I like the writing in this article. The author did warn us, but the punchline takes a while to get to:

> I’d like to be clear that there are legitimate uses of remote attestation. By using a website that requires attested passkeys you can be sure you stay safe from accidentally installing a scammer’s fake passkey application that steals your data – the website will reject such a passkey. You might want an attested Passkey even if the website doesn’t require it, since you can use attestation to verify that your software has not been tampered with by a hacker while you weren’t looking.

> As for reasons to not want attestation: you might want to be able to use software that Twitter (formally X) doesn’t specifically approve of, such as Linux. Or a phone with a refurbished operating system.

So the bad timeline is the one in which the industry gradually transitions to "you can't log on unless everything about your system is exactly as we want." Figures.

> such as Linux

Before anybody thinks "surely they can't ban all linux users", they don't need to. The systemd folks are also working on a startup that is building verifiable computing into Linux via systemd. So, we have no choice on the matter anyway. It could become of choice of approved distro vs non approved distro.

> So the bad timeline is the one in which the industry gradually transitions to

We have been on that timeline for every other tech transgression. There are no signs that this will be a different timeline.