1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation
2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection
This concept of "I should run any code on hardware I own" is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we should not expect manufacturers of phones and tablets to allow anyone to run any code on every device, since this will cause harm to many users.
There should be more open and hackable products available in the market. The DIY mindset at the junction of hardware and software is crucial for tech innovation - we wouldn't be where we are today without it. However, I also want regulations and restrictions on the phones I buy for my kids and grandparents. They need protection from themselves and from bad actors.
The market should serve both groups: those who want to tinker and innovate, and those who need a safe, managed experience. The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
idle_zealot · 1h ago
This makes the point that the real battle we should be fighting is not for control of Android/iOS, but the ability to run other operating systems on phones. That would be great, but as the author acknowledges, building those alternatives is basically impossible. Even assuming that building a solid alternative is feasible, though, I don't think their point stands. Generally I'm not keen on legislatively forcing a developer to alter their software, but let's be real: Google and Apple have more power than most nations. I'm all for mandating that they change their code to be less user-hostile, for the same reason I prefer democracy to autocracy. Any party with power enough to impact millions of lives needs to be accountable to those it affects. I don't see the point of distinguishing between government and private corporation when that corporation is on the same scale of power and influence.
wisty · 21m ago
Remember, the law provides patent, copyright, trade mark, and NDA protection.
While it would be a burden to require a degree of openness, it's not like companies are all rugged individualists who would never want to see legal restrictions in the field.
It's just a question of what is overall best and fairest.
Restrictions can both help and hinder innovation, and it's innovation that in the ling run makes things improve IMO.
AtlasBarfed · 23m ago
This is one of the real canaries I watch on "real AI" for programming.
It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers. It should be able to port code to new platforms. It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architectures.
Sure seems we are very far from that, but really these are breadth-based knowledge with extensive examples / training sources. It SHOULD be something LLMs are good at, not new/novel/deep/difficult problems. What I described are labor-intensive and complicated, but not "difficult".
And would any corporate AI allow that?
We should be pretty paranoid about centralized control attempts, especially in tech. This is a ... fragile ... time.
ACCount37 · 9m ago
AI kicks ass at a lot of "routine reverse engineering" tasks already.
You can feed it assembly listings, or bytecode that the decompiler couldn't handle, and get back solid results.
And corporate AIs don't really have a fuck to give, at least not yet. You can sic Claude on obvious decompiler outputs, or a repo of questionable sources with a "VERY BIG CORPO - PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL" in every single file, and it'll sift through it - no complaints, no questions asked. And if that data somehow circles back into the training eventually, then all the funnier.
bsder · 1h ago
The primary problem is that we can't build a phone and run it on a cellular carrier network. This is where legislation is needed.
Apple and Google are still a problem, but they are a secondary problem.
ACCount37 · 1m ago
You kind of can? The carrier network has no way to verify that your cellular modem is a real modem made by a real modem company, and not 3 SDRs in a trench coat standing on the top of each other.
The sheer technical difficulty is what makes this kind of thing impractical.
The network does validate that a SIM card is a real SIM card, but you can put a "real SIM card" in anything.
dwattttt · 53m ago
You'll run into a variant of the tragedy of the commons; without any kind of regulation or provable assertions from people taking part in common communication infrastructure, it'd be quite easy to ruin it for everyone.
bsder · 45m ago
You don't need to allow completely unrestricted access to the network. However, there needs to be a process with a defined cost to certify your hardware. The cost can be expensive and time consuming but it needs to be known and published and the cellular companies need to be held to it.
The problem right now is that even if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, I STILL couldn't reliably get a piece of hardware certified for the cellular network. I would have to set up a company, spend untold amounts of money bribing^Wwooing cellular company executives for a couple years, and, maybe, just maybe, I could get my phone through the certification process.
The technical aspects of certification are the easy part.
The problem is that the cellular companies fully understand that when it happens their power goes to zero because they suddenly become a dumb pipe that everybody just wants to ignore.
That's why this will take legislation.
hnuser123456 · 1h ago
GrapheneOS?
jetbalsa · 56m ago
Only runs on a handful of hardware, and still uses the binblobs from google for the hardware devices.
divan · 1h ago
> It should be possible to run Android on an iPhone and manufacturers should be required by law to provide enough technical support and documentation to make the development of new operating systems possible
As someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900/950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices again, statements like this sound more than naïve to me. I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us "hardware". The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.
