431–440 of 475 posts
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To be fair, none of that involved selling ads.
It involved the mass collection of personal information (what Google does in order to sell ads), which was then weaponized and used for purposes other than originally implied
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You may be interested in the Purism Librem 5 [0]. It's made by people who care about software freedom. It doesn't use the common ARM-based SoCs which require proprietary drivers and will be unusable with modern software in a few years. Everything except the cell modem (on a replaceable M.2 card connected over USB) runs 100% free software. The device as a whole runs Linux with Gnome, and Plasma Mobile + others also de…
> It's made by people who care about software freedom. How do I know that? The first I saw about Librem was their original laptop that made clearly overstated claims about its openness. (e.g. claiming a device that used intel CPUs would have completely open firmware). After that I paid no further attention to them.
https://puri.sm/learn/freedom-roadmap/
For instance, all the firmware is completely open. The BIOS can be flashed by the user. What openness do you feel is lacking?
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Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…
I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017. I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app. Many Android users also lament the lack of a visib…
There is a counter argument which says that the only reason you can do those things is because the existence of open source Android forced Apple to do it or be uncompetitive with Android's features.
My primary objection to Apple is one of principle: giving up your right to code software that is hostile to the interests of a platform owner is massive loss of freedom. As Stallman put it, "Apple made it cool to go to jail".
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Cost is rarely a concern unless you are barely making ends meet. iPhone's cost per year is actually lower than most Android flagships, if you factor in how quicker are the Android phones to start breaking down and/or lose their system software update window. So IMO Apple has the upper hand in terms of amortised cost (albeit not by much if you look at the insane prices of the iPhone XS/Max). I completely agree we shou…
>Cost is rarely a concern unless you are barely making ends meet. Well then 40% of American households are concerned: https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-house... I'm a former ios user (9 years, from my 3GS in 2009 to my 6S which I used until 2018) that switched to Android last year mostly out of cost. Apple crossed a threshold I'm unwilling to follow. Now I have a moto x4 that was just $300 so I'm…
That being said, don't most US households get carrier-financed phones?
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It's not about trying to boot off the micro-SD card, it is being able to just pop out the card, and get all the data that was stored on it.
Well sure but most smartphones -- both iPhones and Androids -- do periodic automatic cloud backups. The ability to do offline salvaging does not seem like such a big selling point to me.
As for offline salvaging, do you realize how many phones have had bugs that resulted in boot problems in the last 10 years?
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Cost is rarely a concern unless you are barely making ends meet. iPhone's cost per year is actually lower than most Android flagships, if you factor in how quicker are the Android phones to start breaking down and/or lose their system software update window. So IMO Apple has the upper hand in terms of amortised cost (albeit not by much if you look at the insane prices of the iPhone XS/Max). I completely agree we shou…
I think you overestimate how much free capital the average person has. Even in my case, where I could afford an iPhone with max storage (to assuage my previously stated concerns), I'd have a really hard time justifying it. We budget pretty diligently, so we'd have to justify to ourselves why paying a premium to Apple is a better use of our capital than anything else. I came really close to buying an iPhone 8+ about a…
I most certainly do, but as mentioned in a sibling comment, don't most US households use carrier-financed phones? That's like, $20 - $50 extra a month?
The 3 years usage period is kind of surprising to me because it clashes with my anecdotal evidence somewhat -- I've known 20+ people holding on to iPhones for 5-6 years. But I am pretty sure the median you gave is more accurate so in that case the cost per annum might indeed be equal to Android flagships (or larger).
> paying $200 extra because Apple doesn't think I need a microSD slot.
I now dearly regret not keeping the link but there was a research showing that the SD controller introduces lag in the entire system (in the case of SoCs anyway). However, nowadays that probably can be solved. Likely nobody in Apple tried though. So there's not only Apple not thinking you might need a microSD. There seem to be other factors in the equation. iPhones are known to be fast and Apple doesn't want to risk losing that no matter what -- would be my guess.
> She gets very nervous about carrying around a fragile $800+ device.
As I mentioned in the other sibling comment here, I really miss the days I didn't have to care if I dropped my phone. Sadly I don't think these days are ever coming back. :(
I personally am unwilling to sacrifice privacy and smooth operation (most budget Androids lag like hell) -- because I consume a lot of reading and video and audio material on my phone and replacing light amounts of anxiety (that most of the time I can put under control) with severe annoyances on a daily basis is a bad trade for me.
Of course, we aren't trying to convince each other, I am aware. We're sharing use cases and I am grateful that you oblige.
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Well sure but most smartphones -- both iPhones and Androids -- do periodic automatic cloud backups. The ability to do offline salvaging does not seem like such a big selling point to me.
I disable cloud updates for privacy reasons and bc backups of that size would cost more money than my own solution As for offline salvaging, do you realize how many phones have had bugs that resulted in boot problems in the last 10 years?
As for privacy, I would disable cloud sync and backups as well. But eventually came to the sad conclusion that I have a lot more going on in my life and I cannot sacrifice even more of my preciously little free time to self-manage all my data -- not to mention this would require a moderate investment in my own NAS / 10Gbps switch / 10Gbps router and end-to-end encrypted backups to 1-2 VPS-es.
I get where you are coming from, I do. But I had to make a choice between an actual life and paranoia. I settled for a "mostly ok" solution and a bit more of a personal life and free time.
If privacy and offline-first own personal data get commoditised, I'll be the first to switch away from cloud (and thus Apple).
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This has always seemed pretty straightforward to me, so I simply don't store things that need to stay private on other people's machines. If I want to keep it private then I keep it to myself, and that's that. If I put it out into the world, I assume it's out there to be seen, and it doesn't really matter what privacy guarantees people claim to make today because policies may always change tomorrow. I do make one exc…
This has always seemed pretty straightforward to me, so I simply don't store things that need to stay private on other people's machines But what's the definition of "other peoples' machines?" If you run Windows 10, it's not really your machine. You don't have full control over it, do you? It updates and reboots when Microsoft tells it to, not when you tell it to. If you use a smartphone, that's not your machine, eit…
My devices all connect to a wifi router at home that I bought and configured myself, which bridges to my ISP's modem. Has it been hacked...? Well, I hope not. I do the best I can. My laptops have all been ThinkPads running Linux, for years. I love the maintainability, and the fact that I can turn off wifi with a physical switch is a nice bonus. I'd like to try out a Purism laptop someday, if I can ever afford it.
I take comfort in the fact that nobody really cares what I am doing and I am not worth the effort of a focused attack. If I ever got involved in politics or activism, I might manage my risks differently. It is frustrating for me that the world continues to drift further away from the way I'd prefer it to be, in this arena, but my desires are extreme, so I suppose that's to be expected.
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The far Eastern Europe (Bulgaria where I live, and Romania) has one of the best internet connections in the world. ;) In my case I am on 1Gbps ingress/egress for ~43 EUR a month and could negotiate a deal for a datacenter level of a link (10Gbps) but I don't want to. The reason I'll go for 10Gbps router and a 10Gbps switch is because if you put a NAS in your home network then the gigabit speeds will never be achieved…
What kind of router would you get? 10 gigabit options seems very expensive.
Quite an investment I admit. But it's long-term. I don't anticipate changing that setup for like 10 years.
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I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017. I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app. Many Android users also lament the lack of a visib…
Use https://microg.org/ instead of Google play services A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.
It's cool if you have a weekend's worth of time to burn on such a project and fine-tune everything to your liking. But I don't.