This shot across the bow certainly is a good reminder for advocates of abortion access rights not to become complacent, as progress can be undone. I'm hopeful that it can act as a catalyst for advocates in the region. Extremist actions like this often create new advocates, as well as drawing external attention. There are already groups mobilizing from without and within to help Texan women who want or need an abortion, and conversely, groups hoping to take advantage of this law to target those women for what I would consider to be legal harassment. It seems like more of a gamble than you might be thinking.

> The real problem those on the left have with this law is that it is a major advance against abortion, pure and simple.

I haven't seen anyone deny that the main issue is unreasonable restrictions on access to abortion. It's certainly valid to discuss the recklessness of the law's coercive mechanisms and their broader, negative side effects on unrelated groups.

It's not the burning that directly leads to something better. It's more like a natural consequence caused by failing to adequately address people's need for something better; people who feel powerless in their quest for justice will treasure morsels of that justice whereever they can get it, such as direct attacks on the public institutions suppressing them.

The good that can come from it is motivation: it's more clear than ever that gradual reform is not occurring, and something has to change at a fundamental level. Enabling people to get justice civilly will sharply reduce the number of people resorting to incivility.

In most of the cases I've seen of police misconduct, a brief clip of the actual offending act is all that is necessary to establish that misconduct, making them valuable documentation for any court case. Edited footage between the beginning and end of the clip is easily detected.

Taking an egregious example of the murder of George Floyd, there is no context that could have preceded the footage of his murder that would have justified kneeling on a man's neck for over 9 minutes. It also would have been trivial to detect if someone had extended the video to make it appear that he knelt longer than he did.

What are some examples of situations where you imagine that footage taken by a regular citizen could be edited to make an officer's reasonable actions look like police brutality or other major forms of police misconduct?

Taking the most extreme case to justify everything else is the most American thing I can think about.

OBVIOUSLY if police officer is committing a CRIME the footage of that crime is evidence enough, but I've seen many times cut up security footage of "cops harassing someone" only to see the full footage of the "someone" in question being the aggressor the whole time and then yelling about police brutality when he is apprehended and escorted into the police van.

We've witnessed this US LARP in my country just recently where protestors were nicely carried into police vans by the cops, but some intentionally went completely limb to hinder the operation and footage of these limb people getting dragged into the van was used as evidence of how brutal our police force is even though there was dozens of removals where people were carried without even touching the ground.

I can't speak to the actual legality, but I strongly feel that a less-dysfunctional system would account for the intent of the officer. It is undeniably an attempt to suppress widespread dissemination of video documentation of their actions, by taking advantage of a known flaw in the technology most commonly used to do so. At the very least, this should be a fireable offence on the first infraction, akin to tampering with their body camera.

And I disagree with you. The police officer is not doing anything wrong he is only utilizing a strange loophole. Is an actor wearing a reflective hat is breaking law by preventing paparazzis of using the photos in tabloids? Why should they make it easy to post the video on youtube which is a commercial platform that has nothing to do with any kind of law. The video of the police officer can be manipulated too to show limited context. If he was breaking the law the video can be used in the court no problem. They can also write an article or describe it on twitter.

I think the issue is that people are entitled and intoxicated by their "freedom" and publicity. It is not enough if what people say is consumed it must be mass consumed. The freedom of mass publicity is limited by DMCA takedown.

An actor isn't employed by the state to uphold laws. They should be boasting to upload it to YT, to show they've done nothing wrong. The adage turned around "well if you've got nothing to hide", seems to fit.

Sure the video could still be held as legal evidence, but the uproar required to get the attention to get it there will not be possible.

People aren't upset police are doing this because it's infringing on their right to record, it's infringing on their limited ability to hold them accountable.

Here's hoping this backfires on a lot of them. Environmental integrity is not theirs to sell out from under the rest of us.

Personally, I think it's important to encourage corporations to take human rights into greater consideration. Complex as the issue is, it still results in Apple enriching itself and a nation which could reasonably be considered an apartheid state, by doing business there. In my view, that gives them at least some responsibility to speak out against human rights violations by states hosting economies in which they participate, if not to stop doing business there entirely...

> And when you observe that mask mandating states don’t do significantly better than mask-free states, then a curious mind rightfully starts pondering.

