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Zak

@ Zak @lemmy.world

Posts
13
Comments
1287
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

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  • You could get a €2000 euro phone for €500, pay that up front, and walk to the local guy with a serial cable who unlocked your phone for €20.

    A world in which telecoms can't use SIM locking to offer financing on ultra-expensive phones to people who would otherwise be bad credit risks sounds like an improvement to me. Most people who can't pay cash for a 2000€ phone are better off not buying one at all.

  • Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

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  • people like this make phone deals worse for the rest of us.

    Verizon can get exactly the same amount out of most customers by either:

    • Charging more for the phone and less for the service
    • Unbundling the phone financing from the phone service

  • Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

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  • People... don't care about being able to switch phone carriers while keeping their phone? I think you're quite mistaken.

    Even if few people actually do that, they certainly care about the effect of the resulting competitive pressure on the market.

  • Verizon refused to unlock man’s iPhone, so he sued the carrier and won

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  • That is a separate issue. This is a lock to prevent use with other service providers,

  • One in 10 Mamdani voters were also Trump voters, study finds

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  • One in 10 Mamdani voters were also Trump voters, study finds

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  • I’m still of the belief that 2024, Biden beats Trump.

    I don't think so. In each case, there was significant dissatisfaction with the losing candidate prior to the election.

    • In 2016, it was because people saw the DNC as having subverted the democratic process to give the nomination to Clinton when Sanders might have won in a fair race.
    • In 2020, pick any of Trump's many faults, or the various impacts of the pandemic. He was terribly unpopular and would have lost to any mainstream candidate.
    • In 2024, it was mostly economic concerns, for which many blamed Biden. Harris positioned herself as a continuation of Biden when Biden was terribly unpopular.

  • What's the biggest case of planned obsolescence you've dealt with?

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  • That sounds like a very negative experience, pretty much opposite to my experience with the same model.

    She got 50 USD back. Not worth it at all.

    50 USD was one of the compensation options Google offered; a battery replacement was another. The latter might have been wise if she wanted to keep using the phone.

  • What's the biggest case of planned obsolescence you've dealt with?

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  • Be sure to give it a one-star review.

    So far, Magisk and Play Integrity Fix have been sufficient for apps that don't like it.

  • What's the biggest case of planned obsolescence you've dealt with?

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  • Messaging, web browser, podcasts, navigation, a couple services that require a phone to access. I tend to not install apps that could be websites.

    Hardware drivers are surely dated. Android, on the other hand is 15, and I assume getting updated to 16 soon. I think I'm pretty good with regard to the sort of zero-click exploits I've heard of used for targeted attacks. If somebody slipped a trojan into a software update, I could have a problem, especially if it was a privileged app like AccA or Adaway. Of course, updated drivers wouldn't protect me from that.

  • What's the biggest case of planned obsolescence you've dealt with?

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  • The entire smartphone industry.

    I use five year old smartphone (Pixel 4a). I can afford a new one, but I don't need a new one, and it would be worse in ways I care about (bigger, probably without a headphone jack), without being better in any way that really matters to me, so I don't want a new one.

    Official software updates ended a couple years ago, but I'm running LineageOS and I got an update this week. Google has intentionally made it hard for most people to use LineageOS or any other Android distribution not blessed by Google as their primary phone by allowing app developers to check whether it's Google-approved. For now, I can usually work around that, but it would be too big a hurdle for most people.

    The kernel is getting pretty old though; it's 4.14 when I'm up to 6.17 on my laptop. This is because SOC vendors don't release open source drivers, nor maintain the proprietary ones for very long.

    Finally, there's the battery. Mine is in great shape because I use AccA to limit charge to 60% most of the time, but charging to 100% as most people do would have greatly reduced its capacity by this point. Replacing it requires melting glue and some risk of damage. Most phones are like that now (though that's changing due to EU regulation).

  • AI toys for kids talk about sex and issue Chinese Communist Party talking points, tests show

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  • Who could have predicted that hiring the lowest bidder to hook a teddy bear to an LLM wouldn't result in a good toy for kids?

