Saying goodbye to an old friend
ar.al
ar.al
CalyxOS: https://calyxos.org/ Privacy-respecting Android distribution that replaces Google spyware with MicroG, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Most everything will work as you're used to, but it does still talk to Google to make that happen.
GrapheneOS: https://grapheneos.org/ Very much like Calyx, but extra-hardened and with no MicroG. No involvement with Google at all.
LineageOS: https://lineageos.org/ The successor to CyanogenMod, will work with many different phones. More privacy and control than stock Android.
There are also many others: Sailfish, Replicant, e
Hardware-wise: CalyxOS and GrapheneOS run best on Pixel 3, 3a, 3XL, 4, 4a, 4XL, 5, 6, 6a. The path of least resistance is to get one of these phones and run CalyxOS (if there is an app you need to use that needs Google services like Firebase Cloud Messaging...note that many that can use FCM will run fine without), otherwise run GrapheneOS.
You can also buy a Librem 5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ If privacy and security and hacking are really important to you.
Or a pinephone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
I can to the comments hoping someone has context.
Otherwise it’s just a rant, and not a very lucid one at that.
A dude's project died of a thousand paper cuts.
The dude's observations about Apple made him notice an emergent pattern of Apple being all but openly hostile towards any independent efforts of assuring one's privacy in a way the person themselves sees fit, as opposed to privacy as Apple sees fit, and all but openly hostile toward small developers in general.
Think for a moment how lucid would you yourself be after a couple years or more of those things grating on your nerves. Read the thing again through this lens.
It is no longer a thing as of Dec 15, 2021
Can understand he's salty about it, but looks like he's trying to use that fact as well as lots of unrelated stuff as leverage to pitch his foundation.
Also how do you rationalise Apple bad, everyone else Good. If Apple are actually the only company to have public consultation about the new feature - while the others implemented theirs silently and have been running for years?
One last one: Why do you think political memes uploaded to an iCloud Photo Library are the target of governments, if such memes are trivially detected when posted online? Why do you think Apple would comply here if Google(et.al.) don't? If referencing China, are you not aware who runs their social media? Also why do you think that new memes can't be created on the fly - ones that wouldn't match a set of hashes used by nefarious governments.
Side note: Are you aware Google uses hashes to detect CSAM imagery too? Better still, are you aware Google use AI to guess at what might be a CSAM image and report those as well?
https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/1033093... https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...
If using Whatsapp - turn off autosave on images.
Signed ~(Mostly)Happy google-less LineageOS user
For a technical forum the lack of willingness of individuals to read into the system is perplexing. So far most of the arguments I've read are entirely based on creating a strawman then beating that to death.
Admittedly, I may have missed it... But can you point out to me where this system cannot be expanded to non-CSAM material?
As a totally wild example, is this technology restricted, in some technical manner, from scanning for images which display a certain political leader as Winnie the Pooh?
+ Approximate matching. They might want to have images almost similar also to be flagged. + Scope creep. Particular images of people who are wanted or areas where they might live or shots of joints etc. + Mistakes. Accidentally flagging honest citizens and the bureaucracy that will follow. "Innocent until proven guilty..." That's not preemptively scanning someone's personal devices.
So, how is it different, again?
1. I can't link the paper, because apparently, Apple took it offline. But it was widely-reported on.
He is interested in the protection of user privacy. Author of "Better Blocker", an ad bocker for iOS/macOS.^1 Apple's decisions are making user privacy increasingly more difficult if not impossible when using an Apple computer.
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20211219053624if_/https://better...
I have to confess that in this particular case, and maybe at this particular time, I was "hoping" that this was about a real human being, and the process of saying goodbye to him/her. I guess I was looking for a peek into the feelings of someone else, who cared deeply about another person.
Why does it matter? I took plenty of pictures. I still have all of them. In fact there are some physical logistics, but they will probably still be around in 30-40 years. Who knows about my Dropbox account. Every so often I do ship an encrypted hard drive down to my parents house. It is a backup of everything.
