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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

It's an Apple problem, because with libre tools you can run your own software to circumvent this law.

You can run your own software, but if asked by UK authorities to provide the keys/password and you don't comply you face prison time.

You can safely leave it to FOSS to implement ways around that.

How does FOSS prevent someone from pulling your teeth out with a wrench to get your passphrase?

Rust solves this.

You give them access to a fake account.

Although effective, this particular technique does not scale very well. Even if the UK had 100,000 kidnapping wrench torturers, it would take ~2 years for them to get through to pulling everyone in the UK’s teeth.

Fortunately for those who like laws having an effect, that's not factoring in the deterrence aspect of the first (few) toothpull event(s)

It's the law that's the issue. Avoiding enforcement only works until people actually care to start enforcing. There's also enough examples in history of people taking matters into their own hands if they disagree with something, doubly so if there's a law against it or something else makes them feel righteous. If you do bad in the eyes of the public (or its prosecutor), good luck swimming against the tide

What if they tortured with wrenches in both hands? That would double torturing capacity.

no, no, you can't that's just a factually vacuous and obviously incorrect statement...

The majority of apple and android users can't run their own libre software, until libre software is as easy and seamless to use as the comparables.

My (grand)parents like their FOSS launcher, gallery, and chat client just fine. I've had zero questions about how Signal works, but a bunch about how to deal with the OS' pre-installed garbage spawning notifications about this or that update. They can't tell the difference between an advertisement pushed by some commercial app they want and a smartwatch firmware update notification

From my POV, it's the commercial software that has fundamental usability issues due to misaligned incentives (not completely different either, but not as aligned as FOSS). They just have a better lobby and marketing budget. Chrome didn't become this ubiquitous on mobile by having to be downloaded from f-droid, but by making a deal that device manufacturers cannot refuse

tell me, did they install and set this up themselves or you?

Did you have to state that as a question? (I obviously install even FB and Watsapp in there)

It's unthinkable to setup a phone with whatsapp and fb here. When meta had a BGP problem, they (the older ones) asked me why there was "no internet"

The fact you're answering rather than ignoring shows the problem I'm very sorry to say

The person above said "run", not "install". I don't build my own car either. But in this case it's more of a marketing/discoverability problem than a knowledge gap on setting it up because it's nearly as simple as using them

Idk if it's just me but I do hate these suggestive questions. If you've got something to state, spit it out

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