In fairness...

1.) Cisco is far less litigation happy than Oracle is. Not saying they don't have attorneys on retainer, but Oracle is frequently referred to as a law firm with a software sales division - very different tiers.

2.) Cisco owned Linksys for a while, sure, but they haven't owned it in nearly 15 years - Cisco sold it over to Belkin back in 2013, who in turn sold it to Foxconn around 2018.

3.) Cisco may have discontinued selling routers running Linux out of the box, but they never did any signed-bootloader shenanigans that prevented DD-WRT/Tomato/OpenWRT from running on routers for quite some time - I remember running Shibby's TomatoUSB on an AC3200 for quite some time. Ironically, I think Belkin later started making it nearly-impossible to run third party firmware on Linksys hardware (except the $400 ones).

4.) It's not like anyone else took up the mantle...a handful of routers can run OpenWRT, but they're from obscure vendors - it's not like Cisco got rid of OSS-running routers, only to have Belkin or Netgear or D-Link take it up...Asus did for a little bit (the N56U being a better example), but they didn't keep up with it.

So yeah, Cisco has its clear faults...but how they handled the consumer router division, in my opinion, isn't the best example of this problem...and certainly not when being compared to Oracle.

Irrespective of the nationality of the people making decisions, I think what the GP is getting at is that there were different philosophies over the decades at Microsoft. Amongst the things Ballmer is most famous for is his "Developers, developers, developers, developers" mantra...and the idea was to make Windows the easiest platform to develop software for, and the developers would write software that would encourage the proliferation of Windows in the market. It was a rare case of growth by "trickle-down economics" - take care of the developers, and the developers would grow the market for the platform.

Microsoft's method of increasing shareholder value during the Ballmer era was indirect - value was sought after by market capture, which was fulfilled more so by third party developers than by Microsoft itself. By contrast, the Nadella era has been about "increasing shareholder value" by pushing everyone to Azure and Office subscriptions and by putting ads into Windows and by data harvesting.

Neither era was some sort of pinnacle of customer care; both were concerned about increasing shareholder value. I think the GP is at least somewhat justified in having concern about Microsoft's shift toward increasing shareholder value by making the Windows platform being actively-user-hostile, rather than developer-friendly.

Windows 95 and 98 shipped with "Progman", a UI shell that loosely mirrored Windows 3.1. Windows XP, and even Vista, shipped with a "classic mode" Start Menu. My standards are lower now; if they could stop breaking ExplorerPatcher and OpenShell, that'd be great.

And do what? Develop UWP apps to be sold in the Windows Store that was so poorly implemented and curated that it's useful for almost-nobody - the developers still writing desktop Windows software likely have an established distribution channel at this point, so they don't need to pay the MS tax. The users have no need for it because they're either doing everything in a web browser, or using their existing software that already has a distribution channel of some kind. This means that the software on offer amounts to mostly-shovelware.

Tangential because it's Office...but they could show they're listening by making Copilot an icon in a corner when logging into Microsoft365, rather than spitting the user into a chat window by default. They're still trying to find a use case for on-device AI, and it's pretty telling that they're shoving it into the OS via annoyances, while their best example (Recall) is something that made more people say "that's creepy" than would say "that's useful". Copilot is the new Clippy in Office, there are memes about how plain-English formulas in Excel make obvious mathematical mistakes, and this is all on the backdrop of sucking everyones' data into OneDrive.

...So, by the author's admission, AI isn't a feature that matters? ...Seriously, I'm half asleep and I can still come up with holes in this argument...I don't think it's going to stop until the AI bubble implodes; the best we can hope for is for MS to implement fewer nags about it, but if Edge is any indication, I've got no confidence.

Mozilla did this....and unfortunately, it's worse than useless.

