I’m probably just an AI pretending to be human.
Into wandering abandoned places, tinkering with technology, and authoring things for fun and profit.
Which they can apparently do from the Play Store, too. Thing is, the sort of person who goes seeking out alternatives is generally (though not always) more familiar with tech.
Regardless, lockdown by design isn’t about safety so much as it is about control.
As much as I hate them for it, they’ve done an excellent job vilifying ownership of one’s own devices.
I find it interesting that these companies are taking something that was once normal… loading your choice of software onto your thousand plus dollar computer… and pretending that its something new and evil.
I’d prefer honesty. They want cash and this undermines thier platform near-monopolies.
I’m glad your experience has been good, but buyers really ought to be wary. There are themes in the bad reviews that should give them pause.
The service doesn’t cover most healthcare so you’re still stuck with One Medical’s bills, which (if reviews on Trustpilot are correct) tend to be higher than traditional medical. They still bill to your insurance if you have it.
I was curious so I looked up reviews of One Medical. Almost universally, people note that they charge well more than average for services, fail to meet thier appointment wait time promises, limit access to doctors, and have terrible customer service that fails to respond timely and often fails to respond at all.
$99 seems to be a lot of money to pay to be ignored.
Afghanistan had few resources, so that’s not necessarily true. But I do agree that the US only intervenes when it aligns with selfish interests.
But then, the same is true of every nation on the planet. The US isn’t unique in that, it just gets all of the attention.
We already have a strong lease market in many places and that works great for many people. The issue for me is not the availability of leasing, but the asssumption that my purchase of a vehicle nonetheless entitles the manufacturer to collect massive amounts of data on my in-car habits without my knowledge, which they can then provide to anyone they damn well please.
Even leasing, I doubt anyone expects to have thier call logs and texts stored for law enforcement’s later use, bug there was a story recently suggesting that some of them are actually doing that.
At what point does the world look at this and say that enough is enough. We’d condemn this behavior were it any other government but in this conflict, blatant war crimes are hand waved away.
Arguably, the only reason they bother to ask is the negative attention the medical field got from Henrietta Lacks. And they’re still not great at it.
If someone opts into the research, I have no problem with thier DNA being used for that purpose. What I do have a problem with is the medical community’s belief that providing a biological sample for one purpose (for example, a biopsy) entitles them to use that sample in any way they see fit.
Henrietta Lacks comes to mind, here.
If I pay someone to I dunno, clean my house and I give them a key to enter, that doesn’t give them permission to rent out my kitchen or borrow my clothes. Similarly, if I pay a company to sequence my DNA because its the only way I’ll ever know where I come from (team adopted,) that should not give them permission to profit off my limited use sample unless they explicitly ask.
If they want to use the collected DNA for additional research, it isn’t unreasonable to expect them to ask first.
Age is no barrier for Linux adoption, but some people just… don’t have the bandwidth to dive into something new. If you use Windows at work, all of the programs you own (or really, license) are Windows, your files are tragically stored in OneDrive… you really have to WANT to branch out to move to something that for your use case is comparable.
Difference for the average user is that there are 10^4 shops per square mile of Windows capable support shops in most places. Meanwhile, my local area has “that weird AI called Melpomene” for Linux support.
Or the inevitable “PopOS muted my audio and I had to dive into terminal to unmute myself” issue I run into every month or three. I am fine rolling my eyes and fixing it… most people are not.
Installing apps outside of the Pop Shop for instance. Getting something installed via terminal is a lot of ask of the average user; they just want things to work (and I am not inclined to be their forever support.)
I still use Microsoft at my day job, but MY tech refresh was Linux-based because privacy is important to my clients. Both Microsoft and Apple are bad at consumer / small business privacy so I moved to a platform that is not in the business of turning my data into marketing profiles.
Always one that comes in hot, I swear.
I do wish Linux was friendlier for the average person. I use it and I recommend it (via PopOS) to some people but other folk would have a heck of a time with maintaining it.
And this is one of many reasons I’m glad I dumped Microsoft (and Apple, actually) when I did my last tech refresh.
I can’t, but worrying about hidden LTE chips is s path that leads to madness. Unless I ditch all tech, there’s no way to be sure.
For the data pull, yeah. I tend to avoid dealers though so I’m not sure that there is much incentive for my mom & pop service station to monetize my data.
Almost all of the malware ridden apps people encounter are FROM the app store.