery programs for smokers, programs they fund but have no say in designing or administering (since they've clearly declared themselves to be untrustworthy for such a task), even if that means these companies end up paying billions of dollars which reallocate all of their profits. Putting more people into single-payer healthcare (Medicare for all) would help focus people's attention on chronic issues as well.
Or paying people in entertainment to be seen either smoking or at least holding cigarettes, things that can subtly suggest smoking is okay or even 'cool' to do. They already do this in movies (likely with the cooperation of the tobacco companies) so they can do more of it. Traditional TV ads for smoking stopped airing years ago, not because they were forced off but because they're not needed.
Advertising inside of something else (such as entertainment products) is quite effective and used for other propaganda too. It's also how the US Government helps keep the US on a constant war footing; a steady dose of pro-war propaganda including people who work with that government to vet Hollywood scripts, recommend changes to elide actions they don't want people talking about (like the time the CIA made a change to "Meet the Parents" where "In the original script Stiller finds CIA torture manuals on a desk, but Brandon changed that to photos of Robert De Niro with various dignitaries."), and generally influence messages conveyed by the corporate media.
Traditional advertisements are what industries like the smoking companies want to frame any punitive choices around because the weak spots of that old form of advertising are well-known and easily worked around or avoided. The grandparent article is really a lot less interesting than its current moderation would indicate.
Beware of gaslighting with this op-ed. The article reads to me as if to say, you haven't had net neutrality for a while now so don't complain when it officially goes away and you can't miss what you've lived without. So please quit pressuring Congress to intervene; you'll never notice a change when net neutrality disappears.
As others have pointed out, the article isn't really about something net neutrality will address. The problems with Facebook, Google, spying, and computer control via proprietary software are real problems that need to be dealt with. But net neutrality is about a different issue. Net neutrality is a necessary but insufficient (in itself) quality of network service. I don't want an ISP discriminating for me what other computers my computers are allowed to trade packets with, nor will the absence of net neutrality be fixed by charging me more for an Internet connection. I understand that ISPs in their power and rent-seeking will see this situation differently, but it's critical not to give businesses primacy. People need power to speak freely and be heard, not routed into yet another class system.
The good news is much like Charlie Rose gets embarrassed off the national stage, hopefully companies that don't take security seriously will be forced into bankruptcy.
Hoping for some unaccountable process to help users is no substitute for software freedom. Hoping is apparently flatly incapable of addressing purposeful choices to not fix remotely-exploitable problems (whether bugs put there by accident or weakening something on purpose like Microsoft did with the Skype protocol to make it easier to spy on Skype users).
There are no guarantees of program security so a useful perspective focuses on how users can improve the chances they'll get software that does what they want. Hoping for something better is foolish, passive, and completely unnecessary.
All complex software has bugs. But not all software respects your freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software so you can decide how to handle whatever problems arise with the software. You ought to be allowed to fully control the computers you own. Free software (software that respects your software freedom) is a means to grant people that control and treat people ethically with regard to computer software. Nonfree (or proprietary) software denies users the freedoms of free software. Nonfree software is often used as a way to hide vulnerabilities and malware; a choice which certainly hurts users. When the software's operation is a secret, users aren't granted permission to know what the program does when it runs. This means users who run such software have less control over their computer. If users aren't permitted to improve the software and distribute improvements to others the users are helpless to make their computers better serve their needs and help their community do the same. That's no way to treat other people.
It's not a matter of who writes the software (oh no, this software came from Russia or whatever other country the empire currently objects to), it doesn't matter what the software purports to do, it doesn't matter how comfortable you are with the software nor how much you paid for the software. You don't deserve software freedom any less for one kind of software or another. The development methodology is not the most important point either. The key point is that in order to treat people ethically with computer software you have to treat them as equals and let them decide for themselves how they'd like to handle running, inspect, sharing, and modifying the software. Offer bug fixes gratis (to be nice and show that you care about what you already distributed) and offer consulting services for a fee if you wish (and charge as much as you can get for your services). But you can quickly and effectively earn trust with your users by respecting their software freedom.
No Social Security numbers, credit card details, trip location info or other data were taken, Uber said.
