You do understand that you’re not in the majority?

The root problem is that Android lets carriers “enhance” their devices with crapware and also make it hard or impossible to install without technical know-how

News stopped being news when the 24 hour news cycle started. Now it’s just entertainment.

Yes for all of the first group.

No for Safari.

My need to install “unsanctioned” apps on my phone is on par with my need to install random apps on my PS5. Zero. YMMV.

With the exception of Safari, you can uninstall every application using the standard process.

Can you do that for Android carrier crapware that’s preinstalled? Just tap on it and choose uninstall?

Android is giving the carriers the option to do that. They don’t need to give the tools for crapware installation

It’s hardly intrusive, no pop ups or “hey I’m here” notifications. You can uninstall most of them in seconds without special tools.

Android crapware is much more deeper, it’s not stuff your grandma can uninstall.

This is even worse in TikTok, where the expected content length is 2-3 minutes.

If I’m forced to wear an uniform to work, the employer should provide me with one.

Pants that hang so low that all of your ass is above the waistline. Nobody can ever convince me it can be even remotely cool

Only on Android and Windows.

Zero issues on Linux and MacOS

It does now, it didn’t at the time

For those unable or unwilling to find employment, there is Basic Assistance, the United Nations’ global welfare program. Over half of the Earth’s populace relies on it for survival. Without jobs, these people have no money, so Basic provides shared accommodations in government housing complexes, meagre food in the form of Gray-tasting textured protein and enriched rice, minimal medical care in government clinics, and even recycled paper clothing, dispensed from automated kiosks with a thumbprint. All of these services are provided free of charge, but those on Basic are subject to mandatory contraception and cannot legally have children, apart from the regular “baby lottery” allowing for a small number of births each year

From the Expanse wiki.

Earth has a population of over 30 Billion with a B when the series starts.

The files WILL be scanned the second they leave your device to any major cloud.

If they don’t leave your device, then turning off iCloud (and thus the “back door”) wouldn’t have had any impact on you.

It’s not a very good back door if you have an explicit easy to use switch to turn it off.

And even without this feature on your device, they don’t need to use a “back door”. They’ll just go through your front door that’s wide open and can’t be closed because of “the children”

If you want to “own” your phone, there are other manufacturers than Apple that allow you to lock it down like Fort Knox (or whatever you deem secure)

There was no “huge privacy issue”.

First of all: You could turn off the local scanning by turning off iCloud sync - which would’ve sent the images to the cloud for scanning anyway. That’s it, nothing else, nobody at Apple would’ve touched a single super-private file on your device.

The local scanning required MULTIPLE (where n>3, they didn’t say the exact number for obvious reasons) matches to known and human-verified CSAM. This database is the one that would’ve been loaded from iCloud if you had it turned on. This is the exact same database all cloud providers are using for legal reasons. Some have other algos on top - at least Microsoft had an is_penis algorithm that shut down a German dude’s whole Live account for his kid’s pics being on OneDrive.

After the MULTIPLE matches (you can’t get flagged by “accidentally” having one on your phone, nor would pics of your kids in the pool trigger anything) a human checker would have had enough data to decrypt just those images and see a “reduced resolution facsimile” (Can’t remember the exact term) of the offending photos. This is where all of the brainpower used to create false matches would’ve ended up in. You would’ve had to create multiple matches of known CP images that looks enough like actual CP for the human to make an erroneous call multiple times to trigger anything.

If after that the human decided that yep, that’s some fucked up shit, the authorities would’ve been contacted.

Yes, a Bad Government could’ve forced Apple to add other stuff in the database. (They can do it right now for ALL major cloud storage providers BTW) But do you really think people wouldn’t have been watching for changes in the cloud-downloaded database and noticed any suspicious stuff immediately?

Also according to the paper the probability of a false match was 1 in 1 trillion accounts - and this was not disputed even by the most hardcore activists btw.

tl;dr If you already upload your stuff to the cloud (like iOS does automatically) the only thing that would’ve changed is that nobody would’ve had a legit reason to peep at your photos in the cloud “for the children”. But if you’ve got cloud upload off anyway, nothing would’ve changed. So I still don’t understand the fervour people had over this - the only reason I can think of is not understanding how it worked.

Yep, it’s a legal “think of the children” requirement. They’ve been doing CSAM scanning for decades already and nobody cared.

When Apple did a system that required MULTIPLE HUMAN-VERIFIED matches of actual CP before even a hint would be sent to the authorities, it was somehow the slippery slope to a surveillance state.

The stupidest ones were the ones who went “a-ha! I can create a false match with this utter gibberish image!”. Yes, you can do that. Now you’ve inconvenienced a human checker for 3 seconds, after the threshold of local matching images has been reached. Nobody would’ve EVER get swatted by your false matches.

Can people say the same for Google stuff? People get accounts taken down by “AI” or “Machine learning” crap with zero recourse, and that’s not a surveillance state?

We could’ve burned that bridge when we got to it. If Apple would’ve been allowed to implement on-device scanning, they could’ve done proper E2E “we don’t have the keys officer, we can’t unlock it” encryption for iCloud.

Instead what we have now is what EVERY SINGLE other cloud provider is: they scan your shit in the cloud all the time unless you specifically only upload locally-encrypted content, which 99.9999% of people will never be bothered to do.

The irony is that the Apple CSAM detection system was as good as we could make it at the time, with multiple steps to protect people from accidental positives.

But, as usual, I think I was the only one who actually read the paper and didn’t go “REEEE muh privacy!!!” after seeing the headline.

I think the backstory is so that there aren’t enough jobs for everyone due to automation, so they offer people who don’t want much the option of Basic (income), with the option to get more if they get a job or start a business.

So anarchists want Basic from the Expanse pretty much?

Basic in the world of the Expanse provided people with a very basic apartment with a bed, table and a TV along with three nutritionally complete (not delicious) meals per day for free.

If you wanted anything more, you had to work or enlist.