It's worse than "the idea is better than the execution." You are offering a lot of leniency in the meaning of your words there, and that should bother you more than it seems to but here we are.
The "idea" that was executed on here was a non-starter to begin with. You don't get anywhere by lighting everything that seems like waste on fire and burning it to the ground, learning its effects later. A modern government is not something that is riddled with waste so much that it does nothing. Their first target, USAID, as far as I could tell had no idea what was coming. They didn't even seem to bother to look into what they did, just the cashflows. Which of course will seem wasteful if you don't have a human heart with feelings, it's called U-S-A-I-D. Saying the idea was good here is like giving them the benefit of the doubt that sure maybe they can't read or understand anything, but let them axe these things without a second thought? Come on, you shouldn't let Elon off that easy.
Ah, and there it is. Why shouldn't Y-Combinator be a force for evil like the rest of them? Paul Graham has been off his rocker for about as long as I can remember now, unfortunately my memories of people like this doing anything good for the world are so far in the past, they're fading. What a shame.
> F-Droid's curation saved me at least once when I wanted to upgrade my Simple™ apps and couldn't find them in F-Droid anymore, which led me to learn that SimpleMobileTools was sold to a company that closed sourced the apps[1] and that there's a free fork called Fossify[2].
> Had I installed these through Google Play, they wouldn't have cared about this particular change and I would've gotten whatever random upgrades the new owners pushed.
sheesh. I've spent my whole mobile device life on iOS and am just now learning an Android device. While I feel I have more control over the finer details of my personal privacy and security, this ecosystem is a total minefield if you care about avoiding spyware and malware.
I'm glad I trusted my instincts and only installed F-Droid first before any apps from the Play Store. Just now found the Isolation app so I can create a Work Profile and separate personal life from the life that the relentless data vacuums are constantly trying to pull from the simplest apps these days.
Neither mobile OS is perfect, but I feel like I was correct about Apple having the user's personal privacy still much more of a priority than Google. There was never any question if those were the two options, IMO. But it does seems like now, finally, Android might be ready to deploy as a mobile operating system for the public. I'm fairly certain that this Android ecosystem that's used its users for so long as guinea pigs (not just Android, but the full unrefined and frankly unsophisticated media sphere as a whole that's been figuring out how to effectively work on us) has harmed the last generation or two beyond repair.
This became all too clear when the first thing I did on my first Android device a few weeks ago was install an offline keyboard from devs with my privacy interests in mind. Spent a few minutes thinking about what it would have been like living with this shitty keyboard system on iOS and realized that honestly, I am lucky that I stuck with iOS through all of this and feel like my mental health is much better than it would have been had I been fighting a malware-riddled Android device this whole time.
edit: I'm not saying you shouldn't use Android or that it's a bad idea, I do think that it is solid enough now (and maybe has been for a while, I don't know) that I can safely protect myself after learning. But ask yourself if all Android users would take the time to properly learn? What about kids?
We use Nara to track our baby's food intake and sleep.
A couple of months ago I noticed Little Snitch complaining about the app making new connections to malware domains. Thankfully I can run the app on macOS and noticed it.
When confronted with how this violated their Privay Policy, they gave a condescending reply. When I contacted Apple about this new update to the app, they ignored my report.
So… no, we're not safer on iOS. Perhaps the barrier to entry is a bit higher to discourage some low-hanging fruit, but Apple does very little for the 30% commission it takes.
Safer from apps that do insane but legal data collection is what I am worried about. Why would a foreign adversary need a hacking team when they can just buy what they need from an American company built to sell detailed personal information on Americans using shitty malware-riddled products?
It's not like they're the only bullies in town (@bigG: try to remember "do no evil" and you were an actually cool tech company rather worth applying to, worth having on your resume).
I paid for Prime Video to remove ads only to find that now they'll play skipable ads again at the start of a movie and this time I don't even have the option of paying again..
I'm not against big profits, and I'm definitely not in favor of more regulation to attempt to fix it but I am against mico-maximization of profit with obviously consumer-unfriendly behavior. The way to fix it, IMHO, is to start over with yet another small guy that comes in and does it right. Angel Studios is doing pretty good and although the content selection is much more limited, the overall vibe is great, feels safe to leave children around for more than 2 minutes (unlike youtube kids).
we must think of the shareholders!!! No, how can you! I want to give billionaires more profits that would most likely just be a number to them while selling myself for them, Noo.
> Perhaps the barrier to entry is a bit higher to discourage some low-hanging fruit, but Apple does very little for the 30% commission it takes.
As someone who is diligent about staying on top of these things, I thank you for sharing this because this is what I'm talking about: it is not clear at all to an average user who is trying to do task X with their phone (note that's *not* "do task X securely while protecting personal data").
I figured Apple didn't do a whole lot, but I still feel the policies must do something. Please do tell if you know specifics though. And I am very disappointed with all the near-literal shit that's flooded the iOS app store the last few years. Overall, my opinion about it all is that we need to take some time to think about everything we've learned and rebuild something new from the ground up. GrapheneOS seems promising.
That has been the problem with Apple, a lot of feeling inspired by nice UI design, and a lot of screw-you-over in the background (draconian dev policies, nonsense security requirements that make you less, not more, secure, and money grubbing that doesn't make the users any better off)...
Maybe in a world with Steve Jobs, it could have been different, who knows. I don't get the sense that Tim Cook "gets" it.
Companies are made of people, not just their figurehead.
Jobs wasn't a nice person, as it's been documented. And if he was surrounded by MBAs and PMs trying to make a career, the results might be similar to what we have.
I do think Cook is a terrible CEO on the product side. But he's made Apple richer than ever. I'm not upgrading to the 26 version of the OS'es (btw what a stupid version bump).
Can you give examples of nonsense security policies that make you less secure? I’ve always thought Apple’s security policies have been exemplary, forward thinking, and balanced.
I have lost faith in Apple as a current best choice because of the things you say. Maybe it's dumb for me to think of it this way, but I was just expressing that I'm happier overall with how Apple handled it while I've had an iPhone. I felt like I was in better hands, even though I know just about all their shortcomings that have been made public. Still, I don't think there was a better choice for the general average Joe than an iOS device. They have kept my parents safe from identity theft, any malware (that I know of), stolen credit cards, etc. And I think they deserve some (intangible, feelings-based) credit for that.
This morning I ordered a Pixel phone after realizing they are available in my price range after all (thanks to this discussion, specifically one of the few who didn't try to argue with me) so GrapheneOS is what I would personally recommend if anyone was thinking I was trying to say "iOS is better, prove me wrong". I was more looking for others to share similar thoughts, not attempt to shut me down, but such is life.
To be clear, Apple's authoritarian tendencies are directly downstream of Steve Jobs' authoritarian tendencies. Tim Cook's just continuing what was already there in 2014. It was Apple policy to lock down everything with code signing since the iPhone. Hell, I think it started being a company mandate around the 4th or 5th gen iPod.
The one thing Jobs didn't account for[0] was that iOS apps were going to take off and thus owning the signing keys to iOS would be extremely lucrative. Jobs' original iOS development mandate was "webapps only", at least until the jailbreak developers embarrassed him enough to change his mind. Even then, he genuinely thought 30% was going to just barely defray the costs of running the App Store.
The actual difference between Jobs and Cook is that Tim Cook isn't nearly as charismatic. Jobs had the "reality distortion field" - the ability to confidently lie so hard that the engineers believe the lie and actually make it true. It's the sort of authoritarian manifestation that Donald Trump is desperately trying (and failing) to tap into.
[0] In Jobs' defense the last SDK they'd shipped for portable devices was iPod games.
I've ran Graphene for a year to complement an iPhone; sadly, Device Attestation makes it non-viable as a main phone. Banking apps and what we used to id ourselves are a whack-a-mole of incompatibility. For everything else, I do think it's a great solution.
For reference on Nara, it tries to connect to domains such as dewrain.*, vaicore, akisinn, etc. (many TLDs) Little Snitch was the only way I'd know. Sadly it means we're unsafe on iOS and Android, so we've stopped using any features that might be or leak PII. Just milk and sleep.
This unnerved me so much that I'm building an app for parents on the side. I can't believe our options are free with trackers or expensive (with trackers). And Nara was clean before the update around March.
Wow! Well you never know where simple frustrations will lead, or in your case noticing something that you just can't shake that no one else seems to think is important. I'd say keep me posted, but that's not on you especially while you're developing that app. I wish you the best of luck, and it sounds like you're doing it with a really unique and authentic perspective that I wouldn't be sure that any of the apps that become popular on either App Store can guarantee. Seriously, the world might depend on you :)
I had a feeling about what you described with GrapheneOS would be the case, and that's what kept me from really considering it as a replacement for my iPhone until talking with some folks in this thread. I really don't see myself getting out of using an iPhone as my "main phone" tied to my phone number since my wife is neck-deep in the whole Apple ecosystem (and I truly believe that being flexible in this regard is worth it and makes our lives a whole lot better, even when the issue in question is what I would consider a simple moral non-negotiable, securely protecting my and my family's personal data. just means that I have more solving to do before the solution).