So the people who didn't disclose an October 2016 attack until now assure us about the details of what was copied? Forgive me if I don't think it wise to trust the statements of those who don't disclose problems to the adversely affected in a timely manner. We've seen so many examples of other organizations later disclose that their attacks were worse than they first let on, it'll be noteworthy if this is merely late in coming and not both late and incomplete reporting.
"Is Firefox 57 Faster Than Chrome?" doesn't matter. Firefox is free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) and the basis for more free software browsers that do a better job respecting one's privacy than Firefox does by default. Google's Chrome, on the other hand, is nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating) software published by a known spy agency and partner of the NSA (three cheers for Snowden for freeing the documents about what the American government and corporations are doing!). Using that program means literally handing Google as much control over your computer (including your browsing) as your computer account allows.
I don't care which browser is faster. It so happens that any recent revision of Firefox is fast enough to do the jobs I do. What's more important to me is software freedom; I care about retaining control over the computers I own and I think all other computer users deserve full control over their computers. So I recommend software freedom for its own sake even if that means an inconvenience on something as relatively unimportant as browser speed. Leave it to the corporate tech media, the corporate sycophants (readily found on/.), and people too naive about social issues to cultivate bad priorities like browser speed over software freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, the irony of a site that has outsourced its censorship to its audience (like /. [1]) talking propagandistically about another site threatening comparably vague censorship of its users. The propaganda of the term "creator" in this context isn't copyright related, but it's still aimed at "elevat[ing] authors' moral standing above that of ordinary people" to justify another power, denying freedom of speech.
[1] Where posts have scores, low-scoring posts are hidden by default, users who score aren't allowed to explain a score because they can't post and score in the same thread, and where scores become arbitrary but are effectively used to keep corporate-friendly talking points ahead of critical or dissenting views.
Sometimes people don't want to see how the older free software movement (a social movement which advocates for the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) and the younger open source development methodology are philosophically different (1, 2) and that philosophical difference leads to radical differences on the ground. Objections to raising this difference tend to take the form of trying to make it look like any reminder of software freedom (which open source enthusiasts don't like because their philosophy was founded to reject software freedom) is being somehow rude. But time after time we see this difference in action and this article promoting Skype is no different.
Here a proprietary (non-free, user subjugating) program—Skype—is being advertised for use on what might be a free software system (unfairly referred to as a "Linux" system). No reminder of anything to do with software freedom except in a place where the proprietor thinks they can benefit from the conflation the open source philosophy was designed to achieve: "While Microsoft has long been viewed as an enemy of the Linux community -- and it still is by some -- the company has actually transformed into an open source champion." tries to get you to think of "open source" but not to the extent that one would wonder if even that group's weaker philosophy is going to be available to Skype's users by running Skype. No mention of GNU as in a GNU/Linux operating system; any mention of GNU is far too strong a reminder of the software freedom you're not getting with Skype. Better to stick to distracting technocratic details that are irrelevant compared with the profound problems of running Skype, details like the software's packaging. And to reinforce the notion that open source advocates will often abandon their own developmental philosophy if it gets in the way of a powerful proprietor, we get a quote from Canonical, an open source supporting company, further encouraging users to install the non-free communications software.
Nowhere will you find a reminder that not only is Skype non-free software (and that this alone carries horrible implications) but Microsoft is an NSA partner, and Microsoft changed Skype specifically for spying. Apparently the "seamless user experience" Canonical championed and the "high quality experience" Microsoft talked about doesn't include respecting a user's software freedom, their privacy, or the security of their computer.
Software freedom (a computer owner's freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify published computer software) is a viable cure for this just as it would have been a great way to thoroughly address the recent VW fraud where that company (and many other automakers) cheated emissions checking by having the software control emissions differently during testing than during regular car use. Fines, firings, and forcing automakers to accept returned cars in exchange for money won't fix these problems and they won't help car owners own the vehicles they ostensibly own. Software freedom can by allowing car owners to determine their own limit for how much they're willing to make their cars obey their will (including not leaking data about the car's use without their consent). This is ultimately an ethical issue (how should we treat people with regard to computers?) and yet another spying issue (spying is big business and turning a blind eye to software freedom is indistinguishable from letting abusive proprietors have their way).
