The "boringification" of computers will bring us back to the 70s.
If we have to prove _everything_ on your computer, from your calculator or Pokemon, how much do you think a license of windows will cost? $250,000?
Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Minix will be dead (no one to sponsor certification and then put it in the public).
Crazy "best-practices" (change passwords every couple days, password must include symbols, letters, numbers, upper-case and lower-case in a random order, but be no shorter or longer than eight characters)
Must have a full team of lawyers to prove that everything done fit the letter of the law, and that any hacks are not your responsibility
"Shinyness" is what allows you to have free VSCode and Atom.
Sure, I miss the 70s when you could get a text editor measured in bytes (but, btw, electron is probably more secure than 70s unix) but I definitely like the cost/convenience of modern software.
SNAP (Food stamps) give about $255 a month. That means that out of UBI, about $300 is left over for rent.
2. If everyone in the US gets $587 a month, that's 1.5 trillion a year.
The current US federal budget is 3.8 trillion.
That's about a quarter of current US federal budget, and we still have to give an actual livable stipend to the truly poor (SNAP, section 8, medicare), some kind of defense, leave some for state/city tax, federal infrastructure programs (freeways/trains).
> Entire point of SSL/TLS is to ensure end to end authenticity and confidentiality.
The point is that country A can strongarm a certificate authority under their domain to sign any certificate they want. So if A wants to MITM google or github they can, and there's no way for you to know which certificate is the real one and which is the fake.
3. Can't do it "accidentally". That's why a lot of people have 2 foot high fences, not that you can't jump over them but to create the atmosphere that this is private, and if you get caught there you can't say "oops".
>access to free lawyers at least for the poor etc is more important than access to the legal databases
That itself is a problem, while we have public defense lawyers, we don't have public preventive lawyers (who I can call and ask if what I'm about to do is altogether legal and what can I do to avoid run-ins with the law).
>And the reason people initially used Facebook, Skype, and WhatsApp is not that they were easier to use or better. It's advertising. Notice how all of these are proprietary software made by companies with the means to advertise their software? You can bet people would use GnuPG, Diaspora, and XMPP if they had been advertised by companies like Facebook and Microsoft.
I know quite a few non-techies who use VLC, Firefox, LibreOffice, and other OS advertising-less projects. The difference is:
1. Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp solved problems others didn't and became big. Now it's too late to fight.
Had Diaspora been around before FB, and as easy to work with (put name here, picture here, password here, friend here. You're all set up. Let's go), or XMPP been around before Skype (which is a very old program in internet time), or Kontalk,Signal, etc. been around before WhatsApp (find friends by number, not by username), they probably would have taken off (at least to some degree).
Google came late onto the Desktop scene (Chromebooks) and are not successful while the incumbent (MS) is good.
MS came late onto the mobile scene and failed, while the incumbent (Google) is good.
They've got enough money out of insurance to build themselves a new satellite, the problem is that they need that satellite yesterday, not today.
On the other hand, SpaceX isn't living off poor blokes who were hoodwinked by a starry-eyed agent. Their customers are professionals with lawyers and accountants taking care of things, so I don't feel that SpaceX is particularly unethical.
Web of Trust seems to be an inherently broken paradigm.
Think about this. Let's say I trust my friends (so when my friends sign John Doe is John Doe, it's really him). It's a big deal (not every friend is so security conscious, maybe he met this guy on facebook and looks so real), but would I trust someone because of a friends-friend's recommendation?
I know which friends are naive. But which friend's-friend's-friend is naive?
And those are the only web-of-trust connection I have with him? Can I trust him? Can I not? How do I tell?
If we have to prove _everything_ on your computer, from your calculator or Pokemon, how much do you think a license of windows will cost? $250,000?
Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Minix will be dead (no one to sponsor certification and then put it in the public).
Crazy "best-practices" (change passwords every couple days, password must include symbols, letters, numbers, upper-case and lower-case in a random order, but be no shorter or longer than eight characters)
Must have a full team of lawyers to prove that everything done fit the letter of the law, and that any hacks are not your responsibility
"Shinyness" is what allows you to have free VSCode and Atom.
Sure, I miss the 70s when you could get a text editor measured in bytes (but, btw, electron is probably more secure than 70s unix) but I definitely like the cost/convenience of modern software.