My solution for now is to always run everything through a trusted VPN and NextDNS on the iPhone, or as much as iOS will let me I guess, and using this as my new Pixel's gateway to the internet when I'm away from a trusted connection. I will also be running everything through the VPN when I'm using GrapheneOS, so when I am out and about I'm not treating my not-entirely-trustworthy iPhone any differently than a Starbucks hotspot. Sometimes the convenience really makes a difference, not all the time but it does matter occasionally.
What I've been trying to do is have the critical apps on the iPhone, which stays home; then take the Graphene around as much as possible. It's making me use the phone less as well, since my Pixel isn't very interesting.
Now to convince more family members to connect via a VPN… hmm. No wonder we lost the war on privacy.
Maybe check that your partner has Advanced Data Protection on. iCloud without it is what got us all these iCloud leaks in the past.
Would you even find out if an app has been sold to another company on iOS app store? It's confusing to see all of that diatribe when it doesn't even do much (if anything it almost lulls you into a false sense of security), and you just have less options to choose from to get around being locked out of using your device for apps you want.
> Would you even find out if an app has been sold to another company on iOS app store?
On this particular issue, no. But I also make a habit of not leaving old apps that I don't use lingering around on my phone. And I'm pretty sure I know all of those haven't been bought out by a data predator, apart from 23andme.
I just trust what Apple has done in other areas for my personal privacy and security, and I know they have insanely high and probably unreasonable standards for their app stores. and I don't install obviously predatory garbage apps. I feel like I could have only achieved this level of confidence in my mobile device with iOS. And to be clear that's just an opinion :)
Insane and unreasonable standards sounds right, but I'm not sure about privacy and security all that much. It's just naive to assume something is totally malware free, and they're not actually disincentivized from just keeping some more subtle scammy apps around if they just generate them 30% fee revenue anyway. There's a bit of magical thinking that goes into assuming just how "good" they are at it, when they literally just don't even do some of those vaguely insinuated things.
(to me, if some os is unable to have both freedom of installing apps/sideloading and security (with help of malware checking and other measures that keep bad stuff away), and only able to achieve that "security" only by completely locking down what apps can be run and how apps are obtained, it seems like either a failure to accomplish actual security there, or rather just a pretense to keep a platform locked down.)
Information security's primary focus is the balanced protection of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability, so, not having availability of the things the user wants to do is a failing grade. In this case you can pretend you value other things, not security.
Well, like with "national politics" (what nation?), even if there may be only two options functionally, it's also just pretending that there are only two options there at all. (while almost actively ignoring any other options)
Like, while it may sound annoying and nitpicky, android is not just "one option of the two", it has a bunch of versions/flavors/forks/whatever you wanna call it, that vary between manufacturers, and also alternative distributions that can be installed on devices, situations that iphone just does not have, at all or to that extent. (quite linuxy in that way if you squint real hard.) I'm struggling to worry about this whole debacle with google floating about whatever they're floating about (currently it's that vague) all that much, when android is that malleable.
There are also actual Linux phones and distributions, postmarketOS, environments like Phosh and Plasma Mobile, Ubuntu Touch, Sailfish, and so on. These can also end up being treated as a "third option" when it's a bunch of different options, or even treated as non-existent, but these options are out there, available, modern, with phones you could just buy. The only case where "one option" is actually just one option is with iPhones.
Sorry, Google and Apple are American companies so "here" was the USA in my comment.
I agree completely with you about the Android forks. That does allow for people do things right more than the way Apple does it. But it also allows people to do things wrong, and how many predatory mobile phone companies would see an opportunity to spy on customers if they won't notice? Just like none of us would buy a computer and use it without formatting and reinstalling the OS first, there are tons of people who didn't reinstall the OS and kept installing shitty malware. That's the case that I'm worried is much more prevalent among the American population than we realized. Tons of factors go into it, but I think the fact that we distilled all of our information received regularly down to something that's processed thru two operating systems before reaching human eyes and ears is something worth looking more into. Or at least I think it's a damn good reason to start over and begin with doing things the right way, given everything that we know now.
This just sounds like two different sets of standards, although for two different platforms, but one is getting goalposts shifted to 'but flashing is scary and nobody does it and also what if other phone makers spy on people' (just spreading FUD, really), while the other gets a pass pretty much on every one of those things while blindly buying into privacy marketing. Kinda reminds me of those lawsuits about app stores on ios and android that were running in parallel, where ios also kinda got a pass pretty much just because it's more locked down.
While regular people probably aren't going to mess with custom roms on android and it's kind of self-selecting situation there, they very much might pick a Samsung phone, or Motorola phone, or some other phone, that will have different flavors of android, and may have some meaningful differences and will have some amount of control over them that phone makers have be spread out between their manufacturer and not just google.
Some people also aren't really gonna be any less susceptible to scams that aren't tied to app stores or apps at all. Might as well lock down the browser and phone app then as well.
wait are you serious? I will buy one right now if those are available. paid $100 for the cheapest acceptable android I could find (samsung galaxy a05s). but I was seeing $500+ for Pixel phones. coming from iOS, I have no idea about any of this. I am right now going to look again. I just wish it was easier for my mom and dad to switch to something safe like GrapheneOS. Feels like we are a ways off from that.
edit: Pixel ordered and GrapheneOS incoming, goodbye iOS.
Just make sure it's an unlocked device. Pixel 8+ is recommended due to 7 years of support from launch and hardware memory tagging. A used Pixel 8 or Pixel 8a is a great option. 6th and 7th generation Pixels are fine, but they launched with 5 years of support so they're getting down to 2-3 years left.
Thank you for the info. Pixel 8a was my choice, and I did end up paying about $50 more than what would have been the best deal, to make sure that it specifically said it's bootloader unlockable to allow for custom OS installations.
I'm impressed by people that can make it anywhere near that long without breaking their phone. I'm on a 1-2 year average of dropping it and having the screen crack.
Quickly looked at all those links and without any more commentary from you, I guess I feel like my point stands.
Those all fall under the category of shitty apps I would never install on my iPhone or Android phone. So, Apple's privacy standards and policies, and walled gardens for better or worse, kept me closer to what I was looking for regarding personal privacy and security than I could have gotten with Android. Who knows if anyone checked those same apps I use to see if the Android versions are different or contain malware, but my sense is that it's much easier to slip it in the Play Store than Apple's App Store.
Fdroid had none of these issues, Apple had lots of examples.
Walled garden - 0
3rd Party store - 1
> Apple's privacy standards and policies, and walled gardens for better or worse, kept me closer to what I was looking for regarding personal privacy and security
Apples privacy policy allowed bad actors into the App Store. Considering the levels of Kafkaesque pissing about we see reported on here from devs for non-issues, on a weekly basis, you should have a zero tolerance.
Don't know about a mature but I wanted to play pokemon yellow on my mum's phone and I was in 2nd grade iirc and my brother just told me to search pokemon yellow rom myself and learn how to download/pirate it. He didn't help me at all, even though. he had pirated it earlier.
Made me learn pirating which went into more and more technical untill I think nowadays I dabble in playing pirated games in linux and linux scripting and just general coding.
There was no mature watching over me. I was downloading everything dude, heck I had once downloaded hollow knight as an apk to play it and I am pretty sure that it was a malware which i had quickly deleted as it wasn't working but now yes we've even migrated over from the phone.
So in a way my mature watching over me was saying, Idk learn it yourself, fuck around and find out.
I kinda think that grapheneos would be really nice for protecting your phone from something like malware from what I've heard.
downloading ROMs helped me learn how to do things the right way too. but even back then those kinds of places were filled with traps, remember pop-ups and pop-under ads? from that point forward, learning how to safely download ROMs and whatever else I wanted to do on the internet just felt natural.
What worries me though is that maybe we weren't the norm, maybe we were the exceptions.
r/piracy was something that I discovered really late but I am glad I am.
I recommend it to every of my friend who comes to me begging me to download X or Y or pirate it.
I remember those links where you had to go through the entire article and it would give a (1 of 2) and you have to do that again and again for them to finally get to the final download.
Yes downloading them were indeed a hassle but idk i guess those feelings are really compensated by me playing pokemon, like I genuinely have forgotten some of those popups but I do know that they were really shitty.
here's what I would recommend anybody now:
r/piracy is your best friend, try to read it and prefer to get the goated version of things
use brave browser if you don't want ads/ librewolf/firefox with ublock on pc.
I am not advocating piracy because well, I just can't pay for products and my frugal living doesn't really find it to have peace. I would much rather donate to them directly with a thank you message but maybe that's my ideal.
