I am glad to hear that there was someone who argued for the right course of action in the Amazon Prime organization. I don't know why this is not being fought by other regulators. I also paid for Amazon Prime, expecting to get ad-free content, and then they started to add advertisements. This may not be fraud, but it is definitely lowering my opinion of Amazon.
Amazon seems cool with selling fake fuses that will kill people. That is what got me to stop shopping with them. The fact they seem to be cool with literally just letting people die. Fuses aren't an 'optional if they work' thing.
What's infuriating is that Amazon has finally announced they're getting rid of co-mingling and have never had to massively pay for their misguided policy that has killed people.
When you start a subscription, you're agreeing to pay X amount every Y period of time; you're not starting a new agreement every single Y period of time.
They can cancel the prior tier or bump up the price on renewal though. This is the problem with subscriptions, you become complacent and accept incremental changes until you finally notice that you’re being rinsed.
And actually some subscriptions can include unilateral price increases in the contract (a subscription is a contract) with early termination fees. It just isn’t commonly done because word gets around and you will lose business. You typically only see this in predatory industries where there are few alternatives and the service is necessary, like local waste management.
If the contract is unfair enough you can usually escape it in court or arbitration, but nobody wants to go through that.
No, that doesn't make sense at all. You've paid for consistent terms for that Y period of time. Not cancelling the subscription when it's up for renewal is an implicit agreement to any new terms. And I'm sure if you'd read those terms in the first place, you'd come to the same understanding.
(And it's not even that: the X you're charged is subject to change upon renewal!)
I'm not arguing that this is a good or bad thing, just pointing out the reality of every single subscription agreement I've signed up for online.
They can cancel the subscription if you don't agree to the new proposition after they fulfilled their contract. But they can't just change the terms of the agreement after it was made.
But doing so would mean risking to loose customers who were just too lazy to cancel. So most Businesses don't like it. (Spotify did cancel their old contracts though, for people who had not agreed with the recent price hike)
I think your question is reasonable, but no, I do not think a company gets to promote a service as having no ads as part of the sell, and then put ads in by default.
Not the person you're replying to, but it just feels like rent-seeking. Amazon is already a gigantic corporation, pretty much everyone spends lots and lots of money on Amazon, it just felt like a way to try and squeeze more money out of their existing customers.
ETA:
I mean, I'm sure there is some exception to this, but generally speaking everyone hates ads. Part of the reason that the whole "cable cutting" thing happened was because everyone hated paying a lot of money to some cable company just to be bombarded with advertisements. At least that's a big reason as to why I did it.
Now all these media companies realized that they can start shoving ads at us again and people will keep paying.
Obviously I'm not entitled to having media at a specific price indefinitely, but I'm perfectly allowed to not like it when companies engage in rent-seeking bullshit.
It wouldn't bother me as much if you could still buy media, but as far as I can tell most TV shows don't get Blu-ray releases anymore. The media companies realized that it's more profitable for them to make you pay for the same media forever instead of a lump cost, I guess preferably with you watching corporate brainwashing to buy products.
I suspect once the heat on this settles down, every streaming service is going to start forcing ads on us at all times, and then the only way to fight back on this will be bittorrent.
Or just stop watching. I seem to be out of tune with what people want in a TV show nowadays, I don't find much enjoyable. I accept there was never that much, but given how much content is produced now I would have expected more in my sweet spot.
> The bank is not printing money new money, no matter how many times this idea gets repeated by people who are, ironically, pumping crypto coins that were printed out of thin air.
It is now widely accepted that bank lending produces new money[1][2]
There's an inordinate amount of nonsense being espoused in this thread, when the answer is in that first link. I can only assume it's the miseducation that economics textbooks perpetuate.
The worst part of it is that the "true Internet" is probably still out there, but we can't find it anymore. The search engines have gotten way worse over the years and we no longer have good enough filters to ignore all the nonsense.
the last article "Calling All Hackers" touches on this. There are still plentiful communities and resources outside of the mainstream internet. A lot of what I personally refer to as the "real internet" are these smaller indie sites and communities.
As of 3.13, Python doesnt have a GIL either. JVM-based Ruby implementations don't have a GIL. Perl on the other hand never had a GIL, it just more or less defeated the purpose of threading by copying the entire interpreter state including all variables in every thread. Modules that explicitly work with threading are as rare as hens teeth on CPAN, it's almost always some flavor of async like Coro (hell I bet POE still works too).
python 3.13 most certainly has a GIL, it can just be optionally disabled, and this feature is in experimental status. see https://peps.python.org/pep-0703/
Oh, I thought the experimental state was earlier and that 3.13 was the official no-GIL release. Presumably it's going to eventually drop the GIL entirely (probably Python 4 if there ever is such a thing) but nonetheless I stand corrected, thank you.
I was curious about this and did some casual googling. It spawns an interpreter per thread. However, it seems this is not advantageous performance wise. From docs [1]
The "interpreter-based threads" provided by Perl are not the fast, lightweight system for multitasking that one might expect or hope for. Threads are implemented in a way that makes them easy to misuse. Few people know how to use them correctly or will be able to provide help.
