2,896 karma · joined April 8, 2021
It's a big industry. There are loads of exceptions and they still comprise a tiny minority.
Volumes could be written as a reply.
>Linux isn't some kind of golden rule for all OSes on the galaxy.
Just about every operating system or major piece of system software is written in C, or limited C++ that is defacto C. Rust has a universe more of a likelihood to supplant those than Go or C#. And in fact is the only modern language making any headway in those cases. We're about two decades past people deploying the trite "Oh well that's just legacy inertia..." argument.
Google didn't write Fuchsia in Go, and hasn't used an iota of it in ChromeOS or Android. Microsoft uses somewhere approximating 0% .NET/C# code in the Windows core. Microsoft research made a toy .NET OS once that, unsurprisingly, went nowhere, just as you can find irrelevant toy example projects pushing the same premise, but they're dead ends.
This is of course meaningless for the vast majority of projects that the residents of HN are working on, where the compromises of Go, C#/.NET, GCs, etc, are massively outweighed by the benefits they bring to those sorts of projects.
>I am more than happy to do bare metal coding in C# (Meadow) and Go (TinyGo) without having to deal with Linux.
Okay?
You aren't going to see C# or Go used in the Linux kernel.
"Rust (the Rick & Morty of programming languages - not a compliment)"
You mean something that is good to great but that "outsiders" or late adopters feel unexplainably threatened by and thus feel the need to attack it and its admirers? Where ironically the detractors are louder and more numerous than the advocates ever were?
Rust is particularly susceptible to this effect as it has been racking up wins and growing in influence, making people feel insecure about their current skillset/knowledge (always a weird motivator for rhetoric in this industry).
I have only dabbled in Rust a few times. It feels very unintuitive and "write-only" from my 1000 foot, ignorant perspective. But I realize that's on me, and appreciate the focus and purpose of the language.
Rust today seems like a 2013 Tesla Model S. A couple of years ago it was the GM EV1: It used to be largely promise of a future to come with a loads of downsides, where today it's expensive to get started with, has a lot of incompatibilities, but it's superior to most alternatives. Tomorrow it and those like it will be the norm.
The problem, as cited in the linked page, is that "It takes much more work to refute bad benchmarks than to produce them". We see on HN with regularity where people post egregiously flawed benchmarks, usually to demonstrate some preconceived notion or other. And while that can usually be ascribed to ignorance or sloppiness, it's trivial for vendors to contrive benchmarks that are purpose-suited to make their own product look good and the competition look bad, however completely artificial and unrealistic the scenario is.
DeWitt clauses are an abomination. They should not exist. But I get why they exist and are threatened, even if they are basically never actually enforced (seriously though -- are they ever actually enforced?).
Like a number of other commentators, I'd never heard of this service despite being a fan of classical. If they can improve the state of classical on Apple Music -- playlists, metadata, discoverability, etc -- then I'm sure the founders are thrilled that they're going to have far more of an impact than they were having.
They are surely not required to scan client devices, and that was a foolishly, ill-considered plan (that I still would wager they will abandon), however they absolutely must scan iCloud Photos unless they were technically incapable of doing this. US law doesn't say "you go to jail if you don't", it says "you face enormous liability if you don't".
Apple only scans photos being uploaded to iCloud photos. Google scans. Facebook scans. Microsoft scans. Even tiny image hosting sites scan.
Apple decided to implement this functionality on device, but they could as easily (with much less fanfare and dissent) have placed it on the ingress to iCloud.
I don't like the feature. Putting this on the client device is dubious and should never have made it past the brainstorming stage.
Having said that, technology companies, big and small, are bound in the US to do this. By law. If anything Apple was by far the laggard of the bunch (with reporting counts magnitudes lower than peers, despite a larger customer base). As I said in another comment, no company can protect you from your government.
Much has been made about it being on device, which while a serious optics issue...the hot takes being given on here are manifestly absurd. Like, literally the company that holds all of your data, all of your passwords, all of your info and you need to invent slippery slopes to imagine up what they "might" do?
If they want to have their way with your data, they could have been doing it for decades.
They should never have announced two very different systems at the same time. Contrary to some of the insincere claims given in this very thread, there is massive disinformation and confusion about them. In the end I feel like 98% of the "the end is nigh!" comments are by long time Apple detractors who just see this glorious opening.