It is, and this alone is a big reason why an organization keen on controlling its image favors shifting the control to their favor. This certainly includes a more censor-friendly forum over the typically quick turnaround of an unmoderated mailing list. Unmoderated mailing lists offer no means of cancellation, editing (including edits by non-posters such as sysadmins) and mailing lists typically send out posts to subscribers very quickly. Add in the use of Javascript for even more control over the user's computer by literally sending users code to run in the context of their user account (which every major browser dutifully does by default). Accessible archives are also under more server-side control with a forum: the server admins decide how much history they want to continue to publish and how accessible that is to indexers, whereas with mailing lists and netnews the users have a say.
So many other corporate media repeater sites are forums (/., Hacker News, reddit, every corporate news outlet, many so-called alternative news outlets, etc.). Mailing lists aren't as free speech friendly as netnews (particularly when one considers newsgroups carried by many netnews servers such as Usenet) but unmoderated mailing lists are typically more free speech friendly than web forums.
I'm not interested in a computer that runs on nonfree software, is network-capable, and running code I'm not allowed to fully understand, fix, alter, run only when I want, or share with others (in short, software freedom). I see no reason to trust the manufacturers, the proprietary software developers, or the distributors with my privacy and I see nothing in the ads for any of the devices to convince me otherwise (something I believe to be their job if they want me to buy their product).
I might find it convenient to have access to the information such a device can grant, but not at the cost of my privacy or my software freedom. I also don't have a problem with paying for respect for my privacy and my software freedom. But so long as that's not an option, there's simply nothing for me to consider. The high price and other technical shortcomings (small screen, hard-to-use touchscreen controls, etc.) are relatively minor details; issues that I can address myself with software freedom.
Nobody gets proprietary software for free as users pay with their software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software); Microsoft's nonfree software is no exception. No matter how little money Microsoft's nonfree software costs you, you'll end up paying with your freedom if you run it atop a nonfree OS such as Microsoft Windows.
People need to stop saying this. This makes a claim that is beyond the speaker's knowledge and likely to be untrue as well as misrepresentative. Not only do we not know why the organizations that collect information about us do this, the organizations don't know all the reasons for which they'll use that data. Some data collection might initially be ad-related but the information collected has multiple purposes like everything else in life, but collected information might be just as valuable to target people for murder via drone, inquire about application preferences, or a variety of other uses serious and trivial. You think you're submitting a DNA sample for familial relation analysis but you've also handed over data showing a genetic predisposition for some disease which will become the reason why you'll be denied something you want. Your location data reveals your haunts and if you carry a tracker (aka cell phone or mobile) with you in your house, reveals something about what you do when you think you're alone in the privacy of your home.
Talking about selling advertising makes the data collection seem more innocent than it might be, doesn't recognize the multiple purposes of the collected information, and says nothing about the constant spying going on in people's daily lives (particularly where Google, publishers of the Android OS, are concerned). We should casually reinforce the need for privacy in our lives and the lives of others, not ignorantly reduce the perceived harm in constant data collection.
It's not clear to me how the article for this story or any of the articles the story links to accounts for ads that are a part of the show. I'm guessing the claim of "being saved" from advertising is flatly not true because the alleged surveying doesn't account for these ads.
I also question the veracity of the nameless source who allegedly said "Netflix is a godsend. We try to prevent our kids from watching too much TV, but we love being able to put them in front of a Netflix show and know weâ(TM)re mostly in control of what theyâ(TM)re seeing. We donâ(TM)t need our kids seeing repetitive ads for new toys or sugary cereals." partially because I don't trust anonymous sources in contexts where anonymity is unnecessary and partially because the whole article is indistinguishable from what I'd expect Netflix to say if they were advertising for themselves via an article.
That's another reason you're better off investing in free software, software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify at any time for any reason. It's not the program that costs no money, it's the users that are free to make the program suit their needs. If the software were free software you could run it, hire people to improve it, learn programming (if you're not a programmer) to make improvements yourself, and share copies to help your community. I invest in free software and I recommend others do so too. We can liberate ourselves from so many abusive practices with software freedom.
