> This is generally driven by people’s desire for a new device, including for the functionalities provided by new models.
So people are to blame, not the companies shoveling ads, offering promotions to buy new phones, and in general creating the huge demand that they later, "are forced to satisfy".
The article is great and very informative. But I feel there's a general vibe of "privatizations are great". For example, they do mention that privatizations didn't work in Argentina (they were a total mess and the total railway went from something like 50k kilometers to two thirds of that - if) but they don't mention enough of it - or other cases - to understand which regulations and why worked the way they did. It feels too much like it's all about integrating corporations, and that's it.
I was dual booting Linux Mint (work) and Windows 11 (games). A month ago, Windows started trying to push an update, which I resisted. A week ago, they just force fed it to my computer. I deleted the partitions without a second thought, tried CachyOS, realized that the games I play worked perfectly out of the box, and now I'm using it as my main OS. I'm never again installing windows on a computer I own.
I think there should be less "how to solve friendship" posts, which see our social interactions as "problems" to be solved, and more reflection about how this is a consequence of a market oriented, inequality driving system. If the problem is that friendships need time, we should demand less working time and more free time to establish friendships.
Sometimes it looks like the purpose of those hundreds of billions of parameters and those apparent feats of engineering, is to get others to tell you how clever you are. Now we have even automated that.
I suggest everyone interested in learning how these theories emerge, and how the social sciences work, to give it a read. Also, it kind of dismantles the whole idea of System 1 and 2, which then I guess would question the theoretical foundations of this paper too.
I'm a bit surprised to see those examples, because there's nothing really new here. These are typical beginner pitfalls and have been there for at least a decade or more. Or maybe it's because I learned java in the late 90s and later used it for J2ME, and then using things like StringBuilder (StringBuffer in the old days) were almost mandatory, and you would be very careful trying to avoid unnecessary object allocations.
> Flip the toggle and tap to confirm you are not being coerced
This is just spreading fear. If you're being coerced to do this, then you're in a much bigger danger than what a rogue application sideloaded to your phone represents.
> you are making the recipient wade through noise to get to signal
Because we all know that human beings are actually computers in disguise, or radio receivers, and everything that matters is "perfect", "unpolluted" transmission of messages. :shrug:
Not exactly governments, but I work with NGOs in Germany, and plenty of them use Teams and other MS products, just because they receive them for free and don't have the budget to pay someone to install open source alternatives. Training is especially costly and in these environments people are not really "digital native". It's not even about age, but about culture: people here will do what they are trained to do and fear doing something they don't know, because they might "do something wrong".
I was responsible for a platform that gives free online storage, chat functions and videocalls (BBB) for NGOs, and had to hear these arguments over and over when discussing migrations.
So unless there is a political drive, together with good trainings and support, the transition is very very difficult.
Reminds me of an unfinished game I did long time ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTtX8CavRTk
It also had a 3D mode. Unfortunately it was too difficult to understand what was going on and most play testers were just confused, instead of having fun. :)
No situation justifies external interference, especially not by the US, which has done more than its fair share of invading and then just making things worse for everyone, like in Afghanistan and Iraq.