Here’s a subtle thing…we say both the manufacturers and consumers have choices.

The manufacturer has the choice between all the thousands of possible ways to deliver a product, and picks one or two. A consumer has the choice between those two. ( or do without )

Those are all valid choices, but they are not alone of equal weight

most definitely that. not the other. The guy who played Pavel Checkov, the Enterprise’s navigator. Not the noted author born in 1860.

Yes, this is a bit outside the screen problem, but it is pertinent to car UI. Buttons/Joysticks give a form of tactile feedback, they don’t give positional feedback. Take a button. Pushing it does give tactile feedback (she feels that she pushed the button), but it’s quite possible that the button wasn’t pushed enough or long enough to register the push, same with joystick up/down. Flipping a switch for example is different. The position changes, and latches. She is certain that her intentions (turn on the light) were either carried out or not, because the switch with either be in position one or two. Buttons/joysticks require a second evaluation, to check that the button knows it was pushed. It’s a subtle difference, but serious. Sliding the gearshift all the way forward, we just know it’s done. Likewise pulling up on the handle, hearing the ratchet sound, I know that my parking brake is on.

What about the one sided ability to change a contract??

A year from now Roku pop up says “Click to Accept” , the text says **"this contract means you’ll have to give us your first born child? ** My reasoning says if they can do one then they can do the other. There is nothing that would prevent them from adding ‘fees’, or ‘subscriptions’ or simply turning off the device. (!)

This is egregious. We bought something. In normal commerce, the contract was set in stone at that moment. The seller can’t roll up 2 years later, change the contract, force you to agree before you can use your device, and then say , well maybe if you beg, you can opt out.

For more thinking about this issue for software/hardware makers a good read is “Enchanted Objects” by David Rose.

iirc. He says we’re in a ‘Glass Rectangle’ phase, where makers are stuck on screens, Like Xhibit in Pimp my ride - we put 22 screens in your car. They know how to “screen” and they use it the solution to all problems. It’s like an infatuation, where you just can’t see another way. There are entire sciences of Human Machine Interaction that explain why these designs are messed up, and the designers are aware, and have chosen otherwise.

2016 Actor Antov Yelkin who played Checkov is killed by his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee, pinning him to his mailbox and fence. Because it didn’t have a gearshift. It has a thing that looks like a shift but is a joystick.

Would you believe there is also a brigade working for years to make Tesla look terrible? https://stopelonfromfailingagain.com/

People. go figure.

( no english major here, by far)

but I suspect my qualm is: which entity is the actor and which is the acted upon.

Disney did not act to remove the subscribers, but rather the opposite, the subscribers acted to drop Disney.

One might extrapolate that Disney’s previous actions directly lead to the event.

Does that stand to reason?

Do they mean 1.3 Million subscribers dropped Disney+ ?

If that’s what they meant, english would actually let them say that.

Win7 and Win10.

headline: “We’re still asking some people what they think should be done about the harm they caused.”

must be nice to get asked what you think you you might want to do about it.

1. I’m old enough to have been down this road a dozen times, and it has always ended in tears. The ones I bought into either came into the market too early, too beta, or too late, or just weren’t able to see it through or abandoned hope mid journey.

2. I think it has a great chance to be a great thing.

Why? The magic isn’t the Framework Ecosystem. It’s one thing, un-crapified modularity. The reason most of us can afford to keep a car working isn’t because of the great Mazda or Ford ecosystem of parts. Its because the un-crapified modularity of those parts. The designs are “open” (they’re not in the libré sense, but they are simple re-make or recreate ). That is why most of us can keep our cars going. If I need a headlight, or an alternator, or a throttle-position sensor, not only does Mazda make/have the part, there are a dozen other people who make the part. I not only get a replacement, but I get choices in a open market in a range of prices and qualities.
I imagine in 2032, even if the company Framework has disappeared, there will be a lady in New Jersey making inexpensive replacement modules. That is a ‘good thing’.

Its no accident everything on an Apple device is soldered down. If they made cars they’d grind down all the bolt heads and embed the engine in epoxy. It’s their ethos. If my macbook ssd goes bad, all they can do for me is sell me a new one. The beauty of the Framework is that each module can be replaced. So no, the typical user is not going to completely upgrade their laptop in 8 years. (but they could) But, most will want to replace that one broken part on their otherwise perfectly good laptop. Another way to think about it, lets say I have a 10 year old car, worth $5k. To replace every part might truly cost me $35,000. But the way chance works, it’s rate to actually need to replace every part. And the parts that need replacing are usually relatively inexpensive.

