specifically some modern form of feudalism I guess
where the new nobles (as in large companies because in US companies are people) can mostly do whatever they want and the rest of the population is struggling enough to just "get by" to find time to change anything
but given that Trump put since deniers and anti-vaccers into power it's probably a much more "dump" reason
Well, yes, pretty much. It's an observed pattern among authoritarian states that actual facts are frequently in opposition to the authority, therefore, actual facts must be eliminated.
It's a silver lining in disguise, really. Such countries tend to collapse relatively quickly because it turns out facts are important for running a country - look at the USSR's fake food supply. Relatively quickly could still be a decade, though.
China has been the exception that authoritarian states collapse quickly. It's what the western powers were banking on would happen after they had success with USSR. It didn't pan out the way they thought. Not even close.
China is much more dispersed (because of it's size and some localisation/liberalisation) and they seem to understand at some level that reality exists and can't just be wished away.
It's an open question if they'll retain that with Xi now President for life.
And what's stopping the American people from voting smart people with engineering degrees to power instead of lying loud mouth conmen?
Maybe because modern American mainstream culture has people worshiping the "clever" conman who got rich quick by gaming the system and scamming others, as opposed to hard working nerd who put in the long time and effort for an honest enrichment.
Democratic societies get the leaders they deserve as they are a mirror of the people themselves.
> Democratic societies get the leaders they deserve as they are a mirror of the people themselves.
Don't confuse things being soiled by capitalism as democracy somehow is bad part. There are plenty of examples of democracies that haven't succumbed to capitalism as badly as the US has.
"It took enforcement of carry-in/carry-out policies with tickets to make some progress on that."
Not only do we need heavy fines to deter these sloppy morons but we also need to develop a culture of shame. Shaming people for such cretinous behavior ought to be the norm.
These are the same people who drop things in a supermarket and don't bother to pick them up or change their mind and leave goods at any place instead of putting them back where they belong.
> Not only do we need heavy fines to deter these sloppy morons but we also need to develop a culture of shame. Shaming people for such cretinous behavior ought to be the norm.
I think one of the primary issues comes from the fact that the majority of those who litter are just visiting the beach for a day trip or short vacation.
Even being known as the guy who kicks puppies wouldn't really matter to tourists since they won't come back or only visit once a year.
"The bans should only target things that have plastic-free alternatives, or at least that have less plastic intensive alternatives."
There's also what I call junk plastic products. I'll illustrate with examples. Plastic products that aren't durable and have very short lifespans:
- Plastic storage bins and such that use so little plastic that they break when stacked thus become plastic waste long before they ought to.
- I bought three plastic buckets at the supermarket and the handles fell off two before I got them home. I nevertheless used them only to find that they soon cracked and leaked with normal domestic usage.
(BTW, there's an old galvanized bucket in our family that's well over 80 years old (it belonged to my grandmother), and it's still serviceable (the galvanizing is still intact and it's not rusty).)
- The use of polyethylene for containers, etc. Over time polyethylene leaks its plasticizers to produce a greasy coating on the surface. The polyethylene then hardens and cracks—thus more junk plastic waste. Polyethylene should not be used for such purposes.
Moreover, phthalate plasticizers have been found to have bad effects on human health. Phthalate plasticizers ought to be banned for use in domestic products.
I could go on, there are hundreds more examples.
The plastic waste problem could be fixed quick smart if high taxes were applied on plastic products that were deemed insufficiently durable.
No doubt, manufacturers, penny-pinching cheapskates and greedy profit mongers would cry foul over what's deemed as 'durable'. That's solvable with standards set down by an authoritative standards body.
Polyethylene only rarely contains plasticizers, and it doesn't harden or crack unless continuously exposed to sunlight—neither LDPE, LLDPE, HDPE, nor UHMWPE. It seems like you have your plastics mixed up. Possibly you're thinking of polyvinyl chloride, which does sometimes behave in the way you describe polyethylene describing, but not in all cases.
