ross-life

On one hand: That's a really good point. Thanks.

On the other hand: Everything can now steal my data "just" so adverts can be shown. Really?!

To me that's more outrageous than the original points I listed. My device and my data are left permanently insecure, all to protect their adverts. Even though I purposefully don't use applications with in-built advertising (because they can't be trusted with permissions), I can't easily turn this off.

This really makes my phone suddenly feel like "A rented device who's main purpose is to deliver advertisements to me" instead of "Owned device that helps me managed my life and communicate".

its a difficult business decision for Google

It's a really easy business decision: User security, user privacy and user control are king. If each application wants to tie "functionality working" along with "internet access" and "advert was displayed" than each application can implement that for themselves. It's not hard.

That this is all baked into the actual OS instead with no (easy/toggle) method of user override is nuts.

Can someone shed light on this?

Whoever is in charge of the permission system is absolutely nuts. Or it's designed by the committee from hell. Those are the only reasons I can think of. No one sane would create this.

They actually wanted to "simplify" the permissions system and let the user have more control/understanding. You could argue they've done the first... at the expense of everything else. Half of it seems to have been introduced so "it bugs you less", which is not the point, I want to be bugged (by default) so I know what applications are actually doing. If users wants to "not be bugged" let them manually set it, don't make it default.

I've meant to write a post titled "Android 6 permissions: Still pants" after buying a Nexus 5X and being happy with the phone/camera but utterly disappointed with the "revamped" permission systems:

- Yes sure, because I granted an application "Coarse location data", just go ahead and automatically (WTF?) give it "Fine location data" permissions too, because hey, it's all just "location data" right? Not like I might have wanted to give it coarse and not fine on purpose...

- Want to write contacts? Here's reading too! Want to write texts? Here's reading too! Same as above really. Is the use-case of wanting an application to be able to add to my data (at my request) but never-ever read all my data really that hard to predict?

- You get an Internet, you get an Internet, every application gets an Internet. Because every application needs Internet right? It's not like I'd maybe want to install an application to manipulate a specific file type right now but don't want it connecting all over the net right? Maybe I don't have time to verify it's not nefarious. Maybe I just want control over what applications can actually phone home from my device?

- "Runtime permissions" is hit and miss. Some applications ask and then respect the answer. Others will just pop up the dialog over and over and over again until you accept it... which was not the point.

- READ_PHONE_STATE is still terrible. It's used by app/games to pause tasks when the user gets a phone call but... also gives away the number that's calling you! Of course, nearly every application then requests this. I don't get it, it's yet another obvious use case ("Let the application know the user is busy without leaking any data") that seems to have been glossed over. I thought by this point they'd have a proper IS_USER_BUSY permission that tells applications that you're in a phone call/whatever but doesn't leak any of your personal data *whatsoever".

At this point my next phone will be an iPhone/iOS, even though I don't particularly like them as at least security/sane permissions seems to mean something over there...

Because (it feels) like it's not possible to properly debate the subject in public. As a little/normal person the answer is always the same: "But but what if it was your mother/girlfriend/daughter that died in the attack?!". These are the same people that probably have been into contact with someone who has directly dealt with the consequences of police corruption, yet won't ever support "making the police's job harder".

Once an attack "gets through", which will always happen eventually, anyone that didn't support the PersonalRights-Devouring Anti-Terrorist Bill will get crucified by the press and their opponents.

Most people don't appear to care about numbers, or facts or evidence. They only seem to care about pushing their ideology (normally authoritarianism) that "makes them feel safe", rights and freedoms be damned (which is why I can never take the US's obsession with "rights and freedoms" seriously).

But drugs are awesome :D

Completely depends on the drug, person and context.

The painkillers when I dislocated my shoulder and they had to reset it? Wonderful.

The antidepressants that after several weeks (so once they'd started "working properly"), made me feel "not unhappy" but like a robot and then also gave me vivid, real nightmares in which I died horribly over and over again? Not so great...

I'd never touch antidepressants ever again. For some people they do work, but for others they don't. Yet we still push them on everyone.

one of the best approaches I've seen is to silence them without their knowing it

Shadowbanning does work well but requires (somewhat obviously) fair admins/moderators. Otherwise it becomes something like a censorship tool.

Interesting, I touch type okay enough but don't use the pinky for symbols/ENTER. I use the ring finger of my right hand for symbols/ENTER and and the pinky for just the shift while pressing symbols with middle/index finger. I use pinky on my left heavily though, I wonder if it's a sign of anything (unbalanced typing?).

Ha, I don't use loyalty cards because of the tracking but I never thought of the price difference that way, it makes sense.

Some great examples of this are the several occasions UK banks have screwed up and left people without access over weekends or just after payday [1]

[1] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/britains-worst-bank-history-natwest...

