Depends on the terms of their contract. If you believe the summary, then doing anything with the county's data other than serve it to them for the intended purpose is against the terms of their contract, which would make it actionable.

Every time people hear what it actually involves is outrage and opposition, at least all the way back to when Intel first announced that they wanted to hardcode identity numbers inside CPUs in 1999. But the corporations involved have been relentless, and have sunk countless billions of dollars steadily forcing it forwards, and building front organizations to obfuscate and whitewash it.

With Windows 11, Microsoft was finally able to FORCE Trusted computing hardware into every new computer. Not just every new Windows computer, but every computer.

Every new Intel PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new AMD PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. Every new ARM PC CPU has built in Trusted Computing enforcement hardware. The only processor lines that DON'T have it are the microcontrollers.

There are some unlocked smartphones available, but as far as I can determine it's literally impossible to buy a smartphone that doesn't have hardware trusted computing built in.

I specified that enforcing Trusted Computing at the internet access level is still a long term goal, they couldn't get away with it today. However they are well on the way to success. Virtually all new hardware supporting trusted computing, all the front groups rolling out standards and systems, and as it gets incorporated into things everyone is going to increasingly running into situations where they get locked out of stuff if they're not Trusted Computing compliant. Streaming already restricts you to the worst quality if you're not compliant, and it's only going to get worse as pre-Win11 computers fade out and as more things require it.

I'd hardly call exact date of birth "low information content".

And yes this does reveal exact date of birth, regardless of the bullshit obfuscation that it supposedly only reports age range. The server simply tracks the reported result every time the user connects, and on some specific day the result CHANGES to announce their date of birth.

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This is based on SLSA (Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts), brought to you by the same fuckers making Trusted Computing and the TMP (Trusted Platform Module). It's part of the same shitstack to prohibit you from altering your software and to lock you out of your own files, and to send spy reports out over the internet so you can be cut off if you "fail" the Trusted Computing check.

The software can use a TPM's (Trusted Platform Module) Sealing function to encrypt your data such that it's impossible to access your own data if the software is modified. It can then pass control over that data only to software updates that carry a signed security certificate from Broadcom (or any other company using this system).

It is no longer open source, your system no longer works as you can no longer access your Sealed data if you change so much as a single letter of the code. Even recompile unaltered code won't work, unless you magically manage to get your build environment absolutely identical to the company's build environment and get byte-for-byte output. Even that may be impossible with the newer levels of non-deterministic compiler optimizations.

Also, with TMP's Remote Attestation feature can be used to transmit your machine's software configuration over the internet, so that you can be cut off if your system doesn't match Broadcom (or other company's) cryptographically signed certificate.

And then of course there's Network Access Control (NAC) / Trusted Network Connect (TNC). In the long term, the goal is for ISPs to use NAC/TNC to interrogate your computer for Trusted Computing compliance, and deny you any internet access whatsoever if your machine isn't compliant. Software with this sort of "security" certificate would pass inspection, while any attempt to alter the code would be detected as "tampering". You then get "quarantined". What "quarantine" means is that you are denied internet access - with the exception that you do get very restricted access which can only be used to download the approved software to "fix" your computer into Trusted Computing compliance.

The Spanish call it "Canal de la Mancha" which is much closer to the French name, as do most other european countries.
In scandinavian countries it's called the english channel but in their respective languages, eg "Engelska kanalen" in Sweden.

He could have called it Lake Trump...

And the ROI is really, really impressive. Each dollar in the NIH budget gets returned as about 5 (depending on the study) in increased GDP. To my knowledge, there is no other billion-dollar scale investment that has consistent, long-term returns like that.

Congress knows this fact. They commissioned many of the studies showing it. It is difficult to believe the Executive Branch is not aware of it. If we really wanted to be America First, rather than reducing the NIH budget, we'd be promoting another run of annual increases with the intent of doubling that allocation in real dollars over the coming decade. Contact your congressional representatives today to advocate for the idea.

MacOS lets you run unsigned software too, you just need to remove the quarantine flag on anything you've downloaded if it's not been notarized.

For someone who is technically competent this is a very minor hurdle and only needs to be done when you initially download. Anyone who is not capable of doing this probably shouldn't be running random downloaded binaries as they're likely not capable of verifying that those binaries are not malicious.

This.
It doesn't need to be a special packet, it could be a specific pattern hiding inside any packet received by the host. You don't need the ability to send traffic directly to the target, just the ability to interact with a traffic flow in or out of the system.

I've also had audio blocked in browsers since it was implemented.
Nothing more irritating than opening a page and suddenly some loud obnoxious noise blares out.

He was over-leveraged and didn't manage risk well. In other words, he was a terrible fund manager.

For an SMS based backdoor, no. It seems these devices are designed to use cellular connections (which makes sense since traffic cameras will be installed in remote locations).

And then most firewalls focus on inbound connections, but often do nothing to prevent a compromised device from making outbound connections. SMS could easily be used to initiate an outbound connection.

The problem is when the genuinely useful features take a back seat to user-hostile features like shoving ads in your face, or vehicle functionality which is present but disabled unless you pay more to activate it etc.

These anti features become associated with the technology, and cause users to fondly remember their older simpler cars that didn't have these negative things.

There are also useful features like navigation that are either poorly implemented, or users just don't know how to use them. This also puts users off.

Another thing that puts users off is things that break and cause unrelated functionality to stop working (like the printer/scanner combos that wont scan if there's no ink in the printer etc)...

Or newer functionality that's now mandated by law, but older vehicles get a pass. A good example here would be ABS. If you have a modern vehicle and your ABS fails the vehicle still drives perfectly well and is still safer overall than an older vehicle with no ABS, but it will fail its annual inspection for this and you might be faced with a costly repair. If you're driving an older vehicle that never had ABS at all then you get a free pass.
While i can understand the safety reasons here, this annoys people especially older drivers.

No, the worst part about ads is that they exist at all in a form that intentionally disrupts your attention.

That fundamental issue is then exacerbated by the current societal tolerance for lies, and you get intrusive advertisements that are deeply misleading.

So, why are you tolerating current advertising at all when there are tools that effectively eliminate it?

The assumption is that using your phone / infotainment system to search for, possibly purchase, and play a new release is an attention-demanding task that takes substantial time. The consensus above is that Spotify's UI, in particular, is poor, and thus requires extra interaction, and thus attention off the road, exacerbating the problem. We know that attending to a phone, even briefly, is mutually exclusive to attending to the road. That alone is an explanatory mechanism for the increase in fatalities.

But then we augment that supposition by the additional effects that new music is also a distraction, albeit much lower grade than operating a phone. It might be a lesser effect, but listening to a song or three is also expected to span longer time than interacting with a phone, so might have substantial cumulative impact.

An additional effect that I have not seen mentioned above is the expectation that the demographic listening to top releases is likely to skew younger, and thus contains drivers with less experience than the population. Less experienced drivers are at far greater risk of accidents of any sort, and are more sensitive to distraction.

And, as a parent of teenagers, the solution is clear to me: do not frelling use your phone when driving, period.