The only game I was thinking to buy was silksong but my brother has a ps5 and he would've had to download it seperately and I wanted to split even 20$ lol.
I wanted to buy silksong as a way of saying thank you to the devs for finally making things cheap enough and making me feel like my money is worth it even if I am frugal y'know.
I feel like everyone iscammed by 70$ games bro, I am never paying them.
One time, idk what i downloaded, but it was prob malware in the sense that even if no app is running/removed that app, it would still open up browser and open up some link automatically sometimes..
And pop ups on websites were a nightmare to dodge, pop under ads yeah. I remember it all now. it used to take me definitely 15 minutes or more to download a rom but that was compensated by the hours I used to play bro.
I love pokemon johto with my ampharos of level 75, it used to one shot everything except rock/steel. Electric was goated in johto. And I had a water type pokemon too/there was one fighting type move that I taught my ampharos. I think I even defeated red from gen 1 ( I am talking about the actual gen 2 pixelated game and not the next silver games, I think it was the crystal or silver or gold, I am not sure mareep was only available to play in one of these games and dude mareep is goated and makes me remember my childhood)
Apple has made policy changes and changes to the app store to make it clearer which apps to avoid. Apple really cares about my privacy, or they tell me they do and I believe them. I think they do because they know how important brand loyalty is to their customers. It's pretty much the thing Apple lives on, never losing the customer's trust. Google clearly leaves it more or less up to nature.
I'm not worried about nation-state surveillance. What I am worried about is all the keyloggers on kids' Android phones these days, since I've seen a shady game company or two in my day.
My impression is that the very first thing a privacy-conscious person would do with a new Android device is install a secure keyboard. Is that not the case? Why should people trust any old software keyboard the company selling it sets as the default?
For a very long time, Apple didn't allow installing custom keyboards. And I would still bet a bit of money that they are more restrictive than the keyboards Android allows.
I'd rather not speculate on that, surely you understand? I'm not saying a general "save the children" but would you consider thinking of them, if that doesn't sound too trite?
To be honest, Apple lives on their walled ecosystem and people fanboying them.
I am sure that you aren't a fanboy but I would be skeptical of any company saying that they value about your privacy when the recent debacle went on.
Like hear me out, Apple encryption was being backdoored and the only reason that it got leaked was by a whistleblower and it was illegal for apple to even discuss it.
So chances are, that if that whistleblower hadn't leaked, I am not sure if he's facing jail time or not and if Apple wanted to live in the UK which I am sure they are, then they most likely would've enforced a backdoor.
Would we be any better knowing it? Like when a company's profits incentives is affected because a country wants them to have a backdoor in secret closed doors and not even reveal to the public...
I wonder how many other backdoors there are that we just don't know of y'know.
So I wouldn't say that they care about your privacy. They show that they care about your privacy because that's become a USP to them and quite frankly, after this whole scene, I am not sure how they can prove that back.
The only thing that's literally not tracking you is open source for the most part. That is the only thing and f-droid takes open source apps.
There are even games on f-droid but yes I know that games are just a weird niche which has a lot of malware/exploitative. I hope that more people can create open source games and we can contribute to them along the way.
Whenever, there is a company involved, Deep down, they care about themselves and not you, they really care about the shareholders,everything else is temporary imo.
But there are some companies run by people who have a moral spine and we need to applaud them/use them but in my opinion apple is too big to have a moral spine when they can repackage the same Iphone for god knows how long, but they are still better than google whose literally an ad company but open source graphene os with f-droid is a better option and you are showing a false dichotomy of sorts.
I hope that I can point you into better direction with graphene os + f-droid, both are open source and they are the only one I would sort of trust with my privacy because its code and the code is generally neutral, it has no incentives to sell me anything most of the times yknow. It is like clippy of sorts lol.
Listen, I don't disagree with any of that. I think a lot of confusion is happening because people think I'm talking about how to inform consumer choices better or what exactly about either OS to fix to make them meet the standards that I'm trying to describe. What I think is very important if not one of the most important things facing us as a species is that we need a better mobile OS option than what we have. And you don't have to convince me on GrapheneOS. I am in the process of moving to Android and F-Droid until I can afford a Pixel phone with GrapheneOS.
What I am attempting and apparently failing to describe effectively is that this excellent option we have now (GrapheneOS + F-Droid) was in NO way accessible to any general user of mobile phones since their use has become widespread. What we have had since 2008 is two shitty options, and my point was that Apple has actively done more to keep users safe than Google has. No one seems to be arguing on that at all, but there are many people pointing out the failing of Apple's efforts over the years. Does that make them a complete failure? Absolutely not in my eyes, but I'm not going to tell you what to think.
So, I feel like Android's ecosystem set us up for a HUGE minefield from various entry points from an American's perspective by allowing such an open system into the wild. It has been Early Access level of quality up until recently I would argue. GrapheneOS + F-Droid is safe enough to protect idiots from themselves, probably. If not now, then with time.
How in the world anyone here is saying Google's hands-off approach was the way to go... well it is how we got our acceptable option, finally, but surely you don't think that every mobile phone company with a custom fork of Android kept its users more safe than Apple did?
Hm that is a fair argument in the sense that I also wish to move forward to graphene but I got a shitty redmi phone which barely works but it still has f-droid and I also want to move forward to graphene as I said.
I mean, yes, graphene is fairly recent getting traction and I can understand why you felt that apple did a better job at saving the end user than google did.
That is partially because imo google is essentially an ads company and there are lots of ads of spyware/malware that google does nothing about and also they are esssentially spying on you yourself for selling ads.
Apple takes a more on hardware approach in the sense that they don't want to spy on you as much because they have less incentives to do so because they don't have an advertisement system aaas much as google y'know, so they definitely took a bite at apple = privacy which has worked for many people.
Google bought android and android was always an open system and it had both its pros and cons. There is also an open system of marketplace called aptoid which was literally apt + android but it also might have malware sometimes and f-droid is the best option for most use cases.
Apple had never really had an open system and it had both its pros and cons and google is seemingly shifting into it which is like a nightmare because now we have very less choices of sorts.
And android has sort of innovated/transitioned into grapheneos for general public privacy imo.
So, yes I do think that we are in agreement that grapheneos is now here to stay and I can understand why you atleast appreciated apple for not being as privacy invading as google for some time which you were pointing out
We are in unison, I agree with your points. Its just that I thought that you were just fanboying over apple for the sake of it in the original comment and glad we understood each other points as really we are talking about the same thing and agreeing at essentially everything.
Thanks for explaining your original comment better through this comment and have a nice day.
Thank you for taking the time to write your comment, too. I think it's extremely important that all sides of communication come together ASAP and discuss most of the things that might have been very polarizing in our near past. For the sake of not just our country (speaking to fellow Americans here) but humanity overall.
Agreed. Our differences are very little and we have a lot of similarities
Yet we fight over differences and brush over the similarities.
Why? because hate sells.. People are selling hate/internalizing hate/ragebaits.
I had actually written one shit post comment about something echo chambering of sorts or how or why we should love each other and try be discussing of sorts you could say while still bringing action towards thing.
I think that the one thing most people agree over is big tech's oligarchy of sorts and how they can somewhat abuse it and I can think of ways that I can make the right people understand it I suppose too, never tried it tbh.
idk I just want to bring you attention to the one shitpost I wrote which I intented to write a shitpost but I think I wrote really relevant things in there and I am proud of them
We all need to be understanding of each other and enlighten us to the real issues that we have the power to solve but we don't because of numerous reasons. Lets make a world a better place because We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children.
I think that's one of the most mysteriously insightful comments I've ever read anywhere on the internet. I can see why some might be dismissive without considering it further though, maybe like my initial comment in this thread that I feel like was misinterpreted, when really I wanted others to consider this same thing, their honest opinion about whether the last 17 years of mobile OS experience was worth it to get to where we are now. If we could avoid it, would we do it differently or would we do it all over again? After commenting in this thread all day I feel like we should be smart enough to avoid it, but I don't have an answer of how we would either, so it seems like it would just happen again how it did.
There were lots of excerpts from your comment that I highlighted and hit Ctrl+C, then thinking "well this would be better to comment on or this would be better or now maybe the other way....". It's not important how I would pick apart your comment (and in a really nice way, I don't mean "pick apart" like criticize down to the last detail... but right there's something that would get lost in communication normally, I expect). This was my favorite part of your comment though, and I was going to say something like, Reagan thought we needed trickle-down economics but what we really need is growth with love, all the way down to the roots:
"Yes we are human but dear reader, I feel like corruption only goes to top if it reeks from bottom too as well. Its messed up but maybe we can all try to acknowledge it and try to just know that we are all gonna die anyway and well, giving a other unique human smile and happiness might be the most precious thing."
Make sure you have a nice day yourself, dear reader.
