Current Apple should show their new tests that demostrate the opposite.
(Edit) The full transcription of the video, faster than watching:
"You know, the first thing you think
about is this, right?
We thought about this years ago.
We've done tons of user testing on this
and it turns out it doesn't work.
Touch surfaces don't want to be
vertical.
It gives great demo.
But after a short period of time, you
start to fatigue and after an extended
period of time, your arm wants to fall
off.
It doesn't work. It's ergonomically
terrible. Touch surfaces want to be
horizontal.
Hence, pads.
For a notebook, that's why we've
perfected our multi-touch trackpads over
the years." -- Steve Jobs, 2010
I don't think vertical vs horizontal is quite the thing - people don't always hold their phones and tablets horizontally while using them - often they'd be almost vertical. But standard laptop vertical screen position is uncomfortable to use as a touch screen. I'm curious how that research would relate to how people normally use handheld touchscreens.
AKA smurfing. In this case the association is easy: desrtuction of forest and the bad guy name starts with G. If they would have the same luck than Gargamel...
Yet Qubes OS demostrates it's possible to run X11 programs isolated from each other. They had the need and will to improve security, and found the way over a decade ago.
Making server side decorations an important part of it. Oh, the irony.
Qubes OS achieves isolation by separating apps into VMs. Wayland does this at the display protocol level. If Qubes OS is serious about security, they should consider Wayland with containerization. It would result in a similar level of isolation with significantly lower resource overhead.
I feel like the sheer volume of OS LPEs and escape CVEs in container runtimes indicates that, at least for now, the security boundary capabilities of containers are inferior to those of VMs.
Which is ironic, given that a lot of the tools that underly a container runtime were originally designed to facilitate security, not ease of deployment.
You're aware of the VM escape issues over the past decade? There's no perfect, and high overhead from running many guests can also create security risks. Wayland with all of its problems remains a logical step forward from the X model.
The adult entertainment industry cared decades ago [0]. Their solution is simple: sites send the RTA meta tag if applicable, browsers in accounts configured by guardians as "children" look for it. [1]
Second, all ISPs could offer in their basic service something like DNS4EU modes, just like they offered email and web space decades ago (optional, nobody was forced to use them).
Parents would only need to configure the account to "child". Laws could force companies to properly tag their pages and sites. And privacy would be preserved.
Instead we have to keep on fighting the Crypto Wars. The childs are just a decoy, the target is destroying basic rights.
QubesOS and Xpra+Firejail demostrate security can be improved including the X11 side. Solaris had Trusted Extensions. X11Libre has a proposal for using different magic cookies to isolate clients and give dummy data to the untrusted. Keith Packard also proposed something in 2018.
Reality check: Children have many and useful opportunities to use devices in all kinds of situations away from parents.
Useful situations. On devices parents don't control.
Expecting parents to follow their children around 24/7, in case they access some adult site from a public or friend's device they don't control is beyond ridiculous.
Privacy protecting, anonymous validation of 18+ status solves the problem, in a way that doesn't require unrealistic "parenting" behavior, protects everyone's privacy, and is even helpful to responsible adult sites.
Condescendingly telling parents to "parent" in a way that is virtually impossible, instead of helping, is just rolling out the red carpet for alternate non-anonymous age verification legislation.
Zero knowledge tech, like end-to-end encryption, protects privacy.
Children will always be able to use devices or accounts borrowed or bought from adults, regardless of how the initial verification is carried out. Not to mention that the verification key / token / device might also be borrowed or when copied or transferred, depending on how it's implemented.
I think a device level setting is actually quite pragmatic.
I am having trouble understanding how anyone is unaware that children have pervasive and useful access to devices outside of their parent's sphere on a daily basis.
Or why anyone would discourage use of cryptographically hard privacy protecting solutions.
This is the perfect opportunity to take zero knowledge proofs mainstream, like end-to-end encryption, as a solution for myriads of current privacy leaking services and infrastructure.
The alternative to cryptographically protected privacy, is sites increasingly collecting people's identifiable information and associating their identities with access/behavior logs. Information that can never be assumed to stay private.
Let’s start with friend’s devices. Children have lots of devices and lots of friends.
Friend’s phones, home computers and devices of other family members.
Unattended PCs and laptops at school. According to a music teacher who has literally had to clean her work computer after it was used for erotic viewing by students when the music room in a temp building wasn’t otherwise in use.
Web browsers on game consoles, e-readers, VR headsets, smart TVs, tablets, …
Now throw in constant device turnover, software updates, including settings panel changes, and settings values that get reverted, across the board.
I am not sure why you wanted my opinion. That’s less of an opinion and more of a list of what counts as ordinary for the last decade or so.
So if we secure personal devices of children, with simple, standardized "child-owned" marker, we're basically back to 80s/90s, where children could occasionally get access to adult material via friends or irresponsible adults.
In my opinion that's more than enough, especially when you compare it to requiring everyone to identify themselves. It may be ZPK on the tin, but likely it will be close-source, corporation owned implementation, which will have holes. Then in a few years we will learn that Meta exploited them for years to sell your soul for ad money.
Btw - students occasionally steal teacher's cars. Should we block engine start with ID check too?
> In my opinion that's more than enough, especially when you compare it to requiring everyone to identify themselves.
The solution I proposed was the opposite of people identifying themselves.
Zero knowledge proofs. Enabling trusted verification without revealing identity is exactly what cryptographers designed them for.
We should be using them everywhere. Like end-to-end encryption they provide massive privacy, security, and trust (I.e. ability to verify intended disclosure) improvements.
Or we can complain about parents, the ones who care enough to ask for better help, while legislatures keep passing identity revealing anti-privacy rules. That seems to be the direction many are taking here. Complain, condescendingly, don’t solve anything. Repeat.
The more "digi-ID so we are sure you are old enough, bitte" keeps been pushed, the clearer it's about tracking and not about children. No matter how much they love to frame it the other way around. Unless they want to admit they are total inepts.
Keith Packard, another legend, was proposing X11 improvements in 2018. [0] He doesn't seem to be paid to work in X11 or Wayland, thus being free to float ideas he likes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zfir0Ide0A
Same conclusion that everyone has reached over the past four decades, at least. It even got a nickname.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#%22Gorilla_arm%22
Current Apple should show their new tests that demostrate the opposite.
(Edit) The full transcription of the video, faster than watching:
"You know, the first thing you think about is this, right? We thought about this years ago. We've done tons of user testing on this and it turns out it doesn't work. Touch surfaces don't want to be vertical. It gives great demo. But after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. It doesn't work. It's ergonomically terrible. Touch surfaces want to be horizontal. Hence, pads. For a notebook, that's why we've perfected our multi-touch trackpads over the years." -- Steve Jobs, 2010