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If your idea is to change the culture of tinkerers, then I must withdraw what I said about you, and conclude you're not interested in reasonable regulations at all, but rather are getting off on imposing your views on others / are seething that so many people have managed to escape you for so long.
Fair enough. If there is literally no way to change the culture to something that doesn't have trivially-hackable default passwords on billions of devices with anything other than unreasonable regulations, if this is honestly the dichotomy that you think exists in the world, then I guess I have to throw my lot in with the unreasonable regulations folks. But if you can come up with any plausible way to change the culture enough so that we don't have a spigot of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords on them, and your method is anything other than 'unreasonable regulation', I will jump to your side immediately. Nybbler has already committed to the claim that this is a complete impossibility, that the only options are "a culture that churns out trivially-hackable devices with default passwords" and "unreasonable regulations". Do you embrace this position, that those are the only two options?
The approach I outlined earlier, which you called reasonable, was to regulate mass produced end-user consumer goods, and let people who build stuff on their own, or otherwise are reasonably expected to know what they're getting into, have a large degree of freedom. There wasn't a word there about changing anyone's culture, in fact the whole approach is designed to let everyone keep their culture the way they like it.
I don't think it does, but I think the things you are saying here strongly imply that trivially hackable default passwords are just an excuse for you to destroy a culture you hate.
Nybbler would declare that this is, in fact, changing the culture of people who mass produce end-use consumer goods. That this is the only way, that we have to change their culture. If that is required, I am willing to do it. If you think that we can regulate them so that they don't churn out billions of trivially-hackable devices, without changing their culture, I'm fine with that. But they keep telling me that we can't do that! That we have to change their culture! That that's the only option!
Not at all. I love the 'tinkerer' culture. I love the innovation culture. I love the building new stuff culture. I love coding and coming up with interesting new shit, though my day job is more on the new math side and I'm having less time for coding lately. The culture that I dislike is the "we can keep pumping out trivially-hackable shit because it might be slightly boring to take the basic steps everyone knows and nobody's going to do anything about it" culture.
He's mistrustful of people who request minor reasonable regulations, for fear that they will stay neither. Given the history of law, culture, and social movements in his country, I think that's a largely justified fear. There's ways of having a productive conversation with people who have such fears, but you seem determined to strongly signal you are exactly the kind of person they shouldn't trust. For example:
Ok, in that case I'm out. If it's your way or the highway, and forcing change on a culture doesn't even phase you, I don't know how you can pretend to only want some reasonable regulations.
Tell me again why you were upset about being mischaracterized by Nybbler.
It is not "my way or the highway". Again, if you can come up with any other way to make it so that we don't have billions of trivially-hackable shit with default passwords, sign me up. But I keep getting told this is my only option! It's not even "my way"! It's the only option! That this is a fact about the universe! Nothing to do with me at all!
EDIT: Give me "your way"! Make it an option! If you can do so in a way that won't result in Nybber telling us that "your way" would break their culture, great! But he keeps telling me that you can't.
You are still effectively saying "get rid of things that annoy me, or I'll drive a steamroller over your culture", even if you don't particularly care how those things or gotten rid of, in my opinion that's still accurately described as "my way or the highway"?
You're getting tit for tat, and are acting upset about it, I really don't get it.
I did, and he didn't seem to say anything in response to me, so mission accomplished?
I would be perfectly happy not driving a steamroller over anyone's culture. But billions of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords is truly unacceptable. If you want to characterize any version of "we need to fix this problem (and by the way, we can do so trivially)" as being "my way or the highway", I think this is just a fully-general argument against fixing any problems ever, even the most trivial ones. Literally any time someone points out any problem that could be fixed and says, "Hey, how about we fix this," it can be characterized as "my way or the highway". Even if they're open to literally any option that you can put on the table to solve the problem, they're not prescriptive at all, and are perfectly happy considering the relative merits/demerits of each approach, and even open to the possibility that all options genuinely have too many demerits to implement. Literally any form of "let's fix this problem" is "my way or the highway" because you want to "get rid of the problem (that annoys me... and also causes billions of dollars in damage every year and is a national security threat, but I guess mostly because it annoys me)".
So look, if you can come up with any other ideas. Get rid of them, don't get rid of them. Fix the massive problems some other way, still having billions of devices with default passwords, fine. I don't care. Come up with ideas. Bring them to the table. We can debate the merits/demerits. We honestly could even conclude that there are too many demerits of all the options and choose to not do anything. But right now, what I'm being told is that the One Great Demerit that is fatal to all possible options (not "my way"; all options) is that whatever is done, it will "destroy a culture". Very little is given to support what the meat of this demerit is, other than what appears to be vague threats of slowing innovation. If that's all, then I will throw in with destroying the culture. I will throw in with doing it in the most minimal way possible, with the most reasonable regulations you can come up with, or whatever alternative solution you propose, and we will just have to live with destroying the culture.
Moreover, your refusal on grounds of it being "my way or the highway" is fully symmetric, in addition to being fully general. If, as is claimed, the only two options are "billions of trivially-hackable devices with default passwords" and "destroy a culture", then the people who are demanding that we choose the former are also demanding "my way or the highway". It's just that their way is the other way. Why aren't you rejecting their position on the grounds of it being "my way or the highway"?
I don't know what you mean by this.
Can you link me? I'd really appreciate seeing your way. If you truly believe his silence means that we can do it, fix the problem, and not destroy the culture, it may actually be mission accomplished.
Uuh... I feel like I'm being uno-reversoed here. I specifically said I would be in favor of fixing the problem, particularly when it can be done trivially, and you explicitly said that my approach is reasonable. So you cannot I'm characterizing any version of "we need to fix this problem" as "my way or the highway". This cannot be down to a misunderstanding at this point, we've been through this several times. What I am characterizing as "my way or the highway" is your explicit admission that if the trivial solution does not work, you won't think twice about destroying the tinkerers' culture. If you want to make the claim that the utter destruction of it is worth it to get rid of the scourge of default passwords, but you can't claim that you just want a trivial fix, and you'll leave everyone alone.
Because they're not trying to sell themselves as "hey, just implement this trivial fix, and we'll leave you alone". All terminal values are "my way or the highway", but everybody has terminal values of some sort. My complaint with you is that you're acting injured that anyone would portray your values as terminal, when you said you'd destroy innovation and tinkering if other solutions won't work. You sneer at people for suggesting it might go that far, and then happily admit you'd have absolutely no issue of taking it to that point, if that's what it takes.
You write in a vaguely antagonistic shit-posty style, that implicitly asks to be taken with a grain of salt, but when people respond in kind you demand that their stylized arguments be taken deadly serious.
Here, you even responded to it.
My problem here is that if it doesn't work, you explicitly said you won't stop at it.
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