My theory as to what is the most important issue today
2husamia58/31/2025, 3:53:50 PM
With the growth of AI, the most pressing issue today is to rebuild the internet to be inherently secure. What are your thought's on this?
Comments (5)
mikewarot · 1h ago
Security certainly is important, and the solutions widely used are all unfit for purpose. Every major OS we use expects the user to blindly trust their applications with all of their authority, with extremely limited options for "sandboxing" applications as an exception, rather than the rule.
Computer security was studied in the 1970s and then solved in the 1980s. None of our computers are secure, regardless of what the "Cybersecurity" industry will tell you, but it doesn't have to be this way.
The secondary effect of this insecurity is that users tend to use "safe" sites, and walled gardens gather most users. This lack of running our own servers and software means we're always second class citizens on the internet. We'll continue to be serfs until this changes.
Because of the above, the tertiary effect is that we just can't have a working Democracy in the age of the insecure internet.
glenstein · 4h ago
I actually agree that it's at least one of the most important emerging issues.
I think culturally, in spaces like HN, the average user is expecting a post like yours to bring a little more to the table to tee up discussion, like a recent news article or maybe some pointers to specific real world things like a authentication protocols or a modeling of how AI web agents can make traditional self hosted sites harder to keep up, or ideas you have about what inherently secure looks like.
I wonder if you can find anything like an article that goes in depth or if you want to write a few paragraphs playing out your thinking and submit that as a new post, you might get deeper discussion.
FrankWilhoit · 4h ago
What do you mean by "secure" and why is it any more important today than it was ten or twenty years ago?
glenstein · 4h ago
Well they did preface with the growth of AI so presumably that's why it's more important now.
jasonvorhe · 4h ago
What are your thoughts on this, since you brought it up?
Computer security was studied in the 1970s and then solved in the 1980s. None of our computers are secure, regardless of what the "Cybersecurity" industry will tell you, but it doesn't have to be this way.
The secondary effect of this insecurity is that users tend to use "safe" sites, and walled gardens gather most users. This lack of running our own servers and software means we're always second class citizens on the internet. We'll continue to be serfs until this changes.
Because of the above, the tertiary effect is that we just can't have a working Democracy in the age of the insecure internet.
I think culturally, in spaces like HN, the average user is expecting a post like yours to bring a little more to the table to tee up discussion, like a recent news article or maybe some pointers to specific real world things like a authentication protocols or a modeling of how AI web agents can make traditional self hosted sites harder to keep up, or ideas you have about what inherently secure looks like.
I wonder if you can find anything like an article that goes in depth or if you want to write a few paragraphs playing out your thinking and submit that as a new post, you might get deeper discussion.