What is it about modern phones we actually can’t live without? Or modern cloud? The answer is not much. They are recent inventions. Not required for a convenient or fulfilled life. I do use an Apple phone, I’m typing this on one. But I’m ready for when or whenever I feel like ditching them. I recommend everyone with the means be likewise prepared.
Also backblaze is a nice place to warehouse data for now. They will get bought. Another independent broker will come along. Anyhow. Don’t be a slave.
Ultimately I think Apple's trying its best to be in compliance without screwing their users. Fair warning, there is no platform you don't build yourself that you can trust. People who don't protect their own privacy may arguably deserve their privacy being violated. People in the free world need to learn this lesson the hard way, apparently, before they stop voting for clowns who want to gut encryption.
You can't park a car in many places in my city without paying via an app.
Nobody uses cash here anymore, everyone uses cards, and for private transactions there's an app (yes, just one, owned by one of the banks). So if you want to buy stuff from someone who isn't a shop, say at a flea market, or split the bill for dinner when you're out with some friends, you need that app to participate. The app is tied to a bank account (in any bank), but this is not a problem since everyone has bank accounts (government mandate).
Most of the big supermarket chains have their own apps now that can be used for payments. Of course, you can still by card or cash. Accepting cash is a legal requirement, but that is likely to be phased out over the next few years, and who knows what framework will replace it. If it becomes legally possible, I wouldn't rule out some places being inaccessible to the non-smartphoned here in time, since penetration is so high.
We have government mandated single sign-on service that is a requirement for communicating with any public institution, as well as banks and many other places. It doesn't strictly require an app in its current form (you can get a printed one-time pad), but there's a new version just being introduced that seems to be even more tied to the app, and the alternative seems to be exclusively meant for senior citizens.
So? Just get a cheapo iPhone or Android and use said app. You don't have to make your phone the center of your life.
I don't have a cell carrier or any Apple/Google controlled devices. I run a b2b tech company and it isn't a problem.
When I really need to send an email or chat message I find WiFi to connect my small CalyxOS device to. The rest of the time I am living in the moment without notifications and this has done wonders for my mental health and social relationships as I plan things ahead and act with more intention.
When parking spots require Apps I find there is normally a webapp or a parking attendant that accepts cash. When there isn't I park further away and get some extra exercise.
When I split a bill with friends I use cash or crypto-assets.
When a restaurant demands I use my phone to view the menu I ask for a paper one.
When all hospitals in my area required I use their proprietary app, I accepted the appointment in the webapp, cited that the app didn't work on my device, and was able to get the doctor to call me on my VoIP line.
I am finding out recently I can use cash or prepaid Visa cards almost anywhere if I ask.
I am not aware of a single democratic country with any laws that can mandate all citizens accept the terms of service of Apple or Google.
Any private entity that demands you accept them must be avoided. If all private entities do this and you literally can't use essential services like grocery stores, then you must bring it to the attention of your local legislators as a serious discrimination issue. You could be the squeaky wheel that sparks change in your area.
We have a right to live fulfilling lives in the modern world without accepting Google or Apple ToS.
Oh, I agree, and I don't actually have a phone with an app store. So I'm seeing that it's becoming increasingly difficult. The payments thing is becoming really bad, in particular. As I said, businesses are legally required to take cash, but most people don't want it anymore.
This is such a disaster on so many levels. The USA is looking more like China to me now, the Government now wants to monitor your phone intimately. Fuck off.
I need a new phone, I've decided that I'm going to break my dependency on Apple because of this. I'll buy a second hand iPad to call my family on Facetime, and that's it. I will likely go for a Purism.
The phone is basically a commodity though. I like Android enough, but I get the best value thing I can for under $500.
You're tech savvy or you aren't.
And I used Android for years and Google always promised improvements in their releases, but they never really fixed it for me.
Switching to iOS meant that I couldn’t run background apps anymore at all but that honestly was a worthwhile compromise for me.
I also honestly have like 100 apps on my iPhone and it handles it like a champ. I could never do half of that with my Android.