On the other hand I think this will drive people away from Windows and towards OS X and Ubuntu.

They already pushed too far. Was a life long Windows user, used at home for gamedev and Steam, chosen at work (mainly QA) because it's what I knew extensively, VS is great and it's what users used. Was literally the only Windows user in a sea of OS X machines at some companies.

Now? All my personal and work devices run Ubuntu or Arch. My partners devices now all run Ubuntu or Arch. Projects I'm planning that were going to be "Windows first" will now be "Linux first".

Sounds silly, but I was enjoying the progress Windows was making security-wise. From Vista to 7 and 7 to 8 (and even to 10) the "under-the-hood" part of Windows seemed to be making great strides in protecting the user, even if they were screwing up the UI.

But everything they've pulled with 10 have completely pushed me away from the platform. Adverts in my OS? The nagging? The "updates can be installed even if you really don't want them"? Phone-homeing I can't turn off at all with a consumer edition? I understand wanting to make it hard to turn it off so they can collect reliable stats or protect the consumer from themselves but as a technical user I want my OS to do exactly what I want it to do. MS completely killed that.

As a European that still effectively screams "secret court" to me, just with some word games around it. Part of the problem is the US also broadly applies "Top Secret" to too much information, even the mundane, so then it "has to go to the secret court because it's "Top Secret".

But the voters are being purposefully misinformed by that very same government. It's literally circular reasoning.

Your argument would hold more weight if the people voting were actually well informed and educated about what the implications of their votes would be. If the government came out and said "everything you do, say, click and load will be saved for latter analysis" do you think they would vote the same way?

As a citizen, you are expected to trust the FISA court.

This opinion is just nuts. Trust a court that you were told for years didn't even exist? A secret court? How about no.

Secret courts lead to abuses: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/jo-shaw/secret-cour...

A. The Snowden revelations show the US has spent years being dishonest about their programs. You'd be silly at this point if you think there is not a huge database of American communications too.

B. "Filtered". Do you really believe that? Considering it's coming from the same government that also uses the words "enhanced interrogation"?

C. The US seems to consider the rest of the world people with no rights at all. People understand spying on other countries, not spying on every other single person in the world with a phone and/or an internet connection.

D. Your reasoning is faulty:

If government is monitoring your communications, then there's a pretty dammed good reason, as determined by a judge.

Just because an "authority" says/does something does not mean it is right. It should be expected to explain its reasoning, openly and transparently. Then I can trust it. The current programs do not do that and have no intention of doing that.

E. Random US government employees are literally reading your communications.

How does this work with digital stores (Steam/App Store/Play Store)? Do you even get that data from them as a developer?

I was thinking it was part of the site's name, as in "kivi-kak-kee" or they just dislike .com/.co's.

Similar to many start-ups and tech projects being hosted <everywhere> on .io (Indian Ocean) domains.

I don't see how the conclusion would be anything else, with merely a moment's thought.

Well it depends what side you are on! :)

Anecdotally, in the UK many older people will claim (A) Young people spend frivolously (B) Young people don't work hard enough or "as hard as they did" and/or (C) Their success was "their success".

Everything about economies, markets, education, housing, expectations, opportunities and the rest is wishy-washed away with "Well if they worked harder (like I did), those would work out for them".

I didn't think I could be surprised, given that the UK hands out "anti-social behavior orders," but now they want to hack the trolls?

I can kind of see what you're getting at and could agree that they are sometimes misused. However having lived in several locations where just one terrible family of 4-5 people can make the entire road hell to live on for everyone else, day and night, for years, I'm inclined to support their use.

To me it seems like Human history. European countries (and their various incantations from the past) spent hundreds upon hundreds of years competing and fighting with each other other everything imaginable. They even spent large chunks of that fighting themselves in the numerous civil wars each country had. But if you look into Middle East or Asia history, they went through approximatively similar periods.

Perhaps more of European history was recorded/found?

Out of interest, why not a "Web ui"? Do you use Qt for a desktop client or an app? I'm writing a sort of personal "life tracker/history application" and decided to go with a Web UI (with an offline manifest) because I didn't want to maintain both a mobile and desktop app.

An OS is a product of course, but to me it's on a completely different level to "just" an application product. It has access to everything, I want to be able to trust it and know exactly what it's doing. Telemetry I can't turn off ruins that. Having it is fine, just let me turn it off...

I like Windows and really like VS, I was often literally the only (non-VM) Windows user in a sea of OS X at several offices but Windows 10, the flip-flopping UI, the ads, and the telemetry pushed me to Linux and building my own desktops.

Telemetry in a specific product? Fine.

Telemetry in my OS* that has access to everything? No.

* That I cannot turn off.