And free from privacy; what you do and say inside the car can be recorded and shared with an uncountable number of others who would otherwise have no idea what you did or said. The car you ride in is not your car, so you'll have no permission to inspect or modify the car to let you retain your privacy as you take an ad-sponsored ride. Your location log can be shared as well; people everywhere for all time can use that information to evaluate you for all sorts of things you didn't expect: your next job application, getting a loan, getting insurance, going out on a date, paying for goods and services, and more. We see this with DNA-based services that tell you about your family. The recorded information can and likely will outlive you, helping to form your legacy for generations of people you'll never meet (including people who will be born after you die). Contrary to what the Atlantic concludes ("This future might seem, at first glance, like a techno-utopian scenario. Yet little will have really changed. Like the Las Vegas cabbie, the goal of these systems will be to make profit for themselves.") this future is quite unlike anything humanity has had to deal with in such an organized fashion and there's more at stake than some organization's zeal for profit. There's a lot for you to lose when you don't value your freedom and your privacy.
Quite right, and free software is objectively better for security as well (you aren't allowed to vet nonfree software no matter how much skill and persistence you apply to that task; you aren't allowed to share your improvements to nonfree software either, so even if you find and patch a problem you can't help your community except to tell them to stop running nonfree software).
And free software is probably better for the environment as it lets people run usable older computers for longer avoiding the problem where people throw away usable older computers because the latest nonfree software won't work on them.
Mozilla certainly didn't handle this as well as they should have but it's important to keep sight of the bigger picture: switching to another comparable browser risks switching to a nonfree browser. I hope (for your own software freedom) you won't make that bad choice in a hasty emotional decision. That would be quite ironic: to give up on a free browser that can be made better because of an immature stunt ostensibly aimed at increasing user privacy.
Real user privacy simply cannot be had with nonfree browsers. No matter how willing and able you are, you aren't allowed to know what the nonfree browsers do, alter them to suit your needs, or help others by sharing your improvements. Don't throw out your own software freedom because of Mozilla's ill-handled stunt.
Those who were defending amazon.com's hardware+service to allow amazon.com to deliver items inside your home should remember this: software you don't exclusively control, can't vet, and aren't allowed to inspect, fix, or share (thus your willingness to do these things is moot) means you're not just trusting an unknowable number of people to open your door and do stuff in your home while everyone is away. Your home security and your privacy is also subject to security problems anywhere in the amazon.com system; people could come in and do stuff to your home without looking like they're breaking in (even though they are). It's unwise to create circumstances for a break-in that are indistinguishable from you letting them in.
Car owners modifying their cars? This can't be allowed because nobody would ever sell a car (and clearly businesses must be given primacy in society). Independent garages and individual car owners might learn things that let them offer repair and augmentation services, and then car sellers would be run right out of business. We need people buying new cars to railroad them into accepting features they might not like (built-in GPS that the customer isn't told about and is therefore unlikely to remove), not learning how their cars work so they can customize them. DRM defenders and other proprietary sycophants should be the first to complain that such behavior is "piracy" to avoid the customer becoming a "thief" (or some other smear words). We can't have people fully controlling the things they own!
In this description one is clearly supposed to trust a nonfree program (Google Chrome) to vet other software's access to the file system, clipboard, webcam, and microphone. But one has no good reason to call Chrome trustworthy. Users have no idea what the Chrome code is doing when it runs because that program is nonfree software. No matter how capable the user is, no matter how willing they are to research and fix problems, Chrome users are not allowed to help themselves by reading the complete Chrome source code, modifying said source code, or help others in the community by distributing Chrome code (whether modified or not). The only users allowed to do these things are the people one ought not trust because they're the proprietor. As a side issue that proprietor happens to be a spy organization. So one should wonder if administrators can block Google Chrome's access to these things too or perhaps that is best addressed by not running Google Chrome in the first place.
The Russiagate narrative aims at distracting you away from assigning Hillary Clinton full responsibility for her own campaign, restarting a cold war with Russia, and it's all based on stories that fall flat on inspection. Kaspersky's software is part of the anti-Russia hysteria and is properly dismissed out of hand not for being from Russia but for being nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating).
