I hate online flame wars, but you've misunderstood me and missed my point.

Many people do what you did- dive into the details. My point is: most Android and iPhone users are totally unaware of the lack of privacy in their phones (and computers). Nobody I know knows or cares, and some think I'm "paranoid" because I do care, and try to take steps to limit my exposure to hoovering.

You mentioned iPhone privacy settings: what percentage of iPhone users even know about it?

In case I'm not being clear, my point is: consumers are not aware of the lack of privacy. I think if you could educate them, explaining how much of their personal data is being hoovered, especially phones, if you could get them to think, mull it over, I think they'd want much more privacy, and many would be shocked by how much of our personal stuff is being sent out from our phones.

I barely do anything personal on my Android phone. I'm on a quest to understand Android processes and process control. My phone came with a cleaner app that shows many background processes running. You can "clean" them, but they'll pop up again. Why is Samsung Notes sending stuff through the network? Many other processes pop up, accessing the data / network connection, when I turn on data connection. Why do they need this? Why are they sending stuff? Point is, it's happening, and I doubt most users are aware of it.

I'm generally not okay with this concept of passive agreement. These ToS are much too long, even if someone wants to read through one.

I'm not a criminal and I have nothing to hide. But how would you feel if someone was peering in your bathroom window? I could argue they're not hurting you in any way. But most sane people understand that there's something unacceptable about voyeurism.

I could go on but I fear this will be further misunderstood, and I have much higher priorities to deal with. Thanks.

Things would change if courts would award damages for time and effort wasted fixing the problems caused by all of this personal information gathering and correlating. Poster above mentions getting incorrect bills because someone used (or perhaps mistyped) his email address. If we could track our time spent fixing these things, then charge the offenders at lawyer's fees ($300/hr for example), maybe people would be much more careful with our personal information.

You state that as if it's a well-known fact. I don't think it is. Please elaborate and support your statement.

Thank you, makes sense. IMHO it should never be allowed. In my case I'll have to find another storage locker facility and move a lot of stuff. Maybe I can sue them for the costs of moving.

Seems like someone needs to set a legal precedent if lame Congress won't change contract laws.

It just occurred to me that I know a contract lawyer. I'll ask him.

Thanks!

Maybe more importantly: not distracted by the far too many distractions and interruptions of today's world.

^^^ This ^^^^

And the laws need to firmly prevent anyone ever putting in any TOS or contract that "by using this service you consent to ..."

It needs to be 100% illegal.

And even if you do give consent to someone to share your identity / data, it must never be allowed that there's any kind of automatic chain of inherited consent.

I have some things in a storage locker. They just sent out modifications to the contract, including that I now have given them consent to share / sell any and all information they have on me.

How is it a contract if they can change it at whim?

I will be talking to lawyers and congresscritters about this.

I absolutely agree with pretty much everyone here- I don't want my car transmitting anything. I'll keep my older cars. I do pretty much all the work on them so it's a no-brainer to keep them going.

IIRC I've read stories where cops have seized people's cars "because ongoing investigation", even when the cars are okay and perfectly drivable.

I'm pretty sure my cars don't have event recorders, but I'm not 100% sure.

I also have, and won't drive without, a dashcam. I also worry that cops might seize it.

What viperdaenz said. I have Comcast and Verizon available, but no way I'll deal with either of those robber baron criminals.

Cell signal drops rather suddenly right at my house. Additionally the house is aluminum sided, so inside the house cell is dead. So, I bought a "booster", more properly called (in radio terms) a repeater. I forget which one I have, but it works like a charm.

I didn't bother mounting the outdoor antenna outdoors. The kit came with a suction-cup window mount and I have good signal with that. Had to move it around, try different windows, etc. But it's great.

It doesn't cover the whole interior of the house. There are ones that will, but they cost more. Signal strength varies somewhat. I keep the indoor antenna in my bedroom. Sometimes I need to keep the phone near that antenna, sometimes I can move pretty far from the indoor antenna and signal is still good.

So, as right now, I just use my cell phone as a hotspot for WiFi. Speeds aren't great, but good enough to watch simple videos and normal browsing. I'm not really into movies, so again, bandwidth is fine for most normal browsing. If I need to download something big, I take laptop or phone to where there's free WiFi (many places) and get what I need.

We absolutely are getting screwed. Internet connection providers are either monopoly or duopoly in America. Providers are for-profit companies. IMHO, Internet connection is practically essential to life these days, and providers should be regulated, and non-profit, open-books.

Problem is, and Comcast is a great example: Comcast and others have been around for a long time providing TV and movie channels. They figured out how to tack Internet connection onto their existing cable infrastructure. So it looks like another kind of fun / luxury / lifestyle unnecessary thing.

Plus the providers are incredibly profitable and wealthy companies, and pay for tons of lobbying. IMHO lobbying is a big part of many of today's problems.

I've been using Claws Mail, but it's just mail.

I only use Vivaldi for browsing, but it has all the other stuff too. Maybe what you're looking for?

Not an art, movie, acting, music, etc., critic, but I could argue that so much effort and $ were spent on filming, models, effects, etc., that maybe acting and character development was somewhat compromised. I dunno. Frankly I rarely accept acting as believable characters, so I mostly just enjoyed the effects and story line.

Some years ago someone did a cleanout, and I literally trash-picked a pristine DVD of 2001, long version. I'm not enough of a fanboi, or movie buff, to know or care if it's not true to the original. It might be more true to the original, other versions having been shortened. But again, not a movie buff so it was good enough as it was.

I was fortunate enough to see Star Wars in a big theater in 1977. It was so amazing compared to anything before it. I've never had that level of experience watching any movie or TV show since. One TV show episode was close- "House" where he was in the asylum. I saw that episode online, somewhat high res, on a big computer monitor with high res. and it was an experience, and not just because of the big screen, sitting close, high res., but it was such a different episode from any before.

I highly support your idea. 20-ish years ago my parents dishwasher quit. Being an EE and hands-on repair tech, I did all I could with it. As far as I could tell, the very strange proprietary CPU died. A new control board was like $280 (20 years ago). So, I build a simple PC parallel port interface to replace the control board, and wrote some fairly simple code to control the thing. Worked for almost 20 years until they just wanted a new dishwasher. Of course integrating an esp32, Arduino, whatever, would have been much better than the old laptop I had used, but it worked.

I absolutely agree, and I wish more people would repair things rather than tossing them and buying NEW!. Most new stuff is crap anyway. I can hear it now: how expensive repairs are. True, but maybe it could be cheaper if people kept older stuff that was so much easier to work on.

I've repaired much / many things over the years, including washing machines, dryers, dishwashers, ovens, stoves, etc. (I'm a very hands-on EE).

Your washer might just have gotten soapy water on the clutch. Or oil from the gearbox. But I'm speculating, as there are many different designs.

If you have the typical older Sears / Whirlpool design, there's an interesting clutching system with 2 solenoids that move back and forth and sometimes they go bad, or get stuck due to soap scum. Sometimes a wire breaks internally due to the constant motion.

I'll qualify an earlier statement: some newer stuff is, in some ways, easier to work on. My 60 year old dryer is build like a tank, but you have to move it out to work on it- most things are in the back. Many newer ones are all accessible from the front. But like yours, the idler rollers get stuck, belts break more often. Also heating elements (electric) seem to fail more often in newer ones. Also the many temperature sensors seem to fail frequently. Pretty cheap and easy to replace though. Often caused by clogged filters (which need to be cleaned every load).

You're reminding me of the story of Apollo 13 where they had to very carefully restart systems.