Reading technical documentation on things like secure enclaves, UWB chips, computational photography stack, HRTF tuning, unified memory, TrueDepth cameras, AWDL, etc., it feels very wrong to support claims like the OP makes. “Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want. But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.
tern · 6m ago
Not to mention, it's an authoritarian attitude, talking about forcing companies to support arbitrary software stacks
saurik · 58m ago
It being difficult is different from it being possible. If a company wants to raise $50m to read all the documentation and build an alternative OS to run on this crazy piece of hardware, as the consumer I still benefit. If you'd prefer, let's stick with repair? I also need all of that information to be able to repair my phone, but again, it wouldn't necessarily be ME who repairs my own phone: I take it to a third-party expert who has built out their own expertise and tools.
(Hell: I'd personally be OK without "documentation"... it should simply be illegal to actively go out of your way to prevent people from doing this. This way you also aren't mandating anyone go to extra effort they otherwise wouldn't bother with: the status quo is that, because they can, they thrown down an incredible amount of effort trying to prevent people from figuring things out themselves, and that really sucks.)
fastball · 25m ago
> $50m to build a modern OS from scratch
heh.
wkat4242 · 25m ago
> I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
However the interests you mention aren't collective at all but very singularly the ones of the manufacturer only
HDThoreaun · 21m ago
Its only the manufacturers interests because they dont want people to brick their phone on accident. Really theyre only a secondary party of interest, the real interested party is grandma/anyone who can fall victim to malware. Apples decision to ban sideloading is a huge part of how they became the most popular phone maker in the us
wkat4242 · 4m ago
The real interest is their protection of their sweet 30% revenue stream. There are many ways to protect security, leaving all your keys in the hands of one party is not the only one.
sudosysgen · 23m ago
There is already open source software for UWB, computational photography, various depth cameras, direct link WiFi, etc...
Will it be as good as the iOS implementation? Probably not. But it's hardly an impossible fact and not one that has to be done entirely over and over for every device. The Asahi folks showed it could be done despite hostile conditions.
Ferret7446 · 1h ago
I think we really need to discuss whether IP/copyright protections were a mistake. A LOT of our "modern" problems stem from IP protections. Whether that be not being able to own media, right to repair, DRM, censorship, a lot of monopolistic behavior, medicine prices, etc. And no wonder, IP protection is government sanctioned monopoly, and it is generally recognized that monopolies are bad; is it such a surprise that government enforced monopolies are bad?
throwaway13337 · 35m ago
Agreed. Monopoly is the killer of the market engine that powers the positive sum society we all benefit from.
Actually enforcing the anti-monopoly rules on the books would help, too.
And while we're making wishes, we could kill the VC-backed tech play by enforcing a digital version of anti-dumping laws.
With those rules in place, we'd see our market engine quite a bit more aligned with the social good.
Interesting perspective but unfortunately with smartphones you'll have cellular carriers lock down their bootloaders because of bogus "security" reasons.
agentultra · 40m ago
100 percent agree.
I’ve given talks on how various jailbreak exploits work in order to teach people how to protect their own software but also with the suggestion that we should be able to do this.
It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymore. Devices you might not think of as PC’s… just are. They’re sold in slick hardware. And the software ecosystem tries to prevent tampering in the name of security… but it’s not security for the end user most of the time. It’s security for the investors to ensure you have to keep paying them.
mullingitover · 52m ago
Command+F 'drivers'
0 results
These things are never thought through. Sure, Apple could unlock the whole thing, tell everyone to go nuts. Who's writing the damn drivers? Apple's certainly not obligated to open source theirs, I also can't imagine them signing someone else's. So we end up with a bunch of homebrew drivers, devices crashing, getting pwned, and the dozens of people who install a third party OS on their iPhone write furious articles that get voted up to the front page of HN.
betaby · 51m ago
EU is dropping the ball here. Instead of mandating open hardware they trying to force companies to comply with random stuff, mostly censorship and spying. In theory EU can mandate open bootloaders like EU mandates USB-C charging, but they won't. Open hardware is the enemy of the EU, since that means everyone would be able to bypass the chatcontrol of the day.
hoppp · 18m ago
Eu has the Digital Markets Act and what google is doing is illegal in Eu.
Gatekeepers must allow people to side-load software by regulation.