Strictly speaking, Toyota's privacy policy is pretty liberal in terms of what is involved, and has been for years...and that's what their rating is based on. And, credit to Toyota, their "we can do whatever we want and you can't sue us" policy goes pretty far back, so Mozilla ranked my 1999 Camry as pretty not-privacy-centric. That's useless, because it got the same ranking as a 2024 Tesla Model S.

Now, regardless of what the paperwork says, the practical difference between the two could not be more different. The 1999 Camry had an ODB2 port, which meant it *did* do some tracking...but it kept it on the computer, and Toyota only got their hands on it if I brought it to their shop and they dumped the memory. A 2024 Tesla sends audio and video data, driving data, mapping data, and remote lock/unlock/disable commends to Tesla, in real-time.

Any list that puts these two things on the same level is worse than useless. 1999 Toyota's data is as opt-in as data sharing could possibly be. Tesla's data sharing requires lots of skill to implement, and functionality tradeoffs as a consequence. The paperwork may reflect that Toyota can share their data dumps if they get them, but Tesla's data collection is not just a default, it's a warranty-voiding engineering problem.

So, yes, I would *love* such a list...but when the privacy advocates are as useless as the privacy violators, the only list that *might* make some traction is an ad-hoc, opt-in list that either manufacturers or users create for vehicles where the owners enumerate the intrusiveness.

Your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. ...no seriously, if these things exist, I would be super interested in knowing where to get one.

...I pay $10/month for my search results, and I'd rather pay Kagi $10/month than use Edge and Bing....and the worst part, is that I don't find Bing results to be *that* bad...certainly, no worse than Google results at this stage...but it's because Edge and Bing are just an *INCESSANT ASSAULT ON WHAT I WANT TO DO*.

"I'm searching for [thing]"
"Here are thirteen things that match pretty well with [thing] - ten based on our heuristics, three sponsored results that most closely match."
"Thanks!"

That's all I want a search engine to do!

I *might* stretch it a bit...
"I'm searching for [thing] near [location]"
"Here's a map of [location] with five push-pins most closely resembling [thing] - three organic options, two sponsored options, all matching [thing]"
"Thanks!"

...but with Bing, it's like...
"RANDOM ASSORTMENT OF THINGS!!!111"
"...uhm, okay, I just want --"
"HAVE YOU TRIED EDGE!!11"
"...I'm using Edge..."
"LOG IN TO EDGE FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE!!!11"
"ehm, no tha---"
"Nevermind, I Logged You In Anyway Because You Used A Mandatory Microsoft Account To Use Excel."
"okay, whatever...I'm looking for--"
"REWARDS!!!!"
"...[thing]"
"Here Are Six Sponsored Listings That Are In No Way Relevant To [thing]...and then ten organic listings that are at least on par with Google...MAP!!!!" ...it's that constant battle to get Bing to just let me do an anonymous[ish] search, and then show me a combination of search results and unobtrusive ads.

I can use Searx to sanitize Bing if I wanted, but I'd rather pay for Kagi, who doesn't require that kind of headache.

Full Self Driving, a mode where the vehicle is considered safe to drive without human interaction. There are lesser modes, that still require a driver to be at-the-ready, but think of it as the difference between "safe to text while in the car" and "safe to fall asleep while in the car".

Tesla has been promising the latter for a VERY long time, and they *have* made improvements over that time...but skeptics see it kind of like the paperless office - just beyond the horizon.

This, exactly.

The most immediate thing about being cool is that nothing that is forced, is cool. Copilot existing, with some cool demos and higher thresholds on the free version, could possibly gain some opt-in usage. Copilot being forced everywhere means that people are going to associate it with something intrusive, and no amount of marketing is going to undo that.

ChatGPT didn't force anything onto people's desktops or into their spreadsheets, they didn't run TV commercials and they didn't give sponsorships to 101 Youtube personalities...they existed, and they improved the service, and word-of-mouth was all they needed.

If Microsoft wants their level of adoption, they need to stop pushing...but the problem is that nobody will accept a slow ascent, so they need the accidental, unwanted usage to show the 'growth' being demanded by the MBAs.

