Time to start de-Appling
(heatherburns.tech)565 points by msangi a day ago
565 points by msangi a day ago
The author is a different Heather Burns from the actress.
https://heatherburns.tech/about/
If you scroll down you’ll see an image of the author.
> Am I missing something?
A joke? A fun tagline? A little zing for under the heading?
I wouldn't classify "best known for playing a side character in some 90s movies" as a well known actress. Also, different Heather Burns.
She might be, but it might also be the case that there are so many actors, to be "well known", you need to be in the 0.001%
I probably have seen movies with her in it, but I have no recollection of her as an actor. I did recognize her husband as Samir from Office Space, though I couldn't tell you his name.
Maybe it is better to de-tech a bit. Go back to some older decentralised stuff.
Like buy cd's and blu-rays instead of digital/drm locked/streaming service shit. Be an owner again instead of a renter.
I don’t think you have to go that far backward. You can get a QNAP or Synology NAS, a storage VPS and use syncthing. I don’t even have the NAS yet, just a Pi with an external drive and I’ve gotten pretty far.
The part I haven’t been able to crack is syncing the Documents folder on my iPhone. All the syncthing apps for iOS are abysmal because there’s no real background sync. You can add a SMB share in the Files app, but that doesn’t get you offline access.
> you learn that physical media has a limited shelf life.
Their point is that physical media itself has a limited lifespan.
You need to continuously "refresh" it every 1 to 10 years, depending on the physical media you choose, or it's most likely corrupted. I've lost many HDD, SSD, SD cards, and about 50 "archival quality" DVD/CD to time, with all manufacturers having somewhere around 3x to 20x exaggerated claim of longevity. I'm guessing their numbers are based on some temperature/humidity controlled marketing BS, rather than anything resembling reality.
SD Cards are the saddest. I've seen many older members of my family shed tears when they pull out their SD cars they carefully stored in a drawer/safe, and they're junk. Charge drift be a harsh mistress.
On a 1700px or wider screen your text is cut off on the right-hand side: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BB60xzBW
What a disorganized, poorly written article. Just rambling on about the UK issue, then giving random suggestions for specific apps, then more rambling.
Apparently she's so thoroughly de-Googled and de-Appled that the page doesn't display correctly on Chrome on MacOS on my machine, cutting off part of the text on the right margin (manages to render correctly if I resize the window to a smaller width however)
I de-Appled when Tim Cook took over. Apple died when Steve passed away and they put a fucking bean counter in charge, which is all Tim has ever been.
It really is getting to the point where the crypto gang is right „not your keys not your bitcoin“…except for encryption keys.
DIY is pretty hard though even for the reasonably skilled. Even if you go full nextcloud or whatever - that’s not exactly risk free either
We need to make it easier to work with client-side encryption. Keys on the devices, ciphertext in cloud storage.
I was using CloudMounter to do this, but the software was unfortunately a bit rough around the edges and didn't feel as reliable and seamless as the other options.
These days I have some hacked together tar + PGP scripts for encrypted backups, but still rely on iCloud + ADP for the rest.
just noticed your CSS has an issue on wide screens that cuts off some of the words at the end of a line, here's the culprit:
``` @media screen and (min-width: 1200px) { .site-content .entry-content .wide-content, .alignwide, .alignfull { margin-right: -34.0740%; } } ```
that margin-right is causing some of the content to move too far to the right and gets hidden in `.entry-content`
> On this you should be on their side
If Apple was transparent, I would be. But they are user-hostile and trust the federal government more than their customers. Apple is on-record[0] admitting that the US government requires them to their cover-up cooperation with surveillance. After decades of users demanding proper accountability from Apple, this is exactly what they warned would happen.
You have no right to demand that I take their side - Apple's disregard for privacy nauseates me. Everyone who sincerely trusted Apple to protect them against the fed is a lost cause. Go ask Apple to save you.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
You can de-Google, de-Apple, de-Microsoft, de-bank, de-whatever, go live off-grid in a thatched hut in Sherwood Forest. But the government will spy on you all the same.
Why would the UK government continue to allow e2e iMessage? Is it because they have an existing wiretap law?
> Capital is always subordinate to the state
the international monetary fund has every state in debt. some third-world countries become subordinate to it, when they're not able to pay the interest payments.
IMHO Apple is actually being honest here. They cannot legally operate in the UK without providing a back door, so they are dropping the claim of ADP in the UK. This is letting the user know what's up, and might also help inspire a backlash against these laws. Apple needs to make it clear that they are being forced by UK law to degrade service.
Corporations can't really resist governments unless they're not operating in a given government's jurisdiction and therefore have nothing to lose. They can take things to court, but in lieu of a verdict or an injunction they have to comply with the law or they can be fined, have assets frozen, be de-banked or banned from processing payments, etc.
I'm sure there's services out there that will secretly comply and still claim to be secure.