And while I still hope that Apple says "Mea culpa, we're just going to scan on the ingress to iCloud Photos", whatever they do in a month this is going to be completely forgotten.
I'm not a medical expert. I'm not a statistical expert. I don't purport any expertise or useful knowledge in those areas. But after millions of deaths and a complete worldwide changing of how we work, play and so on, it is remarkable how often HN discussions still fall to media blaming, incant accusations of fear mongering, etc.
If one were to believe the dominant HN commentary through virtually all of this pandemic, it has always been an overblown nothingburger, etc.
The media has done has a much better job at accurately informing than the comments that usually rise to the top in any HN-related discussion.
(to the point that I think any COVID related discussions should be flagged off HN at first sighting. There are a lot of spectacularly misinformed people on here who just muddy the waters with noise, and the net effect is always just misinformation)
There is nothing outdated about it.
"Security and Fraud Prevention. To protect individuals, employees, and Apple and for loss prevention and to prevent fraud, including to protect individuals, employees, and Apple for the benefit of all our users, and prescreening or scanning uploaded content for potentially illegal content, including child sexual exploitation material."
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/
Under "Apple's Use of Personal Data". They had that in there since at least 2019.
Add that an Apple executive told congress two years ago that Apple scans iCloud data for CSAM.
"Due to how Apple handles cryptography (for your privacy), it is very hard (if not impossible) for them to access content in your iCloud account. Your content is encrypted in their cloud, and they don't have access. If Apple wants to crack down on CSAM, then they have to do it on your Apple device"
I do not believe this is true. Maybe one day it will be true and Apple is planning for it, but right now iCloud service data is encrypted in the sense that they are stored encrypted at rest and in transit, however Apple holds the keys. We know this given that iCloud backups have been surrendered to authorities, and of course you can log into the web variants to view your photos, calendar, etc. Not to mention that Apple has purportedly been doing the same hash checking on their side for a couple of years.
Thus far there has been no compelling answer as to why Apple needs to do this on device.
If you ever see the copious ads for "free to play, no money" gambling sites during sports events or live broadcasts, and wonder how free-to-play gaming makes enough money for that to be worthwhile, note that the TLD they use for their free version will always be a non-.com TLD, but if you just replace that TLD with .com you'll be met with a full gambling site. One that would be illegal to advertise, and often operate, in the jurisdiction where you're seeing the free to play ads. It isn't accidental.
Do it in the cloud just like every other service does. None of this anger would have happened if they just kept it in the cloud, and I truly can not fathom how this made it this far. I would peg overwhelming odds that they abandon the on device idea as it makes no sense and has brought incredible ill will.
Neural networks are from perfect, and invariably parents and child are going to have a laugh when it triggers on a picture of random things.
The other, completely separate system checks files stored in iCloud photos against a hash list of known, identified child abuse photos. This is already in place on all major cloud photo sites.
Apple clearly wanted to roll out the first one but likely felt they needed more oomph in the child safety push so they made a big deal about expanding the second system to include on-device image hash functionality. I would not be surprised at all if they back down from the latter (though 100% of that functionality will still happen on the servers).
Right. Exactly. Any country in the world can mandate that Apple do anything they want (any of the slippery slope mandates), and Apple can comply or withdraw from the market. If any country wanted to demand that Apple compare all files against a ban list, they could have done that in 2007, or any year since. There is zero technical barrier and it would be a trivial task.
The point is that this development moves the bar infinitesimally. I would argue not at all. Fearmongering that depends upon "Well what if..." didn't actually think it through very well.
Given that this only applies to photos that are stored to the cloud, it seems like it has total relevance given that for users literally nothing has changed. To argue that there is some fearsome new development requires one to extrapolate into "Well what if..." arguments.
No company can defend you from your government.
"All it would take"...
That is the slippery slope. If a government is going to say "that's a nice looking hashing system you have there, now we need you to..." they could as easily -- more easily -- have said "that's a nice filesystem you have there, we need you to...".
Hashing files and comparing them against a list is literally a college grad afternoon project. There is absolutely nothing in Apple's announcement that empowers any government anywhere in any meaningful way at all. It is only fear-mongering (or simply raw factual errors as seen throughout this discussion) that makes it seem like it does.
