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Ask HN: Should it be legal to switch privacy policies after purchase?

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Re: Ask HN: Should it be legal to switch privacy policies after purchase?

#71
post #70
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a lemon-like law for consumer electronics. I wonder how this should apply to planned obsolescence of devices like smartphones. On one hand, it's obscene that manufacturers expect us to routinely spend ~$1k on a device that will in the best case scenario last for three years. There's no inherent reason that a flagship Samsung from 2017 shouldn't be perfectly serviceable today, and likewise for a Pixel 6 or iPh…

Your phone still works fine. Those security patches not being installed means probably very little.

They mean quite a lot to me personally, but for the sake of argument let's assume you're talking about the "average person".

Sure, on some level that's arguably not wrong. Most individuals are unlikely to be personally targeted by hackers, and even if so might have less to lose from a hack than the cost of a new phone.

Even taking that for granted, I would suggest that it's in the interest of the federal government to use its regulatory power for the purpose of improving our national cybersecurity at scale. Letting millions of people continue to run unpatched devices because the alternative is prohibitively expensive is a disaster waiting to happen.

Re: Ask HN: Should it be legal to switch privacy policies after purchase?

#72
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the market for a TV currently, and have found (in the US) that it doesn’t matter how much extra I’d be willing to pay for a dumb TV, there just aren’t any beyond super low-end ones. Any pointers to some would be much appreciated!

There are dumb TVs; they're for digital signage. My impression from investigating these is that you get a $100 TV quality panel for $10,000, so not really an option. I have a smart TV and it's simply never been connected to the Internet. That makes it pretty dumb.

It took me way too long[1] to figure out that "digital signage" means physical signs, not that display manufacturers are now jacking up their rates for models that won't backdoor your system and exfiltrate your private keys.

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1: As in I was halfway through writing a comment to ask how these were sufficiently different from regular monitors to justify that markup, before realizing that I'm an idiot.

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