It isn't even better than most. I would argue that it is in fact worse. This legislation is still sorely underwhelming unless it completely addresses artificial crippling of devices when 3rd party components and 3rd party repair shops are ruled out. The only thing that Apple did was stall so they could get crippling software in place that allows then to lock out 3rd parties. Just fixing the devices is not sufficient. The legislation needs to ENFORCE that there is competition in both the parts and the repair arenas. Also, any software necessary should be free of charge to the owner of the device if they decide to self help.

Glad I'm not the only one. I was already semi-boycotting Sony even prior to the rootkit thing because of their insistence on using proprietary memory stick format for all their devices long after everyone else had adopted a standard... I think it was MMC at the time. But when they did the rootkit it has been a complete boycott for me. I have not given Sony a single cent of my money since then other than watching a few of the Spider-Man movies. Even then I felt dirty afterwards.

When any branch of government ever remotely tries to justify ANYTHING like this it is time to rid them from their positions. If the people in NYC and state aren't voting every fucking idiot out that supports this from the police in any remote way, they need to be removed. Police unions need to be stripped and removed. Cameras should not be able to be turned off by poilce. ALL police camera footage should immediately be accessible, no questions asked to anyone in any police interaction whatsoever. In addition to that, all police footage even when there is not an incident should have a regular citizen review board that constantly and randomly reviews footage from all cameras whether there is an active incident or not. Purely randomized review and if the camera is not worn or is covered, the police are not acting in an official capacity. This is the only way that police corruption will be rooted out. They need to brought down not just a notch, but they need their damn wings clipped.

I think for the betterment of humanity, the entire concept of information being copyrighted and locked up needs to go away. People can still make money with things made from knowledge, but the knowledge itself should always be free. Nowhere is this more evident than in medicine. Public money goes into universities to fund research but then universities and individuals still get to tie up the knowledge legally. Yes, it would be severely disruptive of markets, but for the long term betterment of humanity, all knowledge should be free.

This isn't even close to sufficient level of protest. The government isn't supposed to know where we travel especially within our own borders. It does not take knowing who someone is to confirm they have no weapons or explosives or otherwise. Also, the entire premise is security theater and their current method makes the carnage even worse (human toll wise). If someone wants to wear an explosive vest and detonate on a plane, they take out the planes passengers and the plane. This stupid security theater just moves that point to the security line. Now someone can just detonate and line and take out MULTIPLE PLANE worth of travelers waiting in the security line to be groped and personally identified. Fuck that and them.

Yes, that charge speed is the reason I can never do EV until it is resolved. I drive regularly for work. I put about 25k miles on my vehicles per year and regularly drive more than 300 miles. I am absolutely OK with an electrical vehicle that matches most gasoline cars for fill up which is in that 300 mile range. But taking even 15 minutes to fill up is a no go, but when you may be driving 600 - 1000 miles in a single day, you need to be able to start with a full charge and get another full charge, possibly 2 in a very quick charge. Even the 15 minute super charger times that people quote are only an 80% fill. Charging to 100% capacity is a very long charge even with super chargers.

I fly self built gyroplanes and ultralights and I would not get in that thing and go higher than I am willing to fall. Every type of aircraft currently out there has the ability to be fully/mostly controllable in the event of an engine outage. To my knowledge nothing that is a drone or built similarly has any ability to do anything but fall when there is an engine outage. Sure you could add more engines/motors, but they are all electric. You MIGHT have a motor failure and lose only one, but if the power delivery system fails you are going to drop like a rock.

Moving this same argument over to sports...
I still call them the Washington Redskins and will to the day that I die. I will also refuse to call any arena by the sponsor name. College bowl games that only have sponsor names and not named after fruit or other things are bullshit and not a real bowl. Language doesn't have to change if you don't want it to. I work in IT and it will be whitelist/blacklist till the day that I die because until this stupid fucking kerfuffle happened, it never even entered my mind that some people might equate it skin color for people. I refuse to change my terminology for it because I used these terms innocently with not thought of it in that way. Just because someone got offended that there MIGHT be that interpretation the whole fucking politically correct movement jumps in tries to change it. Yea... fuck them.

I control my network connection. My bandwidth is not unlimited even with an unlimited account. Anything that is funneled into a computer that was not explicitly asked for is a very real additional and avoidable security risk as well as a waste of my bandwidth. I will not allow ads on my machine for any reason. Every network that I control is a whitelist based system. I spend massive amounts of time tweaking my systems so that only the things that I legitimately need can function and everything else fails by default. I have no IoT devices that are allowed onto the internet. All of my connected devices are sandboxed in my home or work networks and access from remote is only via VPN by me inbound.

