I would say you should be free to make the decision to forego the advantages working though a middle man affords you, if you would prefer the savings. That said, there’s consumer protection, quality certification (important for insurance purposes), returns, after sales care and I’m sure I’m forgetting stuff. Nothing to do with differences in the product itself, more so the guarantee of a product that does what it says on the tin.
One of the reasons I hear for these draconian, inhumane laws is that we should be having more children to sustain the (subtext: white) population. I just only just realized they will do the exact opposite.
Poor woman. What a tragedy.
Or maybe it’s just the ‘we’ that’s going to be out of the equation, which is fine too I guess. Our particular form of life just isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things anyway.
They were all right though, if by ‘the world’ you mean ‘the world as we know it’.
Oh, you mean when you involve a profit motive in health care, providers will act accordingly at the expense of the patient? Get the fuck out of here! No way! Next you’ll tell me when you introduce middlemen into the system they will also abuse their customers to benefit themselves!
Battery swelling caused the display to detach or crack, exposing the user to sharp fragments. Buried a couple paragraphs in, behind terms of use. Thought I’d save you a click.
The old thread I posted this in was deleted, but I wrote this:
Okay so hear me out. I have this pet theory that might explain some of the divide between genders, but also political parties, causing paralysis which ultimately might lead to humanity’s extinction. Forgive me if I’m stating the obvious.
I’m going to set up two axioms to arrive at an extrapolated conclusion.
One: Human psychology tends to ascribe more weight to negative things than positive things in the short term. In the long term this generally balances out, but in the short term it’s more prudent in a biological sense to pay attention to the rustling in the bushes than the berries you might pick from them. This is known as the negativity bias.
Two: The modern gatekeepers of social interaction, Big Tech, employ blind algorithms that attempt to steer your attention towards spending more time on their platforms. These companies are the arbiters of the content we experience daily and what you do and don’t see is mostly at their discretion. The techniques they employ, in simple terms, are designed to provoke what they call ‘engagement’. They do this because at the end of the day FAANG have not only a financial interest, but a fiduciary duty to sell advertisements at the behest of their shareholders. The more they can engage you, the more ads they can sell. They employ live A-B testing, divide people into cohorts and poke and prod them with psychological techniques to try and glue your eyeballs to their ads.
Extrapolated conclusion: These companies have a financial and legally binding interest to divide the population against itself, obstructing politics and social interaction to the point where we might not be able to achieve any of the goals that we need to reach to prevent oblivion.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Business is people, money is speech, war is peace.
I’ve never thought about it like that, but you raise an interesting point. From the point of view of patients insurance is an inextricable part of health care. I’m not so sure you can separate them that easily. Even in Western Europe the trend is towards privatization so when something happens to me health wise my first concern is insurance, never mind the actual problem. It’s a tragedy. Let’s just go back to setting up a mandatory fund and paying out from that without the profit seeking middlemen. We don’t need them.
Oh so I guess piracy is fine if it’s citizens getting robbed huh? Funny how that works.
All those negative things are happening in a society that implemented mass surveillance so clearly it doesn’t help. Recording a crime doesn’t prevent it and if there’s no incentive or funding to make sure justice is served afterwards the recording is useless. I think you’re mistaken in who this surveillance is for: it doesn’t exist to improve your life but to empower corporations and state against you.
I agree that alternative app stores are definitely a boon and I can’t wait for the EU to nail Apple to the wall over dragging their feet on that. Competition is good and that 30% fee monopoly is bullshit.
There are iOS terminal clients (I like Termius). The ROM thing, yeah… I installed /e/OS on my Fairphone 4 just for the privacy aspect, but functionally it’s not better or worse than what came in the box. There might be reasons to do it but utility-wise I don’t very well see the point in this day and age.
I hadn’t thought of the developer license requirement to run your own software, I personally don’t do that but I can see it being a deal breaker. Thanks for your thoughts. :)
This is a common argument and it always makes me wonder what people mean by it. No ill intent from my end here, I use and like Apple as well as FOSS, but I can’t think of anything I can do on Android that I can’t on iOS. I admit I’m a very basic user though, I prefer to do heavy lifting on a laptop.
I am genuinely curious. Do you have some examples?
I’m going to start by acknowledging I’m privileged not to worry too much about finances since I have a well paying job that I quite enjoy. I realize that the grind is a bitter necessity for some.
That said, living simply affords you the time to do this kind of thing. Notice how there’s no 70 inch MagnaPhallix 5000 OLED TV in the background. It’s old furniture in a cave. If you’re happy with simple things and time spent with friends you don’t need the grind as much.
I mean if you want. Why wait for anyone else?