I see Apple implement a trivial (laughably trivial) system -- a tiny little pimple on a massive platform of hardware and software -- and I don't think "this is it! This is what puts the surveillance state over the top!", I think "Hey look, trivial, constrained system".
But if you believe that this was what was between a surveillance state or not...well you must be much more intellectually capable than I and I am honored to be in your presence.
It is the very definition of a slippery slope. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but usually you're just walking to the bathroom.
And it's a useful, valuable option that many (I would wager the overwhelming majority) parents will enable.
Apple made a huge PR mistake announcing both of these systems together (the CP hashing system and the NN message warning system), because as seen throughout the comments it has led to lots of people conflating and mixing and matching elements of both into a fearsome frankensystems.
Apple - creates messaging platform.
Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them all messages.
Apple - creates encrypted messaging platform.
Slippery slope - governments can force Apple to send them the keys and all messages
Apple - Adds camera to device (GPS, microphone, accelerometer, step detection, etc)
Slippery slope - governments can force them to record whenever the government demands and send a live stream to the government. Or send locations, or walking patterns, or conversations.
Apple - makes operating system
Slippery slope - Basically anything. There are so many ways I could go with this. Government can force them to make a messaging and photo system, add cameras to their devices, entice users to take and accumulate pictures, and do image hashing and report suspect photos.
That's the problem with slippery slope arguments. They become meaningless rhetoric.
Image perceptual hashing is literally a single person's work for two hours. If you really think the barrier between an oppressive government stomping on groups or not is whether Apple did a (poorly communicated) Child Safety PR move and implemented this trivial mechanism...the world is a lot more perilous and scary than you think.
Such a collision would generate a human validation.
This applies to cloud-shared files. It actually has applied to cloud shared photos for years. It applies to literally every major cloud photo service.
Though I don't blame you at all: Read through the various hysterical posts about this and there are a lot of extraordinary misrepresentations.
I will repeat: It is a very tame change. Were you frantic and delirious when a neural network first identified a dog in your photos? Isn't that the slippery slope to it reporting you to the authorities for something bong shaped?
Speaking of which, every bit of fear mongering relies upon a slippery slope fallacy. What is clearly a PR move is somehow actually the machinations of a massive surveillance network. Why? Why would Apple do that?
I imagine there are some frantic meetings at Apple today. However the grossly misleading claims people have been making to fear-monger aren't helpful.
Having said that, there is an enormous amount of misinformation and fear-mongering about a pretty tame change. This seems like so much ado about very close to nothing.
a) They optionally scan messaged photos for nudity using a NN if the participants are children and in a family (the account grouping), and the group adult(s) have opted in, giving children warnings and information if they send or receive such material. A+++ thumbs up.
b) They scan photos that you've uploaded to iCloud (available at photos.icloud.com, unencrypted -- in the E2E sense, effectively "plaintext" from Apple's perspective -- etc) for known CP hashes. Bizarrely Apple decided to scan these on device as well, causing 99% of the outrage and confusion, yet every major cloud photo service in the world does such checks for the same reason, whether you have the photo set to private or not, and presumably Apple decided to do it on device simply as free distributed computing, taking advantage of hundreds of millions of high performance chips, but most importantly as a PR move demonstrating that "Apple Silicon helps with Child Safety", etc.
That's it. Various "this is a harbinger of doom and tomorrow they're going to..." arguments are unconvincing. This does absolutely nothing to break or subvert E2E encryption or on device privacy.
EDIT: The moderation of this comment has been fascinating, going to double digits, down to negatives, back up again, etc.
In the no longer useful to employers vein, in the working class town I grew up in there was a common observation that retirement was a harbinger of death. That when someone retired their lifestyle would quickly decline to sedentary decay, boredom medicated with alcohol (or other things). Death would quickly follow.
As an aside, tangentially there's a wonderful passage from Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer -
“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
Location: Toronto, Canada
CV: https://dennisforbes.ca/assets/dennis_forbes.pdf
Email: me@dennisforbes.ca
I've built large scale financial systems, rich mobile applications, robust, fault-tolerant back-end systems, and just about everything in between. But I treat every engagement as a learning experience with the assumption that I need to question my assumptions at every step and learn from others.