brandonr49

More likely the services transformed into smartphone only when the user wasn't looking. Switching costs are not zero.

It's easier to fight for additional rights when you start at a reasonably high baseline.

I wonder if you can sell the printer shell without the main PCB and just open source the main board design. Manufacture and sale of that board as a distinct entity seems tough to stop. Especially because the board can have non-3D printer use cases which it advertises as the main ones.

Just a heads up: reclassifying marijuana is the majority position and decidedly moderate in 2024.

And just like that I never purchased HDMI based products again.

My bank and local government aren't making game consoles one of my primary methods of accessing their services. Smartphones are heavily integrated into the daily lives of most people now. They need to be regulated that way and the makers of these devices need to have less control over their users. We wouldn't allow a car maker to charge a fee to parking garages because the driver is "their customer". I need a car, I need a phone; being a hub of value shouldn't allow for such a high degree of rent seeking.

If airlines adopt this more generally maybe Apple will create a feature to turn off air tags for a length of time. Ie: don't transmit for the next 6 hours but then start again. That would make this ban look quite ridiculous.

A significant value of implementing security as "normal" or by default is that you don't look suspicious for having it.

I will never get over the fact that the Nintendo Switch operated on random character strings to find friends rather than usernames or something more straightforward for normal users. But the fact that they managed it does mean it's not so large a barrier.

I suspect there are a great many existing laws that congress would not pass today.

I think these questions were meant to have an obvious and answer but they don't. We have laws and courts to figure this out. Maybe you should be able to install MacOS on your Xbox and maybe Audi should be forced to change their design. VW certainly was forced to make changes after Dieselgate. Consumers have some rights that are largely not argued about these days, like honesty in the product listing. The people on the side of more rights for the consumer are always confused why so many people want fewer rights for, not only themselves, but their fellow citizens as well. It feels unreasonable: we're standing up for you to have these rights as well and you're complaining that you don't want them so no one should have them.

In a well functioning market it would be a different story but we really need to stop pretending that mobile OSes are a healthy market with lots of competition. There are 2 players worth mentioning and that kind of market needs additional safeguards

The problem of inequality in general needs to be framed as one of power asymmetry. There are a handful of people that have managed to garner, through their wealth, similar power to states with millions of people. The solutions to this involve either making money less able to purchase power, or taking some of this money away. I suspect the latter is more likely to happen but I'll happily support either method.

Strong vote for this new animal being Badger. Bull vs Bear vs Badger

If you think of the government as a union for the country's workers this explains why the minimum wage exists. It avoids prevents the wage race to the bottom that creates sweatshops. It also explains why some people see the minimum wage as the best method of "negotiating" with employers.

Is there a reason no group has popped up to jailbreak the few major TV "OSes"? Given how prevalant this issue is it seems like a reasonable use of time akin to jailbreaking/rooting cell phones.

There's a bit of circular logic here because I can't evaluate who to trust if I can't effectively monitor what the developer is doing on my machine.

I too am willing to sacrifice others when it benefits me.

This argument of "trust no one, not even the sysadmin you employ" is actually "trust no one except me and this black box I'd like to sell you". Even ignoring the externalities of this kind of push I don't really see the value.

I have absolutely no idea why this is downvoted. My sympathies.

Am I wrong in thinking that youtube-dl is clearly just a VCR in code form. Society decided VCRs were legal so this should be fine.

I think it's an understandable position as an individual. Many people are frustrated that all these applications are somewhat forced on them by social and professional engagements in the first place. Even if they haven't been forced on you it has become tedious to have no option to say "STOP NAGGING ME I WILL NEVER PARTICIPATE".

Add to this that even basic OS functions on mobile devices are constantly trying to get you to subscribe to various services and I think it's reached a boiling point for a vocal segment of people who just want to be able to go about their UI in peace. Unfortunately some data analyst at every big company has decided it's ok to have a popup every time the user visits to remind them to engage, and sign them up for 25 different email lists they have to unsub from individually, and have notifications pop up on their phone for no reason other than to get them to open the app, just because it results in 2% more users signing up for some service and it hasn't yet cause the other 98% to rage quit.

Disclaimer: this kind of behavior has been driving me insane for several years but there's almost no mechanism to avoid these issues on the whole. Also this isn't targeted at you in particular but just to illustrate what I think is a growing resentment amongst a set of users.

I think this is a fantastic analogy, except instead of 5'7 and 6'3 it's 5'7 and 50,000' tall. You bet society would start to have some pretty interesting laws if there were a bunch of people running around that were ten thousand times the size of the median person. It would be agreed that people of this size, while capable of incredible things, present a significant problem for the general population and they consume A LOT of resources. Certainly the population would prefer if they were only 1000 feet tall, after all, it's impossible to maintain perspective if your head is in the clouds, far from the median person.