It isn't just this. Almost all 2 factor authentication as implemented by the big internet companies is not even about security and much less privacy. The 2 factor authentication mechanisms are all implemented in a way that forces you to tie an account to a REAL person... not just an online identity that you can choose allow someone else to access, or very easily couple and decouple from devices, locations or applications. 2 factor is fine and good as long as it doesn't force you into divulging your real identity. I do not and will not ever trust Google, Microsoft, Reddit or any other company to have information that allows them to tell exactly who I am in real life. VPN's, custom phone ROMs all are in use. I should be able to authenticate to any app or site that I want to use and do it mostly anonymously. When you combine it with virtual, one time use credit cards, there is very little that they can point back to a real user. From there you can just hide in plain site.

There will always be piracy, but there is a significant portion of it that can be stopped by having a consumer bill of rights enforced by government. Things like the following list of items:
1) Enforced compatibility. Companies can create content, but should not be able to force it to be used on any particular platform especially when those platforms give them insight into peoples lives. Currently companies leverage their content to force you to use players and software that give them additional creepy insight into your life. You should be able to use any player or OS software of your choice that allows you to block any information exchange other than the bare minimum to ensure the content was paid for appropriately.
2) No phone home routines, or at the very least no phone home routines that cannot be declined and VERIFIED to be declined. Pinned certificates should be outlawed. It should ALWAYS be possible for the owner of any device to make their own decision to install a proxy and their own certificates to create an authorized man in the middle to be able to verify what their devices are sending in and out of your network about you giving you the ability to block it.
3) Intellectual property can be sold as either IP or a thing. Not both. Companies must choose one or the other at creation time. If you choose to sell your product as intellectual property, then the license can only be sold once. Once you have purchased rights to the IP, you can use that IP in any way and acquire it from any source of your choice for life. If you buy it on CD and it was sold as IP and NOT as a thing, then you bought rights to use the software or music or movie forever even if it shows up on new media types. If a company decides to sell it as a thing, then it is yours outright and they have no more right to limit you in any way shape or form.
4) Rights to usage must be equal across all platforms. Right now you have stupid shit like Youtube being free to use and able to be used mostly anonymously when you are on a PC platform. But if you move to Kodi, iphone or especially android, the android platform is controlled by Google directly, so they have the ability to do stupid shit like enforce that you can't play videos in background unless you pay. On PC that ability is explicit. Most of this would be nullified by BoR #1 above.
5) This one is the biggest of them all. Guaranteed separation of software and hardware in all cases. From phones and tablets to TV's to automobiles. If companies attempt to do stupid shit like artificially crippling features that are inherent in software for the purposes of selling that functionality back to you, it absolutely should be a right to remove their software and apply your own and it should be illegal for companies to write the software or design the hardware in any way that makes this difficult or impossible.

You know what is bullshit about this? It is bullshit because it is limited to only agricultural equipment. Fixing anything yourself or from third party shops should be inherent in EVERYTHING. Artificial lockouts by the companies that try to force you stay in their small tightly controlled and expensive ecosystem should be illegal.

The biggest thing I will be interested in seeing is if this turns programming back around to be "whatever you can imagine" again. In the early days of home computing, there were no limits. At least no artificial limits. None in the OS's, none in the applications. If you had the skills, you could create whatever your heart desired. But as Windows version progressed, more and more artificial limitations keep getting put in. Initially they were honest and somewhat acceptable, like mild copy protection schemes. But as time has gone on, these have been weaponized in many different ways. Ways that treat the owner of devices as if they are the malware themselves. Ways that artificially cripple things that are inherent in those devices so they can sell those crippled items back to you. If people not affiliated with companies begin to be able to make code themselves, this will change back to being devices and software for and by the owner with the only limitations being your own imagination. Fuck artificial crippling. Fuck software as a service. Fuck having to ask servers not under your control to control things in your own home behind your firewall. I hope this will once and for all be the end of this shit when people realize I don't have to be crippled by you asshats making software that limits or polices me on my own devices.

Passwords don't belong in the cloud. Also, the encryption thing is irrelevant. If you aren't controlling the encryption in advance or allowing any app to access it, then you must assume they have access to the data. If they control the encryption, then they absolutely do in some form. Either they have access on the back end, or they can use their app and upgrade permissions to change the app and allow access to themselves without your knowledge.

Most things do not belong in the cloud, not just passwords.