One day they'll figure it out...probably the day after they have a fire sale on nVidia GPUs that have sat dormant for months.

Point of pedantry: some merchants offer a "cash discount", i.e. they forward the cost of processing only to those with credit cards.

This is partially true, granted...but not entirely. Target may be big enough to interact with Visa directly, but most vendors instead work through payment processors like FirstData or Clover, who work as a middleman to ensure that businesses who *want* to be able to accept Visa/Mastercard/Discover/AmEx can do so seamlessly. There may be rules, but the outcome is that the business doesn't have to negotiate contracts with every card company.

If the merchants aren't giving cash discounts, and a $10 item is $10 in cash or $10 on the AmEx...then they're right, they *aren't* paying a 5% premium by using their AmEx - they're paying a 5% premium when they use cash.

First, we need a plushy of Kit. My wife couldn't tell you the difference between Chrome, Edge, or Firefox from a practical standpoint...but she wants a Kit plushy...so, merchandising works.

Second...Firefox seems to be spending it time making itself more and more annoying. As much as one could appreciate that not everybody knows how to use all the browser features...it's adopted Edge levels of nags, notifications, and "helpful hints". Be less helpful.

So...I still stand by the fact that the article is problematically-scarce on details regarding exactly how the ex-husband was using the Family Group functions in a harmful way...I get that Kate didn't like it, but there was no indication that he caused direct harm to her or the children.

That being said, the article DID make clear that there WAS a court order for him to disband the account, and even if he was using in all the right ways for all the right reasons, not-complying with a court order is extremely problematic.

I'm not all the way on Kate's side here, but the ex is clearly in the wrong for leveraging the Apple account after the court issued its verdict.

So, I went back to the article and re-read a quote from it...

Looks like I missed the very-important fact that Kate *did* have a court order to disband the group.

While I still stand by the fact that the article is extremely sparse in details, the fact that a judge issued a ruling on the matter does alter things significantly. I still think Kate isn't telling the whole story here, but I *do* think that if the ex-husband was unwilling to comply with a court order, that he needs to be held in contempt, and I also think that Apple SHOULD comply with such a court order, and that Apple DOES need a system in place to comply with court orders of this nature.

My apologies for missing this critical detail.

You seem pretty adamant about this stance, so if you're cool with having a discussion about it, I'd appreciate some perspective - I'd like to engage in a discussion on the topic...

So, first off, I'm not completely convinced this is abuse. The father tracked the kids' location, sure, but every indication is that this is a joint-custody scenario, not a sole-custody scenario. The article gives no indication that the father has done anything harmful to the children as a result of the data he has access to. It gives no indication of physical harm of *any* kind, or any actions he has taken for non-physical harm. so if it's simply the location tracking, is there any statute that indicates that a secondary guardian is expected to forego location tracking?

I'll grant that he should have respected whatever screen time limits Kate wanted to set for the kids, during the time she had custody. Fine. Granted. No contest. If Kate wanted them to have three hours a night on her days, it should have been three hours a night on those days, full stop. However, for this to work, it hinges on the stance that denying screen time to children constitutes abuse. Please keep in mind that the article has no information regarding the father's side of the story; for all we know the father was this way *because* one of the kids got in too deep with someone they met on Roblox and the father ended up having to dispute credit card fraud, or worse.

Maybe - MAYBE - I could find some common ground on this quote from the article: "Kate recalls her own children faced constant aggressive questioning about their movements, social interactions, and activities based on data served up by Apple Family Sharing.". There certainly may have been some overstep here; I make room for the possibility that the ex-husband was helicopter parenting the kids at an unreasonable level. He may have been asking about things in an improper manner or time, and this amount of access certainly makes abuse easy to enact.