Also thanks for being more understanding that some things might get lost in the communication as it wasn't really a message that I edited that much. I don't think that I even read it once from top to start and it was like a conversation of sorts.
I sometimes definitely feel like some of my words are noise and there is definitely some signal between them but I just want to get my point across if someone reads it whole like a conversation, preferably.
I am definitely working on my communication. I don't know how to manage between writing things in public completely with no major edit of sorts without feeling like I put on a mask or feeling like I hid something, I don't like hiding things. Maybe I will try to keep a git history of each comment I make and share it with ya lol. Would be funny as this post did take me quite some time to write and was really edited!
I really was gonna end on myself writing a dark note but I really really wanted to end it on a good point and that is why I wanted to give hope.
I certainly can grow my communication style and that is something that I look forward to as well as writing on my own blog someday (I have it but they are scattered into 2 accounts of mataroa and github and HN and discord etc.)
Well, If I can be honest, I am excited about the possibility of growth / growing my communication style so feedback noted!
I do know that you know my intentions are all well and If I can be honest, in this world sometimes..
I am proud of it, like I am proud of who I am. I know I am atleast trying some good % of being best with good intentions and I know I can get better and I got a life to forward too which has just started if I am being honest,so better be rolling with some positive intentions!
> growth with love, all the way down to the roots
Wow, This kind of hits to something that I was thinking/discovering about myself and its been 6 am and I was thinking about it..
Like, it just hit this idea of creating an foundation or any non profit or anything just a mechanism something to spread to people ignorant about things like the goodness of open source (as one of your comments noted), like most people are ignorant about these things and that really lends a lot of things power I suppose when its really easy yet there is ignorance and I don't blame them, I might be ignorant about a lot of things too and so I want to share my enthusiam of open source with ya.
I am in high school right now and I am not sure how it would go to have a career of non profit. I think that I had noted but I am pretty frugal person. These things don't interest me of having a bigger car or whatnot, I am honestly fine with even a scooter and I want a small car and a house(which is gonna be tough in this economy lol).
Money and the things it buy simply doesn't interest me yet I need some baseline of it to survive as well and there are other things like humanist causes/open source that I care about and I just want to make enough while I can yap about open source to students/teachers/offices and I want to tell people about signal and how its so better than whatsapp in a country which just operates on whatsapp mostly and so so many other things like pinta/linux/ even appreciation of bsd and just all the goodness of open source that I have obtained through HN
I really try to show my appreciation to things and I have got 1.5thousand -ish thousand projects starred https://github.com/SerJaimeLannister/ (here is my username)
I know I could be a good enough programmer at a run of the mill job or maybe even my own side hustle but as I said, I just don't see a point. because even if I had the money, I would do what I am mentioning. I used to chase money for financial freedom so that I could do the thing I want but it seems that I have found myself a way or atleast thinking of, a way to do it altogether.
I am definitely sure that I can explain myself better and I would someday, its 6 am right now thinking about open source and how much I just want to replace even microsoft things and what not and showcase all the curious things that people have built in open source and somehow direct people to the severely needed funded of some of these projects and how those donations are better than buying some software sometimes.. and although its not an obligation, it is the obligation of society altogether in some sense otherwise open source might not function well and there are issues right now as well..
Another idea I have is really engaging with the youth, we have so many issues that we are facing and we genuinely don't know a lot of things so I also want this to be a mechanism to atleast help in that somewhere too and definitely integrate youth.
I might sound cheesy but I was genuinely thinking of this before seeing your comment and I wanted to say thank you to your comment saying that it might have changed a bit of my trajectory of my life and so thank you..
I don't know and I am definitely not explaining myself. But I just want to give talks and practical guides to maybe masses about open source. I want to help non profits to migrate over to open source solutions and students/schools/hospitals.
I want to raise awareness about translation/feedback testing and other things too. And this idea of growth with love, all the way down to the roots could be a very neat intrepertation of what I want to do in the sense of sharing the love that open source shared to me and sharing it upwards to other people so that they can also donate to open source projects or benefit from them if they can't donate right now.
I have my own flaws too but I am just trying to live my life in the way that can help a lot of people because I want that to be my legacy. I want to help people.
I will go to college also for a CS degree but this idea of non profit for open source atleast in my country is gonna be something that I would try, to share the idea of open source.
If I can be comletely honest, I don't know why someone would donate to me still and its definitely confusing. I don't have much demands and just want to live comfortably and my plan is definitely to keep something like 20k-30k $ as even they are enough for me in country as my income and all the other funds go directly somehow to the expenses of the project I suppose or if there are excess funds I would much rather have them be saved just some and even donate some to red cross or some starvation myself from foundation as I genuinely can't think of sharing open source while some people also starve and I must do atleast a little to help them too.
I want people to be zealous about open source even if they are less technical, I wouldn't say I am a full on programmer myself. Open source has helped me soo much, I almost use open source software so much and they are much easier to find even sometimes yet there was this one time friction that I had that I want to reduce for some people. I want more people in open source, Open source is beyond any company and its the philosophy that I just deeply love.
I want this to be my legacy hopefully and although I can guarantee nothing that this is gonna be the path I chose in life as I still want to think this through, I will try to keep you updated on the process.
Definitely this message could also be improved but I hope that my intentions can reach through :)
Honestly I am just a man who just wants to have a good footprint of himself after dying in hopes that people can remember me for good actions and I really want to do good actions even in darkness as that is what values more to me in the sense that I want to do good actions someday without seeking anything in return without any spotlight or anything just because its the right way. I just want to do some good and learn new things and am figuring myself out in the process.
Also that comment which I had written made me realize that there are only two options, to either have a get into politics for real change which I just .. no its not for me, and the much more lucrative option that I do have a somewhat self made expertise in, Y'know with open source, I know that deep down if I have an idea , I can make things work. I can do anything of sorts. And I appreciate it a lot, word can't express joy that open source has brought me. Its remarkable and I want to share the joy somehow in whatever way possible.
I do feel like I am selling myself a little bit but I just want enough then I want to share to other people more stuff so that they can also have enough and so on.. Like I really want to create a non profit or something regarding it someday, maybe in college, maybe after college. and I want to write things good and I will try to improve how I communicate slowly and gradually too :)
Atleast these are my plans right now but that is only if I think that I feel like that this is something that needs there to be work done on advocating for open source solutions I suppose. Maybe I am doing this because deep down I am scared of death and I want to really leave behind a good legacy of doing good and I just want to have other people do the same and so on but honestly, even that reason is good enough than just not doing anything about it. I am not sure. This second guessing of yourself wouldn't really leave us would it?
But at the same time, how can I say this differently as I have no idea how people who start non profits actually do and how they get enough money to work in correct circles and so on and how that would work, I will still get a degree of course and I am thinking of starting a fundme page with better wall of text than this one as its just me talking to myself..
I will try to write better and start a way so that people might donate if they feel like it like a kickstarter project and if I feel like there might be enough something then I would try to give my best I suppose as I am a bit scared too in that side as this is a big step of life and I would consult many people about this and this is in no means fianl but thoughts, thoughts which might go back too at some moment I am not sure and I would discuss it with things like family, like idk a lot to learn though :) so that's always nice.
> I have no idea how people who start non profits actually do and how they get enough money to work in correct circles and so on and how that would work, I will still get a degree of course and I am thinking of starting a fundme page
My wife works in non-profit consulting and has mostly worked with people who have great ideas but need help learning how to get funding and structure their non-profit for success. I asked her if there is a website to share with you that has good info, and she said your local library should have people who can help you with anything related to getting a non-profit rolling (try the next library over if not). I had no idea they have these resources either, but public libraries are amazing places and here's further proof.
Scroll down to the section for "Nonprofit Success" and maybe you can find some ideas that will help you. I think you're on the right track about open source education and evangelizing (the tech world used to call its influencers stuff like "open source evangelist" or ".NET evangelist"... not sure if it's still that culty or not).
Best of luck with everything, and if you have any questions or want to chat I just followed you on Github. You can email me at my-github-username at protonmail dot com anytime, if you have non-profit questions I can ask my wife for her thoughts, she's been doing this for years and seems to have it pretty well mastered from what I can tell. She's built a business by herself from scratch and does so well she's the bigger earner of the family. So anyway, she just helps non-profits and makes a living from it, so you can definitely do something with open source! Work on making your writing and communication more effective and I think you will find the people to help you reach your dreams along the way.
Don't lose hope if you can help it, things like the news and politics are discouraging right now but I find that times like this light a fire in me to make sure I'm doing the right things and help keep us from getting in deeper problems. I get complacent more during less chaotic times, so I try to make the best of it and it usually works out. Take care, friend!
edit: I just realized that from the local times you mention, you are likely not in the United States. I'm not sure if libraries in Europe and elsewhere have this information or not. Maybe it can give you an idea of what kind of information to look for in your local resources.