The plastic buckets I use in my house are food-grade polypropylene 20-liter buckets with hermetically sealing lids. Polypropylene, like polyethylene, does not need plasticizers to remain resilient to impacts; its biggest problem is creep. The handles do sometimes fall off, but they're easy to put back on.
"Polyethylene only rarely contains plasticizers, and it doesn't harden or crack unless continuously exposed to sunlight"
I beg to differ, and I'm familiar with polyethylene (I spent too many years studying o-chem not to know something about it).
I have hundreds of polyethylene storage containers ranging in size from 20 to 80 litres and their ages range from around 20 years old to new. They are stored in rooms with temperatures ranging from 15 to 25°C and an average RH of 55-65%.
They are mostly stored in the dark (lights off) and they mostly contain old paper files although some contain books.
For ages I couldn't figure out where the greasy, almost sticky film was coming from given the rooms are dry and the air is clean. (Mind you at first I didn't give it much thought.)
After washing some to remove the film with just dishwashing liquid they were repacked and several years later the film was back and that's when the brittleness was noticed. Container lids were cracking on the bottom containers in stacks of only four to six high (max height 1.5m).
Note, the washing had no noticeable effect, as containers of a similar vintage that were not washed were also brittle.
When I checked I could easily crack the plastic of older containers with little bending. That wasn't possible with the newer units—they would deform out of shape but not crack—not without a lot of effort.
That's a précis of a much longer story. Incidentally, there were several brands involved and all experienced similar problems with the greasy film.
Note I'm not mixing products either, new units of brand A were compared with old brand A.
I'd suggest my sample size is not insignificant, since the late 1990s I've had around a 1000 of these polyethylene containers and the evidence points to the fact that for this type of product polyethylene of that type is not fit for purpose.
BTW, I ought to let you know I'm familiar with polyethylene from my work in RF engineering. And HDPE and that standard polyethylene does not behave that way. Moreover, some of the polyethylene I've used in recent years was manufactured in WWII and is still a viable insulator although (new old stock) coaxial cables with PE dialectic from that era are no longer as pliable as they once were (plastic jacket insulation taken into account).
Is it possible that the companies that sold you these "polyethylene" storage containers actually made them out of PVC and didn't tell you? Are these those big plastic tubs? I've also noticed those getting brittle over time, although I haven't experienced the unpleasant syneresis you describe. So far my polypropylene 20-liter buckets aren't doing anything similar, but I've only had them for a few years.
First, I'm not in the US (I assume you are), so things may be different here. Until recently all were manufactured locally but the latest batch comes from China,
All containers are semitransparent polyethylene, I can mostly see the contents when looking from the side. The Chinese ones are slightly more transparent than the local product. They're not old enough to develop the film (6—12 months), so it remains to be seen what happens to them over time.
They're definitely not PVC—I've chucked enough of the broken ones on the fire over the years and they don't burn with the acrid fumes of PVC (there's no mistaking the choking smell of burning PVC).
Incidentally, on occasions when broken containers have left me short I've repaired them by running a soldering iron along the cracks to melt them together. As with Pb/Sn soldering I'll use a bit of spare material and apply it to the cracks. It melts just like polyethylene. You cannot do that with PVC (at least not practically), by the time it gets hot enough it bubbles and turns black and stinks to high heaven.
A final point, PVC is now banned here for household use—has been for several decades because of its choking fumes/toxic byproducts of combustion in house fires. Electrician friends who are old enough to remember the PVC insulation days still whinge at its loss, the new insulation isn't as robust or as flexible (stripping the insulation off wire isn't as easy as it was with PVC).
In the kitchen environment, there are no plastics that can outperform glass in terms of leaching and wear.
Even polycarbonate can't be run through a dishwasher or microwave like glass can. The only use I have for plastic in the kitchen is for blender jars. The shatter resistance is hard to argue with and PC doesn't emit particles when used with things like hard grains and ice.