There's also a lot of companies that will simply abandon security features like ADP or never develop them. Apple is going to the trouble of disabling it only for UK people not everyone, instead of just deprecating it. The latter would be less expensive and expose them to less legal risk.
If you really want security in the UK now you have to roll your own and do the encryption yourself. Honestly that's always the best security, since you can never be 100% sure a closed cloud or software vendor isn't messing with you.
> Corporations can't really resist governments unless they're not operating in a given government's jurisdiction and therefore have nothing to lose. They can take things to court, but in lieu of a verdict or an injunction they have to comply with the law or they can be fined, have assets frozen, be de-banked or banned from processing payments, etc.
It is also maybe a good thing? Corporations should not be stewards of our rights, we do not want to be governed by tech-barons.
The problem here lies clearly in UK's laws and government and they cannot be fixed by Apple. The West in general is in this crumbling state, where we take corrupt bastards chewing off our rights for a law of nature, instead of getting furious. France is the only western country where people dare to really protest.
I agree. The way I put it is that for profit corporations are not political activist organizations and you should not expect them to be any more than you’d expect the school board to put out a fire. It’s the wrong kind and shape of social organization for that.
That’s not to say they’re bad. They do an important thing. But they have a limited sphere. You wouldn’t expect the police to make a laptop or a church to direct air traffic either.
> We are all liabilities to our own opsec now.
Always have been.
It's unfortunate that gross government overreach and corporate cooperation with it is what it takes for people to even recognize the concept of data privacy and data ownership is a thing, much less that they should do something about it and that their data is and never was "safe" in the cloud, no matter which corporate overlords walled garden you called home. Apple has never been an exception to this rule.
Maybe people in UK should de-stupidify their politicians.
the people are a lot stupider than the politicians. sorry but it needs to be said.
as for the MPs, theyre ok. not as stupid as most think. they are very self-interested and not in the business of 'rocking the boat'. strongly prefer managed decline than any risk taking that could result in things going sideways.
its easy to critique but truthfully the UK is structurally in a dead end (well ok, maybe not... but it does feel that way). but things could be a lot worse, and many don't appreciate that reality. having clean tap water and paved roads is pretty damn good for a country held up by fintech and scraps of last century's industry.
people calling for reforms have no idea what they're in for. Thankfully Reform was deployed together with Nigel Farage, God bless him, rolled in to do narrative control and provide a safe and controlled sponge for dissent. That guy is a 'fixer' for UK political radicalism - every time the crowd starts to have funny ideas, he magically appears and slowly but surely everyone goes back to their £32k/year jobs. I think he's 'retired' from politics thrice now.
truthfully, nobody does politics better than the Brits. but then again, they invented this game to begin with!
Just to clarify, she's advocating people stop using Apple, quite literally the only big tech company with a slightly better focus on privacy compared to all the others and with a reputation for saying no to the latest authoritarian power grab by the UK government?
No, she's saying that due to UK legislation that Apple will no longer be allowed to offer e2ee and it's time to start moving your data off of their cloud services before you're forced to turn off ADP.
It's not an article about advocacy so much as the pragmatics an upcoming data migration.
Yes, she's advocating people stop using them for a few services if they require e2ee for those services. Why? Because apple will be removing e2ee for those services. She is also clearly advocating not to use another big tech company for those services. Source: TFA
I have a new device for you guys it’s cheap it’s better than your iphone and there’s no wait period once I release it. It’ll be ready in 2 months no pre order needed.
> please make sure you de-Apple, de-Google, and de-American Stack yourself when you have time, clarity, and focus to do it. Start today.
That's the message. It's high time. We can what-about-argume about what's E2EE and what Apple "pinky promises" isn't used or sold but the reality is that anything seated in the US may as well be a publicly open http for the right buyer (be it the US government, Saudi Arabia, Israel or whatever...)
Especially if you're in charge of customer data, you can't "just" setup something on a EU server if the corp is based in the US, those days are over now. You need to do the legwork.
De-appling is easy. I just don't have anything from them. Apart from the work laptop, but that is a problem for my employer, not me.
De-googling however is extremely hard. I have been slowly chipping away at it, but there are things I just have no decent option to (such as Waze and Android Auto).
Android itself is another problem. I have high hopes for a Graphene device.
De-Googling is also extremely easy, I haven't had a Google account in 10 years, I use uBlock to block the ads, DuckDuckGo for search and a Youtube app that downloads from it instead of using the website.
Perhaps the only thing I use directly is Recaptcha.
The bigger problem is doing both.
It's easy to use a different calendar, search engine, etc, but it's far from easy to use an Android device without Google Services. Can be done, but banking apps, contactless payments, etc, become painful or impossible.
Seeing as the UK is part of the 5 eyes alliance I wonder how long until this is attempted in the other countries
'Appling' - using Apple products. In this case iCloud SaaS products I believe.