No, instead they have subinterpteters with all of the massive overhead that brings re: data sharing. And even fewer CPAN modules are remotely thread safe than PyPi modules, probably in absolute as well as relative terms. That’s a low bar.
As a result, threaded Perl code or frameworks are extremely uncommon, even relative to Python.
While you may be able to create amazing experiences in JavaScript, JavaScript still has multiple problems:
1. It is inconsistent [1]
2. It does not have many features that programmers love and other languages have.
3. It has a community that holds different values from what other programmers value themselves.
If people want to continue development in JavaScript, they can. But since JavaScript has a monopoly on the (fairly large) 'frontend development for the web' market, there will always be attempts to find an alternative.
Is there a Mac app to copy Windows' windowing behavior?
I want different virtual desktops to behave like they are different computers with a shared clipboard, i.e., I don't want to see apps from other virtual desktops showing up on 'Alt-Tab', dock bar to show all open apps, etc.
It is unfortunate that the company that became incredibly successful, at least partly, because of the hackability of Linux and open source software is now actively working to suppress hackability.
I recently had to unroot my phone since it was too much pain. Almost all apps were constantly fighting to not be allowed to run. After a while, I had a variety of root-hiding modules installed on Magisk, and every time I downloaded and installed a new app, the dread was there that it would not work because of root.
War on General Computing[1] is here. For some reason, most people do not seem to care that they do not have full control of the devices that they bought with their own hard-earned money.
It is one of those rare cases where 'your choices affect my choices' and therefore not meshing with the idea that maximum individual freedom is always a good thing. Therefore, I don't think this can be solved by market forces- we may need some regulation. I think it would be fair to ask the companies to allow the apps to run on a rooted device so long as the user takes responsibility for any resulting losses. Any service provider should still be responsible for securing their own systems though.
To me, this situation only serves to illustrate the importance of computer owners optionally being able to create systems "from scratch". Versus the only option being to use some "we-already-did-the-work-for-you" facility such as a "software development kit" or whatever the terminology is these days.
Custom ROMs might seem like "building from scratch" but to me, it is still far from it. People are still stuck following rules made by someone else, and not the hardware manufacturer. Those rules can change any time, for any reason, long after purchase. Google's ability to easily frustrate people trying to control their pocket-sized computers suggests that whatever control they are able to achieve, it is not enough.
Until I can run NetBSD on an old "phone", or some other pocket-sized computer with similar form factor, I'm not satisfied.
I don't share your experience wrt apps and root checks at all. Only once in a blue moon do I encounter an app that does this, and when they do it's just a good reason not to use it.
In the rest of the cases, say games, the basic root hiding of magisk/kernelsu do wonders, and since recently w/ kernelsu the safetynet bypass comes out of the box. Of course, I avoid relying on this for anything I can't go without.
That said, a big part of this experience might be related to how I primarily run applications from F-Droid these days. The free software app ecosystem is absolutely massive and very mature compared to when I first went gapps-less around 2015, to the point it's rare for me to use anything from the android market at all.
they suppressed hackability since the beginning though, but of course not as much as Apple... For example, by default, they block native Linux apps, block ad-hoc WiFi, rooting your device can be a pain, etc
Getting rid of rooting is not a "war on general computing." General computing means that you can write a wide variety of software for them instead of the computer being meant for a specific use case. The app platform on Android allows for such a variety of apps. Just because it's not possible for an app to record your microphone without asking the user for permission that doesn't mean that the phone isn't general purpose.
One unstated part of that "if I don't have root on my device" statement is "...and someone else does have root on my device". On normal Android, Google does have root on your device, while you don't. For instance, whenever you tell the Android Market app (nowadays caled "Google Play Store", but internally it's still the same app) to install an application, it doesn't actually install the application; it tells the Google servers to ask your device to install the application, and a highly privileged service on your device does the actual download and installation.
Said service is highly privileged because it's signed with a key only Google has; several system services have special access (root-equivalent, or even actual root) to your device, and these are signed by the Google key. Some of these can be remotely updated, and this update is silent (I had long ago written a small app found at https://github.com/cesarb/packageaddedremovednotifier to notify me about these silent installs, but it depended on a notification which is no longer broadcast on more recent Android versions; it was instructive for me to notice how often Android Market and one other app were silently updated).
It's true that you don't have root on your hard disk (until you connect to its serial console pins and notice that it doesn't even ask for a password before giving you full access to all its low-level commands), but neither does anyone else.
Root access is meaningless on a user build of Android. Android is designed such that the root account is not needed and it is locked down using SELinux.
> to notify me about these silent installs, but it depended on a notification which is no longer broadcast on more recent Android versions
I built a test app on Android 14 and I was able to get the broadcast you are referring to. The changes which the app you linked has not adapted to is that since Android 8 you need to use Context.registerReceiver() to register an implicit broadcast receiver for those actions [1] and since Android 11 you need to use a <queries> tag (or query all permission) in order to get visibility of other apps on the system [2].