Hey, I genuinely appreciate it and I am going to send you a mail right away.
I didn't know libraries were such a massive way and I don't think we really have libraries here, atleast not in my city that I can think of a non profit library, I might need to search though. and the funny thing is that some people would just have a bunch of sitting rooms and call them library here.
I have definitely thought about this more and the only nuance that comes up is that i haven't even gotten a degree right now and its something that I plan to do. Its just that I want to have an option to have a cs job too if things don't work out, and I personally don't know but as I said I am pretty frugal and I don't know how others feels but I don't know if anybody would even donate or my project would have even value if I am being honest. I am really a pessimist sometimes..
Its just that I would love to do these things but I would also want to just earn barely enough that my parents wouldn't think that I am doing something foolish in my life either and I can be respected enough in the society as well, these feelings really grapple me if I can be honest...
Honestly, I will keep in touch with ya and my first plan of action is trying to write my first draft of a manifesto of sorts on what I want to bring to the table in a similar fashion to how I had written the comment but maybe better...
I have also thought more and I am thinking something like fiscal sponsorship might be the right way atleast right now to not get involved into legal matters right away and maybe try to build a larger presence online because I didn't use twitter thinking it was going to be toxic but I am gonna be more active sharing manifesto etc. in youtube.
I have read more about other projects like fsf & https://sfconservancy.org/ and sfconservancy has caught my eye but the open source intiative seems something nice too and I want to do as much stuff that I can do to promote open source and other ideas as I sort of consider right to repair really tangetial to open source but just for hardware of sorts y'know..
I am currently working on a manifesto but the theme would definitely be growth with love, all the way down to the roots or something similar. I have some knowledge that I want to share in the world that might help people to pick better options which can enlighten them to donate back to the open source projects which so desperately need fundings. My purpose is to educate people about alternatives as I know that most people in my community don't know linux, they don't know signal yet they can use these softwares. My dad used my kde linux just for browser and he couldn't really tell the difference of sorts.
It is so nice to know that your wife does work in non profits and can make a living in it as that is exactly what I want to know more in how to live my life in such a way and I will definitely need her help! I just don't know if there is even a demand for something that I was proposing, I know people might say this online but maybe not so much offline. But I will try my best to work through things while being realist :)
Thanks a lot and I will definitely always keep in touch with ya through the mail. I know that I can still not explain myself clearly through these texts on what sort of emotion I feel as they are really complex and nuanced. Still, I would love to just discuss them with you. Definitely going to send a mail to ya and once again, thanks.
Hey, I can tell you are on the right track here. Don't get too discouraged! That's the main thing I would tell myself back in high school to make sure I don't lose sight of some important stuff like that, trust me not everyone feels something like that kind of resonance you do with open source and educating regular people about it. It will be confusing at times and seem like maybe you were way off from the very beginning, but do your best to just take that as a sign that more work or clarification is needed, and of course you have the energy for this stuff right? I'd bet money on it, based on how you are writing your comments and how I used to write about the same things like after installing Linux, realizing everything we do we could be done the right way instead of the greed-based or other coercive systems in place that absolve a lot of responsibility by pushing much of the responsibility on the user without even attempting to educate them about what they're consenting to. Most of the time it's doing some simple task like uploading a photo to share but if an uninformed grandma tries to do that with her vulnerable Android phone... it's scary the life-changing situations that simple desire can happen to a person if they accidentally click the wrong link these days. Most of us here on Hacker News have long been aware of all the tracking and data collection and likely take steps to avoid it, but I cannot stress enough how we are a tiny tiny group of exceptions doing things right because it's meaningful to us. Regular folks are still doing the normal meaningful things to them in their lives, but the opposite sort of people who you and I are trying to be see this as an opportunity to trap them at every possible opportunity. The work you want to do is VERY important.
EDIT: just had another thought. You mentioned the FSF and the Free Software Conservancy, you should email them if you haven't already and ask them for some ideas about what you can do or how you can help their organizations. They may have something specific ideas for your area too, there are people like us everywhere. Get in touch with those folks for sure!
I am sure that I can't explain a lot of feelings I am feeling and neither am I comfortable to share this on a forum for all people to see and judge which is why I was scared in the first place to write that comment as now me backing up can be seen as something weird :/ when all I want to do is stay in touch with you and other people and create a community centered around open heart discussion of foss and how to spread the word now and to have a plan of action that I/others can implement when I once get into college or maybe something different, I am not sure.
I hope you can keep in touch with me on signal if the mail isn't working, its on my about me in HackerNews.
I've decided right now that the best step forward is definitely to focus on my studies right away as the exams are getting closer and to me, just skipping college might seem so big of a gamble but it was definitely fun thinking about being an advocate and it is definitely in my plan and I will have 4 years to study about foss and maybe fiscal sponsorships etc would be nicer and I don't want to remove my blow of college and just being focused between two very different things right now can cause a lot of dissonance like right now and my main priority is college and once I get into a decent college, I will focus on foss (activism) a lot, that is a compromise to me that seems the best of all.
I definitely still feel like a lot of other discussions definitely pessimize me too thinking of my generation as a lost cause sometimes and how it frankly boils down to the issue of lack of interest. Nobody seems as interested in these things even if they are important, they can be as easy as one click for things like signal yet nobody is even interested for things like that for most places. It is definitely sad but like, my idea right now is to still try my best just because losing hope makes me sad. We can still try things, no matter the odds.
That being said though my exams are definitely stressing me out and I had tried to give a whole day to writing a manifesto and it is funny how the mind becomes blank of sorts.
And I need to work on myself a lot if I am being honest too which I am going to do, it still excites me but my honest plan thinking about this has to go to college and then maybe really spread the word from there and also a good thanks for telling me to mail them...
I am just still confused, sometimes sad of the state of open source and I don't know what to say... I don't know if I was just being optimist back then and in reality, what would really happen, I have messaged you on email and I also have signal and I would prefer it if you could message me on signal if you could, since I do want to talk about this situation, I am just a little confused on how I can even bring change when I thought about it... when nobody cares. It would seem that my words would be noise to them unless I can understand them better and the state so I definitely need to have a fallback of college degree so that I don't feel regret in life as well... Hope ya understand as my plans are just postponed untill I get into a college, I have written the manifesto though..
Its just I am a little confused in life and I don't know what to say which is why I don't like to keep promises, I don't know but my other discussions of open source has made me atleast feel like there is very little that I can do and I discussed it with people my age and there is definitely this thing that you can't expect others to be encouraging to you in a discussion if they simply don't care and make snarky comments and you definitely need to read the room of the temperature I suppose.
https://anonplusplus.codeberg.page/
I am just confused mate on how I can spread the message effectively of open source when it seems that the algorithms will work against me and the system will work against me and when it seems that everything you do nothing matters, you are gonna have all opinions on every front and in that people are going to drown and simply be ignorant,
The problem to me seems to be overwhelming, open source seems overwhelming for beginners not knowing where to start, not knowing what are some things that they should do.
What I am thinking right now is to create an actionable guide on whatever software I know about and to share that and host them myself and see the pain points...
I don't know man I am a bit tired I had created a project of sorts and I had shared it in a place which to me was really open and the response there was to have the discussions to ban me for sharing something with zeal when nobody cares... and for me to read the room, I don't really know why but that gave me a real reality check of the situation and I am still going to work on maybe spreading the word of open source but it definitely requires a sense of community and its very nuanced to say the least...
I am thinking of creating a community on something like matrix and guides about softwares in my past time and to make videos for any fixes or any showcases just trying my best and also I just feel a little overwhelmed if I can be honest.
So in all, I have just postponed my thoughts in the future when I get into a CS college hopefully and I would love to be in contact with you and discuss more things before taking any bigger steps as well and just discuss things in general too so please message me on signal if my message didn't reach on proton mail as I had sent it.
Everything's just confusing to me right now if I can be completely honest and I am definitely in the sad part of the sin curve of my emotion roller sin wave. I don't really know I have a lot of flaws and I think that I might have made a too big promise here if I can be honest when it was just meant to be proposed of as a thought that I am thinking when I want to focus right now on college and for the 4 years in college to focus extremely on foss so its mostly just a postpone till that and my college is just coming up in 3 months and I doubt that I can do much itself in 3 months but I might still be a decent bit active as a relief from studies and I am just not sure as I said, I hope ya understand
The topic of kids is a whole another debate - whether or not it is wise to give them an Internet-connected device - beause the same general concerns regarding the Internet exist on iOS as well.
Regardless, if I had to give them a device, it'll definitely be a Linux-based one.
I had never seen Android malware until my mom showed me her phone. I think she's barely ever installed an app on purpose in her life, but there it was this malware that looked like the husk of a legit app repurposed to show banner ads after every phone call
My MIL has an ungoogled huawei phone. She was trying to get some app and family told her she needs to get the play store to get the app.