Makes me think that google did this now since trump has been criticizing the DMA, so now they feel empowered by their leader to break the law
notatoad · 31m ago
The inevitable conclusion of this battle is an acknowledgment that you never really own an iPhone or android in the first place, and the companies stop selling the hardware at all. You’ll only be able to rent a device as part of your service plan.
daft_pink · 51m ago
There’s something weird about it. My phone needs to be hyper secure, and a lot of companies went to monetize that and introduce insecurities with their software.
That’s why I love my iPhone, but I’m not super happy about what happens with my Mac.
There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple. Apple keeps the app developers from doing things I don’t like for the most part. I don’t feel very restricted.
But I don’t want my computer to become a walled garden. It’s only OK for my phone.
fastball · 24m ago
Much harder to make a secure device that is resistant to getting pwn'd if you can run any code you want. I personally prefer my iPhone to be more secure than to be more open.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
mikewarot · 4m ago
A gentle reminder to the readers here at HN that it doesn't have to be this way. Computer Security is a solved problem[1], and has been so since the 1980s[2].
It's my strong opinion that the only methods you've seen to this point[3-7] were deliberately chosen to be ones that don't work, and make things worse in the long run.
There's no reason we shouldn't be able to run what we want on our hardware, without having to trust anything other than the microkernel inside the operating systems.
Your opinion is not "a gentle reminder", "a friendly reminder" or "a public service announcement". It's just your opinion and nothing more.
hedora · 4m ago
I think fighting for the ability to write a custom OS for a phone misses the point.
It should be possible to participate in the modern economy using standard technology.
To this end, I think there should be a mandate that all govt and commercial infrastructure apps offer a progressive web app with at least feature parity with proprietary phone apps.
Want me to use a phone to pay for lunch, EV charging, parking or a toll? Great. It needs to be doable with anything running firefox, safari or chrome.
kylecazar · 1h ago
It's a matter of ownership vs. licensing. You own the hardware you buy, but you license the software. I agree with the author that as long as you use that software, you should be subject to the constraints of the license.
The key is that if you choose not to run that software, your hardware should not be constrained. You own the hardware, it's a tangible thing that is your property.
Boils down to a consumer rights issue that I fall on the same side of as the author.
EvanAnderson · 1h ago
The hardware should not be equipped with undefeatable digital locks. Put a physical switch on the hardware (like Chromebooks have-- had?) to allow the owner to opt out of the walled garden.
Also worrisome are e-fuses, which allow software to make irrevocable physical changes to your hardware. They shouldn't be allowed to be modified except by the owner. (See Nintendo Switch updates blowing e-fuses to prevent downgrades.)
glitchc · 34m ago
First, we had bespoke computer systems where the hardware and software were tailored to solve specific problems. Then, as computers became commoditized, the hardware was more standardized and software interacted with it through an abstraction layer. Now, we're circling back to heterogeneous hardware where software and hardware are tightly coupled for the best performance and power efficiency. Of course there's always a trade-off. In this case, it's flexibility.
The smartphone does not consist of just one processor, it's a collection of dedicated processors, each running custom algorithms locally. Sure, there's software running in the application layer, but it's playing more of a coordination role than actually doing the work. Just think of sending a packet over the internet and how different it is between a smartphone and a computer, how much more complex a cellular modem is compared to a network card.
It's less about software now and more about hardware accelerated modules. Even CPUs run primarily on microcode which can be patched after the fact.
These patterns are cyclical. It will take a number of years before we return to standardized compute again, but return we will. Eventually.
hibikir · 51m ago
When the hardware is complicated enough that the software required to run it al all would take many millions of dollars to replicate, hardware freedom alone doesn't cut it. Just like a modern processor needs mountains of microcode to do anything you'd actually want. And that's without companies needing to obfuscate their hardware to avoid interoperability they don't want.
In practice, a whole lot software would have to be open source too so that the hardware is reasonably usable. The layers you'd need to let an iPhone run android well, or a Pixel phone to run iOS are not small.
Tempest1981 · 1h ago
Including cars, TVs, and home appliances -- those are the items I really want to hack.
nicce · 54m ago
And tractors
Liftyee · 42m ago
As other comments have pointed out, this statement (one I 100% support, BTW) is a little naive. I can see how it might be unreasonable to expect companies to publish documentation, build infrastructure, etc. to support running your own code on the hardware you own (which 99% of people will never need to do).