Do you prefer the server-side scanning that every other “big player” that stores end-user data in their data centers is already doing?
Isn't it a big mistake that many people unfortunately make when they are trying to evaluate personal freedoms rights and values in terms of consumer costs?
"I wouldn’t be getting off their ecosystem." One thing to consider is that if you would not you'll pay much more later even though at the moment it decisively appears relatively safe. Nevertheless by staying with them in such case you'll give them a clear sign that they can abuse you much more and they will. Why not?
>that the right solution may be through regulations.
The full control of devices you own is absolutely essential. It requires a complete transparency of basic components like cpu micro-code, firmware and hardware otherwise it can and will be abused.
Client side scanning is clearly the search without warrant. Hard to see it any other way.
Sure, why can’t eg the EFF sue Apple to force them to abandon this practice? I would donate to that cause.
Depends on the country/laws. In the US, I'd say, as soon as judges got to decide for the people what "privacy" means, with BS "expectation of privacy" interpretations, anything goes...
There are some switching costs to be sure. I wrote a custom MP3 tag identifier at one point when switching off an Ipod. But do they just make exports cumbersome, expensive, or what?
It's a weird phenomenon.
I don't use Apple devices, but my wife does. When she got into photography, I asked several tech forums as well as photography forums if there was an equivalent of Rapid Photo Downloader[1] for Macs. It's a nice Linux program that lets you conveniently rename images you're transferring from your camera, and put them in a folder that follows some rule you define. Nothing complex.
The responses I got just drove me nuts. Universally I was told I was doing it all wrong. I should use the standard Mac way of doing things. I forget the details, but it was basically "Let the standard Mac app import it into its library."
Well, where in the HD are the files, so we can do backups?
"You don't need to know that. Just let iCloud handle it."
What if I don't want to use iCloud?
No good responses to that other than "Why wouldn't you use iCloud?"
My wife wanted to use Darktable which wasn't inherently aware of the Mac way of doing things and insisted on simple folders and files. The responses I got were:
"You can export from the Mac app to a folder, and then point Darktable to it. Then when Darktable exports to JPEG, make sure you import the output files back into the Mac app."
But wouldn't that consume double the space?
"Yes."
When I explained that wasn't a viable option, I got a lot of hate.
And everyone told me setting up a folder/file structure for photos was Wrong and I didn't get the Mac way of doing things.
Now I'm sure there are simple ways of doing what I wanted on Macs. What surprised me was how much push back I was getting, and how even otherwise tech savvy folks (e.g. who know Linux quite well) couldn't answer my basic questions.
Reminded me of an Oakland cult[2] where the cult had set up their own parallel institutions that handled everything for its members (banks, paying bills, groceries, etc). They lived right in the city - not in a remote land they purchased, but the cult members had no idea how to function with the rest of society. People who decided to leave the cult had no idea how to pay electric bills or do banking.
1. the vast majority of people do not understand how computers work: I have met many folks in both my personal and work life that do not understand *what a file is*, much less a directory (folder).
2. This whole notion of "where things are stored on the computer" is completely alien to most folks. As a matter of fact, this notion has been shoved down the throat of all Android / iOS user since inception of the ecosystems. I have found myself in a situation where I was unable to retrieve actual data I own stored on my own Android device because I made the mistake of storing it there *before* rooting the damn thing.
3. most people in the above category actively *do not* want to understand how computers work. Hence the "you don't get the mac way of doing things" comment you got. The fact that they completely hand over control over their information to Apple and are thereby imprisoned in the ecosystem and become hostages forever is completely lost on them.Even the least technically competent Windows users I've known understand files and folders.
People who are primarily smartphone users - your statement is quite on point there.
Those pseudo power Apple Mac users are not that far from average users.
Firstly, and most importantly, what you have described is categorically not the "Apple" way of doing things. I'd also add expecting things to work identically between Linux/Windows/Mac is is a fools errand. Different design decisions are made for each environment.
