They could at least have the decency to just secretly do it and then pretend like they aren't, like our government does. This is why physical switches and removable batteries are the only way forward.
The sad part is that this very same can be said about 99% of the laws and regulations that are written. He is 73 years old and listening to him speak I don't think he could figure out how to set the clock on a microwave, much less understand the intricacies of the bleeding edge of the most transformative technology to come about in the last 40 years. I very seriously doubt he knows anything besides what is fed to him by the very companies that are to be regulated. Lobbyists write our laws, congress is just there to collect the money from them and plan their insider stock trades accordingly.
I cancelled since their prices kept getting less and less competitive, and packages were taking a week to show up with "free" "two day" prime shipping. I finally had to report my card as lost to stop them from charging me. Even after I didn't have prime anymore they had the sketchy dark patterns at checkout trying to get you to sign up again so I cancelled my amazon account entirely (which was also a huge pain in the ass that was full of dark patterns). I thought it was going to be a huge pain without amazon as an option but really I haven't missed it. Other companies and even mom & pop stores have really stepped up their online shopping so I have actually had better prices, shipping times, and experiences since quitting amazon. For such a massive corporation the tactics they use are early 2000's satellite TV provider tier. It's embarrassing.
Call me crazy, but I still think VR is just going to be a small niche. It's not a question of who is making it, how much cheaper they can build it, or what PR machine is pushing it. It's just a bad form factor. They are going to keep on trying because strapping ads and trackers directly to people's heads is the big tech wet dream, but I don't think we are looking at the next smartphone by any means.
About 4-5 weeks a year. 'Unlimited' pto is a scummy practice and they wouldn't do it unless it was in their best interest. I have enough to deal with in life without losing sleep over irl dark patterns, so I take off when I feel like I need it. If they don't like that then they should go back to a set number.
My philosophy on anything like this, whether it happens to align with my beliefs or not, is that the truth shouldn't fear scrutiny. If a company, government, or person decides to show how right they are by banning dissent then it should be a red flag even if you agree with them on the actual issue. I'm all for self moderation tools so people don't have to see anything they don't want to but I don't need anyone deciding what opinions are 'correct' enough for me to see.
Yeah I'm sure hypothetical interference is the reason At&t is shitting their pants over this. If you can't beat them by bettering your own service, drag government roadblocks in front of them. The At&t way.
I had it change to dark mode, then when I asked it to add a tasteful picture of a chicken to the center of the screen and it reverted back to white (sans chicken). Maybe someday I will get my text-to-dark-mode-tasteful-chicken-picture-landing-page generator, but it seems that day is not today.
That was my first thought. If I walked outside and saw some douchebag in a paperboy hat writing on my vehicle with a permanent marker I would start throwing rocks at them. The little game of fraud cat and mouse I play is between me and the government.
I wasn't aware that mental health apps were a thing that existed, though I have seen quite a few that have the opposite effect. I always assumed I would be dead and gone before we got to the point where people cried into their electronics in exchange for positive affirmations and pills. I think I have finally done it. I have lived long enough to see the dystopia.
My kid goes to a small school and they buy new chromebooks every couple years. Most of them don't make it to that two year mark. I offered to fix some of the broken units for them for free since they don't really have an IT department, but I couldn't get 90% of the parts I needed. The parts I could find weren't justifiable over just buying a whole new chromebook. I guess people will tolerate planned obsolescence as long as the item is not too expensive to replace, but it feels like a huge waste.
I wasn't overly excited about my child having a google account either, but at least I got them to let me make a throwaway dummy account for him to use instead of his actual information.
I switched to Arch as soon as ubuntu started pushing snaps and never looked back. Of all the reasons to hate snaps what did it for me was the loopback device spam when trying to list block devices. Canonical has a track record of doing things the community doesn't agree with, carefully reading all the feedback, and then doubling down on whatever terrible idea they had and continuing anyway.
I don't use tap to pay so I decided to do away with that attack vector entirely. If you shine a flashlight through your card you can see where the antenna traces go. One hole punch later and I don't have to worry about it at all. These stories about cards being read from several feet away sound like bullshit. I am more concerned that if I leave my card somewhere it could be picked up and used for several small purchases before hitting the tap to pay limit. We just now got to move past signature based transactions to chip and pin, so why they would immediately add a feature that bypasses the pin is beyond me.