Holy fucking shit. What a hive of scum and villany you encounter when searching for the play store. The first link on google launches a full screen PWA that looks _exactly_ like the play store. It took me a hot minute to realize that I was about to install something unsavoury. I almost wanted to dunk the phone in some bleach.
I'm an android user, and I prefer it over iPhone, but the surface area for attacks is way way way too large. Users who are less technically inclined are so damn vulnerable. I don't know how to fix this.
When I bought an ipad a few years back, it had been at least 10 years since I was on the ios ecosystem(last iphone was the 3gs). I was shocked how hard it was to find what I was looking for. Instead of the Playstore minefield of free spyware apps, you now have cheap knockoffs, likely still spyware, but now everything costs $5 dollars.
I think there's two different sets of perverse incentives. On the apple side, it's how to trick you into a "small" purchase of 5 dollars. It's just a cup of coffee man, c'mon just a coffee. Essentially banking on some user will just add it to their apple tab for convenience.
On the android side, the expectation is primarily free apps, with paid generally being a premium app. There are some free apps that just do what they say, typically small side hustles from solo devs banking on some add revenue with the option to upgrade(Shout out to GoneMadMusicPlayer, paid for it back in 2013 and the devi is still out there supporting and responding to emails). If they're not that, they'll be spyware infested trap holes.
Fdroid is typically where I go when I'm looking for an app with a unix philosophy. Just do one thing simply. Voice recorder, guitar tuner, etc.
this is what I'm talking about. I wish more folks in this thread had gone this direction.
I think those types of people like your MIL represent a very concerning bulk of Android users. So people are walking around with god knows what in their pockets, doing every single thing in their life through them these days. I thought others who had arrived at this thought would be alarmed too, but I'm not sure what to think anymore I guess.
I don't really see how you can guarantee your Android phone doesn't have malware, I feel like you may be exaggerating here.
I also don't mind the downvote, but if you would please tell me how you are able to guarantee your Android phone doesn't have malware, please tell me instead of hiding behind a downvote. Otherwise my solution is don't use an Android device.
wow, downvotes on all three comments! thanks, stranger.
> I don't really see how you can guarantee your Android phone doesn't have malware, I feel like you may be exaggerating here.
Can you do it on an iPhone? (You can't.)
Between android and ios, which platform is considered more secure or safer?
It's not easy to find out directly, but bug bounty programs can be used as a heuristic. Guess which one it is, after both being the same for a long time? (It's android).
> I also don't mind the downvote, but if you would please tell me how you are able to guarantee your Android phone doesn't have malware, please tell me instead of hiding behind a downvote. Otherwise my solution is don't use an Android device.
The same way you guarantee it on any other OS, be it windows or macos or linux. You do your best, don't download sketchy apps, and don't be a political figure. Of course that doesn't guarantee it, just makes it 99% likely.
> Otherwise my solution is don't use an Android device.
Do you think you can guarantee this on an iPhone? May I ask you how you are able to guarantee this on iOS?
I haven't said anything about Apple guaranteeing this, I just am saying that Apple seems more trustworthy to me. And unless you can prove Android is actually better, then I still believe that. I feel like people are misunderstanding my original post.
You would probably not be surprised that I would still trust a heavily regulated government that's occasionally broken rather than one that's run in a totally free market by all varieties of selfish interests.
It seems like you're missing the most important part.
If you had to rank app stores by probability of malware, the lowest probability would be F-Droid. After that it might reasonably be Apple followed by Google Play.
But F-Droid isn't available on iOS, so if you want to use the app store with the lowest probability of malware, it's only available on Android. And more to the point, the safest app store is available on Android only because Android has third party app stores.
To have a single store to the exclusion of all others, that store has to be a big tent, and big tents get full of clowns.
No, I feel like rather you are misunderstanding my main point.
I do understand that I am stuck with the Apple equivalent of the Google Play Store. Android is more like a completely open ecosystem, Apple's is much more closed filled with walled gardens. Still, walls provide protection if the ones building them know what they're doing.
So, I feel like Apple has the edge with what we have, over Google's stance of "do nothing" rather than trying to give users a good sense of privacy. If Apple were fully open and allowed such a thing as F-Droid to exist on their OS, you would have a point.
edit: and both OSes are not perfect. That was also part of my main point, not that Apple's is clearly far superior. All I said was I'm glad I trusted my instincts and explained why.
last edit: I've read back the comments to try and see where the misunderstandings are coming from and hopefully have addressed them. While the most secure App Store does exist on Android, it's taken us a while to get there (I know F-Droid has been around a while as well). I am talking about the time period since very early Android and iOS up until now. If I had been using Android, no doubt I would have tried to do it the proper way, but knowing what I like to do freely on my mobile device instead of feeling like I need to worry about privacy with every. single. app. I pick iOS for my mobile OS from 2008-2025 again and I am glad that I did. None of the exploits, vulnerabilities, etc have affected me and I have to give Apple the credit for at least giving me my money's worth on that.
I don't think your point of "I think Apple is safer without much evidence, it's on you to prove otherwise" isn't very solid. You can think whatever you want, but the evidence is clear (as presented here) that the official stores don't do much to prevent malware.
A historical review of app store security also doesn't have much applicability to the current point of Google trying to raise its garden walls even higher.
The point I'm trying to make is less about what Apple and Google are doing for us, and more about what their policies allow developers to do with their apps on their platforms.
I'm not sure what your point is, though. If you want an experience like the App Store, use the Play Store, they're basically the same. If you want to vet your apps, use another store, or install the APK.
Google gives you that freedom (or used to), Apple doesn't. The discussion here is that we Android users want to keep that freedom of choice.
Ok. I am saying GrapheneOS and F-Droid is the answer, but I don't think 17 years of what I would describe as Early Access Android was the way to get there.
Still not what I'm saying. I think we are paying the price for Android being so open right now, with the chaos happening in the US and worldwide. 17 years of messy Android evolution got us to a point where we could possibly start to examine what this has done to us. But based on how my original comment was received, I have much less hope than I did before I wrote it. Especially since I would consider some of the best minds on the internet to be regulars of Hacker News, and before we can even address this issue we need to clarify and understand it. I'm trying to do that here.
> Still, walls provide protection if the ones building them know what they're doing.
And what I'm saying is that they put the walls in the wrong place. They belong around the store, not the platform, so that each store can have its own walls and the user can choose the store independently of the platform.
Suppose a platform wanted to do what F-Droid does, i.e. offer only a manually curated selection of apps and impose high standards for privacy and openness. If that store was the only store on a platform, would that platform be popular? It would immediately have to e.g. reject the Facebook app, so no.
In order to be the only store for a platform, the store is put under insurmountable pressure to compromise privacy in order to sustain the popularity of the platform. Even when the proprietor is as powerful as Apple, Facebook is still there.
Whereas F-Droid doesn't have to do that in order for Android to be popular, because the people who insist on compromising their privacy by installing the Facebook app can get it from Google Play and still use Android, and still have the benefit of the assurances F-Droid provides when installing other apps, and allow people who use only F-Droid to benefit having from a popular platform. And then the iOS app store contains apps that compromise your privacy like Facebook, and F-Droid doesn't.
So everyone really did read what I was saying as an argument. Maybe you can help me here and clarify what you interpreted as a point I was trying to argue? I believe that it was a better decision for the average mobile phone user to use iOS in a smart way between 2008-2025 than Android. Both ecosystems are in a sad state currently, but Android is the clear choice now. Did you think I was making the old iOS vs. Android debate? People really need to move on from that winning side thinking and think more about what matters, if that's what happened. Anyone care about talking about anything else besides that shit anymore?
You're getting down-voted because you're structuring the argument in an unwinnable way, and I think you know that. None of us can prove that any phone doesn't have malware. Seems like you're arguing in bad faith.
the thing is, I didn't mean to argue. I'm merely responding to people's comments, who started an argument?
I am very, very concerned about our ability to communicate with each other as human beings these days. Maybe this thread was meant to be an example of that, I don't know. I didn't realize everyone was trying to prove me wrong with this. sheesh.
further, I am seeing why some folks decided to close themselves off completely to stuff like this. I enjoy intellectual curiosity and try to find others who do, but I realize many people don't enjoy it and many even hate it. it's not because it's a lack of intelligence. It's that everyone seems uninterested in the thoughts that made me type that initial comment, they're more concerned with proving me wrong. Am I accurate in this assessment, or can I trust you to not treat this question as an argument, if that is a better way to put it?
Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line.
I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.
The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany"
that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do.
The really interesting part of the interview gets going around the 7:50 mark, but here Dan talks about the options if you're an average citizen trying to figure out what to do. A litany of poor options if you're trying to pick a side right now really resonates with me.
> and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.
