241–250 of 308 posts
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It's like herd immunity: if most phones have an activation lock, then thieves are less incentivized to steal them. Obviously they can still sell them for parts, but they're worth less.
In theory it's not needed since you could report your phone's IMEI as stolen and the phone would be block, for some reason it's not common among operators https://www.gsma.com/services/gsma-imei/imei-blacklisting/
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I find this whole discussion (including the above comment) surreal, given that we are talking about the country that used to be called "the land of the free" and that claims superiority over countries that restrict freedoms.
The more I hear about the U.S. the less I want to go there, for any reason, ever. I'm sure the people are lovely but the government is scary.
In reality, it's not really any different than any other place, and the way the government treats citizens and non-citizens isn't much different than the way any other generally functioning country would. The only difference is that we have especially well-known patriotic freedom-based songs and sayings. You shouldn't be scared to come.
As a non-citizen, I could be detained/searched if I travelled to France or Germany or any other Western European country for next to no reason and it would be legal there as well, wouldn't it?
To be honest, the most rigorous part of the entry process in the USA compared to other countries is the customs agents that are out to prevent you from bringing in foreign agricultural products.
> Pair locking is a useful feature to protect yourself against invasive device searches. Probably also a good way to get onto no-fly lists, and spend hours in detention, etc.
I sure hope not. I work for a financial institution and our phones are locked down hard, including pair locking. This is done as a requirement from the FSA as a result of having access to confidential data on the phone. None of the data is stored on the phone, or even cached there, but it's still pair locked. I regularly bring my phone through US customs, and i've yet to have any problems. Granted, i travel from a vi…
Isn't it possible that searching your phone at the border is security theater? I think it's likely that the US already has permanent, remote access to most phones.
You can also do a hardware mod by swapping some data pins on the connector and soldering a special cable just for you.
Any reason one couldn’t remove the lightning port entirely? And charge only wirelessly (Qi), using Bluetooth for audio?
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That would really depend on how you define freedom, if you look at it theoratically like "free to do whatever you want". Then maybe , if you look at it from the perspective of "an individual can garner freedoms through work" they are far more likely to do that in most other western countries. You are far more likely to not have to worry about things like healthcare in european countries than you are in the US for exa…
Sure, if you change the definition of freedom, then the US isn’t that free.
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Vertical social mobility is pretty bad in the US. This is for 2012: https://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobi... This OECD chart shows how your financial outcome is practically inherited in the US and Germany: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/08/moving-up-the-income-... This isn't very surprising. For decades, the strongest predictor for a country having high social mobility is a strong welfare…
> For decades, the strongest predictor for a country having high social mobility is a strong welfare program including child care and health care, financed by progressive taxation of income and wealth. I guess that does not apply at all to developing countries like China. EDIT: looking at your link: > An elasticity of zero would mean there is no relationship, and thus complete intergenerational mobility, No, an elast…
Have you looked at the second link?
> No, an elasticity of zero would rather mean that people are overly taxed and therefore there is no transfer of wealth between generations, which is probably not what you want (what is already taxed belongs to you and whoever you decide to give it to).
Low elasticity means high social mobility. It's the desciption of the same thing, only from the other direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
If your design goal is high social mobility (e.g. because you want a meritocratic society or simply argued from an ethical position) and high economic growth, you want to limit inheritance as much as possible. This is pretty much what Piketty et. al. have shown a few years ago.
> Of course, elasticity of zero would mean that there is no whatsoever transfer of skills or intelligence between generations, which is genetically patently false.
And yet elasticity is close to zero (0.15) in Denmark while being over three times higher in the US.
The reason is obvious: Genetics predict potential, societal context predicts outcome.
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It's funny how when discussing freedom with an American they'll always insist the only measure that's really important is the one they excel in.
Please don't be so presumptuous. First of all, I live in Europe. Second, I literally said that I think (at least) people with lower incomes have better lives in other Western countries. I really do mean freedom in the literal legal sense, and I don't think this is an important metric.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
There’s so many of these exceptions to “freedoms” in the US, namely that if you can’t afford to fight for your freedom, can you really be considered to have it?
I do appreciate for the most part, however, the US’s stance on free speech.
I'm all for privacy but isn't this paranoia with device security a distraction ? It's likely that half a dozen companies have access to your contacts list, and Google, Facebook etc. almost certainly log information about the people you call and are in contact with. Anyone who uses an iphone for 'nefarious' purposes is not very smart.
It is not a distraction, because suspicionless electronics searches at borders are becoming increasingly common. Facebook knows a lot about you, but do you really want to give all that information to CBP?
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Please don't be so presumptuous. First of all, I live in Europe. Second, I literally said that I think (at least) people with lower incomes have better lives in other Western countries. I really do mean freedom in the literal legal sense, and I don't think this is an important metric.
In the literal legal sense, the US courts ruled people don’t have rights against illegal search and seizure within 100 miles of a border or international airport. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception There’s so many of these exceptions to “freedoms” in the US, namely that if you can’t afford to fight for your freedom, can you really be considered to have it? I do appreciate for the most part, however…