they have no expectation to value my privacy

That's not true. They do care about privacy, which is why they have that tracking antifeature that I mentioned before. You can't discount that! The only difference between what they're doing and what you apparently want them to be doing is that they don't assume that just because something is using an unnecessary permission it means it's violating the user's privacy. You can argue that maybe they're wrong for failing to assume that, but you have to acknowledge that there's a difference between F-Droid not being perfect vs. F-Droid not giving a shit.

Have you ever tried bringing this issue up with the F-Droid folks? If you haven't, I wouldn't be surprised if they're more receptive to it than you think, especially since you have patches to submit instead of just an idea.

in a similar accident 2 days later in the same area several people died. no, not funny.

This is a good plan. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plantlife. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. Selecting survivors need not be difficult -- a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills.

Naturally, they would breed prodigiously; there would be much time, and little to do. And, with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, society could be rebuilt. Though since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Mein Fuhrer, we should start planning at once!

Featuring GGL (Gateless Gate Logic).

Any brand, so long as it was made more than 25 years ago or so.

My kids like to watch vintage TV shows, and in one sitcom from the early 80s there was a plot line involving a TV remote -- this was back when remotes were still an expensive novelty. I paused and pointed out the thing in question. It was huge blocky moster of metal and wood, and looked like it had been forged by Durin in the deeps of Mount Gundabad. While virtually everything they use is incomparably more sophisticated than that thing, nothing approaches the build quality; physically it's all injection-molded crap that's been designed to be discarded after two or three years and replaced.

We can thank Bill Clinton and his China trade deals for amazingly cheap consumer goods that are designed to fail after a couple of years and be impossible to repair.

Battery? No, what we need are nukes, a subterranean (submarsean?) vehicle that can travel to the core to place them, and a team of misfit heroes.

I've used my Nexus 7 that way, and it works reasonably well. The biggest problem, as always, is that apps that are optimized for the small displays of most mobile devices simply don't work that well on larger screens. I have used it quite frequently with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and RDP software to work on our terminal services server, and there really isn't any noticeable difference between that and a PC remoting in. It's rather a special case, to be sure.

You mean like one of these>?

They flag git apps for having github integration with giant "promotes non-free services" ads, even if there is no actual promotion, just API support, and yet they have versions of things where the effort has been made to compile without google libs, but that still ask for device ID. For example, their version f the google sky map app, they go to the trouble to compile with certain libraries replaced, but they leave in the part where it asks for the device ID, etc. It is a totally passive app with no legit use at all for device ID. No warnings.

I've just done a search in F-Droid for 'git' and looked through all the results. I found the following:

• Github, the "official Github Android App" has a red warning that says "This app promotes non-free network services."
• OctoDroid, described as a "GitHub Client" (not a "git client," a "GitHub client") which says that it "supports all the basic github.com features" does NOT have a red warning.

Having never used either app I don't know how fair F-droid's choice to display the warning in one case but not the other actually was, but it at least seems plausible to me that the "official" app would be more likely to "promote" the service than other apps.

As for Sky Map, if the program is indeed using the Device Id for some nefarious purpose, I'd expect a red warning saying "this app tracks and reports your activity" (or whatever message was appropriate). In the absence of such a message, I would assume that either the app isn't actually doing anything (and the F-droid people think it's sufficient to let the Android permissions dialog handle informing the user of a permission that doesn't matter) or the lack of warning is an oversight on F-droid's part (I mean, clearly, if F-droid has an tracking anti-feature, failing to mark an app that does tracking with it is certainly a bug).

I would also say that even if we don't *know* that the app is doing something nefarious, the existence of unnecessary permissions itself merits a red warning message (or at least a yellow caution message), and would like to see such a policy/feature implemented. However, I don't think the lack of such a feature constitutes "false claims" on the F-Droid maintainers' part.

The bottom line is that if your allegations about F-droid are true, then you're justified in being upset, but I'm not sure those issues deserve to be ascribed to malice when there's still enough reasonable doubt (IMO) to ascribe them to accident.

So actually bothering to read the government's account of what it has done makes you a "leftist" then? And then telling other people what you found is "harassment"?

It must be easy to whip up that old self-righteous anger when you're so -- let's say, "semantically flexible".

The issue isn't secrecy OR expansiveness, or even both. The problem comes when you add fast track to those two.

Fast track is intended to strengthen the US negotiator's hand in trade deals. Here's how it works. By granting the President "fast track", Congress agrees to vote on the treaty exactly as negotiated by the President within sixty days, only forty-five of which the bill is in the hands of the relevant committee.

Fast track developed in the Cold War era. The idea was for situations like this. Suppose we we are discreetly negotiating with the Kingdom of Wakanda for access to their vibranium reserves. But we're worried about the Soviets getting wind of this, so we keep everything on the DL and rush like hell to get the deal through Congress before they can stick their oar in and queer the deal.

And for a relatively simple quid-pro quo type deal negotiated on the side in a bi-lateral world where you're with the commies or not, this procedure makes sense. But not for a massive, complex, multi-lateral accord that will govern the economic relations between twelve nations, and which took ten years to draft. How the hell is Congress supposed to examine something like that in forty-five days?

Don't let them give you a set-top box. Make them give you a CableCard instead, and take a stand for the spirit of "any lawful device" (which should have been applied to cable companies, but hasn't).

Also, they'll tell you the box is "free," but if you swap it for a CableCard they should give you a discount.

I'm honestly not even sure where the cable box is; I asked them not to send me one but they did anyway.

Send it back and demand a CableCard. Not only is it a good "fuck you" to those who hate the idea of people having the audacity to hook up their own equipment, it should also get you a small discount (because contrary to what they tell you, that first cable box is only "free" in the sense that the rental fee is built into the advertized price).

This could be fun, actually.