From: fungus@amongus.com.invalid   
      
   From the «burn it down, start over» department:   
   Title: Software Bloat and Security: have we all Gone Mad?   
   Author: admin@soylentnews.org   
   Date: Fri, 09 May 2025 21:19:00 +0000   
   Link: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=25/05/08/1259227&from=rss   
      
   quietus[1] writes:   
      
   "We have now sunk to a depth in which restatement of the obvious is the first   
   duty of intelligent men." (George Orwell).   
      
   Few people remember this, but back in 2003 there was a bit of an uproar in the   
   IT community when Intel dared introduce a unique, retrievable, ID, the PSN   
   number, in its new Pentium III CPU.   
      
   It is kinda hard to believe, but that little privacy backlash was strong enough   
   to force Intel to withdraw the feature, starting with Tualatin-based Pentium   
   IIIs. That withdrawal lasted until 2015, when it was (silently) introduced   
   again, as the Protected Processor Identification Number (PPIN), with Intel's   
   Ivy Bridge architecture.   
      
   So, only a good ten years ago we believed in privacy. Now we still do, perhaps,   
   but somehow the industry moved the needle to obligatory consent -- without   
   opt-out possibility[2] -- with any and all privacy violations that can be   
   dreamt up in Big (and Not So Big) Tech boardrooms.   
      
   Something similar is happening with software, argues Bert Hubert in a piece on   
   IEEE Spectrum. Where once on-premise software and hardware was the rule, trying   
   to get a request for on-prem hardware signed off nowadays is a bit like asking   
   for a coal-fired electricity generator. Things simply *have* to be in the   
   Magically Secure Cloud, and software needs to be developed agile, with   
   frameworks.   
      
   The way we build and ship software these days is mostly ridiculous, he claims:   
   apps using millions of lines of code to open a garage door, and simple programs   
   importing 1,600 external code libraries[3]. Software security is dire, which is   
   a function both of the quality of the code and the sheer amount of it.   
      
   Let me briefly go over the terrible state of software security, and then   
   spend some time on why it is so bad. I also mention some regulatory and   
   legislative things going on that we might use to make software quality a   
   priority again. Finally, I talk about an actual useful piece of software I   
   wrote as a proof of concept that one can still make minimal and simple yet   
   modern software.[4]   
      
   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
      
   Original Submission[5]   
      
   Read more of this story[6] at SoylentNews.   
      
   Links:   
   [1]: https://soylentnews.org/~quietus/ (link)   
   [2]: https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/ (link)   
   [3]: https://github.com/SashenJayathilaka/Photo-Sharing-Application (link)   
   [4]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/lean-software-development (link)   
   [5]: https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsubsubid=65674 (link)   
   [6]: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=25/05/08/1259227&from=rss (link)   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)