To the flow - Darktable, whilst a fine DAW, clearly lacks in certain features. It should be able to handle importing and renaming files to a standard file structure, including sane default folder names, etc. without the need for scripting. This is a flaw that I suggest you raise with the maintainers.
I've never heard of the software that you/your wife is using to capture the images from the device, but a cursory Google search bought up some interesting results... DigiCam seems to be what you are looking for! It free (libre and beer), scriptable, and acts as a DAW should you need. Will it work like Rapid Photo Downloader? Probably not, but the maintainer of that software doesn't seem interested in supporting macOS, and that's fine. From the FAQ: Does it work on Windows or Mac? No. Theoretically it could be ported to both Mac and Windows with minimal effort. The one gotcha is getting gphoto2 to work effectively on Windows.
It's GPL2 and the source code is here; nothing stopping you or your wife porting it to macOS. https://github.com/damonlynch/rapid-photo-downloader
Finally, a bit about the "Cult". The Mac 'cult' is no different to the FOSS 'cult'. Both sides are enthusiastic about their environments to the point of the being, frankly, assholes. Too much "your doing it wrong" and not enough "what are you trying to do".
It's not clear from your comment if my insisting on using files/directories is not the Apple way of doing things, or what the people on Mac forums told me is not the Apple way of doing things.
If the former, your whole comment merely adds to what I and my parent were trying to say - that even though MacOS has totally fine support for files/folders, Mac users appear to have a hard time switching away from Apple.
As for the rest of your comment, I don't understand the relevance or why it is being directed to me. I'm not complaining that there doesn't seem to be an equivalent of Rapid Photo Downloader. I'm complaining that even highly technical MacOS users insist that resorting to basic things like storing photos in directories and dealing with their file names is simply wrong - and that their solution entails a lot more disk space and had no clear backup solution.
> It should be able to handle importing and renaming files to a standard file structure, including sane default folder names, etc. without the need for scripting. This is a flaw that I suggest you raise with the maintainers.
They are aware of it, and designed it intentionally this way for a good reason. They have certain goals, and this is explicitly not one of them. I can't fault them for not doing what they make clear they have no intention of doing.
> Finally, a bit about the "Cult". The Mac 'cult' is no different to the FOSS 'cult'.
Again, not sure why this is directed to me. I'm no fan of the FOSS/GNU/GPL cult either. The point I will make is that most Linux users are not members of those cults either, and it is not a barrier for them using Linux. The same goes for Windows. When I've wanted to do nonstandard things in Windows, I don't get Windows users telling me I'm doing it wrong.
The latter. You assumed that I meant the former, then I can only assume that you didn’t look for a solution particularly hard.
As to the rest of my comment, it shows that my assumption was correct. The “highly technical MacOS users” are nothing of the sort. It took me all of 5 minutes to Google what was required. You being lazy is not representative of a platform or it’s users.
“Their” solution, by the way, does provide a backup solution, two built-in in fact - iCloud, which is unacceptable to you (which is absolutely fine), and Time Machine.
> They are aware of it, and designed it intentionally this way for a good reason. They have certain goals, and this is explicitly not one of them.
Funny, I thought their goal was to be a DAM. Importing images is part and parcel of being a DAM. The pro-level DAMs certainly do this. Even as an amateur, using separate software to manage importing and organising files seem like a a pain.
> The point I will make is that most Linux users are not members of those cults either…
Funny that, I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a “Linux” user say “just use Libre Office”... You went to, I’m guessing, a Mac based forum with possibly filled with “that type” of user. Again, I have seen, on these very pages’ both Linux, Mac and Windows users espousing the wrongness of someone’s approach. Every last one of them an asshole.
I take umbrage with you because you are lazy. You were lazy when looking for a solution that should take around 5 minutes of Googling and you’re being lazy when generalising about users of a given platform.
> I'm not suggesting that the information that you provided is in anyway wrong or fraudulent,
To
> Lazy, lazy and lazy.
I'm not sure addressing your comment point by point will help, but I do think this thread and your comments make for good examples of common mistakes/fallacies people fall for.
