Because you have the actively user-hostile version, as discussed. It is extremely sad that such tech is user-hostile, and it is equally sad that there aren't enough regulations in place to mandate that such options are opt-in-with-informed-consent, or able to be disabled in a way that retains as much functionality as possible while still respecting an opt-out, but since there is not, the options are either:

1. accept your system in the state in which it currently exists, complete with the ads or potential for them, or

2. disconnect and claw back as much functionality as you can.

You've accepted the first, and it's 100% your right to do so. However, since the situation we currently live in does not allow for both.

Give give your comment its due, we agree there are powers no state should ever have.

And, if one isn't careful, it isn't hard to creep up on a mode where it seems like giving the state this little bit more power is no biggie. My guy is running the show, it fixes a real problem and it isn't a big deal, right? And at some point you've crossed a line.

However.

Here we are. The barbarians are not at the gate; they are literally redecorating the White House. And you're worried about fantasy commies.

Perhaps we can compromise. "No ubiquitous surveillance for anyone, inclusive of fascists, commies, AND Unitarians."

And you remain free to test your water for fluoride before drinking it (at your own expense).

How's that?

This is the insidious two-step.

Flock probably didn't *accuse* anyone. They probably "indicated to law enforcement that further investigation is recommended". Flock gets out of it because it was "simply a recommendation", the PD gets out of it because they were "following standard protocol".

If there were really justice in this world, they would both be facing a $100M lawsuit (paid from the pension fund in the case of the PD), unless they agreed who would accept responsibility as a matter of formal record, in which case, the responsible party pays $100M and the 'whoopsie' side got only $1M...and then let the relationship strain as a result. ...but this is why the two-step exists - it protects both.

Yep. Municipal power is a natural thing to do - it is a situation where the locals are about as close to fully aligned with one another as they get - everyone wants reliable, cheap power and responsive service when you need it. So you make a captive company with a charter that keeps it aligned with its customers instead of Wall St. You don't take silly risks because you're not chasing infinite growth, customers gets decent rates, the area gets some decent local jobs out of it. Everyone except the predators are happy. If only other all local problems had such great solutions.

But, ohhh, booga-booga, that's communism. (Please just ignore Trump seizing the means of production.)

Learn to read.

If you are treating Windows devices as much like chromebooks as possible (autopilot deploy into S-mode; fairly draconian setup) you can get away with not too much IT; but at that point you really have to ask yourself why you are using Windows devices.

Most of the things you actually need windows for don't play all that well with that level of lockdown; and between chromebooks being cheap and defaulting to that level of lockdown without additional effort and the low end Apple stuff being nicer than wintel hardware that costs the same it's a bit tricky to make a strong case for running Windows systems as 'edgebooks'. You can; but it's not a super compelling option.

That's exactly why it's sort of disappointing to see him promoted away from actually doing stuff; and showing off a one of the less interesting "do Doom in a technically weird way" demos around.

Plenty of c-suite are just "meh, nothing of value was lost" when the suit fully engulfs the human; either they never seem to have done anything of interest or were popped directly out of some viscous spawning pool at McKinsey or whatever; but Russinovich was really good for nasty NT crevices work, so it seems a real shame for him to be vague CTO of cloud stuff. I don't begrudge him the money the promotion presumably involved; but going from actually interesting things to sending copilot to double booked meetings is kind of grim.

There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public. Cell phones are different because they're considered private communications despite using public airwaves.

There have been attempts to get precedent that automated, continuous monitoring is qualitatively different than a cop standing outside watching you, with unfortunately mixed results.

Mostly correct. I'd just add the average LEO doesn't care about catching criminals, either, if it takes too much effort.

Going beyond today, this is a long-running theme in US constitutional law. Before the colonial rebellion, King George was a big fan of "writs of assistance". These were effectively licenses for thugs to search or interrogate anyone at any time in pursuit of a crime (or "crime"), and of course anyone subject to such abuse hated it. So that's where the 4th Amendment came from - we do warrants, but you have to name with specificity what/who you want to investigate as well as why and under what authority, and get a judge to agree.

Authoritarians, thugs and control freaks have been trying to reinvent them ever since.

One famous case from before the digital era was Stanford v. Texas (1965). Texas, being extremely Texan, passed the Suppression Act, which made writings, photos, etc. "concerned with" the Texas Communist Party contraband subject to 20 year prison terms. The Supreme Court unanimously held the warrant was an unconstitutional general warrant.

Opposing general warrants is as American as apple pie, opposing kings and displaying amazing senses of entitlement.

