28c3: The coming war on general computation

"The Coming War on General Computation", Cory Doctorow (2011). Speech: ▶ this video Transcript: [link] (Of course, Stallman warned of this type of thing much earlier as well.)

in “What happened to running what you wanted on your own machine?” · View on HN

puts tinfoil hat on Ensuring that a critical mass of people use remote attestation[0] capable devices. The next step is a browser API[1] for this so that content owners can exclude devices capable of storing the content, or stripping out ads/tracking, etc. Sure, there will be a cat-and-mouse game where people will figure out how to fake the attestation for some period of time, but general computation[2] is probably on the way out. ---- [0] [link] [1] [link] [2] ▶ this video

in “Microsoft deletes official Windows 11 CPU/TPM bypass for unsupported PCs” · View on HN

Computers are a little different than specialised devices like… well, bombs & drugs let's say. Heard of the coming war on general computation? ▶ this video [link]

in “UK proposal to criminalize “sophisticated encrypted communication devices”” · View on HN

> Software is economically worthless without making it artificially scarce. A lot of "software innovation" is not about building better software, but building software you can charge for, which means "walled gardens", patents, DRM, license servers, anti-tampering mechanisms, and the like. In essence all content (music, movies, software, books, etc) follows the same pattern. You remind me of Cory Doctorow's "The Coming War on General Computation" keynote, which interestingly didn't notice that streaming and similar cloud-based services would become the DRM of the last decade. Or, as it turns out, the rising appeal of non -general purpose devices that are more efficient. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link]

in “The decline of computers as a general-purpose technology” · View on HN

This isn't a big surprise, you should expect the tightening of the screws to continue and the pace of it to accelerate. The real issue here is general purpose computing. General purpose computing makes it possible to block ads, to rip your CDs instead of the industry forcing you to buy the same music again, etc. and as a result it is THE major obstacle to unlimited rent seeking and squeezing the last penny out of every user. Expect the industry to keep working in this direction until everything is as locked down as an iPhone. See also: ▶ this video

in “Notarizing Your App Before Distribution” · View on HN

This is an interesting article. It made me think of the socio-political consequences of the move towards neural networks. Many of us, children of the personal computer revolution, were attracted to computers for its empowering and democratizing effects. Just with a computer you could build anything! You are as powerful as any of "them"! The proprietary software model was developed to monetize end consumers by enchaining them, but the free software model and the fertile communities of the early Internet showed that the model of personal computation could not simply be displaced by legalese. But if we take the author's position on the impact of deep networks, the model of computation is changing again. If teaching deep networks is the new way to write useful programs, our brains and personal computers are not enough... they are obsolete. We now need clusters and, most importantly, massive access to data! This gives extraordinary leverage to the hoarders of data and servers of the Internet, the googles and the facebooks. I'd like to think that maybe we are just at the beginning, the early "mainframe neural networks" era. That we just have to wait until there is enough technology and new markets discovered to build the "personal neural network". That consensual, open and distributed ways of sharing data will emerge and that new massively parallel computers will become affordable by the masses. That the models of neural networks will become well divulged and simplified and kids wi

in “Deep Learning’s Impact on Image Processing, Mathematics, and Humanity” · View on HN

The TPP was far greater than a class issue. It was part of the War on General Purpose Computation ( ▶ this video ). It cut through class lines, into our ability to control the technology in our lives.

in “US Announces Withdrawal from TPP” · View on HN

> And if I decided to show one of them to a someone who gave me money in return, that still doesn't give anybody who didn't pay me or anyone else for that matter, any right to access that file, no matter how little "intrinsic value" it represents. Sure, this is unconditionally right if we go by the book and agree with the law. No argument here. Though, by going by the said law... The full albums, songs, movies, movie clips, whatever unauthorized there is in YouTube for example for billions of people to see every day creates a huge problem. For example here in Finland, any person listening to an unauthorized upload of an album on YouTube breaks the law. Practically a huge majority of the youth are criminals as they do this on a daily basis, and take it for granted. Obviously it is utterly senseless to go after these people for what they are doing. > If someone invented a teleport that allowed people to beam to whereever and back, that would cause a rise in theft of tangible goods all over the world. But this would not mean that because the old systems of doors and locks were now inefficient, people should not be allowed to claim ownership of property anymore. But this, of course, is a flawed analogy. A better one would be with an ability to clone material for free. Say, if we were able to build a car, and then clone it for free for everyone. Why wouldn't we? For many goods we could just come up with better and better ones again and again, and people would immediately clone the

in “Peter Sunde: 'I went to jail for my cause. What did you do?'” · View on HN

Basically everything Cory Doctorow has predicted [1] would happen with DRM, and of course what Richard Stallman said many years before that. [1] ▶ this video And now we're going to get OS level DRM that works through all of our browsers, thanks to Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and last, but not least, the W3C. Terrific.

