Legal action for picking the “wrong” option in an app? Also, “I’m gender fluid, your honor”, so good luck proving anything.
By “nefarious purposes” I meant serious stuff. Some deranged fuck decides to kill (edit: a certain gender) and there’s not much you can do after they point a gun or put a knife to the driver’s neck. It’s too late by then.
I don’t know, I understand their intention, but it seems to have some flaws.
Are they checking the customers too? If not, it seems to be an easy way for some weirdos to go around targetting genders they don’t like.
Can’t really comment on that as in my city (not US) to drive for these companies you need a license. To get the license, they perform background checks, check your criminal record, ask for medical approval, etc, every time you have to renew it, and all this seems to stop a lot of bad stuff. Not saying it doesn’t happen - you can’t never completely stop it - but there are ways to reduce it.
Anyway, they could just allow customers to select their preferred gender, would make anyone that wants to use such option happy, and we wouldn’t even have to talk about discrimination.
Since users choose their gender in the app, this has some potential to be used for more nefarious purposes, no?
Not a big fan of discriminatory options like this, btw.
Someone needs to learn the difference between gender and biological sex.
People will forget - like we eventually forget about everything - but the information doesn’t have to disappear from the internet.
Have a website, blog, etc? Write about your experience, what you saw other people doing, the reactions, what politicians did, what you felt, etc. Archive the pages on the usual archival sites, so something lives on even after you die.
Just like some people went back to read what the newspapers wrote about the “Spanish” flu 100 years ago, someone is likely to get back to what we wrote/filmed/saved during this pandemic.
1.5x speed is your friend, but (from memory) essentially it’s a video where he:
Criticises Linus/LTT/LMG for their handling of the initial review/problem and what happened with the female employee. Also points out their incompetence, fuck ups, and Linus not reacting as he should.
Criticises Gamers Nexus/Steve for the way he presents opinions as facts, nitpicking, how youtube channels should managed/updated, and his “gatekeeping”. Also mentions the comments about LMG hiring people from the industry and how they leave out important information about the people being hired as it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Criticises the community for being fanbois, sending threats, asking for Linus “head”, lack of understanding how content creation works and the difference between small and larger operations, the reaction to some of the official replies. Also, the difference between one person (eg: Linus) and the organisation (eg: LMG/LTT) and how Linus (or any “main” dude) probably doesn’t read or reply to most of emails.
Goes into content production from a point of view of a content producer (written and now video), the logistics of that and how it can be hard to fix mistakes, especially when different teams and people (with different areas of knowledge) are involved.
Etc. I’m probably forgetting a few things, so watching the video and reading comments there is probably a good idea.
You made 4 points about things that may or may not happen. For some of them you made the worst assumption possible (eg: batteries may not be available to buy. As if China won’t go brrrrrr making them :P ). And that’s why I said that “I guess” that for you the glass is half empty (aka you’re focusing mainly on possible issues).
You might be right of course, but keep in mind that the main players (eg: Samsung, Apple) already sell some components to 3rd parties or are starting to do so. Even Apple, with all their control, don’t disable 3rd party batteries on their phones, they just show you a warning inside the settings menu. So, from a slightly different point of view, the glass is actually half full and you may not need additional rules. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if someone wants to piss off the EU and have more rules imposed on them.
Anyway, it was a quick reply to the top comment on this thread (when I opened it at least). I didn’t spend much time trying interpret your comment :P
Is the glass half full or half empty? For you, I guess it’s half empty.
Rules can be updated and tightened if needed. This is a good step, another could be taken if they don’t play nice.
Every generation needs to adopt new technologies if they want to live in society. For some it was cars, for others it was phones, faxes or the internet. We also stop using older technology… for example, I’ve never sent a fax in my life. It probably sucks for people who still want to send faxes, but now you scan and email or take a picture and send it via your favourite app. Today you need internet and a phone. It is what it is… like every generation you either keep up or get left behind.
Yes, smartphones can be used to manipulate and spy. You can also use them to learn, to be entertained, to drive to places you had no idea how to reach, keep in touch with people, and so on. I’m not being “controlled” by anyone when I pick my phone and make a video call to a friend or watch a tutorial about something I want to do. You’re only focusing on the bad aspects, so it’s not a surprise that phones are so evil for you. Plus, some people prefer to have all their tickets, cards, etc, inside an app instead of carrying coins and cards around… it’s not bad for everyone.
Regarding China, yes, some countries will be like them. Some won’t. There’s a lot of stuff that have nothing to do with phones that could have be done by other countries, but haven’t because things are different. Governments want to control people, but you probably don’t need a permit to travel from one side of your country to the other like they do in China or used to to in the Soviet Union. Maybe I’m being naive, but I don’t see why every country must become very controlling surveillance states. It’s possible, but there are other possible outcomes too.
I think it’s good to be aware about the negative aspects of technology, but to “hate the future” just because it may (or not) be worse than today doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll deal with the problem when and if it appears.
No. For most (if not all) batteries the recommendation is to avoid discharging them too much.