To begin with: The original commenter asked "What is it about Apple that makes them hard to leave?" and that was the context of this thread. Your comments focus on what I said, without providing anything useful to the bigger question. You may want to ponder over what you're trying to achieve here.
Now for some fallacies, whose names I wish I could remember:
The first one: Assuming the other party has the same information that you do. Clearly, you found something quickly with a Google search, and therefore I either did or didn't really look at the Google results. This ignores:
1. Google gives different results to different people.
2. Google gives different results for different queries.
3. Google gives different results over time. You have no idea when I did that Google search.
Fallacy 2: If someone has the same information as you, they should arrive at the same conclusion as you. I think this is self explanatory.
Fallacy 3: If someone has the same information as you, and they didn't arrive at the same conclusion as you, then that is attributed to something negative. Examples are poor reasoning skills, laziness, maliciousness. This should also be self explanatory.
Also, some reading comprehension skills may need to be upleveled:
I never said I'm against iCloud for backups.
And:
> and you’re being lazy when generalising about users of a given platform.
Can you point to the generalization? I reported what happened. How is that a generalization?
> The pro-level DAMs certainly do this. Even as an amateur, using separate software to manage importing and organising files seem like a a pain.
Not sure why we are even discussing this. As I said, everyone knows what you are saying. Darktable made a choice not to do this and they provided their rationale. Their decision has been discussed to death on the Internet. You are welcome to disagree with it, but what does this have to do with the whole thread? A Mac user wants to use Darktable, and is asking reasonable questions.
Still not clear why you bring Linux into this. I'm sure assholes exist amongst them. My experience with Linux forums, though, is that while assholes exist, there are usually others on those forums who will answer the question. Still - even if your experience differs, what is the purpose of pointing out that other cults exist? If a cult is problematic, it is problematic regardless of whether they are unique or not.
What you described makes a lot of sense though. What you're describing is learned helplessness, which increases switching costs for the low-quintile technically inclined users.
I’m unclear, are you saying that regulators should prevent Apple from doing client-side scanning? If so, that’s entirely unrealistic. Government regulators would love to require even more intrusive capabilities.
So? You can use any of those with a Linux or Windows box.
Some hacky devices?
Why do you need Apple or Google to make phone calls, or send SMS messages? You don't.
You've gotten used to a lifestyle with subsidized services in "the cloud" aka Someone else's computer. It's going to be an adjustment, but you're going to have to either give up your freedom completely to own your data, or actually pay for your own infrastructure.
It would suck if google and the rest went away in a flash, with no notice... but we'd all recover, likely in a few months, a year tops. Remember how things changed when remote work became a fact of life, and now nobody wants to go back? It would be the same if the tech giants disappeared, and forced the decision.
My problem is that there is so much to do in my life that giving up Apple devices would slow me down too much.
Apple's crazy App Store regulations are slowing me down ...
It's funny how large corporations tend to become like bureaucratic government institutions given enough time. Well, it's not funny really.
It’s a great piece of software I would really miss.
The people maintaining it also do great work.
I don’t think my set up upgrades everything. I install stuff still but haven’t upgraded anything in months possibly. Brew outdated command shows dozens and dozens of packages fhat need to be upgraded.
Not sure what I did.
—-
I don’t know why everyone loves one package manager that’s also everything for your OS like typical Linux package managers. Things get pretty chaotic. I’m not saying homebrew is the solution. Just Linux package managers seem overhyped
Apple is not looking at images, it makes a hash of the images and then looks to see if they match known child porn. Only it there is an excessive amount (30 images is what I read previously) do they do anything.
There is a lot of evil in this world, including child porn, and up to this point not a whole lot is being done about it.
I think this is a good step.
Do I want them look for anything further, no, of course not.
But as I said, Apple isn’t alone in this. Google is reported to censor user documents in the Google Cloud. That to me is far, far worse than what Apple is doing.
You’re safest on an Apple device, far more than Windows or Android, but people single out Apple.
