May 21st, 2014
Quinn Norton, writing about why software cannot be secure:
Your average piece-of-shit Windows desktop is so complex that no one person on Earth really knows what all of it is doing, or how.
Now imagine billions of little unknowable boxes within boxes constantly trying to talk and coordinate tasks at around the same time, sharing bits of data and passing commands around from the smallest little program to something huge, like a browser — that’s the internet. All of that has to happen nearly simultaneously and smoothly, or you throw a hissy fit because the shopping cart forgot about your movie tickets.
We often point out that the phone you mostly play casual games on and keep dropping in the toilet at bars is more powerful than all the computing we used to go to space for decades
NASA had a huge staff of geniuses to understand and care for their software. Your phone has you.
Plus a system of automatic updates you keep putting off because you’re in the middle of Candy Crush Saga every time it asks.
Because of all this, security is terrible.
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Good lord.
SkinsFanPG May 22, 2014 at 10:39 am
I’ve been telling you this for years. Technology is great, until you realize that it’s all magic and NOBODY knows how it all works. NOBODY.