> Of course, if you like living in a world where Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Google run every single thing on your phone and ultimately your life, that’s great for you. I hope you enjoy your scrolling and your ads.
It's not really the ads that bother me as much as the tracking, both implicit and explicit.
I feel like now a days for anything that I want or need to do online I must provide my name, last name, email, phone number and address.
Why? I just want to (read that article | play that game | get that movie). I would HAPPILY pay for it. But why do I need to give you my name, phone or address. All you need to know is "account X successfully paid for content Y". Let me create an account without an insane amount of unnecessary information and pay in a private or at least semi-private way.
Worse part is that is even spreading to the real world. I went to a Pandora store a while back and they _refused_ to sell me a charm if I didn't "have an account" with them. My wife ended up getting a different gift.
I am generally not in favor of adding regulation, but this is a place where I would support it.
Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This means you must have the ability to:
1. Transfer ownership of it (either temporarily as a loan or permanently as a sale). Digital-only doesn't preclude this: the store can have a "transfer" functionality.
2. (Within reason) use it at your discretion at any point after the sale. This means that a company cannot "revoke" your access at a later time. Specifically for content that is DRM locked, if they decide to sunset that service (store, DRM server, whatever), no problem! just offer DRM free (or generally lock-free copies). I have no problem with Sony not offering DRM free versions of games that I can still download and play with the store. But if that goes away -> you must give me a path to local ownership.
(Multiplayer games that require server infrastructure are a bit more complex, and I'd leave aside for now).
This should apply equally to video games, movies, books, music. Any digital content.
I'm curious about the environmental argument here. At face value it makes sense, but is there some hard data that shows that there is a meaningful number of consumers that buy new phones only (or "mostly") because of battery degradation?
The article (granted, probably not the best source of information) has some numbers like "number of phones sold", but doesn't actually tackle the crux of the issue: how many of those phone sales would be prevented by having user swappable batteries?
> [...]And because federal agencies were allowed to deploy the product during the review, GCC High spread across the government as well as the defense industry. By late 2024, FedRAMP reviewers concluded that they had little choice but to authorize the technology — not because their questions had been answered or their review was complete, but largely on the grounds that Microsoft’s product was already being used across Washington.
This sounds like the crux of the issue. The combination of: "tool can be used during analysis" and "analysis takes long" shifts the barrier of rejection from "is this tool safe?" to "is this tool so unsafe that we're willing to start a fight with a lot of other government agencies to remove it, find an alternative, etc?".
Not criticizing FedRAMP. Proper security review takes time. And probably more when dealing with vendors.
I hope so too, but don't believe that's the ultimate intent here.
The problem is that the tech independence is being pushed by government who want more control - not less. (Not speaking specifically of France and this instance, but looking at the anti-encryption rules that the UK and Ireland are pushing)
From that standpoint, I imagine the "solution" here won't be to push an open source alternative, but a closed one that they to control.
100% agree. The level of tracking has gotten to absurd levels.
I needed a couple of grocery items and happened to be next to an Amazon Fresh. Cool, let’s try it! Went in, found everything I needed and went to self checkout. When it was time to pay, the machine wouldn’t accept Apple Pay. I ask an employee who helpfully informs me that I can pay with physical cards or my Amazon account.
I didn’t have my physical cards, nor wanted to do my Amazon account so I had to leave empty handed. Why don’t they accept Apple Pay? Because they can’t track you. If you use a physical card, they can likely link that card number to an Amazon account and thus attribute the purchase to a person. If you pay with contactless payment they get a one time token that they can’t tie to anyone.
Looks like Microsoft is taking a page out of the cable companies' playbook. Next up, there will be "discounted" Copilot 365 or whatever: a 2 year contract with the "promotional price" locked in and a penalty fee for cancelling early.
My understanding is that the law doesn’t ban TikTok. The law gives the president the power to ban TikTok.
So the president can elect not to use said power.
Question: were the "medical reasons" specific or a generic "no because it's medical related" reason?
As in, did their refusal say "no because the way you're tracking if the user is on their back is not accurate enough?" or did they say "we don't allow people to write watch apps related to medical diagnoses / treatments / etc?"
It's not really the ads that bother me as much as the tracking, both implicit and explicit. I feel like now a days for anything that I want or need to do online I must provide my name, last name, email, phone number and address.
Why? I just want to (read that article | play that game | get that movie). I would HAPPILY pay for it. But why do I need to give you my name, phone or address. All you need to know is "account X successfully paid for content Y". Let me create an account without an insane amount of unnecessary information and pay in a private or at least semi-private way.
Worse part is that is even spreading to the real world. I went to a Pandora store a while back and they _refused_ to sell me a charm if I didn't "have an account" with them. My wife ended up getting a different gift.