However, I strongly believe that - should one choose to do so - you should not be stopped from jailbreaking, cracking, etc. manufacturer restrictions on the hardware you own. Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this - but why should legislation stop me if I want to try? (You can easily guess my thoughts on the DMCA.)
danpalmer · 36m ago
> Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this
Where does one draw the line on support? If I jailbreak an iPhone, should I still get Apple customer support for the apps on it, even though they may have been manipulated by some aspect of the jailbreak? (Very real problem, easy to cause crashes in other apps when you mess around with root access) Should I still get a battery replacement within warranty from Apple even though I've used software that runs the battery hotter and faster than it would on average on a non-jailbroken iPhone?
I feel like changing the software shouldn't void your warranty, but I can see arguments against that. I probably fall on the side of losing all software support if you make changes like this, but even then it's not clear cut.
marcus_holmes · 53m ago
I know I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I genuinely think it's OK for a device manufacturer to say: "we are building this device to run this software. If you don't want to run this software, then don't buy this device. There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support that".
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
scosman · 39m ago
+1. Smartphones aren't a monopoly. GrapheneOS is a thing. More companies can build hardware for it if there's demand. Not every piece of hardware needs to be general purpose computer.
I've been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it's not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app's data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don't have the technical literacy to have "informed consent" prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don't mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.
Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.
serf · 51m ago
>There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support tha
except in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.
In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.
How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?
Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.
mixmastamyk · 40m ago
> There are plenty of other devices out there...
No there isn't, and one of the main problems.
htrp · 1h ago
You don't own the hardware, it's now a license just like the software..... problem solved.
I'm two days into switching my Pixel 6 from Android to GrapheneOS. No issues so far. I haven't set up my banking app, but it's supposed to be supported.
glitchc · 44m ago
Why not launch a new startup focused on building an open smartphone? This is HN after all, with the right pitch someone will throw money at it.
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 1h ago
We do have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own
That's why I continue to use non-corporate operating systems such as NetBSD and OpenWRT
s/should/must/
ChrisArchitect · 11m ago
Title is: What Every Argument About Sideloading Gets Wrong
Nursie · 47m ago
I want my less tech savvy family members to be able to buy locked-to-the-company-store hardware, that they can’t run other things on, as it protects them from one avenue of scams and hacks. This protection can and will be worked around if it can be easily disabled.
Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.
hoppp · 6m ago
That is understandable, most people are not technical but the few who has a need for it should have an option for it.
As a developer I write apps for myself and I side-load them. Why take away my right to do so, just because other people can't then nobody should?
andy99 · 1h ago
I don't think government should be involved here, but what they can do is (a) always provide alternatives where interacting with government doesn't require a smartphone or apps, and (b) mandate the same for regulated or essential industries like banks and airlines etc.
I'm not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware/OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.
yesbut · 1h ago
If left to the generosity of companies to allow us to control the hardware we purchase then we will never be able to modify the hardware we purchase again. There are no inalienable rights that we, as humans, do not define and legislate ourselves. If we want unfettered control of the hardware that we purchase then we need to codify it into law.
sciencesama · 57m ago
Cuda disagrees with you !
otikik · 18m ago
That doesn’t benefit the corporations, so it’s communism.
anothernewdude · 1h ago
If sideloading goes, so does their OS.
surajrmal · 1h ago
What are you planning to use instead?
tamimio · 41m ago
Not defending Apple, but when they restrict sideloading it's because they made both the software and the hardware. They didn't exploit thousands of open source developers who basically worked for free making Android what it is right now, only to be hijacked by Google. I used to use Android but I did notice a huge decline around 2015, which was around the time when the Android creator left Google.
add-sub-mul-div · 46m ago
As for the new Android restrictions I assume my Galaxy S20 will be immune to them because it's not getting (major) updates anymore. I'll continue using it as long as I can to avoid this. Does anyone know the most recent Galaxy phone that will be safe from this? I want to get a backup.
micromacrofoot · 57m ago
tbh I don't even care about support, just give me the keys
but ultimately it doesn't matter, if the market could bear the additional cost a competitor could emerge... but they barely do anywhere
honestly at this point in life I think it would be easier to change society to be structured in a way to make the people running these companies want to give it to you
yesbut · 1h ago
Anyone who doesn't agree with this is a collaborator and should be publicly shamed.
