191–200 of 330 posts
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A smart-phone of one of the two supported corporate-controlled OSs, iOS or Android.
So then what's the law referenced in 'A' that requires me to buy and carry around a smartphone?
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What in the world...?! What's in everyone's coffee this morning?
A life without a smartphone is already difficult. Possible, but difficult; it involves knowing people who have smartphones, and using fragile hacks, and doing without. With only “show the screen of your smartphone” proof-of-whatever being used, and the phasing out of paper documentation, it's not unreasonable to think we might end up in a situation like this. (Though, it definitely hasn't already happened; I don't th…
I understand the slippery slope argument, even if I think it's kind of alarmist, but... I mean, come on. Present tense?!?! We are sooooo far off from a legal mandate to carry a smartphone that I'm not even sure how to politely react to this statement.
> it's not unreasonable to think we might end up in a situation like this.
This is perhaps a good use of the double negative, because it's certainly not reasonable either.
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Well, the “anxieties and neuroses of society” are the only reason we're still forced to wear cloth masks in certain places, so...
No one is forced to wear a cloth mask anywhere -- a superior mask is always accepted. The inferior cloth mask is merely accepted, not required. Here you distort a laxness in COVID mitigation to describe it as the very opposite.
We are long beyond that point, sadly. We are right now in the process of a) becoming legally required to own and carry a particular kind of device and b) being legally unable to fully control said device and c) having that device explicitly working (again by legal requirement) against our own interests It will be interesting to watch how things will progress and whether governments or corporations will be the ones ho…
No we aren't. I don't have to buy a phone. Yes, the apps make the border easier for Covid, but don't be ridiculous. I can fallback to filling out a piece of paper. Furthermore, I can buy an [PinePhone, Librem 5, etc] phone and "fully control" that. As for c) that's been part of life since the government got the right to tap your phone or telegraph. Right now there are troubling signs for the direction of American dem…
In Denmark where I live there are now trivial things that are impossible to do without an Apple or Google smartphone, and important things that are becoming very hard. Unless laws are specifically enacted to enshrine "analogue rights" or whatever, it will become impossible to exist here without a smartphone over the next decade.
Cash is largely dead and will die when the legal requirement to accept it is phased out at some point in the next few years. In addition to credit cards, there is one app for payments (owned by the largest retail bank) that has become the de facto standard for person-to-person transfers. So we are already at the point where not having a smartphone makes you a second class citizen, unable to participate in some parts of the economy.
In one HN thread, people complain about the U.S. not forcing people to get vaccinated, and in another thread it's about how the U.S. is becoming an authoritarian state. I take no position on these arguments, I just get spun around trying to track whether the U.S. is being overrun by libertarians or authoritarians sometimes.
Libertarianism leads to oligarchies led by the richest.
Billionaires seem to like this idea. I suspect the reason is so they won't have anyone nagging them to pay taxes and could write law without having to spend money funding think tanks and lobbyists.
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> My bank has made it (almost) impossible to make payments without a phone, btw My bank has several buildings full of people, all within driving distance of my house. Any of those people will happily accept a stack of paper bills. If you don't want to use digital forms of payment, why on earth are you using a bank that doesn't have physical branches located near your home?
Any of those people will happily accept a stack of paper bills. Have you actually tried depositing large amounts of cash on a regular basis? Sounds like a good way to get your account flagged and suspended. Not to mention the Treasury's seeming animosity toward cash as an instrument of payment.
Snowden is twitting from Moscow. Russians in a similar position have been formally labeled "foreign agents", imprisoned, or worse. I'm wondering how Snowden managed to avoid a similar fate.
Because he is their agent. Remember Russia has been the undisputed world champion of dezinformatsiya for centuries - they did a good job of making him appear as the "disgruntled principled whistleblower" they wanted. But most of the stuff he stole had little to do with the NSA activities they publicized, and much to do with key intelligence damage to the USA, including likely loss of lives. That's not protest, it's t…
My friend, you seem to have mispelled United States of America
Snowden is twitting from Moscow. Russians in a similar position have been formally labeled "foreign agents", imprisoned, or worse. I'm wondering how Snowden managed to avoid a similar fate.
Because he is their agent. Remember Russia has been the undisputed world champion of dezinformatsiya for centuries - they did a good job of making him appear as the "disgruntled principled whistleblower" they wanted. But most of the stuff he stole had little to do with the NSA activities they publicized, and much to do with key intelligence damage to the USA, including likely loss of lives. That's not protest, it's t…
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So then what's the law referenced in 'A' that requires me to buy and carry around a smartphone?
It's a looking-forward statement... projecting current trends 5-10 years in the future. More likely will be a de-facto requirement to participate in society rather than a law. As I mentioned in another comment, many private companies are already requiring it.