"Apple-ing"
turning a name into a verb is common these days
Wouldn’t it be easier to just move away from the UK? (I jest, but actually…)
nobody is going to stop you leaving the UK.
its entering another country that suddenly becomes a real problem, and ofcourse, if you're in the UK, the only country worth moving to at that point is the US with (as I understand) quite stringent immigration restrictions.
in reality, if the US were to open their doors to the UK, holy moly - this entire country would turn into Ukraine overnight, with nobody but pensioners left. which actually isn't in either governments interest: obviously not the UK, but infact, the UK presents a source of cheap labour for the US: read any hackernews thread concerning tech wages in the UK, the comments are hysterical/diabolical ("you make HOW much!?" - "A fast food worker makes more..." - etc.)
so, the current state of affairs is probably a good business arrangement for both parties involved, and aren't gonna change any time soon.
> ofcourse, if you're in the UK, the only country worth moving to at that point is the US
I don't even know where to begin with this remarkably dreadful take.
Not as many easy paths anymore for a British worker, tech or otherwise, thanks to The Foolishness.
And the most popular choice -- the USA -- is off the table for the majority of Brits, I think, who cannot comprehend The Other Foolishness. (Mind you, the ones it encourages... I hope they follow their hearts)
That is straightforward to the point that a British citizen can just go there and work, even go there and freelance.
(I have given it some consideration myself.)
Generally speaking, though, it's not a route Brits take in huge numbers, for legacy reasons. Though plenty investigated their potential for citizenship.
As bad as things feel here in the UK (partner is Hungarian, came and settled way pre-brexit, worked continuously and is many ways more British than me even though I was born in England) I'm not at the "Will random unaccountable group working for the prime minister snatch her of the street" levels yet (though I view reform with absolute fucking horror for many reasons).
I hope you and yours are OK though.
From the article, I'm suprised at this unusual twist:
> What about that second TCN?
> On the 1st of October, the Home Office issued a second TCN against Apple for the same as before, but only for _British citizens’_ data. World-leading!
> Those who follow my work know that this phrase made me spew a double barrel of Glaswegian swearing. British citizens’ data, as opposed to British users’ data? The dividing line here is not e.g. being located in the UK or having registered an account here, but what it says on your passport? How is Apple going to know that, much less roll it out? (/s)
> Did Apple just publicly state that they’re going to be removing a security layer and adding a nationality check layer?
> We don’t know.
> We don’t know because as with the first TCN, that information only became available in the public domain due to someone leaking it to the media. That’s all there is to know. Everything else is confidential and NCND. There is nothing else to say because nothing else is known. If someone who did know something was sitting across from me right now, and they told me, they would be committing a crime.
Does that mean my non-UK citizen friends who are resident in the UK now have better privacy rights than UK citizens in the UK? Does it mean it's better to remain only a resident, than to attempt to obtain citizenship in the long run?
> Also, why is Apple disabling ADP, and why are they right? Is it because of the UK wanting to snoop on all communications?
Yes.
UK wants Apple to give them a backdoor to E2EE iCloud data, including ADP. The UK gov having such a backdoor to iCloud would also affect non-UK citizens, basically UK wants to snoop on everyone's communication, whether they are under UK jurisdiction or not.
Apple took the route of not offering ADP to the UK instead of complying with the backdoor request, which IMO, is the right move, they shouldn't compromise their service for everyone on the globe because the UK can't break out of it's nanny state fantasy.
But, as always, unless you own and control both ends, you can't really trust that a service does what it says it does.
> Who is "that one" Heather Burns?
Like most personal websites, this one prominently features an "about" page, which will likely answer this question to your satisfaction.
Technical Capability Notice
[ https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/investigatory-pow... ]
Hilarious downvotes, just telling what Google told me. Nice for anyone in any region of the world to qualify their acronyms when first used. But spit on who you need to -- says more about you.
If you google it with the words next to it, 'Home Office TCN' (no quotes necessary), the proper definition comes right up.
It's written for a UK technical audience, who is likely familiar with these terms. An American article doesn't bother to define "FBI" or "USDA," and an article about breaking Python news doesn't expand "PEP" or "RFC."
Try any of those example acronyms (which are far more common in search indices IMO "in my opinion" :) and they will be immediately disambiguated by Google's top results. Type "TCN" and "Technical Capability Notice" doesn't show up after 4 pages. I needed to use an LLM and provide a paragraph of context for it to learn about it.
this is not practical or desirable in my view: de-google, de-apple, de-meta, de-aws etc etc etc
What next, become stone masons? nah, that's too corporate, pick berries instead ;)
Come on, what happened to moderation, discipline and planning? How about use what you need, hedge your risks (mix providers, products), be more proactive than reactive to demands for consumption?
> Hi, I'm Heather Burns — yes, that one.
Ok, I was going to ask, but taking "yes, that one" seriously I suppose confirms the author is the actress Heather Burns best known for playing the best friend role in a string of successful romantic comedies.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0122688/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Burns
Kind of weird to be reading some blog post about tech privacy from such a well known actress.
Am I missing something?