Some years ago Consumer Reports Magazine had a section where they’d list the costs of all the replacement parts of a new car. Was interesting. IIRC it was about 4x the cost of the car.

late to the party, but I had OperaGX do a clever evil thing recently - I have an old machine running MacOS 10.14 (for reasons), I had GX up, and I alt-tab’d and noticed there was the “don’t symbol” (ghostbusters) over the OperaGX Icon. I thought, “that can’t be right”. I’m running GX right now. I double checked, and I was using GX with several windows open. But the symbol was right - they had Updated OperaGX that I WAS running, WHILE I was running it, to a version that WOULDN’T work on the computer I was on. I eventually restarted GX, and got a 'You can’t use OperaGX with this version of MacOS". Jerks.

I dug around, and very roughly, the .app file is not the App. They use a folder off in Library to store the actual pieces of the app, and it there is a few different pieces, and the .app file points to the actual executables.

Anyway it was fun while it lasted. Never again.

Space Weather News - Dr. Tamitha Skov - 22 Jan 2024 https://www.yewtu.be.com/watch?v=41LGqYbxsvk

“The MOAB contains 26 billion records over 3,800 folders, with each folder corresponding to a separate data breach. While this doesn’t mean that the difference between the two automatically translates to previously unpublished data, billions of new records point to a very high probability, the MOAB contains never seen before information.” Totaling 12TB.

shady is as shady does. on the street or in a corner office.

: -)

1. In terms of terms of service -this is not in the terms of service. Its a secret social contract. What do we know about the lockset on our doors? not much. What do we know about the company that made it’s ability to make keys? not much. There is a trust that the creator will know things that we wont, and for everyone’s betterment, they go to the grave with that knowledge.

Security is always temporary. Security puts an obstacle in the path of the treasure, it doesn’t seal off the treasure. That’s not how the real world can work. Bury it in concrete, seal it in steel. If the owner can get it, with enough time, the theif can too. Perfect security isn’t real.

2. Should they be forced - how can you? There are a thousand vulnerabilities to every product, its just that we don’t usually care so much. This is the idea behind many openSource ideas. We all know. In reality, businesses make and keep secrets.

3. It already is a social contract. It just seems important because now it’s concerning something we care about.

4. This is the struggle of law and order. To create laws that are never self-contradicting. Laws that don’t need exceptions. It’s hard math. Each society decides what IT values, and then makes laws around those values. Every fireman has a protected right to not simply break in to my home, but destroy my home in order to save lives inside it. It happens every day. They don’t come with keys, they come with battering rams and axes.
   two things are different though- We trust them, based on years and years and years of faithful service. They are honest. the second, is their actions always leave Clear evidence that they did something. I wouldn’t come home and wonder if the fire department has been in the house. I would see the broken window and smashed in door and know. With the phones - we don’t know if anyone was in, and this is very very different. There’s nothing that prevents the phone from flashing a bright red warning that its been opened from the inside - except if the person disables the alarm :-) but its possible.

17 years ago Apple stated that they have a ‘kill switch’ for the apps, and this is similar. What do you do if a million phones go wild. If you could have set up a kill switch, would you regret not doing it.

What does it mean? It means that people who use these things HAVE to put trust in the person who made it. In the same way I have to trust in VW or FORD if I sit in one. There is no using the thing, without putting a tremendous amount of trust in the person who made it.

Sure is nice of Google to change things for the better of the world. I’m sure they stand to gain nothing from this. < /sarcasm>

“Valve Software has joined the ranks of Microsoft, Sony and Electronics Arts by requiring Steam users to waive their right to file a lawsuit against the company in order to use the digital distribution platform. The company made the announcement on Tuesday, saying that Steam’s new dispute resolution terms allow customers to only bring individual claims, not class action claims.”

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/Steam-Valve-Software-Class-Action-Arbitration-Subscriber-Agreement,16598.html

People paid for particular product on a particular platform. That’s what they will get sued over. People made a contract with steam for product that runs on a platform. That’s just contract law.

Valve are the ones who require tethering to their magical drm cloud - not my copy of ‘Monkey Island’.