Side note I'm super sad the fabric connected hard drives that were popping up seem to have vanished. Drives already run pretty fancy ARM controllers; having a 2.5Gbit network connection out would be such a sweet sweet sweet game changer.
"Installing software you want" and "getting access to the root user" are not the same thing either. The root user is a means to an end and not the end in itself for one's desires they have with a computer.
When Google decides that you're not allowed to install a piece of software you want on a non-rooted device (such as a phone call recorder or an ad blocker), and the only way to bypass those restrictions is using root access, then they become the same thing.
I mean... yes? If a disk has firmware that prevents the owner from destroying it when desired, that's really not okay. It even has a practical angle in cases where you need to make a disk unreadable.
I’m not that pessimistic. The world ebbs and flows.
There was a time when if you wanted an app, it had to be for Windows. It needed to be digitally signed (for good reason) not long later. Good luck moving it to any other platform. Also, good luck getting past corporate IT departments.
Then, the internet got better. Anyone could make a program that ran on any device. Later, we need pseudo-signing for that too, but it was nowhere near as intensive to get.
Desktop computers have never been a free for all. It ebbs and flows. Less freedom on system apps, greater freedom for web apps is the new vogue.
Let’s also not forget the motivation for this - people learned to be terrified of installing software. Remember Windows 10 and 11 S mode? Microsoft claims 60% of users never leave that mode to install even one app outside the Microsoft Store. That’s how much the “Normie” has learned to fear programs, and I think that there’s some blame to be had there. We desired freedom at the expense of the normal user. The normal user has rebelled and rejected freedom voluntarily.
The “Normie” user is perfectly content with a walled garden and a big tech company “securing” their experience. They’ve had their taste of freedom with Windows in the 90s and 2000s and fear it immensely. Blue screens, viruses, clunky software, broken updates, unreliable - but free. Unlike iPhone: Automatic updates, no crashes, viruses almost nonexistent, reliable and simple. Not technically free, but it feels free enough. We don’t really have anyone but ourselves (tech enthusiasts in general) to blame.
I can’t overstate this enough: We want freedom? We need to break the well-earned cultural stereotype that freedom equals a terrible experience.
They don't effing know and most people don't have the mental stack or attention span to make it through an explanation of the factors/consequences involved.
Believe me, I've tried hard to get things boiled down for the layman. We're at a point we're literally speaking languages that have no commonly relatable interpersonal equivalent.
> There was a time when if you wanted an app, it had to be for Windows. [...] Desktop computers have never been a free for all.
You're not going back far enough (as shown by your statement mentioning only Windows). Back in the MS-DOS days, there was no technical block to doing whatever you wanted with your system. It's no coincidence that Linux originated in these days; the openness of PC clones running one of the DOS variants (MS-DOS wasn't the only one) allowed for the full replacement of the operating system with nearly zero effort. You didn't even have to change the boot sector; a DOS program (LOADLIN.EXE) could completely switch the currently running operating system.
Things are much more locked down in desktop computers nowadays, and the only reason they aren't completely locked down is that Linux had already become popular enough to convince Microsoft to allow for a backdoor (actually a pair of backdoors: signing by Microsoft for popular distributions, and manual disabling for less popular distributions and development).
> [...] people learned to be terrified of installing software. [...] Microsoft claims 60% of users never leave that mode to install even one app outside the Microsoft Store. That’s how much the “Normie” has learned to fear programs, [...]
Is it fear, or is it just convenience? If everything you want or need at that moment is on whatever software store you have (be it the Microsoft Store or Steam or something else), there's not much incentive to look beyond it. It's like what's been said about video streaming providers: once every show you wanted was on a single streaming provider, there was not much incentive anymore to look around on seedy corners of the web for movies, but once that convenience is no longer available (because said provider no longer has the media you want), people once again look for alternatives.
(As an aside, think about the reason "developer mode" in more recent Android versions is hidden behind a secret knock on a disused corner at the bottom of the settings application: if it weren't a hidden setting, "normal users" would enable it. The same with bypassing some security warning pages in the desktop Chrome browser. If "normal users" really feared freedom, they would stay away from these options without the need to hide them.)
It's much more simple: Normal people (read: not us) buy computers to accomplish a given task, computers are merely tools; a computer and a can opener are exactly the same thing. If the computer serves its user's purpose, that's all that matters.
That is to say: Normal people couldn't care less about fleedumb and rible. Normal people care about getting shit done; presently, locked down smartphones get shit done better than any other computational device for normal people.
I also buy computers and phones to accomplish task.
Those task are, however, way more diverse than task people you are referring to are willing to accomplish.
But it is a holdings company, and their business model is to make returns on equity (and possibly loaning out capital to their subsidiaries) instead of directly managing their subsidiaries' operations and generating revenue.