The democrats crying is pure bullshit here. They wanted this to

A. This is nonsense on stilts. Name one elected Dem who promoted this.

B. Even shitbags like Cruz are saying this is illegal.

This benefits everyone's donors.

C. You seem to believe only elected politicians matter. What about the actual, you know, citizens who pay these government workers?

where they'll defend all the anti-human rights shit that happened to no end

Weird how selective you are about which humans and which rights.

Yes, do it. This is Slashdot, so I can meaningfully recommend what I did: buy a used Android phone like a Pixel 6a or something like that if you don't have one lying around. Then, load it up with iodeOS...there's an app stack that'll replace almost everything you requested.

CoMaps and Sygic GPS both provide these, the latter being $18/year and working completely offline.

Spotify still works; I also use either AntennaPod for podcasts or PowerAmp ($7 once) to play the music I loaded onto it.

...yeah, disconnecting the car makes this one impossible, no getting around it.

OwnTracks, possibly combined with Reitti on the server side if you're feeling a bit extra.

well, Sygic and Comaps both show distance to destination, and the last five cars I've owned have showed me miles-to-empty on the ICE side; I'd imagine the EV side will do the same, and from there it's just a subtraction problem. Sygic does have an EV mode; I don't know how that behaves, but it probably narrows the gap a bit.

Agreed...and that's why the systems are desirable to buyers...but since it's clear that these systems can and will be actively used to make money for the OEM, there's a trade to be made. The aforementioned setup isn't a drop-in replacement, but it checks off many of the things on your list.

That said my car has never shown ads, fuck BMW and I highly recommend no one ever buy their cars.

Yet. BMW has been the most aggressive at post-purchase monetization, but the others will follow.

I completely agree. Waymo has a lot of work to do.

And it isn't just passenger safety - those things are a menace during civil emergencies. There needs to be both a lot of work put in to contextually proper response to exceptional circumstances - from what should be easy stuff like "don't block fire trucks or drive over fire hoses" on through figuring out how to safely get out of the way when power goes out. For reference, right now we're at the point where they still confuse themselves.

Of course if you also intentionally cripple them by omitting multiple available, useful sensory modalities, climbing that capability hill will be that much harder, and you'll obviously never get the same safety in some high-salience situations like a kid running out from behind a parked car if you aren't running something that can "see" behind it.

Well, the thing is that having a frictionless ordering process that allows more sales-per-hour is good if the goal is to sell coffee, but the point of a Starbucks, originally, was to be a 'third place' that wasn't the home or the office, so paying $4 for a cup of coffee or $8 for a thousand-calorie caffeinated milkshake was entirely justifiable when the value proposition was "paying for a place to sit down with a cup of coffee for an hour". Shifting to a coffee pickup location means that the value proposition shifts, and paying half as much for a cup of coffee twice the size at 7-Eleven while I'm getting gas tends to win out on both cost and convenience - dissuading customers from sitting down and hanging out gives fewer reasons for people to *go to Starbucks*.

Likely, but for different reasons. I left T-Mobile about two years ago, after being a customer for over 20 years. They weren't less expensive than Verizon or AT&T anymore, and they pissed me off for other reasons...but having a retail channel means being able to make a few dollars off accessories with new phone sales, it means having a first-point-of-contact with a rep who, at least *used to* help address customer issues from tech support to billing discrepancies, and so forth. I could understand perhaps reducing the number of stores, but if they're going to give the same service level as an MVNO (buy a phone on Amazon, everything is an online transaction), they're going to have to compete on price way better than they currently are.

It's possible that T-Mobile is looking to be a more muted player in the field and quietly make more money by just being the network of the MVNO's, but I don't think they'll be able to compete with Verizon and their retail presence without having a retail presence, any more than they'll be able to compete with the MVNO's on price.

It would be interesting to know what the numbers look like in terms of schools that are actually doing something at least modestly Apple-specific vs. ones basically reusing chromebook-focused plans on Apple hardware.

Anything you hand out is going to be 'a platform' and normalize it for the students(not necessarily a point in its favor; people tend to resent the deliberate limitations of hardware that IT has been told to at least try to make less useful for porn and cheating); but there is a potential difference in versatility and vendor flexibility between people actually adopting some macOS stuff and people concluding that chromebooks have been getting more expensive at an alarming clip, without feeling any less cheap, so Apple is now genuinely competitive even if you are just going to slap managed chrome on there and reuse your existing, chromebook focused, IT and curriculum stuff.

I'm assuming you mean they were binned with fewer cores.

I guess they are "slightly defective" in the same way an Epyc 9115 is a slightly defective 9965.