So, I think you are saying "wow, you're right, my company is being shitty. I could admit it, but that would involve admitting to being wrong, which is uncomfortable. Instead, I'll just swap topics and spew out a bunch of random bile unconnected with the previous technical discussion, and assume that everyone is too stupid to realize this".

Are you a politician? Because you sound like a politician.

The fact that you say "Google's RCS" shows that you have no clue what is going on but want to feel special by talking with the adults.

The only "Google's RCS" is a client which Google write which follows the RCS standards and adds an open e2e encryption protocol on top, and a server which follows the RCS protocol. All of this is readily available standards which anyone who cares about security and privacy can follow (or not, if they don't). People use Google's RCS client because their cell phone manufacturer refuses to implement their own secure version (like Apple) but does allow third-party SMS apps (unlike Apple). People use Google's RCS server because their cell carrier refuses to implement their own version.

So, Apple could make messages end-to-end secure for their users, but they choose not to. Google chooses to make messages to/from their users as secure as the other end permits.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you care about privacy and security, Apple is provably terrible and insecure (for both their own users and for anyone their users communicate with), and Google is demonstrably trying to make things private and secure for both their own users and all other users. Apple fans, please explain why Apple is not a shitty insecure company, because this seems really damn clear.

You're only mostly correct. Chargers don't pull full power when not charging a device, but cheaper ones still pull a small amount; you can tell when the wall wart is warmer than ambient. Ditto with wireless pads, so a wireless charger loses power both at the wart and the pad.

But still, the amount wasted per month is less than what a fridge uses for a few minutes; you're wasting more energy bending over to unplug the charger when not using it than just leaving it alone.

I'm in western PA, and prices are a bit higher but nowhere near double. A quick look at www.usinflationcalculator.com/ implies that food prices are up but not nearly so much.

I heard about an earnings call for Costco in the last few years, where an investor complained that Costco could make more profit by raising prices at the same rate as competing stores, and Costco claiming that they wouldn't do that since their underlying cost wasn't rising that quickly. I suspect that a lot of "food inflation" can be traced back to the stores that are now making record profits, and that's not the government's nor the Fed's fault.

Hey, hey. They don't want useful information. They just want to whine about the government, the Fed, and Biden! If you're not going to post comments that confirm their crazy biases, you clearly shouldn't post anything at all...

Seriously, I'm amazed at how much people want to believe inflation is high and the economy is poor, despite all evidence to the contrary. I mean, things aren't perfect, but they're doing pretty well.

So, inflation means prices always go up. And video services have historically raised prices faster than inflation.

In related astonishing news, the sky is up and water is wet.

I have, like when I was planning a vacation I did a lot of similar or identical searches over a few days. But if I did that, and the search target was then the victim of a crime, yeah, the police should probably look at me.

Keyword search warrants are easy to abuse, but this specific case doesn't seem to be an abuse. I wish we had way more privacy for our online presence, but this case doesn't make anything worse.

Fraud has been with us forever. A low amount of ventures using "fiat currency" are fraud; a moderate amount of real estate ventures are fraud; and seemingly most cryptocurrency ventures are fraud. Fraud is not new, but the percentage of fraud in cryptocurrency is very high.

In surprising news that nobody could have ever predicted, the amount of fraud seems inversely proportional to the level of financial regulation in the area. There are valid arguments for looser financial regulations, but crypto effectively argues for the opposite.

10 years? Maybe not, though five years happens. And since schools often buy models released a few years ago (to save money), and replace broken models with refurbs, you can run past the 5-years-from-initial-release policy.

$250 chromebooks won't age well, but $500 or $1000 chromebooks will stay fast enough for quite a long time.

Actually, while their chances started near zero, using firearms would have made them zero instantly. If the rioters had firearms, then folks would have sent in the national guard instantly without waiting for Trump to authorize it. Also we'd have only a few insurrection trials but a lot of insurrection funerals.

This is why the plan seems to have been to start without guns and only bring in the guns once congress was hostage. We are fortunate that those who hate democracy are also, so far, terrible planners.

Yeah, but being anti-competitive is not illegal. Most companies are as anti-competitive as they can be given the market realities. Only certain types of anti-competitive behavior are illegal, and they are only illegal if a company has monopoly power. Which Apple does not.

Is Apple annoying and kinda slimy for how they limit their app store on their hardware? Sure. But since you are not forced to use their hardware (Android has a much larger market share), Apple is probably not being illegal. This is in the USA; I have no idea how the EU rules work, and I'm pretty sure that most Europeans don't know either.

Agreed. Apple doesn't even have monopoly power; they definitely don't have a monopoly on anything (unless you define their "market" in a stupid way).

I wish that Apple allowed alternate app stores, but they don't, and since Google does allow other app stores, consumers have choices. I wish that we had smartphones that ran something other than Android or iOS, but again, Google allows other companies to customize Android until it barely counts as Android (also, all other smart OSs have died from self-inflicted wounds, and not because Apple/Google killed them). I wish a lot of things about the world were different. But that doesn't mean that Apple is a monopoly.

And honestly, if Epic could become the only app store on some platform, I bet they would be way worse than Apple or Google. Apple makes their money on hardware; Google makes it on advertising. Epic makes their money in their app store, so they have way more incentive to be assholes (and way more history of the same).

That's easy. It's a free speech issue to anyone who blames the government for all of their problems because personal responsibility is something that happens to other people, not to them. Nowadays in the USA this is primarily (but not exclusively) folks on the rightward end of politics; it has been different in the past.

It's also a good sign of someone who will loudly explain the constitution to you, incorrectly but with great fervor.. They will explain how THEIR book-banning by the state government is legal and righteous and not a first amendment issue, while Youtube de-monetizing ivermectin videos is a terrible first amendment violation. Good times, good times.

This fine seems way too small to discourage insider-trading, which is worth billions not millions.

You mean Jabber/XMPP? gtalk was open and interoperable, but since exactly zero other non-trivial services would federate with them, nobody cared. Eventually Google got tired of keeping the door open while being limited by XMPP's oddities. But no worries, rather than complain about the dozens of messaging systems which never even tried to interoperate (including iMessage which was/is XMPP based), you whine about the one company which tried and was ignored. One wonders why Google even tries.

Google chat protocols have never had any significant market-share; honestly, RCS is probably the highest market share they have ever had in this area. And RCS is fully interoperable, though Google has to route most messages through their own servers because Telecoms don't care about security, interoperability, or functionality.