In this *particular* case, based on the information expressly stipulated in the article, there is a grey area between "parenting" and "abuse". The article mentions nothing about a restraining order or sole custody, so why does Kate have a monopoly on making sure her children are where they're supposed to be, or who they're talking to? It sounds like there's no winning here - Kate obviously wanted the kids off the father's account, granted, but it speaks to a much deeper issue - what would it take for Kate to consider the ex-husband a good father, to the point that she would respect his wishes in the way she wanted hers respected?

I'm not convinced that this is the case. The 'organized system' would likely need a court order, because if Apple allowed children to be moved from one account to another without the consent of the primary account holder, that's a pretty obvious recipe for disaster. The article gives no indication that Apple was served with a court order with which they were noncompliant, so it's unclear that Kate attempted to get that court order to compel either the ex-husband *or* Apple to do it.

As an added bonus, the article *also* didn't indicate whether the account was set up prior to the marriage, or after the divorce. Nothing is said in the article, and the part that describes the potential loss of photos is part of an aside that was not a concern specifically attributed to Kate's case. If the father bought the phones after the divorce and pays the bills for them, the mother is fully within her right to say that the phones stay at dad's, or buy different phones they can use when they're with her. Again, I'll concede that he should have been more reasonable.

So then why did Kate allow the kids to keep the phones on them when they weren't at their dad's? If it's because she wants to be able to contact them, Walmart has phones for $20 with $15/month service...did the court mandate that the father has to pay for the phone the mother uses to reach the child?

Abuse, certainly not. Biased, one-sided description of parenting who's closest description of abuse was "limiting screen time", "asking questions about who the parent's children are talking to", and "tracking a child's whereabouts", as performed by a person who has at least partial responsibility for the well-being of the children? I want more information before I pick sides here.

And which policy should change? "Parents" should be able to call Apple and request that "their" child be transferred from one family account to another, without the consent of the current account-holder? It'll take less than a day for that to go sideways. If it's that Apple refused to comply with a court order, the article makes no indication that such an order was given. So...again, a sincere question - what policy would need to change, where Apple can allow Kate to have her childrens' phones transferred to her account, independent of a court order, such that it wouldn't put the children at even more risk?

And which customers are these? Should the father be able to have the accounts moved back to his account without Kate's consent? Because he's an Apple customer, so Apple only has one satisfied customer in this set of people, regardless. From Apple's perspective, why does Kate get to be the happy one?

And why would antitrust law apply here? Nobody is stopping either Kate or the children from buying whatever phone they want, and tying it to whatever account they want. There are certainly other reasons why Apple may well be worthy of antitrust litigation, but I'm having trouble understanding how Apple's unwillingness to transfer sub-accounts without either a court order or the consent of the account holder proves that they're abusing a monopoly position.

1. Use something like iMazing or Photo Transfer App to pull photos and videos from the phone to a desktop/laptop, then replace the phones and apps. I'm really unconvinced that this is some insurmountable or prohibitively expensive solution.

2. What's the expectation in terms of changing how family sharing works, because they all sound like they'd be even worse. By definition there can't be two primary accounts, because that wouldn't solve the problem - she'd extend screen time, he'd retract it, and they'd just go back-and-forth with the kids caught in the middle. If Apple does what she wants and makes it possible to do a hostile-takeover of a primary account position...then he could just call Apple and do a hostile takeover if he's still on the account...And, Apple is stuck wasting valuable CSR time being caught in the middle of these two bickering as each calls to have Apple do the cha-cha-slide.

3. Devil's Advocate here...Kate's story is extremely light on details.

...okay, but there is no indication even in the TFA (yes, I read it) that this was used in a quantifiably harmful way. The article mentions nothing about him doing anything with this information that involved kidnapping or threatening behavior. The article seems to ignore something pretty important - they *are* his children, too...and especially if he was the one paying the bills for the phones (again, unclear, but if Kate was paying the bill, it seems like something the author would have enumerated), why is he a *bad* father for enforcing rules? So, there have been a hundred Slashdot stories about how screen time is bad for kids, and when a father requires that his children account for their screen time so that they don't spend massive amounts of time doomscrolling, that's 'draconian' now?

