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Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

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Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#91

We need a law, and that"s coming from a libertarian. If the owner of a hardware device is using it, that person has total control over the device. Nothing can be blocked. Nothing can be hidden. All data must be available in plain language. That owner/user should have the right to inspect and modify everything in the device in plain language. With today's memory / storage capacities and with today's LLMs, that should…

We need a law that protects transfer of rights in general. It must become illegal to stop people from selling things they have, from hardware to things like accounts on various platform. Ensuring transferability brings us closer to a free market, which should take care of the problem.

The secondary markets law. What a lot of people and a lot of libertarians don't realize the contract law can and is regularly used to undermine the private property rights

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of ZTE phones in the stores here in Cancún. I’ve not seen that brand before coming here. Some of them are pretty cheap even. I thought about buying one so that I could leave my iPhone in the hotel room some days and only carry a cheap phone when I am outside walking in some parts of the city. We are leaving Cancún soon, so now there is not so much point in doing that anyways. But I was thinking that I cou…

ZTE is not connected to Samsung. There were some budget ZTE phones sold in the USA about 10 years ago. I believe ZTE was banned by the US government, along with Huawei for doing shady things.

Another reason why those companies are banned is because the US gov hasn't successfully inserted back-doors in the chips so therefore there is no oversight/snooping so they don't get to do business in the US market.

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#93
post #87
post #18

Related: "Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets" (10/23/2023, 164 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990528

Thanks! Macroexpanded: Samsung and other manufacturers disable phones bought on gray markets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37990528 - Oct 2023 (166 comments)

167 comments now :p

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZTE is not connected to Samsung. There were some budget ZTE phones sold in the USA about 10 years ago. I believe ZTE was banned by the US government, along with Huawei for doing shady things.

"I believe ZTE was banned by the US government, along with Huawei for doing shady things." The shady things are beeing chinese owned and there is a trade war? Otherwise I heard lots of accusations, but saw no proof of anything.

> are beeing chinese owned and there is a trade war?

Lol it takes a lot more than being a Chinese owned company to get banned in the us the majority of the things that we buy is made in China. If it was that reason you wouldn't be able to buy anything in the store anymore

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#95
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I believe ZTE was banned by the US government, along with Huawei for doing shady things." The shady things are beeing chinese owned and there is a trade war? Otherwise I heard lots of accusations, but saw no proof of anything.

> are beeing chinese owned and there is a trade war? Lol it takes a lot more than being a Chinese owned company to get banned in the us the majority of the things that we buy is made in China. If it was that reason you wouldn't be able to buy anything in the store anymore

So .. where is the proof for anything?

Otherwise the difference is in strategy. A toaster is geopolitical not so important, like communication infrastructure.

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#96
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would a free market prevent Samsung from doing this?

In a free market, people choosing not to buy Samsung phones would prevent them from doing this.

But they pulled this after the phones were bought.

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#97
post #3

That's messed up. I have generally preferred Samsung products,too. 10-15 years ago, when I had a lot more free time, I used to put CyanogenMod on my phones and play around with that. Are there any good open source mobile OS around these days?

Nobody else (that I saw) mentioned it, but PostmarketOS [0] has a decent number of (community) supported devices, is Free and more than a de-Googled Android distro - it's actually based on Alpine Linux. I've previously run it on my Pinephone Pro, but images are available for multiple Samsung handsets as well [1]

[0] https://postmarketos.org/

[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#98
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a law that protects transfer of rights in general. It must become illegal to stop people from selling things they have, from hardware to things like accounts on various platform. Ensuring transferability brings us closer to a free market, which should take care of the problem.

The secondary markets law. What a lot of people and a lot of libertarians don't realize the contract law can and is regularly used to undermine the private property rights

As a libertarian, I think keeping markets free is more important than contracts. Ownership, for consumers at least, should be ultimate. We also must ban the use of terms like "buy" or "get" for things you are not actually going to own, like access to walled garden services. They must say "license" instead.

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#99

Frankly, I can't imagine a reason not to buy an iPhone instead of whatever Android device happens to be around besides ideological differences. The customer experience is so vastly superior to these bloatware filled, borderline spyware Samsung/Xiamoi/OnePlus devices.

Mostly people buy Android because it’s cheaper (for non-flagship devices). In so many areas of our world today we have two-tiered experiences, one for the moderately wealthy and a different one for the poors.

Re: Samsung disables customer phones remotely, holds data hostage [video]

#100
post #44

So, a hardware I've paid an arm and a leg for can be shutdown by the manufacturer. I think, we've give up too much power and become too tolerant of excessive overreach of these giants. I no longer look into future with optimism.

Dark age of tech

Sad sarcasm incoming:

How would this be the dark age of tech? It's not like the actual Dark Ages, in which written records were few and far between, making it relatively difficult for historians to learn through historical texts.

No, instead we have hardware that will no longer work, and cannot be studied, because the auth servers have been shut down. We'll have software that cannot be downgraded and looked through, for our own safety. We'll have machines that will die, and cannot be repaired, because the replacement parts the OEM no longer manufactures or sells aren't matched to the device we want to revive.

Completely different! /s

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