DrillShopper · 1h ago
No, says the man in Hollywood - those cycles belong to the MPAA
No, says the car manufacturers, those cycles belong to us
No, says the nerds in Redmond, your computer belongs to us
add-sub-mul-div · 1h ago
Weird last example, Windows is freer than Apple/Google. There's no path to locking down Windows like Android or iOS, half the world would break. Apple originated and normalized this, Google is following.
Spooky23 · 11m ago
Microsoft will absolutely go down this path, they just have longer commitments and product cycles.
I’d guess in 5 years you’ll start getting friction for using AD, and heavy push towards cloud services first. You’ll probably have to subscribe to legacy features or migrate to Azure to use them.
Their legacy systems management tool is a zombie product, and the replacement is Intune, which and an MDM solution which locks you out of your computer similar to Android or iOS.
I’ll be retired, so IDNGAF, but in 15 years, Microsoft will be capturing all of the value they give you for free in windows. The future will look like a 1980s mainframe.
Krutonium · 59m ago
Windows 10/11 S is that path. Microsoft has walked it already; They just have to push the net wider over time.
rogerrogerr · 57m ago
A few weeks ago someone was posting links to a thing MS is trying to push, which would require signed code for local execution. It had a weird name but seemed like they’re trying.
fareesh · 55m ago
the Android change doesn't impact your ability to plug in your own device and run your own code or someone else's code
the change impacts closed source software distributed without verification which is by definition unknown so the "want" is not possible - i.e. you can't know if you want to run it.
abtinf · 1h ago
I can only assume that folks making this argument didn't live through the bad old days, 15+ years ago.
Sometimes, I want wide open hardware that lets me do whatever I want. Innumerable companies serve this need.
Other times (indeed, most times) I want locked down hardware because of the massive benefits. That's why I use macs and iphones, and strongly advocate others use them too.
Yet a bunch of assholes want to rip that option away from me.
i80and · 1h ago
I was there, Gandalf, 15 years ago. I think the last virus I saw in person was closer to 25 years ago, but I've done my time in the trenches.
Locked-down app stores certainly have significant utility and even should maybe be the default depending on the device, but calling people "assholes" for asking for an escape hatch is extremely odd.
No comments yet
sverhagen · 1h ago
Do you want locked down hardware, or are you accepting the locked down hardware because you don't care about it either way, but are otherwise happy (very happy perhaps even) with what those platforms offer? But why can't we have both?
marak830 · 1h ago
This. Abtinf's solution changes how I can use hardware. But me being able to install what I want does not change theirs.
You guys keep not installing what you don't want - that's fine and your choice - but don't remove mine for no reason.
sesky · 30m ago
This is not true. A walled garden only works well when it applies universally.
When app developers have the ability to bypass the walled garden, they have many incentives to do so ranging from financial to wishing to circumvent scrutiny. This will include an increasing amount of popular and useful apps, decreasing the options available to those who want to stay in the walled garden. For less technical users they will blindly follow instructions to leave the walled garden.
You are removing the choice of users who want a walled garden by supporting legislation forcing these ecosystems open.
slug · 1h ago
What bad old days? 15 years ago we had n700, n800 and n900 to run whatever we wanted on a portable device.
It's not a binary choice though. We have the technology for an OS to enable sideloading for people who want it and disable it for people who don't...
nzeid · 1h ago
This is confusing. No one (I know) who zealously supports open hardware also thinks that "closed ecosystem" software should be eliminated or undermined.
Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone.
blooalien · 53m ago
> "Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone."
Yeah, it's called "competition", which time and again throughout history has proven to force all involved parties to improve or perish (good for everyone; at least the "improve" part). Lack of any has proven to foster "enshittification" to the most extreme levels (absolutely bad for everyone).
1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation
2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection
This concept of "I should run any code on hardware I own" is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we should not expect manufacturers of phones and tablets to allow anyone to run any code on every device, since this will cause harm to many users.
There should be more open and hackable products available in the market. The DIY mindset at the junction of hardware and software is crucial for tech innovation - we wouldn't be where we are today without it. However, I also want regulations and restrictions on the phones I buy for my kids and grandparents. They need protection from themselves and from bad actors.
The market should serve both groups: those who want to tinker and innovate, and those who need a safe, managed experience. The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
While it would be a burden to require a degree of openness, it's not like companies are all rugged individualists who would never want to see legal restrictions in the field.