It's nice to be able to transport dinner leftovers to work (or carry food on a hike) in something lightweight. If need be, they can then be decanted into a ceramic bowl for the microwave.
Glass (that won't easily shatter in a backpack) is just a bit heavy for food transport.
Well we did this for the bags (put a high price on them) and banned some others (e.g. straws). My fear is that taxing plastic items more (let's say of VAT is 20%, plastics could get 35%). Then our dear politicians on Year4 will pass a law to "redirect the extra collection for blah blah blah" and it will end up _not_ to the effort of mitigating the plastic pollution, and we will be stuck with one more tax _and_ the pollution!!
I'm fed up hearing about lead contamination, so let me try and put this into perspective.
Zinc galvanizing generally only has lead in it as a impurity and it's in pretty small amounts (zinc and lead are often mined together so completely separating the two is expensive (one has to be mindful of the costs)). That said, there are some few exceptions where tiny amounts of lead are used as a wetting agent.
This obsession with lead contamination really has gone too far when we start worrying about the tiny amount of lead in
galvanizing. It's on a par with the obsession with the harmless amount of thiomersal in vaccines (I know, I'll never convince the unconvinced).
Look at it this way, zinc is harder than lead thus it's harder to rub off than lead—so it traps any lead that might be there. Given that the galvanizing on this 80+ year old bucket is still intact, how much lead has it shead in the past 80+ years? Answer: stuff all!
Consider this: large parts of the world have buildings still covered in lead paint and that lead will be still hanging around for hundreds of years to come. And there's one hell of a lot of it. Some years ago I removed the flaking paint from my house before repainting it and I could hardly lift the buckets they were so heavy from the lead. Anyone in an old house that's not had every ounce of lead paint removed would get orders of magnitude more lead in their bodies from the paint than from my galvanized bucket. Moreover, just removing the paint will spread lead about no matter how careful one is. Is that residual lead relevant? Well, it depends on many factors, the fact is you can't remove every trace of it no matter how hard you try. Also remember lead paint sheds lead as an aerosol—lead dust, galvanizing does not.
Lead is everywhere in the environment, in soil, in eves and attics—everywhere thanks to that ratbag Thomas Midgley Jr. and his tetraethyllead in gasoline. Lead from gasoline is still everywhere and isn't going away anytime soon.
Again, I'd suggest the average person would absorb orders of magnitude more lead from that source than they would from our old galvanized bucket.
I'm not finished yet, what about all that lead in building damp courses, in roofs, in church leadlight windows, etc., and in some places it's still used for water pipes. There's even lead in Flint's water supply.
Moreover, lead is still being used in buildings, especially in roofs where old lead is being replaced with new. Rain oxidizes the lead and the runoff continues to contaminate the soils and waterways.
Remember the fire in Notre Dame in Paris where hundreds of tons of lead melted and collapsed onto the cathedral floor. Well, that lead wasn't replaced with some safer material but rather new lead installed in exactly the same way as it was centuries ago.
No, that's still not all. For around a hundred years until only several decades ago fruit trees, especially apple and pear trees, were sprayed with the insecticide lead arsenate (lead hydrogen arsenate, PbHAsO4) to protect against codling moth and such. And as it's an inorganic chemical the double whammy of both lead and arsenic will be in the soils of thousands of orchards indefinitely (as a kid I used to spray our own apple trees with the stuff).
Oh, and there's much more, crystal drinking glasses, car batteries, lead in solder, and so on.
Lead is an important industrial metal and it's not going away anytime soon—we just have to get used to it being around us in the environment and in industry.
That's not to say it's not dangerous especially so to children. Nevertheless, we have to put this ubiquitous contamination into perspective, we have to channel our efforts where it's most effective—and that's not worrying about the miniscule amount of lead locked up in galvanizing.
What truly pisses me off is that the lead poisoning problem has been known about for millennia, since Roman times in fact, and yet so little has been done since the industrial age to protect people—ensure proper safety protocols are in place when working with lead, etc.
