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Comment by anderspitman | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Users shouldn't have to understand firewall rules, containers, VMs, or even VPNs in order to tunnel traffic for a specific app through a (more) trusted third party.

We need an open protocol for establishing tunnel/VPN connections. Apps implement the protocol, which lets you enter your tunnel provider and go through a quick OAuth flow to establish a tunnel. This would be a big win for VPN providers as well because people would be sending only specific traffic through them instead of everything.

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users that don’t understand those things are doomed to make the wrong trust choices. vpns are decidedly not more trusted. differently trusted, sure.

Users should understand how to use their computer. Asking users to comprehend a firewall or a vpn (if using a vpn) is not unreasonable.

Coddling users is harmful.

Making secure practices simple (or automatic) for less-technical users is not “coddling”.

"Hey why are my torrent downloads running super slow?"

"Oh, well, your torrent client decided to automatically use your vpn because it saw one running and somebody decided that was the right behavior because they thought you were dumb."

Users have preferences. Users can read. Let them learn and sort it out. Don't ruin a simple program with tarred assumptions of what is correct for users. Prefer simplicity.

Also don't assume using a vpn is more secure. That is a wrong assumption.

I don't have a horse in this race, but I think you're presuming simplicity where there is none.

A bittorrent client, even in CLI form, is not simple software at all. Have you ever taken a look at the myriad of available settings?

Most GUI clients have a sort of "wizard" that helps you pick acceptable connection parameters. This feature alone has a truckload of assumptions coded in. And that kind of feature exists for a reason: no nonsense-seeking users. They're the majority. Just let me download my file bro.

It also makes sense that the developer chooses parameters. They are probably the person with the most detailed knowledge of the problem, they are probably the person who knows best what the parameters should be.

It baffles my mind when developers just expect users to tweak low level settings. Sure, it's good if stuff is configurable, but it should work correctly out of the box. Like, you spent days or weeks working on this feature, don't expect your users to do the same...

Yes, I agree that your assumptions about how you think I think this should work are bad. :^)

But to be more specific with my feedback, it seems a bit silly that Transmission (I'm trying 4.0.0b1 right now) doesn't allow me to specify that it must use "VPN X" (as opposed to "VPN Y", which is also available) for downloads.

I understand that I could mess with namespaces or containers or VMs and probably make that work, but "use Bittorrent client with VPN" is more or less a universal use case and should be straightforward.

> Also don't assume using a vpn is more secure. That is a wrong assumption.

I agree with this statement, but what should a user ‘read’ in order to understand this?

Circa 1989 I remember people complaining that the NeXT computer (which eventually turned into the current Mac OS) was needlessly coddling users, and that anybody who wanted the power of Unix needed to know how to recompile their kernel. I also remember people objecting to MS Windows because people really should be using MS-DOS so that they understand what's going on.

The main point of computers is to make things easier for people. Most of us make our livings because computers are very good for that. If most users really had to deeply understand the technologies involved in solving their needs, a lot fewer of us would have jobs and much more time would be wasted by people who were just trying to get something done. So yes, let's absolutely coddle users.

The main point of computers is not to make it easier for people, that mindset leads us to cede control of our lives to technology.

The point of computing is to be a tool to make people more powerful and efficient, an extension of our abilities, able to do more or better.

Yes, I think we agree. That would fit within my definition of "things" in "make things easier". They can only do more/better with computers if the software is built to support them in that. If instead we insist that people focus on understanding the computer rather than doing the things they want to do, then they will do less and/or worse.

I would be fine with users doing less with their computers, if they in turn understood how they worked and why we all get angry here about things like: politicians likening cryptography to criminal activity, companies hoovering your data from every site you visit, etc.

I see. In what areas are you prepared to make the symmetrical deal? That you'll do less and get less while investing more time in understanding areas other people are less expert in?

I’ll cook more if we had less shitty pre made food in stores and less fast food. I could make several other examples but that’s just one I thought of.

> The point of computing is to be a tool…

The point of a tool is to make things easier for people.

There are millions of job openings for coders now. Illiteracy was not a good idea.

Also, youtube just served me an un-skip-able 12 minute add 30 seconds into a video. It was the 3rd add. The thought police is all over the web now. My windos cant download photos from my iphone. My windos is rebooting when it feels like it. The glued in phone battery life is garbage after 2 years. I must have purchased 30 chargers now. My new laptop requires a microsoft account. Google search is not working anymore. Adsense is driving up prices.

Its like trying to get nutrition from MacDonalds. The mc drive is convenient tho. Very easy for users.

This isn't about coddling users, it's about not reinventing the wheel.

Sure you could spend hours reading pf man pages. But maybe it would be better use of time if one person figures out how to do it, writes code to do it automatically, and shares that with other people so they can spend more time watching all the movies they download instead of configuring their bit torrent client.

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