It's just a question of what is overall best and fairest.
Restrictions can both help and hinder innovation, and it's innovation that in the ling run makes things improve IMO.
It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers. It should be able to port code to new platforms. It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architectures.
Sure seems we are very far from that, but really these are breadth-based knowledge with extensive examples / training sources. It SHOULD be something LLMs are good at, not new/novel/deep/difficult problems. What I described are labor-intensive and complicated, but not "difficult".
And would any corporate AI allow that?
We should be pretty paranoid about centralized control attempts, especially in tech. This is a ... fragile ... time.
You can feed it assembly listings, or bytecode that the decompiler couldn't handle, and get back solid results.
And corporate AIs don't really have a fuck to give, at least not yet. You can sic Claude on obvious decompiler outputs, or a repo of questionable sources with a "VERY BIG CORPO - PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL" in every single file, and it'll sift through it - no complaints, no questions asked. And if that data somehow circles back into the training eventually, then all the funnier.
Apple and Google are still a problem, but they are a secondary problem.
The sheer technical difficulty is what makes this kind of thing impractical.
The network does validate that a SIM card is a real SIM card, but you can put a "real SIM card" in anything.
The problem right now is that even if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, I STILL couldn't reliably get a piece of hardware certified for the cellular network. I would have to set up a company, spend untold amounts of money bribing^Wwooing cellular company executives for a couple years, and, maybe, just maybe, I could get my phone through the certification process.
The technical aspects of certification are the easy part.
The problem is that the cellular companies fully understand that when it happens their power goes to zero because they suddenly become a dumb pipe that everybody just wants to ignore.
That's why this will take legislation.
As someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900/950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices again, statements like this sound more than naïve to me. I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us "hardware". The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.
Reading technical documentation on things like secure enclaves, UWB chips, computational photography stack, HRTF tuning, unified memory, TrueDepth cameras, AWDL, etc., it feels very wrong to support claims like the OP makes. “Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want. But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.
(Hell: I'd personally be OK without "documentation"... it should simply be illegal to actively go out of your way to prevent people from doing this. This way you also aren't mandating anyone go to extra effort they otherwise wouldn't bother with: the status quo is that, because they can, they thrown down an incredible amount of effort trying to prevent people from figuring things out themselves, and that really sucks.)
heh.
However the interests you mention aren't collective at all but very singularly the ones of the manufacturer only
Will it be as good as the iOS implementation? Probably not. But it's hardly an impossible fact and not one that has to be done entirely over and over for every device. The Asahi folks showed it could be done despite hostile conditions.
Actually enforcing the anti-monopoly rules on the books would help, too.
And while we're making wishes, we could kill the VC-backed tech play by enforcing a digital version of anti-dumping laws.
With those rules in place, we'd see our market engine quite a bit more aligned with the social good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
I’ve given talks on how various jailbreak exploits work in order to teach people how to protect their own software but also with the suggestion that we should be able to do this.
It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymore. Devices you might not think of as PC’s… just are. They’re sold in slick hardware. And the software ecosystem tries to prevent tampering in the name of security… but it’s not security for the end user most of the time. It’s security for the investors to ensure you have to keep paying them.
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These things are never thought through. Sure, Apple could unlock the whole thing, tell everyone to go nuts. Who's writing the damn drivers? Apple's certainly not obligated to open source theirs, I also can't imagine them signing someone else's. So we end up with a bunch of homebrew drivers, devices crashing, getting pwned, and the dozens of people who install a third party OS on their iPhone write furious articles that get voted up to the front page of HN.
Makes me think that google did this now since trump has been criticizing the DMA, so now they feel empowered by their leader to break the law
That’s why I love my iPhone, but I’m not super happy about what happens with my Mac.
There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple. Apple keeps the app developers from doing things I don’t like for the most part. I don’t feel very restricted.
But I don’t want my computer to become a walled garden. It’s only OK for my phone.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
There's no reason we shouldn't be able to run what we want on our hardware, without having to trust anything other than the microkernel inside the operating systems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_operating_sys...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_permissions
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
It should be possible to participate in the modern economy using standard technology.
To this end, I think there should be a mandate that all govt and commercial infrastructure apps offer a progressive web app with at least feature parity with proprietary phone apps.
Want me to use a phone to pay for lunch, EV charging, parking or a toll? Great. It needs to be doable with anything running firefox, safari or chrome.
