alt Hacker NewsIt's not an issue of permission, it's an issue of trying to make a computer that's safe for grandma to use. Criminals can and will convince grandma to navigate a byzantine labyrinth of prompts and technical measures in order to drain her bank account. That's the threat model we're dealing with here.
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>make a computer that's safe for grandma to use
People also forget that it makes it safe for people who aren't grandmas. The reason why you think it's just grandmas is because, for you to get a virus or your computer hacked now, it requires so many user gaffes for something like that to happen. In addition, it almost always involves typing in or telling someone your password when you shouldn’t. In the early 2000s, I still remember there was some ad affiliate for the cyanide and happiness webcomic website that, if you let it's ad load, instantly infected your computer with adware just from visiting the site. That’s unheard of now because of increasingly protective/restrictive policies set by technology companies. It’s one of those situations where if a system is working correctly, you won’t even know it’s working at all.
Is that really true though? It kinda just feels like a way to force people to have to pay $100 per year, own Apple hardware, etc.
I think a time-lock feature to enable “I know what I’m doing mode” for a year, after a 48h delay would be ok.
Or something like that
Any inmutable distro with Flatpak will solve this forever. No need to restrict anything.
We should have never tried to let grandma on computers. Wait until the genAI revolution is complete (2027) and she can entirely use her voice and an AI agent in natural language to do things. This but unironically. Gate keeping is very good and keeps enshittification at bay. We see what happens when Apple tried to let in too many normies and wouldn't let them get darwin awards.
Answer to Skeltoac: Isaiah 57:1
At a certain point you have to let adults be adults and make adult mistakes.