Consider what they're telling you in the article: "This allows independent experts to verify that our software has no hidden functionality, that it doesn't send your files to third parties, doesn't spy on you and fully complies with the end-user agreement". These "independent experts" do not include the users, no matter how willing or technically astute Kaspersky's users are. Furthermore these alleged experts are unknown to you, subject to change (not at your choice), and even they don't get their software freedom respected with the software. Also, it's quite easy to bamboozle anyone who doesn't get free software.
There's no reason to trust that one nonfree program will somehow "protect" you from the problems of malware. This has nothing to do with who wrote the software, what country the authors come from, or what they claim "experts" will vet. Proprietary software is often malware.
But don't be fooled: one thing Apple remains firm on—Apple's customers don't deserve software freedom. Apple will continue to pursue its walled garden, ever restrictive practices built around DRM, proprietary software, app store censorship, and so on (see more about how Apple's malware adversely affects its users). The latest insecurity should not be taken as a sign that Apple's users deserve to fully own their computers. Apple will remain firmly in control over their users no matter how capable or willing they may be to want to run, inspect, modify the software, or share improvements to help make things better for their fellow Apple users. I'd like to be able to say to users: pay more for Apple because they sell you software freedom and that deserves extra money to help keep them in business treating you, the prospective computer owner, right. But I can't say that about Apple, so I recommend that you take your business elsewhere and do business with other distributors.
From what I gather so far, you're missing software freedom. Whether this is creation of an unprivileged account named "root" or granting admin privileges to anyone patient enough to "click on unlock a few times" (as the story intro claims), something is wrong. Are MacOS users still being denied the permission to inspect what's really going on in the source code, fix the problem, and distribute fixed code to others?
In the referenced twitter.com thread, Apple wants to "take a closer look at what's happening together" in an unpublished discussion ("Send us a DM that includes your Mac model along with your macOS version. We'll meet up with you there."). There are plenty of skilled programmers willing to help but without software freedom, this makes Apple look even worse than their lame attempt at seeing the problem which it's entirely possible only they have the privilege to really study, understand, and fix.
I don't like the speech ramifications of curtailing messages I don't like, nor would I choose to curtail your freedom to say what you did, but I also think the reasons why people smoke are far more complicated and require more compassion than can be addressed by calling them "stupid". Persistent messages telling people smoking is socially advantageous plus addictive chemicals engineered to keep users hooked are apparently a potent combination.
We do ourselves and the people suffering from a problem we seek to "fix" a disservice by belittling them. Real solutions won't come in the form of curtailing free speech or such namecalling. We could do a lot better to get the tobacco companies to fund health and recovery programs for smokers, programs they fund but have no say in designing or administering (since they've clearly declared themselves to be untrustworthy for such a task), even if that means these companies end up paying billions of dollars which reallocate all of their profits. Putting more people into single-payer healthcare (Medicare for all) would help focus people's attention on chronic issues as well.
Or paying people in entertainment to be seen either smoking or at least holding cigarettes, things that can subtly suggest smoking is okay or even 'cool' to do. They already do this in movies (likely with the cooperation of the tobacco companies) so they can do more of it. Traditional TV ads for smoking stopped airing years ago, not because they were forced off but because they're not needed.
Advertising inside of something else (such as entertainment products) is quite effective and used for other propaganda too. It's also how the US Government helps keep the US on a constant war footing; a steady dose of pro-war propaganda including people who work with that government to vet Hollywood scripts, recommend changes to elide actions they don't want people talking about (like the time the CIA made a change to "Meet the Parents" where "In the original script Stiller finds CIA torture manuals on a desk, but Brandon changed that to photos of Robert De Niro with various dignitaries."), and generally influence messages conveyed by the corporate media.
Traditional advertisements are what industries like the smoking companies want to frame any punitive choices around because the weak spots of that old form of advertising are well-known and easily worked around or avoided. The grandparent article is really a lot less interesting than its current moderation would indicate.
Beware of gaslighting with this op-ed. The article reads to me as if to say, you haven't had net neutrality for a while now so don't complain when it officially goes away and you can't miss what you've lived without. So please quit pressuring Congress to intervene; you'll never notice a change when net neutrality disappears.
