cferry

This site is a prime example of the worst kind of enshittification that could happen around an IPO. I left when the first moves around that were looming (API restrictions and 3rd party app ban). This is one of the rare decisions of mine that I have yet to be critical about.

When I read old.reddit.com was disabled for non-logged-in users, to be sure I'd never hit this site again even by mistake, I put a rule in my router's DNS resolver to lie and pretend an NXDOMAIN.

When it comes to attestation, it's purely promoting business and state interests against yours. No security comes with it, it's purely control.

Imagine being the owner of a small business who is now required, to do business with any providers, to have a rogue executive that is loyal to them rather than you, and overrides your decisions; your provider refuses to sell you any materials if this executive is not obeyed. Do you think any business owner would accept that? I think on the contrary, this practice would be outlawed by Congress or the relevant legislative body in a matter of weeks. Those who voted seatbelts in. Then it's exactly that, if you replace business by computer.

> The logical labor response should be to not work for companies that require remote employees to submit to constant visual supervision.

Or make this kind of intrusive monitoring illegal? Preventing this kind of abuse is exactly the reason there are labor codes.

> Is it wrong to require people to use certain tools?

As the state or a representative thereof, yes; that's why public service is either run by itself or contracts to operators who must then abide by requirements (like no discrimination, unconditional access to information, social pricing, or similar provisions depending on your jurisdiction), that they would scrape the very day their activity became free market.

In France, even banks, a sector without a public actor in most countries, are legally required to open accounts ("droit au compte"). I don't mean _any_ kind of account, but at least one. On which banks naturally don't make a profit...

Google or Apple on the other hand, have no legal duty to let you in, which means in practice that they can lock you out of public services that they gate access to.

BTW: overthinking is how society moves forward :)

"Cher compatriote, voici, rédigé avec mes clavier et mulot, mon programme de l'an 2000 que j'ai après la dissolution..."

Get ready to hear something along the lines of "Rules for thee but not for me"...

My belief is that the AI business is all about data collection. The value isn't so much in the quality of the models (that's what enterprise customers and developers pay to get), but in the amount of data that comes "for free" to whoever hosts the models. And then it's worth whoever buys it thinks it is, like insurers or advertisers.

I make the analogy with a company, because on that front, ownership seems to matter a lot in the Western world. It's like it had to have unfaithful management appointed by another company they're a customer of, as a condition to use their products. Worse, said provider is also a provider for every other business, and their products are not interoperable. How long before courts jump in to prevent this and give back control to the business owner?

A little bit of imagination, and we end up with hardware-backed attestation required to contribute source code, that certifies the author isn't an AI!

I believe the solution to this kind of problems is that enough legislators (thinking of USA, EU) make it illegal to require a certain implementation of a software client to use an online service, whether this restriction is built into the communications protocol or checked through a side channel. Then the owner of the client device decides which implementation they'd like to use - so corporations can keep requiring the proprietary "official" one on their own corporate devices, but customers / end users who own their devices get to choose. Like, basic rights that come with ownership.

This would essentially take us back to what online services were 20 years ago, by outlawing a business model that relies on providers controlling stuff on users' devices. What's on the server is the company's business, what's on the client is the user's, and the boundary is clear. On the one hand, services that would persist would likely no longer have free tiers (which would essentially mean free lunch for customers); since it's a commercial service run by a company that has costs, it's just normal to pay for it as a user, there's no free beer anywhere. On the other hand, by paying for something, you'd get that thing and nothing else, as there's always going to be a client that doesn't leak data not necessary for the service to perform whatever you paid for, or impose arbitrary restrictions on its use. If any, these need to be server-side.

Historically, these have been issued by "consumer credit" specialized banks like Sofinco; and retail chains ("carte Aurore"); traditional banks would seldom advertise them, if offered at all.

Things have been changing a bit in recent years. Since the "debit" and "credit" nature of the card is now written on them, French folks have started to request "credit" ones for travelling (to rent a car for instance).

My understanding is that for car rental purposes, anything using Visa/MC (and not a national debit network like Visa Debit in the US) will work, it doesn't actually need to be backed by a revolving credit. At a US gas pump, a Frenchie needs to select "credit" even though the card has "debit" written on it. Still, should the clerk refuse the card because it reads "debit" without running it... better have this "credit"-labeled one.

The "they" is any corporation that has an interest in the user not controlling their system, and whom this technology caters to. This sea has plenty of fish already. Streaming services serving Hollywood content, banks, dating apps...

Lastly I even faced another one. Something as simple as a gym token wants GMS, attestation and GPS positioning because it treats its users as liars prima facie. That's the new norm this attestation enables. No conspiracy needed, simple business interest and greed to juice "customers" to the last penny drives you there.

Exactly. It's beyond me that people have to fight to use what they own as they please, or even are asked to justify themselves...

> any IP in a /64 is the same as a single IP in a /32 in IPv4

This is very commonly true but sadly not 100%. I am suffering from a shared /64 on which a VPS is, and where other folks have sent out spam - so no more SMTP for me.

That's the thing. I can only provide a piece of software with the guarantee it can run on my OS. It can trust my kernel to let it run, but shouldn't expect anything more. The editor is free to run code it wants to guarantee the integrity of on its own infrastructure; but whatever reaches my machine _may_ at best run as the editor intends.