  • Judge orders immediate release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration detention - ABC News

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  • The government has sabotaged its purported objective by not taking the opportunity to deport him to Costa Rica when it had the chance. I suppose a country that has offered him asylum and residence, which he has indicated he would prefer to go to isn't cruel enough.

  • 'I love an underdog': Trump-Zohran Mamdani voters are at the center of an unexpected relationship

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  • The underlying theme is dissatisfaction with the political establishment.

  • U.S. Pedestrian Deaths Up 77% Since 2009 & The Auto Industry Knew It Would Happen

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  • The article doesn't talk about the fact that the increase is far greater in dark conditions, which is not readily explained by the changes to car design the article discusses.

    This article talks more about that, and the linked report suggests population trends have contributed to more people walking at night along arterial roads with poor pedestrian infrastructure.

    To be clear, daytime fatalities are up by about 40% in the interval shown, which is much more than the increase in population. Increasing vehicle size and hood height are real problems too, but don't seem to be the biggest factor.

  • Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It

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  • airports and land within 100 miles of a border is a "constitution-free zone"

    This isn't accurate. That's where CBP has jurisdiction to operate, but they're still bound by the constitution (for now),

  • Firewood Banks Aren’t Inspiring. They’re a Sign of Collapse.

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  • The author seems to be viewing the state as the first line of defense and neighbors helping each other as a last resort to be used only when the state has failed. An alternate view is that neighbors helping each other is the first line of defense, and the need to rely on the state is a sign there isn't a functioning community.

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  • I’m scared.

    Of what? This is not a rhetorical question. Security starts with threat modeling, and your threat model dictates the precautions you need to take.

    If you're most people, your main privacy threat is advertisers and data brokers. Other comments have detailed how they collect data, and it's usually "voluntary". Defenses against this include a browser with good adblocking like Firefox with uBlock Origin, using websites instead of native apps as much as practical, using DNS-based adblocking, limiting or eliminating use of corporate social media, turning off voice-activated assistants, and preferring open source when practical.

    It is not likely that advertising companies are activating the microphone or camera on your phone without your knowledge. The legal penalties for doing something like that in most countries would be ruinous for even the largest corporations, and the motivation for security researchers to check for things like that is substantial. If it did happen, the impact on your life would likely be a small payment from the resulting class-action lawsuit several years later.

    If you live under a repressive regime that is known to routinely install spyware on phones, you may have different concerns. If an intelligence agency, large criminal organization, or multinational corporation is directly targeting you and willing to spend more money than most people have surveilling you, they'll probably succeed even if you throw your phone in the ocean.

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  • In any case, modern Android phones and modern iPhones do display an indicator when an app (or the system) is accessing your microphone. I do not know if this can be disabled.

    It can't, for certain values of can't.

    On Google certified Android, the feature is required; apps cannot disable it, and there isn't a UI toggle for it. A phone manufacturer who added a way to disable it would be breaking its contract with Google and could owe money or lose the ability to ship Google certified Android. As for Google's own devices, "just trust us". If you have a normal threat model, that's probably good enough.

    If someone very sophisticated and resourceful is targeting you directly, that may not be good enough. It can be disabled with ADB, and it's possible to run ADB commands on-device. It would be hard to make that happen without physical access to your unlocked phone, but if your adversary is sophisticated enough and the stakes are high enough, it would be unwise to rule it out.

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  • Sony once sold a video camera that could sort of do that under specific circumstances.

    Cameras usually have a filter to block infrared light, but that camera offered the ability to toggle the filter to improve the camera's performance in low light. Hobbyists also sometimes modify cameras to remove their infrared filters for artistic effect or to photograph animals at night without disturbing them with visible light. Some clothing is not fully opaque to infrared light, so an IR camera can sometimes capture some detail of what's underneath. Adding a filter that reduces visible light and passes IR might increase the effect.

  • Removed

    Cinnabon Worker Fired After Being Racist to Couple

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  • The customers on the receiving end of the abuse apparently also have a fundraiser, or someone set one up on their behalf.

    That's kind of weird. Maybe they need financial assistance for some other reason, but somebody being a verbally abusive racist asshole at a food stall doesn't create a financial hardship.