The trouble has always been that lead's industrial and economic value has always outweighed its dangers—that is, its perceived dangers which have changed over time. Whilst, today, we are more conscious of its dangers than in the past that should have been the situation well over a century ago.
There was absolutely no excuse for Midgley's tetraethyllead in gasoline as the dangers of lead were well known at the time.
By the mid Nineteenth Century the problem of lead poisoning was so well known that elders were teaching their kids of the dangers. No, this isn't hearsay, here's the evidence: download the PDF version of the 1858 edition of The Boy's Book of Industrial Information by Elisha Noyce from the Open Library: openlibrary.org/books/OL24144198M/The_boy%27s_book_of_industrial_information.
At the bottom of p57 is a discussion on the uses and preparation of white lead. On p58 is a statement that I find remarkable for the time (167 years ago), it's just as applicable now as it was then:
"White lead is a very poisonous substance, and produces the disease called painters’ colic, when taken into the system in minute quantities and for a long time, so that all who have much to do with this dangerous substance, as house-painters and artists, should be extremely careful that their hands are well washed frequently, and especially before going to meals."
And that's just a warning for boys—what else did the Establishment know about lead poisoning at that time? Much more I'd bet.
What's truly outrageous is that 68 years later Midgley and cohorts had the fucking hide and audacity to add tetraethyllead to gasoline in 1926. Moreover, by then not only that information from 1858 was known but also chemistry and medicine had moved on significantly. Clearly much more knowledge was known about lead poisoning by then. It's hard to believe they got away with putting lead in gas for so long. This is one of the great 20th Century disasters, as Wiki puts it:
"Throughout the sixty year period from 1926 to 1985, an estimated 20 trillion liters of leaded gasoline at an average lead concentration of 0.4 g/L were produced and sold in the United States alone, or an equivalent of 8 million tons of inorganic lead, [three quarters of which would have been emitted in the form of lead chloride and lead bromide]. Estimating a similar amount of lead to have come from other countries' emissions, a total of more than 15 million tonnes of lead may have been released into the atmosphere."
This isn't the only crime of this type, asbestos is a similar story but I can't cover that here.
As I said, lead is everywhere and eliminating it completely from the environment is impossible. The best we can do is to concentrate on things that truly matter, teaching kids the lesson from 1858, keeping them away from known large sources of lead such as flaky paint and so on. We haven't enough time in our lives to worry about sources that are in the noise.
Here's another perspective: it's said that there's enough naturally occurring arsenic in the average cubic meter of soil to kill a person but we don't worry about it because at that concentration it's not going to harm anyone.
I'm not saying it's a good thing. But we shouldn't hide from the fact that door has been opened and I see no practical reason we won't see more of it.
The minute Apple sees a clear path to get away with it, iPhone will essentially become licensed devices.
Then other phone makers will jump through the opening, at some point it becomes the standard, and we'll laugh at the "voting with your wallet" joke again.
> software
We're already full in licensing books, as truly the most pragmatic choice. Amazon opened the door, and many other ebook stores have jumped on the bandwagon.
This can end in several ways, users and third-party repairers will reverse-engineer phones encryption notwithstanding—simply remove the 'offending' chips and replace tbem with open tech.
To say it's unlawful is moot. Apple may have jurisdiction in the US but not across the globe, there are plenty of places I can think of to send an iPhone to have it fixed the way I want (and I'd do so the moment that market is established). There's no way Apple can police what people do with their hardware once it's in their hands, it's fanciful to think otherwise.
Open hardware is on the move, eventually considerably cheaper open products will become popular just on price alone. Competition will then be fierce, Apple will have to change its policies if changes to laws don't beat them to it. Remember also the US isn't the whole world, so those changes are likely to be enacted first outside the US. If Apple wants to sell there then it'll have to comply with those laws just as it did with USB-C in Europe.
Also keep in mind Apple, Google, Microsoft etc. have become the richest and fastest growing corporations in human history—they even beat out the previous contenders the Dutch and British East India Companies of the 17th and 18th Centuries.