I don't understand mentions of "civil war" in the public lately (there's even a Hollywood movie about it).
There is only one party controlling the armed forces. I also doubt that any high-ranking officers would take the troops they command out of the command structure and then even order them to attack the government and other troops.
Not to mention that the new administration did some cleanup among the ranks already.
The chances for enough, or any, troops breaking away from the command are very low, no?
So who is going to fight that "civil war"? It looks to me like the government has overwhelming power. At most I see some troops refuse orders to shoot at the American people, or at other troops.
Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with.
> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight, that's why I only mentioned the latter to begin with.
We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military. Assuming like minded people wont self-organize is a bad starting point, and jets and tanks have a tough time doing things like enforcing curfews. That's also ignoring that such a scenario would involve portions of said military force joining the civilian resistance, including those in leadership positions.
Besides, I've always hated this argument, because why fight the military when they can just target the politicians directly.
> We have several recent real-world examples of that not working out for the military.
Only when the military is not serious since they are not fighting for their own lands and the civilians are backed by another country. When the military is fighting civilians in its own homeland the civilians stand no chance unless they get massive help from foreign powers.
> Besides, I've always hated this argument, because why fight the military when they can just target the politicians directly.
Even if you do that its still the military that gets to decide the next leader, killing their leader does not lead to democracy. Nazism didn't end with Hitlers death, it ended with the country being taken over. Oppressive Communisms didn't end with Stalins death etc. There are always enough likeminded people that you can't end a horrible reign just by killing the leader.
Let's see... military drones; satellite surveillance; comms surveillance; giant network of flock cameras vacuuming up facial, descriptive vehicular, and license plate movement data; small-scale tactical nuclear weapons; a huge fleet of hypersonic aircraft and extremely maneuverable helicopters; decades of urban combat experience; militarized law enforcement; the largest military in the world by orders of magnitude fighting on its own turf; complete control of utilities infrastructure, centralized resource creation for food, fuel and weapons; large stockpiles of modern chemical weapons that they wouldn't hesitate to use for a second if it was an existential threat... the world is a very very different place than it was in the 40s, and the modern US military is very very very very very different than any military was back then. Even if you can argue that our power has grown linearly with more access to guns or whatever, the US military's power has grown at a much much faster rate.
Would you consider the US military presence in Afghanistan comparable to it's presence in the US? How about knowledge of the landscape, ability to understand local cultures, having local contacts, having working transportation routes, resources in place, and the fact that none of the people fighting back are going to be backed by foreign governments? These two scenarios are incomparable.
They're absolutely comparable, notwithstanding their being different. One could just as well argue that it was a lot easier for the military to do drone strikes or call in CAS on the Taliban with zero risk of political blowback. You remind me of someone who was seriously arguing with me in 2004, telling me the Iraq war would not turn into a quagmire because Iraq was arid desert whereas Vietnam was semi-tropical and forested.
Something you didn't say, something significant, is the US military is made up of US soldiers.
A good many of those soldiers will have "Patriot Sympathies" (of many kinds).
This will lead to a great deal of information leakage, "lost" equipment going to militias, sabotage, etc.
Regardless of oaths to US military, an innate sense of duty to some personal ideal of USA will over weigh for a significant number, and a good percentage of those will remain embedded, organized, and difficult to root out.
They will also exist in various numbers from the lowliest boot to the highest general.
Sure, that could be a factor. Didn’t really seem to stop soldiers from steamrolling through American cities during the civil war, doesn’t seem to stop cops from messing people up during protests, and doesn’t stop genocide in other countries. We, as a species, are pathetically easy to manipulate through in-group, out-group thinking, which honestly is much of the basis for patriotism anyway.
True, but it goes the other way around as well - the Taliban had absolutely no way to infiltrate the ranks and do damage to the military operations from within.
The Taliban lost immediately and was suppressed indefinitely until the US decided to leave. It's a good demonstration of how well the US military can suppress even decentralized and suicidally fanatical movements for as long as it wants.
Suppressing them didn't cause them to stop fighting, though. In every guerrilla war the conventional army is nominally in charge, and generally never loses any sort of pitched battle. The whole military theory of guerilla warfare is to avoid shootouts in favor of hitting the enemy and running away.
You're admitting you're wrong? You're now agreeing that the US army could suppress an insurrection indefinitely and could only be stopped by a split within the military itself. A scenario that has nothing in common with what happened in Afghanistan.
Except this violence will absolutely be preceded extensive operations by the giant existing police and national guard presence that knows the neighborhoods like the backs of their hand. They would put a giant dent in that well before a single shot was fired. Would that absolutely be the case if we invaded, say, Canada? Quite likely. The US government has so much existing control on US soil that I'd eat my hat if any US city lasted a week in active conflict.
Well, I think you did a pretty good job of describing the resources that they are consolidating into that one party that controls the military. For now it's just the National Guard going into cities, but didn't they float the idea of sending Marines to LA? There's so much it's impossible to keep track of what's actually going on.
I've always been of the idea that 100 guys with guns gets wiped out with 1 bomb nowadays, so why do individuals arm themselves to the teeth and LARP in the woods? it is looking more like that's going to be a paramilitary arm, or "private consultants" to ICE and CBP. those resources aren't for nothing, and they certainly aren't for taking down the US military.
This is a WW2 figure who had a song written about him after he was martyred. It became the anthem of the Nazi party. I didn't ever hear about him in my many years in the US, until a few days ago on Wikipedia:
He already sent active duty marines to Los Angeles, and it was ruled illegal by a judge (after the fact) but it doesn't matter because no one with any real power cares what laws or judges say: https://time.com/7313929/trump-national-guard-la-los-angeles...
What do you mean? That is exactly what they are trained for, you just do the same thing but even more aggressively. US cops are already pretty aggressive but you can dial that up a lot, they are already trained for this.
Tell the cops that they can shoot anyone looking aggressive and not get questioned and they will happily go out and quell any resistance, don't you think? Tell them they can put people in prison without lawyers getting in their way, that they can torture people to speak without anyone stopping them etc.
US police is very close to a fascist police already so very little has to change. Remember that the US police culture roots came from policing slaves.
If the president shreds the constitution, there would likely be many in the military opposed to it.
While they are actively replacing cabinet positions with loyal outsiders that have little-to-no experience within the organizations they now run (eg Patel, Hegseth), I think it’s reasonable to assume that there remains career leaders throughout that would put country before king.
You also need to look at loyalty within the rank and file of course.
When I talk to conservative friends about this scenario they generally laugh; of course the military would choose country over king. At least for now I think there remains enough institutional integrity that this is plausible.
Hard to say. "About six-in-ten registered voters who say they have served in the U.S. military or military reserves (61%) support former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, while 37% back Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early September." from https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/30/military-...
The military is not composed of constitutional lawyers and the danger is that they might persuade themselves that the best way to protect the country is to support whoever has at least a façade of legitimacy, particularly if it aligns with their political preferences.
Agreed, but I do think it’s important to distinguish:
- voted Trump because they believe the constitution protects us from his worst impulses; would support constitution over Trump
- voted Trump and would shred the constitution if they had the opportunity to
I think it’s hard to say how many are in each camp. My fear is many tell themselves they are in the first, but will actually end up in the second under the correct manufactured crisis.
But the stats and polling would need to go into a lot more detail than what you quoted to distinguish.
One of the best CJCS in decades, with high intellectual and military accomplishments.
But that's not the point. The point is that dropping his name will serve as an interesting litmus test for what your friends actually believe, because Trump has made it very clear that he hates the guy.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying this is obvious and nothing needs to be done, or that I'm totally wrong or what? Or saying that I'm being a conspiracy theorist by seeing parallels?
> This is probably the most ironic post I read in quite a while. [¶] TLDR: brain washing is dangerous, we don't have headspace due to Trump oh and btw Trump is hitler.
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. (But no, Trump isn't Hitler — even though they do share some characteristics.)
It doesn't matter if Trump is Hitler or not (what does that even mean?)
Stop paying that much attention to people, they mostly do not matter. Think instead about the circumstances.
What matter is that the USA in 2025 is not Germany of 100 years ago, today economics is not the same as the great depression, there is no threatening civil unrest due to a massive neighboring country which just went through a social revolution, nor due to decomposing colonial empires.
That’s what makes this scarier. If a political party can drum up this much social unrest when the world was largely prospering, then that shows just how much people have forgotten about the real hardships our parents and grandparents suffered, and how quickly we could end up back there through greed.
The number of different national and international situations that get compared to Nazi Germany seems to reflect a paucity of historical imagination and desire to collapse every conflict into an manichaean analogy with modern civilization's foundational battle of good vs. evil.
It might make at least as much sense to compare to Erdoğan's Turkey, Orban's Hungary, Syria's Assad and al-Julani, Chile with Allende and Pinochet, Bolsonaro and Lula in Brazil, the Spanish Civil War, Maidan and the Ukraine war, Cerén and Bukele in El Salvador, etc etc etc.
