I am disabled too but I still go out. It's strange but... I'm missing a few body parts, and the small degree of functional augmentation my implants provide my partially-failed biological body feels like fighting back disability through technology, if that makes sense.

It's hard to explain and most people don't understand, but my implants give me a degree of feeling like I can do something more than just endure the loss of amputation. It's entirely psycholofical, I know, but if you're disabled too, you understand.

Haha no. But I don't shy away from going all the way on solutions that I deem worth it to improve my quality of life.

Implants aren't fun to put in, they're not cheap, and the devices you use them with - like RFID or NFC locks and such - aren't cheap either. But if you have the money and you're willing to grit your teeth for a few minutes, they're totally worth it. At least that's my opinion.

There is, again if you have the money. I use this stupidly expensive padlock with an equally thick chain.

I hate having stuff on me. Worse: I hate having to remember that I need to take stuff with me, and then realize I need something and I forgot it. To each his own I guess.

I've been through a 2T MRI machine twice and have had numerous X-rays taken, no problem.

I can't count the number of times I've misplaced my keys or cards, or left them at home. Some people are good at never losing those things. I'm not.

But even if you never forget anything, there's nothing like going about your life without ever carrying anything in your pockets. It's truly liberating.

There is no inconvenience: The card is in my hand, and when I'm not using it to pay for something - which is like 99.99% of the time - it's like if it wasn't there. The only inconvenience is getting sliced open to insert it. But that's a 10-minute affair, then 5 minutes to get the stitch out 10 days later.

And no, sadly the card is not truly tokenized. So it has an expiry date. Mine expires in 2029, after which I'll have to have it replaced. But once every 9 years is acceptable for the convenience (I've had mine installed in 2020).

Wasn't Huawei on the US administration's radar for being a PRC spyware distributor?

If that doesn't convince you the US spews out just as much propaganda as China does, I don't know what does.

I'm gen-X and I don't do phone payments either. Not that I don't want to, it's just not part of my groove.

I have many implants to do many things. Paying for stuff is just one of them. But I also open doors, share my contact information, log into my computers, do 2FA...

It's hard to explain to those who don't wear implants, but once you get used to never needing keys, access cards or payment cards, it's hard to get back. I seriously couldn't live without them. Like popping into any store to do the groceries and simply waving my hand to pay instead of fumbling in my pocket, only to realize I left my wallet at home or something. It really does grow on you.

As for nudity, you jest, but my local swimming pool has NFC lockers and I can enroll one of my implants when I close my locker, so I don't have to wear a bracelet while I swim. It's little things like that...

It's not "the Western world" so much as the US. I'm pretty sure Spain or Germany have no problem with hentai.

Case in point: I have a payment implant in my hand. What that is essentially is a contactless Mastercard payment chip from a keychain wearable that's been extracted from the wearable and embedded in bio-compatible goop.

Well, if the payment processor or Mastercard ever learn that my wearable is in fact under your skin, Mastercard will strike it off their network. It's happened to others who didn't keep their mouth shut and got checked out by the payment processor: they were asked to produce a selfie of them holding the wearable, and of course they couldn't.

Why you ask? Because after all, what does Mastercard care where people put their wearables provided they're valid, right?

Because of the religious right in the US spewing off nonsense about the "mark of the beast". Mastercard wants nothing to do with implants to appease the religious nutters and avoid bad publicity. It's the ONLY F*ING REASON. And that forces implantees in all the other reasonable countries in the world that don't have ridiculous religious groups to play hide-and-seek with Mastercard.

...will be translated into "The suspect was resisting arrest and the officer had no choice".

Each. And. Every. Time.

This is just going to be automated whitewashing. Because why would Axon antagonize their customers by making an impartial AI bot that transcribes the truth eh? They clearly have a conflict of interest here.

Since Reddit announced it was going to sell "its" data (i.e. the data it was given for free by all the redditors), I've been busy deleting most of my posting history, and pumping old posts I left there full of technical idiocies and fake facts,

Why you ask?

Because 1/ it hurts Reddit and 2/ it trains AI on bad data.

I have no intention of helping business models based on mooching off people's contributions.

Putting Palestinians in Bantustans doesn't absolve Israel of apartheid. They still have literal laws that take away rights of Palestinians even with Israeli citizenship.

Government... productivity?

Facebook asks you to pay them not to abuse you. If that's not a Mafia-style protection racket, I don't know what is.

But besides that, even if you do pay, how can you trust Facebook not to put you under surveillance, invade your privacy and monetize your data anyway? The one thing Facebook has proven again and again over the years is that they're not to be trusted in any way, and it's not like an independent body will ensure they're true to their word.

All you'll see if you pay up is the outward appearance that Facebook is not invading your privacy. Whether it's true or it's just theater... I know what my money is on.

Clearly this is a great step forward for humanity.

Well, I'm living it. Perhaps I'm lucky, or perhaps it's because I'm late in my career and I have enough experience to have that luxury, but I definitely choose who I work for.

In fact, I have for a long time:

Back around 2000, I had an opportunity to work at Citrix. I didn't really know who Citrix was back then. but they were already big and definitely an attractive employer to land a job at.

They came to the offices of the company I was working for back then to hunt for potential recruits, because my company was closing and they were nice enough to organize job interviews in their facilities before throwing everybody out.

So I got interviewed by the Citrix head hunters. When they explained what Citrix did, how they had a tight partnership with Microsoft, and would I like to join the team, I told them "Thanks but no. If you're in cahoots with Microsoft, I'll decline if you don't mind." Then I walked out of the room. Them guys couldn't believe that this 30-something junior programmer just blew them off, because they expected everybody to want a job at Citrix really bad :)

So yeah, if you don't feel like working for certain companies, unless you're desperate for the money, just don't.