If this is true, which I haven't confirmed, wouldn't that say more about the effectiveness of political policy rather than about masks themselves? When we have seen throughout the pandemic that healthcare workers have a dramatically lower rate of infection compared to the general population, despite having more direct contact with infected populations, it is clear to the that proper precautions including protective equipment (principally masks, for a respiratory disease) can impede COVID transmission heavily. With that being the case, the question becomes: has mask policy been effective in getting enough people to wear masks properly and consistently, in states where it is mandated?

> It’s tough because Google and others are huge, they buy out competitors, it’s not anything like the restaurant market.

Not just that, they go to great effort to lock you into their ecosystem so that the difficulty of changing becomes a big part of the calculation.

If I had to make a comparison, instead of a restaurant, I'd suggest a company town. When you buy a Company X phone, you're moving to Xville, where everything is sold with predatory prices and low variety by the company store.

Their lock-in amounts to “be more appealing in some ways”.

Is there anything you couldn’t replace switching from your platform of choice to a different one? I have a lot of 3rd party software it would be difficult to replace and it would be a quality of life hit, but software is software, I could replace what they do with something else if I was forced to.

The way their payment system and marketing rules are designed--and I know this isn't some complex-to-solve problem as I actively ran a popular app store that did not have this user-and-developer-alike-hostile feature--prevents "porting" purchases, so if you buy a bunch of apps on iOS you are forever locked into iOS unless you want to repurchase all of them for Android: this is purposeful lock-in.

You said it yourself, switching would be a complication, and manufacturers are happy to maximize that complication as much as possible. I consider it unethical to impose artificial hurdles to switching upon consumers, especially when they most likely aren't familiar with vendor lock-in.

iMessage is a good example for me. It replaces a federated, universally-compatible service with a centralized service that works only on Apple devices. The upgraded features are nice enough to be alluring, and now a significant portion of American smartphone users feel compelled to remain with Apple so that they don't experience any difficulties communicating. This is a sticking point for me in particular; I used to be a heavy user of multi-protocol messengers like Trillian, during the time when multiple providers offered mutually incompatible messaging services.

> You said it yourself, switching would be a complication, and manufacturers are happy to maximize that complication as much as possible.

Actually I said it would be a quality of life hit. I’m convinced that what I use are already the best choices, so switching to something else would feel like a quality of life hit. Bet you I’m not the only one that uses something just because I like it the most.

It would also be a complication, but for me, personally? Somewhere between a day and a weekend to bootstrap and I would replace things as I go. Actually I’ve done this at a few points in my life.

I feel your pain on the multi-protocol front. I used to be a heavy user of Adium, but at some point that wasn’t sustainable. Sticking mostly with iMessage does feel like a quality of life downgrade in many ways, but it’s also an upgrade in a few other ways, so call it it a wash? Sidegrade maybe?

Usually vendor lock-in actually amounts to "smart and well paid people think of clever, evil, but technically legal ways to make it as difficult as possible to leave the ecosystem".

Yes, but is it actually all that difficult to switch between two vendors? Mac and Windows? Windows and Linux? Android and iPhone?

It’s some work, it isn’t that much work. You would be surprised at all the things people don’t care if they lose.

It's not just the work. Money is a factor too. Accessories as well. The Apple Watch needs an iPhone to work for example, dongles, cables, software. Even stuff that works on multiple platforms may not work as well or be limited on others (e.g. Airpods) so you have to decide is it worth switching to lose X and gain Y?

I think a lot of people don't care once they switch, but thinking about switching, the costs etc. makes it seem daunting and not worth it.

> so you have to decide is it worth switching to lose X and gain Y?

Still sounds like the lock-in is “be more appealing in some ways”.

Everything is a trade off. Life is tough that way, always forcing you to make decisions, or wait until you can afford to do things before you do them, but at this point we’re talking about luxury goods.

Having your watch become a paper weight if you switch phone platforms is not "be more appealing in some ways". Having your router become unmanageable if you switch phone platforms is not "be more appealing in some ways". Having to buy entirely new cables and dongles that do exactly the same thing essentially as your current cables and dongles is not "be more appealing in some ways". Having to find and possibly buy (or subscribe) either the same or similar software/services again to what you need is not "be more appealing in some ways".

Mobile platforms specifically iOS and Android have moved beyond luxury goods. Way too much shit relies on an iOS or Android app. They are even talking about making vaccine "passports" digital only.