And they released it without a physical version for consoles and stated that’s because it helps them to keep the price higher. Big yikes.

This is a position that is held because you believe other people would find your definitions of harm and better as reasonable.

Consider if you were in the minority here. You’re doing something and wearing something that you don’t view as harmful. And then someone else insists that it is harmful only to you and decides to stop you from doing said thing.

I don’t know how you’d consider that okay for the state to force you not to wear clothes because its “harmful”. Or for the state to force you to do the thing that others view is better for you to do. People should be free to disagree with the state and take personal actions that the state disagrees with. Full stop.

It’s a good thing. Is it a good or bad thing that this child would be forced not to smoke?

It does not matter if a vice is chosen or unchosen. Smoking is a great example. You may not choose a tobacco addiction.

Situation A: you have the freedom to choose to quit or not. Quitting results in more freedom. Not quitting results in less. The total freedoms available to you at any time are the freedom TO quit and the freedom OF quitting

Situation B: You have no freedom to choose to quit. Your total freedoms are: freedom from quitting.

So your freedoms have decreased in situation B. We have to ask if personal freedoms are preferable to better outcomes.

The difference is that freedom is independent of opinion. You are either free to do so lawfully or not. But if I say “it would be better for you to not have that freedom”, I need to demonstrate what “better” means. And there everyone often disagrees.

Forcing someone to stop smoking is not giving them freedom

I think saying this largely denies the cultural implications of many religiously associated garments and symbols.

Most religious symbols are not just that, they’re cultural ones. People adopt them, change them, redefine them. Drawing lines between religion and culture is very difficult so attempting to stop someone dressing some way is just a restriction of freedom, regardless of religion.

You’re not wrong. But I was just pointing out the validity of talking about the semantics of piracy. I ultimately don’t care what people decide to do, just be aware of what it is you’re doing by blocking ads. Which is most of what Linus was saying.

It’s not like you see the ads that have trackers, they get blocked. So it’s still part of the agreement sort of. And you’re also aware that it’s revenue for them. People assume it’s a moral argument, it’s not. You can pirate from absolutely evil people, but it’s still piracy. That’s why I don’t view it as worth arguing over for the most part. I WANT people to realize that it’s piracy but that they’re actually doing something ethical.

I want to be clear still, piracy isn’t a problem or wrong necessarily. I’m not pushing a corporate narrative by saying this, I’m more concerned about creators and other sites that use ads for revenue such as newspapers. So if you want to “pay” a site without money, don’t pirate their content. That’s all. That’s similar to what Linus has said.

But I think this is somewhat similar to asking you for a ticket at the door for a movie. If the “ticket” is watching the ad and they’re asking you to buy the ticket (with premium) or get it from ads, bypassing the doorman would mean it’s piracy. Doesn’t even matter if the doorman doesn’t try to stop you. Doesn’t matter if they don’t pull you out of the movie.

You being the product is irrelevant to the piracy thing. But it is relevant to the moral thing

Purchasing and pirating don’t have contractural agreements. You don’t have to have a ToS to pirate something.

If DuckDuckGo does block the ad in their browser, they’ve done the work for you. And if they do not but instead Google decides to serve it to you without ads in a browser, it’s not piracy to not have ads.

As long as the intended revenue of the content you’re viewing is being blocked, you’re pretty much pirating it. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it’s just a definitional thing.

It is, yes. It’s a separate conversation of if it should be illegal or immoral to keep your privacy this way. But as long as you are violating the intended method of revenue for the content you’re viewing, that’s piracy to me.

I think most people hear piracy and think it’s immoral or illegal, but there are very valid reasons to pirate content such as game and movie preservation.

I see what you mean but I don’t agree. The deal being made here is obvious and you’re signing up to give them data in exchange for watching a video. You’re also signing up to view their ads. You have an option not to be the product at all. You already have the wheat, but you’re giving the middleman less than what was arranged, not just producing less.

And if you view it as okay to not give them what they’re asking for while getting the content anyways, that’s chill. Just recognize that you’re paying less for the content than they’re asking. This is even more enforced by YouTube and news papers who charge for ad free experiences.

Believe it or not, I think he has a point and isn’t at all a hypocrite. He’d show you how to pirate and torrent stuff (and has before) while also telling you he doesn’t recommend stealing. What he was saying is that the content isn’t meant to be free. The ads pay for the content. So not watching ads means the producer doesn’t get paid. Its a soft form of piracy but he wasn’t telling you what to do about that. He just said “Be aware you’re not giving people anything for their content”. I don’t know why thats controversial, he’s not even suggesting its illegal or even immoral. I never understood the arguments here but I also dont visit twitter

I think repairability is a discussion. But we can also talk about how android makers cut updates off sooner which dooms the hardware to be trashed quicker. Or the very real human cost of google killing projects related to android and selling data. Also, a lot of the Apple stuff has to do with cost to repair, not repairability. At the end of the day, Apple can and does repair and resell their stuff. They just charge more to do so. But a lot of their users pay up for it. Would be interesting to see the stats on where broken devices end up for each

I’ll give them some fairness. When lightning originally launched, it was a great interface for lightweight power delivery and was more sturdy than the deplorable micro USB. I can’t explain just how bad microUSB is. So it made sense. I think USB-C just put in the legwork to be a much better adapter.

Also the giant plot hole missing here is that Apple sits on the USB forum I believe and so has some say in what the billions of devices they produce use to charge. They just can’t make money off of a standard now.

I hadn’t heard this. Good on the EU not letting them squirrel out of this (hopefully)

It makes them a very small amount of money. But they’ve also been rumored to be making iPhones use a “Made for Apple” type of cable for faster charging speeds. I think that would be really dumb but here we are.

I think these are accurate. Siri is better at being summoned and doing quick tasks but I feel like Google has a lot more features.

And for having to tinker less, absolutely true so far

The only reason I chose this phone is because I determined that the interconnected apps and services were more worth it in my social circle. Without that, the value proposition basically becomes even to me.

I guess my thing is that technology is important to me and at some point having tech work better overall even if it’s more expensive is more important to me. Plus a lot of Apple stuff is well made and has great resale value so it becomes more manageable that way.

That is odd. But I can definitely tell you that most of the solutions for casting your phone to a tv never worked for me on android. Smart cast almost never worked for me at all. But I will slightly miss the Dex software which was occasionally useful.

I think the best solution for me was getting an NVIDIA shield and using 3rd party apps anyways. It’s better than casting and works more consistently.