I'll grant that he should have been more reasonable about usage limits during Kate's days...To be fair to Kate, it does sound like things were uneven and he *should* have been more willing to alter the account parameters during her parenting days without having to go to court/Apple/the press. That said, it definitely sounds like there's room for there being more to the story than Kate's telling...especially because the article includes this chestnut:

So...not only does the article show its bias by calling this a "happier ending", but it seems that weaponizing children against their other parent is okay when she does it? It goes on to say:

Wow...it's "parenting their own parent" when a joint-custody situation has friction, apparently. Instead of buying new phones and creating new accounts and re-buying apps, and instead of going through the traditional court method of compelling the accounts to be transferred or to have the account better reflect her wishes on her days, and instead of telling the kids to accept the suboptimal situation and learn to work within the unfortunate contexts...she wants Apple to come up with a means for someone to forcefully migrate childrens' accounts from one account holder to another without the consent of the primary account holder? Anyone else see next year's WIRED headline about an actual-psycho convincing a vulnerable child to migrate away from their Family Group, and Apple doing nothing about it?

I'm sure the ex-husband was no saint, and yes, I understand that the amount of control here *can* be misused in a way that *is* harmful and certainly *has* been at some point...but the free option is having the kids leave their phones at the father's house when they leave. The best-for-Kate option is undergoing a set of phone purchases and a weekend's worth of account setup and app re-purchasing, which would cost $3,000 at the *very* most (likely less than half that). The fact that the problem was solved through incessant nagging makes question whether this specific case was one where the father was being dangerous. The article makes zero indication that WIRED even reached out to the father to get his side of the story, so I'm hard pressed to believe that there is a need for Apple to redesign the system in a way that could allow even more dangerous abuse.

I'm not so sure. Spamming can use the law of large numbers due to its low barrier to entry and easy automation, so even a 0.01% success rate can be profitable. With ransomware, most of the easy stuff has been picked off already - basically nobody has RDP open on 3389 anymore, pretty much everyone has SSH locked down, lots of people do their work in SaaS products which are more difficult to ransomware, and for all the obnoxiousness for Microsoft shoving OneDrive down everyone's throat, it *does* do versioning remotely, which can mitigate the extent that ransomware is a problem. Meanwhile, insurance companies are more adamant about requiring 2FA, virus scanner companies are better at detecting ransomware, and while vulnerabilities continue to be found, the overall trend of those which can be exploited for ransomware is decreasing overall.

As deployment becomes more and more difficult, and it requires more and more skill to deploy, the amount of effort increases, while the probability of payout decreases. If it takes four hours to deploy with 50/50 odds of payment, that's probably a better paycheck than the IT guys who are keeping the ransomware out. If it takes ten hours to deploy and 1/4 odds of payout...still viable. If it takes 20 hours to deploy while keeping the 25% odds of payout, automation/AI might help keep it even, but some of the smaller gangs may throw in the towel. If it takes 60 hours to deploy with the same 25% odds, the squeeze continues. If the odds go down to even 20%, but with 100 hours of deployment, it becomes a niche.

Now, if it's made illegal to pay, all that's going to do is to create a market for a middleman. The company hit is paying a consultant, and the consultant is just buying an NFT, which is perfectly legal for a company to possess as an asset. More to the point, making it illegal to pay the ransom means that the likelihood of payout is, ironically, higher, because even getting hit is going to trigger an investigation, so it's ransom *and* hush money in one fell swoop.

As easy-to-hack legacy systems get replaced with more-secure-by-default systems, either through upgrades or through closures and mergers, the process becomes more difficult, and the continued pressure from insurance companies reduces the likelihood of payout, starving the industry over time. It'll still happen, but it'll become an asymptote. Give it a few years, and it simply won't be profitable.