The key is that if you choose not to run that software, your hardware should not be constrained. You own the hardware, it's a tangible thing that is your property.
Boils down to a consumer rights issue that I fall on the same side of as the author.
Also worrisome are e-fuses, which allow software to make irrevocable physical changes to your hardware. They shouldn't be allowed to be modified except by the owner. (See Nintendo Switch updates blowing e-fuses to prevent downgrades.)
The smartphone does not consist of just one processor, it's a collection of dedicated processors, each running custom algorithms locally. Sure, there's software running in the application layer, but it's playing more of a coordination role than actually doing the work. Just think of sending a packet over the internet and how different it is between a smartphone and a computer, how much more complex a cellular modem is compared to a network card.
It's less about software now and more about hardware accelerated modules. Even CPUs run primarily on microcode which can be patched after the fact.
These patterns are cyclical. It will take a number of years before we return to standardized compute again, but return we will. Eventually.
In practice, a whole lot software would have to be open source too so that the hardware is reasonably usable. The layers you'd need to let an iPhone run android well, or a Pixel phone to run iOS are not small.
However, I strongly believe that - should one choose to do so - you should not be stopped from jailbreaking, cracking, etc. manufacturer restrictions on the hardware you own. Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this - but why should legislation stop me if I want to try? (You can easily guess my thoughts on the DMCA.)
Where does one draw the line on support? If I jailbreak an iPhone, should I still get Apple customer support for the apps on it, even though they may have been manipulated by some aspect of the jailbreak? (Very real problem, easy to cause crashes in other apps when you mess around with root access) Should I still get a battery replacement within warranty from Apple even though I've used software that runs the battery hotter and faster than it would on average on a non-jailbroken iPhone?
I feel like changing the software shouldn't void your warranty, but I can see arguments against that. I probably fall on the side of losing all software support if you make changes like this, but even then it's not clear cut.
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
I've been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it's not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app's data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don't have the technical literacy to have "informed consent" prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don't mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.
Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.
except in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.
In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.
How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?
Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.
No there isn't, and one of the main problems.
That's why I continue to use non-corporate operating systems such as NetBSD and OpenWRT
s/should/must/
Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.
As a developer I write apps for myself and I side-load them. Why take away my right to do so, just because other people can't then nobody should?
I'm not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware/OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.
but ultimately it doesn't matter, if the market could bear the additional cost a competitor could emerge... but they barely do anywhere
honestly at this point in life I think it would be easier to change society to be structured in a way to make the people running these companies want to give it to you
No, says the car manufacturers, those cycles belong to us
No, says the nerds in Redmond, your computer belongs to us
I’d guess in 5 years you’ll start getting friction for using AD, and heavy push towards cloud services first. You’ll probably have to subscribe to legacy features or migrate to Azure to use them.
Their legacy systems management tool is a zombie product, and the replacement is Intune, which and an MDM solution which locks you out of your computer similar to Android or iOS.
I’ll be retired, so IDNGAF, but in 15 years, Microsoft will be capturing all of the value they give you for free in windows. The future will look like a 1980s mainframe.
the change impacts closed source software distributed without verification which is by definition unknown so the "want" is not possible - i.e. you can't know if you want to run it.
Sometimes, I want wide open hardware that lets me do whatever I want. Innumerable companies serve this need.
Other times (indeed, most times) I want locked down hardware because of the massive benefits. That's why I use macs and iphones, and strongly advocate others use them too.
Yet a bunch of assholes want to rip that option away from me.
Locked-down app stores certainly have significant utility and even should maybe be the default depending on the device, but calling people "assholes" for asking for an escape hatch is extremely odd.
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You guys keep not installing what you don't want - that's fine and your choice - but don't remove mine for no reason.
When app developers have the ability to bypass the walled garden, they have many incentives to do so ranging from financial to wishing to circumvent scrutiny. This will include an increasing amount of popular and useful apps, decreasing the options available to those who want to stay in the walled garden. For less technical users they will blindly follow instructions to leave the walled garden.
You are removing the choice of users who want a walled garden by supporting legislation forcing these ecosystems open.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N700_Series_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900
Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone.
Yeah, it's called "competition", which time and again throughout history has proven to force all involved parties to improve or perish (good for everyone; at least the "improve" part). Lack of any has proven to foster "enshittification" to the most extreme levels (absolutely bad for everyone).