I just don’t get it.
Google can do the check on their servers because they can see the contents of your files. Apple has to do the check on your device because they can’t. But they are not checking nor have they announced plans to check random files on your device.
People give Apple a lot of flak for the fact that Apple holds encryption keys for iCloud Photos (because obviously they do CSAM scanning server-side), but now that Apple is taking steps to ensure that they doesn’t hold these keys, they take flak again.
If you don’t use iCloud photos, this change doesn’t affect you. If you use iCloud photos already, nothing changes for you except where in the process the scanning takes place. Your phone already scans all your photos while your phone is asleep and charging to classify them, so this isn’t really much more than it already does.
The next thing they'll try to "lock down" will be Internet infrastructure. We need some sort of cheap wireless decentralized networking for Internet 2.0. Curious what thoughts are from others around that?
As the technical summary [1] explains, this scanning process only affects data that is being uploaded to iCloud – which, by the way, never offered end-to-end encryption of photos in the first place. Apple is fully within reason to prevent CSAM content from reaching their servers, and if you read the technical paper they seem to have implemented the technique in a way that goes out of its way to avoid collecting data about you.
Instead of using iCloud, you can have your photos automatically upload to any other cloud photo service including self-hosted solutions like Nextcloud Photos. At no point does iPhone ownership require that you use Apple's services beyond the App Store. You can completely back up and restore your phone and sync a variety of content entirely with local storage via a cable or WiFi just like it was an iPod. Or, you can use a wide variety of non-Apple apps for storing and accessing content.
You can enable/disable each iCloud service individually.
I know the author really has some decent points here, and certainly Apple and Google's smartphone duopoly needs more customer protections, but the article as a whole feels ruined by a bunch of whining about a single customer-specific issue (Something about migrating a developer account? I have no idea what he's talking about.), no more useful to the rest of us than a blog post complaining about a restaurant server who forgot to bring him a side of BBQ sauce.
[1] https://www.apple.com/child-safety/pdf/CSAM_Detection_Techni...
This is an approach to avoid having some law enforcement agency using CSAM as an excuse to be granted access to paw through those servers. Otherwise it’s hard to deflect such requests.
You can’t escape from their ecosystem without seriously limiting your ability to interact with friends. The only way out I can see is If someone makes a phone that can interop seamlessly with all these features. That seems like a really hard technical challenge with a very small market.
There does seem to be an in group / our group thing for teenagers and people in their 20s though.
The biggest feature benefit of group imessaging is sharing images/video at original quality. But I feel like that is also a benefit for WhatsApp, in that its compression results in quick messages.
I've lived 34 years with this _never_ being an issue. Ever.
You say it like it's bad thing?
Because where I live most teenagers don't have iphones, but androids.
And by most I mean 80%-90% , you see ocasiona iPhone, but not that often
It's interesting that you feel this way; I don't feel like either of those things are hard for me to do with friends without using any Apple devices or services, but obviously these sorts of things are very subjective. On my Android phone, I can either manually show them the password or read it out to them or even show them a QR code to scan to add the network from my phone's wifi settings. It's a bit more work than automatically adding it, but I feel like it comes up so rarely that having it take ten seconds instead of one really doesn't matter. For photos, I don't really ever email my friends; I generally have their info on any number of potential messaging apps which deliver faster than email and don't have nearly as small a limit on the attachment size. It's kind of surprising to me that there's nothing more significant than that stopping you from migrating to a new ecosystem.
Cool to know how both of you chat. Are you in your earlier 20s? I’m respectfully asking :). I ask because Snap’s demographics skew pretty young? I run a virtual free coworking camaraderie community. The only people there who have brought up Snap have been 2-3 people under 25. This is a small sample size though.
In that case, yeah, a bit sneaky to offload their electricity usage to me and save on hardware by using mine. but it is not "The End of Privacy as We Know It".
Didn't you guys vote him out of the office? And if you did, but Apple still continues with their evil sinister plan, maybe it's not on Trump's Justice Department, after all?