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Regarding 3. Battery life - I’ve had a ThinkPad Nano for several years that, on Windows 11 would get roughly 4-6 hours battery, and this was optimized (very few running apps, no junk on startup, power saving settings on, etc). I switched it to Ubuntu (I was surprised that everything worked out of the box too, all of the hot keys and everything), and it will get about 8-10 hours doing the same tasks (primarily Chrome). So there is something to be said about Linux in general just being so much more “light weight” so to speak vs windows, which has become such a bloated mess. But the main issue I had was your point 4, since the thinkpads screen is 2K, everything was either too small (with no scaling) or too big (with scaling on).

"The only winning move is not to play."


No, the winning move is to actually make legislation that says you can’t do ridiculous creepy nonsense.

But we are not allowed to do that so we can just shame people and hope that they actually follow through for more than two months.


AND carriers. Don't forget the carriers.


Honeypot?


What’s even more bizarre is how often they update the Win10 calculator app from the Windows store. Never had any idea that a calculator would need bi-weekly updates, but shrug


Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know.


> Exactly. Three letter agency abilities were expanded hugely under Obama. Why people can’t grasp this, I’ll never know.

Partisanship is one hell of a drug.


The boat was built and set sail under Bush and the GOP congress, under the super-Orwellian PATRIOT Act. I am not happy Obama expanded their powers but fail to see how the GOP would make the situation better.


The boat has been under construction for decades. The FISA courts were set up in 1978 (that's the Democrat Carter, and I believe that it was Democratic Congress at the time, too), but even that was only a response, trying to rein in the national surveillance apparatus that was already running wild. Reagan upped it a notch with Exec Order 12333, GWB obviously built on top of that, and Obama went hog-wild with it. There's plenty of blame to drown both parties.


Don't forget the grand daddy: J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director, 1924-1971.


That's true. Myopic of me.


> Three letter agency abilities were expanded

As well as politicized and weaponized.


Google has no incentive to police the store or protect it’s user’s devices. They only care about getting more people on the Android platform so they can increase their search and advertising revenue. They could give 2 shits about the Play Store.


The fact that android is such a mess is the reason I use an iphone. If and when they start caring about the quality of the android experience, including the play store, I may be tempted back.



That seems like a rare occurrence. My macOS install is screwed up. I'm not entirely sure if it's something on my end, the hard drive, MacOS or something else. But I'm not going to straight up just blame macOS or Apple MacBook hardware for the issue when maintenance others do not seem to be having the issue. That seems far too assuming and rash.


So you won't blame Apple, but will blame Google? :)


But that's counter intuitive. I for one don't use android simply because of the play store. If you take care of the developers, they'll take care of the apps which will bring the people in.


One incentive to police the store is that quality is a draw for users.


What's the alternative, iOS? That's great for people with financial stability in developed nations, but that leaves out swathes of those in developing nations.


Old & new previous-gen iPhones are available at Android prices, including “free with contract” (in the US at least).

They aren’t cutting edge, but neither are the equivalently priced Androids.


I have an Android dev phone that cost £19, no contract, about half-to-a-third the price of a then-equivalent second-hand iPhone. In third world countries even a £19 device is worth stealing, as a friend of my partner experienced.


Wow, that is cheaper than I expected. What brand?


Vodafone sold it (pay as you go, no contract) with only their brand visible, but I think it’s an Alcatel device under the paint. The model is no longer being made, but their current cheapest model is almost as cheap.


Old iPhones are still prohibitively expensive in developing countries. Brand new low/midrange Android phones usually cost half or less.


Good catch. Didn't even think about that.


F-Droid


Did their souls make it too?


Their hearts are all in SFO, but their souls are in HEL.


A reference to the jazz song "I left my heart in San Francisco"! :D


The mention that is varies by provider is notable. Apple encrypts End-to-end all iMessage chats, as well as FaceTime (VoIP) calls. None of the other providers on that list do that, so at least there's that.

Also, people here act like Apple jumped willingly onboard the PRISM program. You can bet your ass their arm was twisted by the government or they were taken into the program unknowingly (datacenter ISP taps, etc).


"Apple encrypts End-to-end all iMessage chats, as well as FaceTime (VoIP) calls."

End-to-end encryption does not guarantee that Apple keeps your data encrypted, or that they don't process it for 3rd parties (NSA would fit as a 3rd party, where Apple would be for them a content provider, as the slide shows).

"You can bet your ass their arm was twisted by the government or they were taken into the program unknowingly (datacenter ISP taps, etc)."

Can you back that up ? How can you be so sure ?


> End-to-end encryption does not guarantee that Apple keeps your data encrypted

I'm probably misunderstanding something here but doesn't "end-to-end encryption" mean that A encrypts it with B's key and [whoever is in the middle passing it along] can't decrypt it because they don't have B's key?


Yup, so Apple knows about your data.

And according to that slide they are a "provider" for NSA.

End-to-end encryption at least maybe guarantees that it is not your ISP that is selling you out to NSA (making it harder for Apple to explain why they are on that list).


How does Apple know about your data unless they have B's key?


Who generates the keys for B ?


You are not misunderstanding, you are correct.


"Snowden’s revelations made people aware of what was happening, but little changed as a result."

Actually I'd be willing to bet the level of spying the alphabet agencies are doing now is 10 times worse than it was when Snowden stole those documents.


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