These corporations became so rich so quickly because of a confluence of circumstances—the new tech paradigm of the personal computer, the wow factor that took the world by storm and a compete lack of regulations worldwide. Without regulations to keep these corporations in check they simply ran amuck.
That's now over. Yes, it will be some while before they're brought to heel but they'll never get such a straight run again.
Apple is on top now but let's see where it'll be in 20 years.
"How can you hold a manufacturer liable if the user was given unsupervised time as root?"
PCs had root access by default, so why wasn't it a significant problem for them? Banking is possible on a PC without a banking app.
As Noam Chomsky has said, as in politics, manufacturers and OS vendors such as Google and Microsoft have been deliberately "manufacturing concent" — a widespread belief in the population of users that benefits them to the disadvantage of many of said users.
Manufactured consent requires media complicity to achieve acceptance of Hobson's choice Accept or Don't Use EULAs and corporate, technofeudal non-ownership and the "shame" of specialized knowledge, tinkering, and modifying things. Nerds were frowned upon until electronics and software people became billionaires in the 80's, and technical vocations are still frowned upon in socially most of America.
PS: While he maybe in effectively hospice now, at least he outlived Kissinger.
"Manufactured consent requires media complicity to achieve acceptance of Hobson's choice Accept or Don't"
Right, I've never fully understood why the media was (and still is) so complicit. There's a long history of the media, especially the tech media, mags etc. ass-licking the likes of Microsoft, Google et al. It's been horrible sight to watch over the decades. Perhaps it's because of kickbacks, fear of exclusion from events, press releases, or handouts—free software etc., or that many had/have shares in such entities—or the belief that those who run such entities are only one step removed from the gods—hero worshiping.
We users would now be in a damn side better prosition if the media had done its job professionally.
"technical vocations are still frowned upon in socially most of America."
Right again, and America is not the only place, such thought is endemic across the anglosphere.
> PCs had root access by default, so why wasn't it a significant problem for them?
They weren't networked. They were notoriously buggy. And most importantly, they weren't warrantied [1].
Root should always be an option. But once you root, it's fair for the warranty to be voided.
> OS vendors such as Google and Microsoft have been deliberately "manufacturing concent"
Nitpick, the propaganda model [2] attempts to describe traditional mass media. Two of its five pillars (ownership and sourcing) fall apart in a world with smartphones and social media.
Uh? My PCs and corporate PCs I've been responsible for are networked including the internet (they always have been). Moreover, they were warranted with no conditions about what software was run on them.
Where on earth did you get that notion from? Just because some vendor [your links] has conned the unfortunate client into an unacceptable contract doesn't mean it's commonplace or ever was.
> My PCs and corporate PCs I've been responsible for were networked including the internet
These came later, in the mid 90s. If you have a source for any PC having been "warranted with no conditions about what software was run on them," I'd love to see it. Practically every warranty for PCs voided if you e.g. overclocked the CPU. And almost all PC warranties were limited warranties, not the no-questions-asked up-to accidental-damage common today.
Deliberate abuse and misuse of a product is not covered under any normal warranty, and overclocking the CPU could fall into that category depending on the specific warranty (some CPUs could not be overclocked for that reason so it was irrelevant).
User software is another matter altogether. Users could always install whatever they wanted.
It seems you are not old enough to remember that the PC was originally designed to be modular and flexible and that applied to both the hardware and software.
The whole raison d'être from the S-100 bus of the 1970s and the IBM PC† of the '80 was to provide users with a computer system that was flexible and that users could adjust and alter to suit their needs. This meant that users were actually required to alter the configurations of their PCs. No one would have questioned such action, it was considered completely normal.
Moreover, warranties took this into account and it was a normal procedure to add RAM, disk drives and video cards etc. without voiding the warranty. What's more, one could even upgrade the CPU (and if necessary its clock speed) and the rest of the hardware would still remain in warranty—that's why CPUs until recently were 'socketed' and not soldered into place. Of course, the third-party CPU wouldn't be warranted—not on the PC's warranty anyway.
