Viewing profile — 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 s…

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 peop…

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. Tha…

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 user…

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 …

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…

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 sweatshop…

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…

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 t…

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 …

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…