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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

I've always liked OS X's concept of the Library folder, particularly back in Snow Leopard when it wasn't hidden by default.

Applications need a place to save state, and you don't really want it to be hidden, because sometimes I as a user do need to change it manually for any number of obscure reasons. So you make a subfolder that's designated for apps to write to.

There's no good way to put this into the existing Linux model though. All you'd do is add yet another standard a la https://xkcd.com/927/

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You as a user can still access hidden directories. Most new applications are nice enough to respect the XDG specification.

Oh, for sure, but it's mildly annoying.

Especially when a . is used to make the directory hidden, because I can't unhide that specific directory without changing the name apps expect.

You can press cmd-shift-g to open a "Go to folder" prompt which has some basic tab completion. This also works in file selection dialogs. Hopefully this saves someone as much time as it has saved me over the years.

I get into the Library folder by doing: cmd-shift-g -> ~/Library -> enter

Cmd-shift-. will show hidden files and folders in the Mac Finder before Catalina.

In Catalina, it's now Cmd-shift-fn-.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250756110

Whoa, even better tip. Thanks!

What? Of course you can!

$ ln -s .hidden not_hidden

It's that easy. Really.

Well, that's a symlink. It's a good idea, and something I should remember if I ever do start using Linux again—but the downside is that if I do need to temporarily enable hidden files, I'll see the same directory twice.

I'm being picky, I know! But I still think the Library approach is cleaner. (Again, back when it wasn't hidden by default!)

Not exactly the same, but the closest Linux equivalent that's semi-widely used would probably by ~/.local

And the problem is gigantic, programs in general are completely broken - why does my entire system have to be compromised because I decided to play Catan. We need the iOS/Android model for permissions on desktop.

> We need the iOS/Android model for permissions on desktop.

This model is terrible. OS asks up-front: program wants permissions to do A, B, C, X, Y, Z: grant/refuse? You the user decide that the program should not be allowed to do X, so you refuse. Now the program will not run at all. That's about the worst design possible. A 10 year old can brainstorm a better design within a few minutes.

Investigate prior art:

    man 7 apparmor
    man 4 capsicum
    man 2 pledge

At least on recent Android versions the apps only ask for permissions when they actually need them, not on install time, and you can grant/refuse individual permissions.

This is also how iOS has worked since forever. I think it's helpful, but not that helpful.

In practice, apps that want access to my contacts usually keep asking for access every time I try to do anything, until I eventually either relent to make the prompts go away or click allow by accident.

And that's me as a computer-enthusiast. I would bet money most normal people just hit allow always. Because it's easier.

The missing piece is "refusing" permission should instead give dummy data: an empty address book, a random location, etc. Better would be profiles: Full, Basic, Public, Anonymous, etc

I'm not necessarily against this but there are some pretty major UX implications for non-tech users who don't understand what's going on. "Who is Foo Smith and why does this app think I know them?"

In Android 10 you "only" need to deny a permission 3 times until it is auto-rejected without a prompt.

Some apps even try to circumvent this system by showing a "help" screen with instructions on how to re-enable the permission manually, but I only saw this twice.

> At least on recent Android versions the apps only ask for permissions when they actually need them, not on install time, and you can grant/refuse individual permissions.

Still, this is not practical enough. A true user-centric strategy would be to offer "mock-permissions" to an app, so that if an app says that it needs to read your home dir, you grant mock permission to the app, and it sees an empty home dir, not yours. From the point of view of the app, it should be impossible to know if it has been granted the real permission or just a mock permission.

Do we really?

People still just click "allow" on everything. They get tired of getting questions asked, and just want the program to work, so they don't even read anything and just tap tap tap until it lets them through.

Access your files? Sure. Access your documents? Whatever. Send data off to our corporate data vacuum? Whatever, I need to see what my face will look like with an AR moustache!

Also, are you running Catan as root or something? How is it able to compromise your whole system?

I agree with you on everything but the last two sentences. An unprivileged user account still has a ton of power in a modern Unix or Windows system, because the security model doesn't really solve this problem: https://xkcd.com/1200/

Thats one thing that snaps are trying to do. I personally prefer firejail for application sandboxing and permissions but then you have to be extra careful how you install the application (dpkg post-install scripts have been known to do sketchy things) and you have to make sure you never accidentally run the application without firejail.

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