Having a larger battery helps here because you won’t go as deep. On a larger UPS, maybe you’ll be at 30% when the power returns instead of being at 5%. On a phone, it may reduce the number of charging cycles because you no longer need to charge during the day or have to go too deep. On EVs, a larger battery means that you won’t have to fast charge as much during trips and that you won’t have to charge it to 90% to reach the next charger or arrive with a very low state of charge.
Larger batteries also allow devices to age better. If I get a phone that barely lasts me a day, I’ll probably have to replace the battery or carry a power bank around after a while. On the other hand, if I always end the day with 20-30% left, I’ll only have problems after losing ~20% of capacity. It’s the same with a UPS. If we find ourselves going down to 5% when it’s new, then 2 or 3 years later that USP won’t be enough for our load/outages and will shutdown before power returns.
I don’t have anything to add in terms of solutions, but I think it’s worth trying to understand why your batteries only last 1 or 2 years.
If it’s because they’re too low capacity for your needs and you’re deep draining discharging them often, then you might be able to save money in the long term by getting a larger, more expensive UPS. If the environment where they operate is harsh (eg: too hot), maybe the fix is actually air con or something like that. And so on.
Batteries can last a long time, but you need to avoid the extremes: temperatures, state of charge, charging cycles, etc.
I’m not sure if the MAGA (and similar) crowd likes electric cars :-P
I bought a replacement in 2015 (months after the problem started), so no, I wasn’t trying to use the latest iOS on a 5 years old phone. Even if I was, it’s up to them to make sure it runs at least well enough and/or to provide a way to downgrade (something that Apple didn’t [still doesn’t?] allow you to do) as customers have no idea if the update has a problem before they install it and use it for a while.
Only Apple can prove this as all we have is rumours, but I believe they started playing with the idea of slowing down devices way before that wider release years later. I remember finding similar reports when I tried to find out what was happening to my phone. There were complaints even on Apple’s own community forums: some owners had laggy iPhones while other owners, with the same device/model, were fine. Unfortunately, other than the usual user blaming from people that didn’t have the problem and the “buy a new phone” comments, no one suggested an actual fix.
The slow down in 2017 was huge for some people. Here’s a 3 year old iPhone 6 that had its frequencies go from 1400 MHz to 600 MHz: https://twitter.com/Sam_RMSI/status/943400254451335168
I’m far from being an Apple hater - I’m typing this on a M1 MBP after all - but it’s not okay to slow down phones like that without any warning, information or a way to disable the “feature”. The person above had their clock speeds drop to less than half of the original speeds! Like, what the heck?
I’m sure they had good intentions, but in practice they slowed down some devices too much without any warning or a way to reverse the change. Their only fixes for the problem they created all involved giving them money: you either had to buy a new phone or pay for a battery replacement which was not that cheap. They had to be sued first and only then they added a setting to disable the throttling and started offering affordable battery replacements…
This type of behaviour from companies shouldn’t be defended or praised.
How long of a delay (too long and people complain) and how to cut if off without having to add another line to the pilot’s checklists during troubleshooting?
The intention was probably good, but at the end of the day my phone still lagged, I couldn’t disable or was aware of the “feature”, the guy at the store still told me to get a new phone, Apple still denied it at the time, etc. Willingly or not, they created a bad experience for some iPhone owners and made money selling new devices.
I’m not getting any of this money and that was my first and last iPhone (I’m still pissed all these years later…), but it’s good that they’re receiving bad PR and have to pay something. Not only customers got cheap battery replacements and a setting to disable this (on newer iPhones) after the lawsuits, but next time they’re more likely to remember to create a help page on their site and to inform their store staff about features like this one.
You usually want to know and control what goes into your distro, especially if we’re talking about more critical systems. If you just install Ubuntu, you’re handing over control to its creator, Canonical.
Some planes and carriers have this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slzAcWff7nU
It costs money though, so you usually only see them on more premium carriers and larger planes.
I’m working from memory here, but I think there was an instance where there was a crash or some incident where people could see it happening on the cameras though… and it’s not ideal having everyone in the plane panicking because they’re going to die.
We should bear in mind that the level of slow downs were worse on some devices than on others.
I don’t know if it was the different SoCs or just different levels of throttling for different levels of battery wear, but my phone got really slow. There was no information about what was going on, no way to disable the slow down, and Apple support back then would tell you to just get a new phone (which they did to me).
While the idea behind the slow downs is solid and I’ve done it myself on old laptops with bad batteries, doing it behind the scenes without informing anyone and then making money by selling new devices is not something that should be praised. Apple probably made more money than what they’ll have to pay with this settlement, but still… better something than nothing.
The option allows customers to prioritize drivers from two of their 3 gender groups: “female” and “non-binary”. One group is left out and if you happen to be in that group, you’ll end up doing less trips, making less money.
I wouldn’t be happy with a setting to prioritize “male”, so you can see why I’m not happy with a setting that prioritizes “female” and “non-binary”. You either give the customer the option to prioritize any gender or you don’t.
Since they can’t verify one’s gender, the potential for abuse is there. A customer could prioritise these groups if they wanted to target them and the driver could also pick one of these genders if they wanted to have people of said gender in their car.