this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Signal Developer Explains Why Early Encrypted Messaging Tools Flopped (www.pcmag.com)
submitted 3 months ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to c/cybersecurity@sh.itjust.works
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'The intuition was to take the complexity and push it onto the user,' Moxie Marlinspike says at Black Hat. 'We were just wrong.'

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[–] magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

'The intuition was to take the complexity and push it onto the user,' Moxie Marlinspike says at Black Hat. 'We were just wrong.'

No the issue is that we had a second eternal September when the iPhone dropped, and since then the computer literacy of the average boomer was allowed to become what we expect out of everyone.

This guy might be a bit of an asshole, but hes got a point. It's only gotten worse since then, now that all the computers with real desktop OS's in schools have been replaced with chromebooks/iPads.

[–] conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 months ago

decided that the young woman would probably not appreciate the sarcasm, and took the MacBook off her so I could add in the county's proxy server settings

I mean, the YouTube whatever, though calling that her fault is still douchey, but this is entirely on the author. If he's logging someone on to the network and the network doesn't work without a proxy configured, he's the one who should know to set that up. That's absolutely not normal end user behavior.

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

Bugs me that in all of his examples he does the thing for the user instead of having them do it while he guides them through it. I have a 'sit on my hands' rule for cases like that. But it has been a while since I've done desktop support.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No the issue is that we had a second eternal September when the iPhone dropped, and since then the computer literacy of the average boomer was allowed to become what we expect out of everyone.

That is true, iPhones have made people less literate, but it is because many many devs are just like other experts: proud of their ability to do stuff the minority can. We have very few tech-folk who are willing to make things usable for non-techies.

There is a huge "git gud" and RTFM crowd out there, and I for one am glad they get to stay in their niches or get called out for that elitism. Linux forums were (probably still are) the epitome of elitism with people saying insane stuff like "its people's own fault for using windows" and in the same breath "I don't want more linux users because it will destroy the experience". Just a bunch of hipsters gatekeeping stuff with non-existent or shitty documentation, doing their darndest not to let people in for fear of losing the ability to proudly claim "I use linux".

Look at the Arch crowd. They still haven't grown out of their ridiculous propensity to scream "i use arch btw" or recommend it to newbies. Arch users smell ineptitude and will promptly call it out to ridicule it or start frothing at the mouth before letting loose their 4 favorite letters: RTFM.

It's taking a minority of devs who care about UX and large corpos to bring linux to the masses. Without them, we'd still be hard-stuck in with technical troglodytes that have a terminal illness and can't stop mentioning a recompile every 5 minutes.

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[–] magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I don't know I entirely agree with this take. Computers are literally the most powerful tool for creation in all of human history.

You should absolutely be expected to put effort into it.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 3 months ago

You might be expected to, but your not required to. Most people's workflows on their phones don't require much work, so the minimum skill level isn't very high

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There's just a lot of stuff going on and everybody can make an argument for knowing something:

  • Maths is the most important tool to mankind
  • It is imperative to understand your own brain because it makes a lot of decisions
  • If you drive a car, you better know how it works
  • Politics is crucial to our society and being an informed citizen is paramount

And so on. It's all true, but you only have so many hours in a day, and everybody has a different life. You could live in the most affluent society and be dealing with stuff that has nothing to do with computers.

Also, who decides what's "basic knowledge"? I know a lot about software, what I know about hardware is minimal. What's minimal to me though might be advanced to another and vice versa.

We should be trying to be more empathetic. Recommending an advanced Linux OS to a newbie isn't empathetic. Expecting a user to know how to install an OS isn't empathetic.

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[–] magic_smoke@links.hackliberty.org 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Recommending an advanced Linux OS to a newbie isn't empathetic.

I agree, I don't think everyone needs to know how to use niche CLI utilities or minimalistic tiling WMs. I do think you should be able to easily navigate a windows-like UX such as Mint.

Expecting a user to know how to install an OS isn't empathetic.

No, I think that's about where the average persons knowledge should end. The fact that the average person doesn't know this is exactly the issue I'm getting at.

Re-installing an OS is easy, It's like knowing how to change a tire, or check your oil. Booting off of a USB stick and clicking next a dozen times isn't hard.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 3 months ago

Re-installing an OS is easy

Hmmm, this is where our opinions diverge. It's easy when things go right. UEFI and MBR changed that. And I've had a few linux installations fail for obscure reasons (mostly hardware support).

Installers also say "backup your data" but if you're coming from windows, what do you do when your stuff is on onedrive? What if you know nothing about partitioning and the installer just wipes the entire disk clean even though you expected your D:/ with your backup to be kept?
Oh, an should you keep that windows recovery partition? What's on there? How do you access the data to check?

There are a bunch of things to consider when installing to prevent data-loss and IMO they aren't as straightforward as they seem.

Doing a regular system update or upgrading from one LTS release to another are comparable to oil-check and changing a tire. Installing an OS, IMO, not so much.

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