I think you make good points here, but I don't think it'll stop this from happening. There are ways to try to capture the intangibles, and the functionality is just too rich for us to avoid.
I think this might be overcomplicating things. Why not just a secret to create the valid sessionID in the first place? Why have it as a separate process if you already have the ability to mix in a secret?
Maybe this is just like the debate around driverless cars. "They're not perfect!", they say. "They're flawed just like anything else.", they say.
Well, they don't have to be perfect; they just have to be better than humans. And it turns out that's pretty easy.
So maybe rather than beat up on internet.org because it's not free as in perfection, maybe we should be happy that a billion dollar corporation is trying to do SOMETHING to help 4 billion people who can't afford the current option.
It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be better, for those billions of people with no access to the internet, than having nothing at all. And I think they are meeting that and far above it.
This is even less honest for a simple reason: the manager keeps asking, "will this work for you?"
It's fake in the same way that the sandwich is. They're being reprimanded, and that's the fact of it.
I think the sandwich is much more honest as long as you're being honest when you execute it.
You could even merge the two and say:
"Here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about what's been going well lately, talk about an issue I've seen recently, and then close out with a plan to improve things. How does that sound?"
This is a legit issue, and you can definitely expect it to be patched quite soon. Not sure how/why someone would think it wouldn't get patched.
Many, many enterprises bet their data on passcodes combined with the 10-guess wipe defense. You can bet that they've already called Apple many times about this.
I hear and feel the frustration, but it's misplaced.
If a man shows up to a tech conference dressed like the guys from Jersey Shore, he's going to be looked down on by everyone there. He'll be assumed to be part of the delivery people doing setup for the booths.
If he complains that he's a programmer and that he shouldn't be judged by his clothing, he will get mixed results.
It's true that if he turns out to be a nice guy, and a great programmer, then people will change their opinions of him.
But the one thing we cannot do is demand that the entire world see signals differently than they see them out on the street.
When someone dresses like the men on Jersey Shore, they do so because they are signaling certain things. They're signaling masculine power. Strength. Sexual prowess. Fighting ability. Etc.
Women who dress extremely femininely and girlishly are also sending signals that literally BILLIONS of people already know how to receive.
Don't be surprised when people interpret signals the way that is most beneficial to them in 99.9% of cases.
This is not a message that men from New Jersey or Women in general cannot be seen as programmers. It's a message that signaling matters, and we must be aware of what messages we're intentionally sending to others that we may need to overcome.
My point is that one was a lapse in judgement that resulted in very little damage, while the other was a calculated maneuver that changed the intelligence world forever.
Maybe it's different for a decorated war hero to show a notebook to a mistress than for some random contractor to steal thousands of classified documents and release them on the Internet.
The message I got from it was that Hacker News is tired of hearing about it, which is a bad sign indeed.
Yet another message was sent by downvoting my comment, which I interpret to be because they thought I meant that nobody wants to hear about this anymore.
And that WAS what I was saying, but I wasn't saying it was justified.