"Telecom shop" is an important choice of words here. What you describe is not the norm in the US by a long shot.

That said, yes, we're all geeks here on Slashdot. Most of us could figure out how to find a version of phone-X compatible with carrier-Y.

Now have Grandma do it without any hand-holding - Oh, sorry, the cheapest option was carrier locked to the wrong carrier, try again. Oops, this time she grabbed the GSM version when she needed CDMA. Third time's the charm, right? Oh damn, she managed to find a Windows phone? Is she even trying?

I'd love an apartment that has 480V service and a sub-floor plenum!

Might be tough to meet egress though, unless you're splitting each floor into "apartments" the size of a small grocery store (or insanely long and narrow).

The GP is splitting hairs. The key detail here is that Private Relay isn't a VPN, it's basically just a two-hop anonymizing web proxy. Now ask any non-geek to explain the difference.

There are really two separate problems here, one of which very much is Apple's problem, and the other... I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself.

First and most importantly, this isn't limited only to people using passkey; the remote site can ask for it regardless and the response will include the device's true IP.

And second - Private Relay is primarily targeted at people who:
1) Don't understand the difference between a relay and a VPN;
2) Want to browse the web anonymously;
3) The limit of their technical ability is going into settings and hitting a toggle;
4) Have an iCloud+ Subscription (meaning they're paying for this fake anonymity).

Is that Apple's "bug" in the technical sense? Of course not. But they're effectively selling pigs in pokes to customers that can't tell the difference.

I don't disagree in spirit, but not everyone is a middle-class geek. Per the 2024 US ACS, one in seven US households lacked access to a PC at home. And the "have-nots" here are disproportionately members of various under-served demographics (young, old, poor, uneducated, minority).

Here's where it gets crazy, though - Only one in three Gen-Z'ers have (not lack) home access to a PC - And they largely don't want one.

Assuming everyone can just do it from another device is chasing a trend that's already peaked and started to reverse.

It's almost worth watching the entire world turn to shit just for the great wordplay we get to have. Well, not really, but we gotta entertain ourselves somehow as we watch society burn.

PG&E thanks you for your loyalty.

That said, I'm not seriously challenging your assertion - Rather, if we presume you're primarily correct, that's been the case absent financial motivation up until now. Pyros aren't in it for the money, they're in it for the show.

If nothing else, I'm sure investigators would love the short list of who bet on fire-X.

Let's ignore for now the obvious issue of how you solve a problem with an app that requires the very device you have a problem with.

How do they expect people to become new customers in the first place? The #1 reason I go to a cell provider's physical stores is to pick out a new phone, have it activated, and my current phone (if still functional) cloned to it. Are they seriously expecting 100% of new customers to be BYOD Verizon defectors?

I have to suspect this is the "anchoring" opening bid in trying to sneak through a far less obnoxious change, hoping we'll all thank them rather than reaching for the tar and feathers when they announce whatever real change they're aiming for.

It's completely imaginable that they'll throw enough nag screens at you during sign-up, upgrades, or any other interaction that someone without an iron will against dopamine rush reward systems will succumb to the "Be a bro, not a dud" messaging and such. In fact, some study within the company probably already predicted they could drive unenforced upgrades through popups better than sales people on the floor could, or this wouldn't be happening at all.

This isn't about gambling in general, or even the risk of arsonists making good on their bets.

This is about not making the geriatric scientophobic morons in charge of the country look bad. Their go-to response is always that disasters are unpredictable and there's nothing to be done for it. Meanwhile, the actual experts can all predict wildfire patterns pretty well.

Tough for the degenerates in congress to keep feigning ignorance if the experts are allowed to start raking in $$$ calling their bluff.

Offering bets on destructive wildfires threatens to minimize communities' suffering

Totally different from hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis, right?

There's also the heightened risk -- according to state and local fire officials -- that individuals could be tempted to commit arson in order to make sure their bets are successful

This is, actually, a valid concern. I don't think, freedoms — including the freedom to bet one's own money — should be curtailed by such concerns, but it is valid.

Funny, how the authors don't hate the would-be arsonists — nowhere close to their disdain for the "rich and powerful", who might (might not!) profit from the betting...

We all know the answer to 'Who's looser' is always 'yo momma.'

I get that spelling is hard for some, but the word you were looking for is 'loser.' Like the guy trying to shit-post and fucking up the basics.

Bending Spoons sees decent companies that provide something end-users actually like, buys the company, then turns that thing users like into something with the vague sheen of what they used to like, but more monetized, somewhat crippled, with favorite features clusterfucked with happy-happy messaging about improvements that aren't. The fact that companies like this don't just exists, but thrive in our world, is a sign we went horribly wrong somewhere along the line. We reward these parasitic profit generators with ever escalating value and profit, while allowing the better parts of the business world to be sucked up into them like black holes, slowly spaghettifying them, stretching the positive that made them interested in whatever they consumed to slowly turn into nothing but a thin string of empty promise, that if you squint almost looks like the memory of that good thing they initially purchased.

It's super stupid, but it seems to be the way of everything now.

My company has entire levels of management communicating with each other almost exclusively this way. Thus far it's only led to a few hilarious examples of every level of management having a different idea of what direction we're taking, but it's only a matter of time until the summary->expand->summarize routine causes real, harsh, profit destroying problems. I'm not sure what kind of crack pipe gets passed around at those conferences they go to, but they're all obsessed with how much more efficient their communication is now that they've tossed a layer of AI generated slop over the top of their usual somewhat informational bullet points.

Most likely due to previous orders to maximize usage of AI because the company management has decided that AI is the future whether anyone wants it or not.

Real world productivity can't be put into a pretty bar graph. Statistics are the only thing that matter when you work for a company where MBAitis is still in charge. And AI makes statistics even easy to collect, whether they're relevant to actual quality output or not.