Comment by overgard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by overgard | Hacker News Reader

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> Would it connect to 802.11m WiFi router?

Sure. It's using OS networking APIs. Or running in a virtual machine.

> Would you consider it secure enough to open your banking website on it?

If I'm running 20 year old software, it's probably to interact with a legacy system. There are still businesses that run on like 486's with Windows 3.1. This is more common than you think!

> The bar is whether the machine is usable (secure).

The bar is whatever I WANT it to be, it's my machine, and it's pretentious of a software developer to assume they know what I'm using the software for and what my best interests are. For all they know I'm using the software in a museum, 20 years from now, about this era of computing.

> For all they know I'm using the software in a museum, 20 years from now, about this era of computing.

And then you'll simulate a time appropriate for the device/software. As a date before 2038 to not have unix time overflow. Or 2000. Or any other time specific bug.

Or how often did you have to "fix the internet" for one of your relatives because their damn CMOS battery died? Yeah, time seems to be quite relevant for trust.

And I don't even like mozilla enforcing signatures for addons that strongly, but people can go overboard.

My point wasn't that I want to run a museum, but that intentionally turning software into a time bomb is silly and adds very little security value. At least those other ways it happens accidentally.

> The bar is whatever I WANT it to be, it's my machine, and it's pretentious of a software developer to assume they know what I'm using the software for and what my best interests are. For all they know I'm using the software in a museum, 20 years from now, about this era of computing.

I think that's a reasonable point of view. However, for such users, it's best not to use software that's largely developed for masses who just expect the software to work. It might be best to just checkout the source code, and build your own binary. Sorry for being rude :(

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