Ask HN: Trusting Software | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Trusting Software

12 pointsasim8 comments

As I get older I see a lot of new software and services being produced. This isn't news and it's not unique, we're all experiencing that. What's interesting to me now though is my lack of willingness to adopt these new services that store my data or manage my communication. As the internet grew I loved trying new services but now as the essentials are accounted for I don't feel that same desire to adopt new technology. If anything I'm trying to pair it down to bare essential utilities. I was curious to know if anyone else saw the same behaviour in themselves?

What's more, I'm leaning towards owning my own services and trying to understand how that would work in reality. Home ownership is standard and we rarely build our own homes now. Just wondering if that'll happen for essential services like email, chat, storage, etc.

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My initial reaction to new technology these days is skepticism. From the start, I'm looking for the catch, the 'gotcha' that will be my undoing.

I attribute this change from trust to skepticism to a changing of demographics on the internet. Back when I was more trusting, the internet was different.

Early internet felt more like idealist hobbyists sharing their creations with others The demographics now seem to be more representative of the population as a whole. There have always been more scammers in the world than dreamers/tinkerers, it's just that there was a window where that wasn't true of those sharing on the internet.

As the demographics changed, the average behavior did too. At least, that's how I rationalize it. I'm sure we'll have another golden age in another form in the future!

Can't say I'm old, but as anyone else I'm getting older.

Yes I've been seeing this behaviour in myself lately. Not something new for me, but now it has a stronger feeling. Could it be due to the general increasing distrust in big companies and nation states? Maybe. It's hard these days for a technical savy person to trust big and loosely regulated organizations.

I don't think it's even just distrust of large tech companies but anything that now wants to manage any data or communication. I see startups launching on HN to manage passwords or some new collaboration app and I think, do I really want to put all my information through that? No. I really don't. I don't know who the people are running that service, I don't know their motivations, I don't know what their goals are, I don't know where they're storing that data, how they're securing the service or what they'll do with it in future. I don't even know if they're competent enough to keep any of it secure. If anything I'm more and more convinced people don't have the first clue about security, let alone password security. Does anyone remember what salting passwords means? I'm worried they don't. Will the data be encrypted? Likely not.

It just feels like all the stuff that now comes out, it's a rehash of what came before only less secure, less private and more superfluous/likely-to-disappear.

> If anything I'm more and more convinced people don't have the first clue about security, let alone password security.

I feel the same, both for fresh sw engineers and non-technical people. And they compose the majority of people writing and using software.

I don't know whether it means security ends up being rethought and we actually eliminate passwords entirely, offloading to the magic links in email or SMS codes but it feels like new generations might benefit from just doing that.

Still, the data, the communication. I don't want anyone to store it or run it through their servers. So if we found a way to totally offload that it would be interesting. Like maybe entirely new types of software while built for the cloud and uses cloud resources is actually self hosted using your own accounts.

> nobody trusts tech to be benign or a voluntary enhancement to one's life anymore ... It's like watching someone tinkering on a torture device you know you'll eventually be forced/coerced into wearing. Nobody cares what epic new tech breakthroughs come with it.

He's not wrong. Michael argues to leave Zuck alone, as he's trying to push the boundaries of innovation, and in a purely optimistic and naive world that can be true, but it's missing such nuances as argued by @acczibit. There was a time when everything on the internet was a first, or so very raw that it had yet to be exploited, it had yet to be turned into an exploitative and addictive rage brainwashing machine. But we see what happens, we see the addiction and we see the exploitation through advertising and we see how much Facebook and others enabled this to become cash printing machines. So yes people are reluctant to trust Zuck and while we could argue the other side that he's just trying to advance innovation that would otherwise occur, the question is whether we need to be more pragmatic and anticipate the ways these advancements could be exploited or exploitative.

The personal TLDR; I think Zuck thinks he's doing mankind a favour but I also know he wants everyone to live in his virtual world rather than the real one and I can't get with that.

Yes.

I find myself more and more at the two extreme ends.

Either it streams or it is physical.

The skeuomorphic middle is mostly more pain than gain.

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