[LAD] Forgive me, for I have sinned, or: toss your Macintosh, as fast and wide as you can.

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 12/04/2017 01:30 PM, Robin Gareus wrote:

> Seeing as this was in a train, and last I looked the DB-network was wide
> open, I'm curious if this was actually a hack by guy in another
> train-compartment or perhaps a subverted access-point exploiting some OS
> X vulnerability.

I was connected to my own phone hotspot. So unless it's a very low-level 
WLAN interface vulnerability, a local wireless exploit seems unlikely.

I'm pretty sure the kill message did come from the iCloud (a service 
which I'm not using and which I don't indent to ever use) using the 
Find-my-Mac feature. I was _never_ given an option to opt out of this 
feature, and it was never made clear to me that I was carrying a 
time-bomb (with remote wipe option) that would enable unknown third 
parties to potentially cause five-digit damages on a whim.

And re Luigi, no, I do not agree that proprietary is necessarily more 
stable. It can be, with proper engineering and human resources. Paying 
for the development of free software (which I regularly do) helps.

But even though Mac OS X is a really slick operating system, a single 
feature like the one I encountered makes it completely and utterly 
unacceptable to me (and this is "just" Sierra, I hear with the latest 
High Sierra they are running absolutely hog-wild with respect to user 
choice and privacy). The day I move my private data into the Apple 
"cloud" (or rather, a content delivery network for celebrity porn), 
someone please kill me.

Of Windows, I shall not speak, and I know what I'm not speaking of.
Let me assure you I'm not this bearded hippie (well, yes I am, but...) 
whose main occupation in computing is trying out new window managers. I 
work with lots of different systems professionally, some of them 
ridiculously expensive and ridiculously closed, every day.

That said, and very much in disagreement with Luigi, after being a 
long-time happy Thinkpad user _before_ the IME clusterfuck surfaced, I'm 
even tending towards "I will only ever accept those jobs that I can do 
with open software on open hardware". Still a pipe dream, but I've had 
it with big data and big company hypocrisy, and I will remove myself 
from it at the earliest opportunity, even if it means my creative 
possibilities will be severly limited. If creative freedom means having 
to play along with that shit, it's an illusion anyway and I want to be 
rid of it.

Sorry for the noise, I did not expect this thread to go ballistic, and 
if it has bored anyone's socks off, my sincere apologies.




-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier
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