As others have pointed out, the article isn't really about something net neutrality will address. The problems with Facebook, Google, spying, and computer control via proprietary software are real problems that need to be dealt with. But net neutrality is about a different issue. Net neutrality is a necessary but insufficient (in itself) quality of network service. I don't want an ISP discriminating for me what other computers my computers are allowed to trade packets with, nor will the absence of net neutrality be fixed by charging me more for an Internet connection. I understand that ISPs in their power and rent-seeking will see this situation differently, but it's critical not to give businesses primacy. People need power to speak freely and be heard, not routed into yet another class system.
Hoping for some unaccountable process to help users is no substitute for software freedom. Hoping is apparently flatly incapable of addressing purposeful choices to not fix remotely-exploitable problems (whether bugs put there by accident or weakening something on purpose like Microsoft did with the Skype protocol to make it easier to spy on Skype users).
Proprietary software is often malware and there are plenty of instances where the proprietor goes unpunished despite years of anti-user aggression (Apple's iTunes being vulnerable for years allowed spying, Microsoft Windows ignored user privacy settings, Google admitted it tracked user location data even when the tracking setting was turned off). Each of these problems and many more could have been fixed for virtually everyone by sufficiently skilled and motivated users if the software involved were free software, but users were not allowed to inspect the software, improve the software, or distribute improved variants to others.
There are no guarantees of program security so a useful perspective focuses on how users can improve the chances they'll get software that does what they want. Hoping for something better is foolish, passive, and completely unnecessary.
All complex software has bugs. But not all software respects your freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify the software so you can decide how to handle whatever problems arise with the software. You ought to be allowed to fully control the computers you own. Free software (software that respects your software freedom) is a means to grant people that control and treat people ethically with regard to computer software. Nonfree (or proprietary) software denies users the freedoms of free software. Nonfree software is often used as a way to hide vulnerabilities and malware; a choice which certainly hurts users. When the software's operation is a secret, users aren't granted permission to know what the program does when it runs. This means users who run such software have less control over their computer. If users aren't permitted to improve the software and distribute improvements to others the users are helpless to make their computers better serve their needs and help their community do the same. That's no way to treat other people.
It's not a matter of who writes the software (oh no, this software came from Russia or whatever other country the empire currently objects to), it doesn't matter what the software purports to do, it doesn't matter how comfortable you are with the software nor how much you paid for the software. You don't deserve software freedom any less for one kind of software or another. The development methodology is not the most important point either. The key point is that in order to treat people ethically with computer software you have to treat them as equals and let them decide for themselves how they'd like to handle running, inspect, sharing, and modifying the software. Offer bug fixes gratis (to be nice and show that you care about what you already distributed) and offer consulting services for a fee if you wish (and charge as much as you can get for your services). But you can quickly and effectively earn trust with your users by respecting their software freedom.
So the people who didn't disclose an October 2016 attack until now assure us about the details of what was copied? Forgive me if I don't think it wise to trust the statements of those who don't disclose problems to the adversely affected in a timely manner. We've seen so many examples of other organizations later disclose that their attacks were worse than they first let on, it'll be noteworthy if this is merely late in coming and not both late and incomplete reporting.
...if you get people asking the wrong questions.
"Is Firefox 57 Faster Than Chrome?" doesn't matter. Firefox is free software (software users are free to run, inspect, share, and modify) and the basis for more free software browsers that do a better job respecting one's privacy than Firefox does by default. Google's Chrome, on the other hand, is nonfree (proprietary, user-subjugating) software published by a known spy agency and partner of the NSA (three cheers for Snowden for freeing the documents about what the American government and corporations are doing!). Using that program means literally handing Google as much control over your computer (including your browsing) as your computer account allows.
I don't care which browser is faster. It so happens that any recent revision of Firefox is fast enough to do the jobs I do. What's more important to me is software freedom; I care about retaining control over the computers I own and I think all other computer users deserve full control over their computers. So I recommend software freedom for its own sake even if that means an inconvenience on something as relatively unimportant as browser speed. Leave it to the corporate tech media, the corporate sycophants (readily found on /.), and people too naive about social issues to cultivate bad priorities like browser speed over software freedom.