in “EA is File Snooping with the Origin Client” · View on HN

Cory Doctorow's keynote at Chaos Communication Congress (2011) was about this trend. It's not technically feasible to make a turing-complete system that only does things that the creator likes. All anti-virus and DRM systems are provably limited unless general-purpose computation is removed. ▶ this video

in “US cybercrime laws being used to target security researchers” · View on HN

Dev here. Moved from OSX to Ubuntu a year ago. Love not having to agree-click ULAs all the time. Setting up dev stacks is very often so much easier and better documented. Working with open source software to develop open source projects is very enjoyable and very often I feel this is just the beginning of something very profound. With proprietary OSes I constantly have the feeling of banging against elaborately engineered limitations. This feels so counter-productive. Instead of producing something great why not spend incredible amounts of work-years on creating artificial limitations for the users, right. No thanks. In other words I like my computers to be general: ▶ this video

in “Ubuntu Touch OS wins its first smartphone partner” · View on HN

What next? This [1], of course. Of all the electronic device you own that are capable of being exploited for automated surveillance, your PC or Mac is probably the only thing that is not actually being used for automated surveillance (not counting your web browsing habits, and provided you don't have any spyware on your computer). How dare you use a computing device that (hopefully) does not have any backdoors built into it, is not locked into any vendor's monthly payment plan, is not locked into any vendor's proprietary OS, and even supports "terrorist" techniques such as full-disk encryption? Fortunately for Big Brother, key hardware components of general-purpose computers are only produced by a handful of corporations such as Intel and AMD. Don't be surprised if they agree to build all sorts of defects-by-design into their processors, graphics cards, HDDs/SSDs, etc. There are already plenty of excuses: I have popcorn ready for the day when graphics cards finally implement security systems to prevent them from being used for bitcoin mining or password brute-forcing. The FSF should change their name to FCF, Free Computing Foundation. We need them badly, more than ever before. [1] Cory Doctorow, "The Coming War on General Computation", ▶ this video

in “Welcome to Echelon 2.0” · View on HN

You asked a straight question - how to reduce piracy. I answered - treat customers with respect (no DRM), and many of the current pirates will become paying users. If they want to "eliminate piracy" - they can forget about it, it will never happen. They can however increase their profits by acting decently. Today they are mostly focusing on chasing pirates wasting resources on that completely in vain. They should focus on catering to legitimate users instead. And it will pay off. As proven by those who act decently and principally don't use DRM. > Because if I'm selling files for $5 with no copy protection and Joe Pirate is giving them away for $0 (but he doesn't want me to disrespect him by filing legal action against him or hurting his feeling by labeling him a pirate), tell me why people are going to give me $5 for the same thing that they could get for free? I thought this is simple. People already can get it for free by pirating it. I.e. you have such choices: 1. Sell for $5 with DRM that reduces usability by limiting platforms where this can be used and etc. etc. By using DRM the distributor also offends paying customers by default by treating them as potential criminals. Joe pirate breaks DRM, and gives this out for $0 with no DRM, which can be used anywhere. 2. Sell for $5 with no DRM. It gives wide platforms availability and shows respect to the customer. Joe pirate gives out the same thing for $0. Note, Joe pirate will give it away in either case. So what is better

in “Dear Congress: It's time for a real fix on unlocking and the DMCA” · View on HN

It is possible that in one hundred years or so that many of the "most useful" results published in copyrighted journals of the 20th century and available nowhere else will have found their way into the public domain. But it need not turn out that way. Cory Doctorow spoke about the coming war on general computation at 28c3: ▶ this video So we cannot be complacent.

in “Elsevier's recent update to its letter to the mathematical community” · View on HN