What you are referring to is a sleight-of-hand by some sleazy ratbag manufacturers to change the PC from an open system and make it proprietary. Any system administrator or corporate buyer (at least until recently) would have objected to any clauses in the warranty that would have forbidden modifying equipment as mentioned. I know, I was head of a government IT department for years and contacts that included such punitive warranties would never have been awarded—they would never have passed my desk. Not that I ever saw any mind you. (BTW, there some were warranty claims, altering the equipment was a non issue.)
What we are seeing now (and this whole discussion) is about reclaiming the open nature of the PC—and our computing equipment in general, our phones, etc.
Fortunately, the Right to Repair movement and the Right of Ownership—people like Louis Rossmann and iFixit—are beginning to make inroads into keeping these sleazy carpetbaggers in check. As we've seen Right to Repair laws are getting enacted.
† The original IBM PCs had full service manuals that included electronic circuit diagrams and even the BIOS source code! To suggest we weren't meant to alter things is sheer nonsense. (I still have my copies of these manuals.)
> warranties took this into account and it was a normal procedure to add RAM, disk drives and video cards etc. without voiding the warranty
Again, very limited warranties that only covered manufacturing defects. Not the warranties integrated products have today. In most cases, a manufacturing-defect warranty is not voided by rooting your device. (It may become more difficult to prove it’s a manufacturing defect, however. The law varies state to state.)
What fundamentally changed is warranties expanded as products became more integrated and the market expanded beyond power users. You cannot provide accidental-damage insurance for a user adjusting their BIOS.
"You cannot provide accidental-damage insurance for a user adjusting their BIOS."
Rightly so because adjusting the BIOS won't cause harm!
PS: if you are referring to damage caused by oveclocking (if perchance it's available in the BIOS), then this is a user-accessible feature. As such, it'd be covered under warranty.
If a manufacturer played hardball and tried to dishonor the warranty then they wouldn't stand a chance against most consumer legislation in most parts of the world. They'd be toast where I am, not only would they have to honor the warranty but they'd be fined in the process.
Perhaps you're in a part of the US where consumer legislation is essentially nonexistent then things might be different. (The US is known worldwide for having the worst consumer legislation in the Western world.)
"I accept this metric. It means non-rooted devices are unsafe."
Same here. It's manufacturers and software vendors such as Google and Microsoft that we need to most guard against.
Fully agree wirh your second paragraph, I've only seen viruses on non-rooted devices and I've never had a virus on any of the many rooted phones I've owned over the years.
Sure there are viruses and they can be troublesome but when you look below the surface much of the hype about locking down one's devices comes from manufacturers and software vendors, Google, MS et al, who benefit financially from not allowing users to control what runs on their phones.
It's not only phones, what Microsoft has done with TPM and Windows 11 and the deliberate obsoleting of millions of perfectly good PCs/forcing users to buy new hardware when it's unwarranted is simply outrageous.
Microsoft ought to be sued for committing environmental vandalism. …And that's just for starters.
One can be uniquely identified but the info gathered can be made pretty useless (at least for commercial purposes). The State spying on one is another matter altogether, one has to assume one is then petty transparent.
For example, my default mode is no JS. If JS must be used then cache, cookies, history, etc. are erased by default (usually they are anyway). I use multiple machines and they have multiple browsers (there's five on this phone alone), and if I think it's important I'll change browsers between sessions for a given site—that also means an IP address change (router reboots, etc.). On Android, remove all Google apps, have no Google account, use a firewall and only allow apps from F-Droid to have internet access.
Can't say I've clicked on an add in 20 years unless accidentally, and anyway I see them very rarely sans JS. If I do I never linger over them to give the impression I'm reading them.
Browsers have block lists some very extensive (e.g. Privacy Browser), so do OSes' hosts files, location is off, etc. There's other stuff too but you get the gist.
