Comment by z3t4
1 day ago
Auto update is basically a root backdoor, it's especially troublesome when you are not the customer, you are the product!
1 day ago
Auto update is basically a root backdoor, it's especially troublesome when you are not the customer, you are the product!
Yes, which is why I use paid-for OSes and browsers, instead of free ones like Linux or Firefox. I don't want to be the product.
I think with Windows you probably are the customer and the product
Cory Doctorow had an essay about that years ago, except he didn't artificially limit it to Windows:
"Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product: Incentives matter, but impunity matters more."
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar...
With Linux you can control up to the detail any auto-update, and any update in general, all the way to being able to inspect the code.
With GNU/Linux, yes. With Android/Linux, not so much. [1]
(I used to dislike this "GNU/Linux" term, it seemed unimportant - Android showed me why the GNU part of it is)
[1] https://keepandroidopen.org/
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Why is nobody building a paid for browser with built in search engine and LLM assistant? Should probably make it open source for transparency. And before anyone says you would build/compile it yourself if it was open source, those ppl are already running their self compiled tools and are not the target market.
Isn't that essentially Dia? (Pro is 20USD/month.) https://www.diabrowser.com/
(I miss Arc, such a shame it only gets security/chromium updates now ...)
And I think Codex's desktop client has a built-in browser now? At least I've seen someone using something like that. Nevermind Atlas is a thing now too. https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/
(Tell me if I'm misunderstanding you?)
Who would pay for it when literally every other option has been free for a lifetime?
You are still the product with commercial OSes. Paying doesn't stop them from shoving ads and telemetry wherever they can.
Man, this is a dumb take even by HN standards.
No, the dumb take is believing that if you pay for something you are not the product anyway.
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