Why bother you ask. Before the internet I could look at adds in magazines, buy something without giving name, rank and serial number, and or my address, or phone number and so on and be pretty certain manufacturers and advertising agencies weren't tracking me.
In short, I had some autonomy I could call my own.
So why is it now a prerequisite to give all that personal stuff away just because I've joined the internet? That wasn't the plan when the internet was devised.
I see what I do as basic self protection.
A final point: what the internet desperately needs is a JavaScript engine that users can tailor to their individual needs. Randomize, machine details, cookie info, and so on. A well designed engine could feed copious junk info back to websites and spoof itself as a 'genuine' engine to the extent that websites wouldn't know what's genuine and what's not.
Widespread use of such a JS engine could do considerable damage to these snooping bastards. The big question is why the hacking community hasn't yet come up with one.
Looking at how it works for Wear OS. Qualcomm still only hosts the repos for the BSP and not the whole OS. It's expected to still get those from Google, from the partner portal.
You wouldn't need to touch BSPs or drivers unless you're doing bringup or updating the Android kernel for a supported device. The common approach to avoid a lot of pain whn updating Android is to simply stay on the old kernel supported by the OEM or partner.
This acronym is somewhat known in Android device hacking communities that try to replace Android with Linux or Windows, because these communities usually deal with understanding the bootloader and Qualcomm distributes bootloader sources from what I remember in their BSP.
We need laws to stop Google deleting data in such circumstances. It's one thing to block or remove access to one's data but deleting it is another matter altogether.
Google is a monopoly and people have little choice other than to use it or go without.
If governments cannot bring Big Tech to heal—which seems to be the case—then the least they can do is to protect people's data. A third party, government tribunal etc., ought to be an avenue of appeal. Only after investigation by such an authority and after it deems material illegal etc. could it be deleted.
Despite what I've said I for the life of me cannot understand why people trust Google with their data without first backing it up elsewhere.
For the record I've even chosen to not have a Google account (at least a current one linked to a phone number and a smartphone). Before such mandatory requirements I posted to YouTube under an alias.
You can't fault people for using a popular service that's advertised as safe.
Maybe the solution is laws requiring prominent disclosure of high-impact practices like this. How many people would use Youtube if the sign-up page said, in bold red letters:
WE CAN AND WILL DELETE USERS' ENTIRE ACCOUNT AND LIVELIHOOD AT ANY TIME.
YOU WILL HAVE NO RECOURSE OR EXPLANATION.
WE DON'T REALLY EVEN EMPLOY HUMANS FOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
What's your specific disagreement? If it's that I'm still uploading data to Google then it can't be much. Google's apps have been removed and a firewall blocks any third party ones from the internet that aren't from F-Droid.
> Despite what I've said I for the life of me cannot understand why people trust Google with their data without first backing it up elsewhere.
Because most people are non-technical, most technically skilled people assume a basic level of good faith and transparency from society, and even people who are both technical and cynical have finite hours for setting up NextCloud.
And by non-technical, I mean "doesn't know what a folder is", not "might struggle with long Docker commands". OneDrive and Google Photos already describe themselves as a "Backup" in the UI, so why would you need another backup unless they're lying?
Big Tech can obfsucate their bad behavior behind technical complexity, simply not care about operating in good faith, and still attain market dominance through convenient offerings and manipulative practices.
Imagine your pizza shop taking back a pie they'd already delivered, or your local bank branch unilaterally deciding to incinerate your safe deposit box. They'd never get away with it. But Google can.
Instead of faulting people for trusting them, we should hold Big Tech accountable for not being trustworthy.
>Despite what I've said I for the life of me cannot understand why people trust Google with their data without first backing it up elsewhere.
What's actually a good solution to backing up your data?
Let's assume I would like to spend hundreds, not thousands of dollars, and I'm not interested in physically mailing copies to friends or maintaining a safety deposit box.
Last I checked, the usual recommendations are pretty dang clunky.
What's this administration trying do, return the US to the Third World or the Dark Ages? Madness.
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