The point is, if you drew up a few dozen historical parallels that were at least as close to the current American predicament as is Germany in the 1930s, you might draw (and implicitly suggest your audience draw) more tentative and complex conclusions regarding the correct course of action. Whereas the Nazi Germany analogy ends with near-inevitable wave function collapse into "start shooting Nazis", other historical analogies might caution against encouraging everyone escalating into a violent conflict as the only imaginable course of action.
This. If you read Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels (which is partly justified, but as another comment points out there are also a lot of parallels with Orban's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, Putin's Russia, etc.) to 'Luigi'.
There are so many non-violent approaches that would be effective. First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike, pretty much all of society would come to a standstill and it would send a heck of a powerful message. One of the issues though in the US is healthcare tied to employment, combined with fire at will. It reduces preparedness of people to protest until it's possibly too late. So, it's simultaneously important to build/strengthen unions, etc.
Aside from that, and this is true for Europe as well, we need to heal as a society. People have divided themselves in stupid 'teams', fueled by politicians, foreign interference, algorithms, etc. Not woke enough? You are cancelled. Left-wing? You are cancelled (employer contacted and fired). We have to do a little less social media and go outside and talk to other people. Even if I disagree with people politically, there often a lot of common ground (we all want food, health, to be safe, etc.), we all like to talk about some sports match, and whatnot. We don't have to agree with each other, but we can at least try to understand and care for each other. Break the stupid tribe wars.
> First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike
FWIW, when the best case recommendations for a restoration of civil order and the rule of law involve very large scale society-wide civil disobedience...
...then maybe the comparison to Nazi Germany and authoritative dictatorships more generally are perhaps not as far afield as you're implying. Like, once your thinking goes beyond "just win the next election" things are kinda over as far as "democracy" goes.
(And FWIW I don't necessarily disagree: the existing regime's leadership, not just the White House, seem extremely unlikely to just walk out the door if they lose an election. It was tried four years ago and failed, the resulting loyalty tests have produced a very different cabinet this time.)
> Like, once your thinking goes beyond "just win the next election" things are kinda over as far as "democracy" goes.
Elections are not the only form democratic participation can take. We can take local action, coordinated action, talk to our representatives at various levels, and so on.
Your suggestions aren't really addressing the things people are actually worried about here.
If leadership-aligned politicians won't dare step out of line, and those opposed are systematically marginalized by the executive, other legislators, and the courts, then what good does that do? Deliberately neutralizing the opposition's power renders the opposition's ideas, efforts, and proposals useless, and the allied politicians will never disobey, so petitioning either of them to make changes is pointless.
I'm not saying any of that is completely true right now, but people are nervous that this is becoming true.
It seems abundantly clear that there will be no peaceful/rule-of-law transfer of executive power in January 2029 to anyone but a hand-picked Trump successor that wins an election. A democratic victory (or even a Republican primary winner that isn't appropriately selected) will be resisted at all levels of the executive, and... we'll just see. Whatever the result, the losing party will call it a coup and illegitimate, and such an administration will survive only so long as it can hold control of the government by authoritarian means.
It may even happen earlier. A lot of the kerfuffle around redistricting is being presented to right wing audiences in a way that would be very easy to spin as "cheating". What do we do if democrats win the house next year and Johnson simply refuses to seat the California delegation to keep power? Are we prepared?
Basically, the End of the American Experiment may have already occurred.
I'm not so quick to pull the trigger on that assessment. I think we're at point where the rubber band has ostensibly been pulled back nearly as far as it can go, and it may snap, or it might make a surprising move in the opposite direction in response to the tension. I don't think any of us peons has any meaningful control of which of those two things happens, but I think it will hinge a lot on how much big businesses are affected by the economic and political consequences of recent policy moves. No matter how much Trump might bluster about big businesses and such, he'll still fall in line if enough get pushed to the point of having to draw a line in the sand. Too bad it will probably be big business operating in pure self-interest and not some actual principled entity. Maaaaybe if there's enough economic pain among his base, that could point us towards a voter-driven repudiation to some extent. Even if they cement their power significantly, I don't think they could swing it with an outright rejection of their approach. I doubt that will happen though.
...then maybe the comparison to Nazi Germany and authoritative dictatorships more generally are perhaps not as far afield as you're implying.
Sorry, I was not implying they are far afield. We have seen this playbook in several nearby European/Asian countries in the last two and a half decades (I live in Europe). Of course, not all these countries did have a long democratic history, but they did show the fragility of democracy, you have to actively protect it.
Heck, even in the country where I live, which has quite a healthy democracy, a majority of parliament has just accepted a motion to request declaring antifa a terrorist organization because Trump did it as well (all Dutch experts, including former secret service personnel agree that antifa is neither an organization, nor terrorist). Some of them just to score a few points for the upcoming elections. Only a judge can declare an organization to be a terrorist organization, but it's all small steps in eroding the rule of law.
(Coincidentally, the next day 1500 right wing hooligans rioted in the streets of The Haglue the next day, burning police cars, damaging the office of a center-left political party and the parliament square.)
> Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels to 'Luigi'.
oof. I certainly understand where Luigi came from, but I'd also say that Luigi represents an escalation that empowers the Trump regime. The general population's latent desire to see some "justice" metered out on the "elites" pushes those elites into cozying up to Trump. Because those elites know that if Trump chooses to go after them, even the masses against Trump aren't going to be terribly concerned with their plight.
This is why people say that "fascism is the failure mode of capitalism." When the rich and powerful get too fat off their structural advantages and society starts coming apart at the seams, capital will align with anti-democratic, anti-freedom, bigoted, and genocidal forces to suppress change rather than relinquish some wealth and power.
They would rather rule over ashes than join us in a little bit more of an equitable society.
I have nagging the suspicion that the knowledge that a good portion of the population wants them dead is a slightly more significant factor in pushing elites to the Republican side compared to the Trump administration's threats.
My point is they're not different factors, they're the same dynamic.
As for your comparison, the actual threat from more Luigis is small. There are at least thousands of CEOs at or above the level of Armstrong? And one death, over a seeming period of several years? And the motive wasn't just "elites bad", but very specific healthcare denials.
Meanwhile Trump is actively attacking many companies and institutions. Part of the pressure are the populist memes that makes the masses unsympathetic to their plights, even though they are the structure of our society.
> As for your comparison, the actual threat from more Luigis is small. There are at least thousands of CEOs at or above the level of Armstrong? And one death, over a seeming period of several years?
It's less about the murderer himself, and more about the high level of support he has. "Many of the rank and file in the Democratic coalition want you dead, but not to worry nearly all of them are cowards who'd never do anything about it." is cold comfort.
> And the motive wasn't just "elites bad", but very specific healthcare denials.
Do I really need to go trough Reddit to find you people calling for the murder of "capitalists", right down to landlords and homeowners?
I'm sure the elites (if we could call them that) prefer to seem like they are being pressured by the Trump administration. It's better for business and it's safer that way. But their compliance comes a little too easy.
You seem to be trying to make this into a partisan thing by invoking some imagined attribution to Democrats, when the outrage against elites is clearly pan-partisan. Also if anything it's rightism that tends to encourage individualist violence (and I'm saying this not as a partisan slam, but as a libertarian who sees the virtues in both philosophies)
You've also completely sidestepped the fact that Trump is actively attacking many companies and institutions. Sure, it's conceivable that some capitulating-institutional leaders were looking for an excuse to bring their institutions to heel, but it's not conceivable that they all were.
It seems like your goal is to absolve the autocratic authoritarians, and justify the elites cozying up to the autocratic authoritarians. So I don't see how continuing this conversation can be productive.
Social media is not real life. How many of those comments are bots? How many people say things online they wouldn’t say in person? The right and left are not as far apart as the internet would have us believe.
It's especially important to realize this when it's TikTok where most of that is happening, and where TikTok is the propaganda arm of China, a country that the US currently considers a frenemy at best, if not an outright enemy, and that considers the US in somewhat similar terms.
And when the algorithms on the rest of the media sites are used to drive maximum engagement for profit purposes, or maximum dissent because of the political leanings of their owner (e.g. X), social media is most definitely not the reality.
Wasn't there a group cheering in front of the courtroom when the judge dropped the terrorism charge? Those people were not bots.
> How many people say things online they wouldn’t say in person?
Ohh, so lovely of them. I wonder how Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and ultimately Paul Graham feel, to know that the only reason why a good portion of the population doesn't advocate for their death is taqiyya?
I'd like to sidestep the question, and ask, is lethal violence justified as a retaliation? But I'd like to ask that as an ethical, not as a strategic question.
Suppose the starts align and the omens are good. Imagine the assassination of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk would be highly beneficial to all your pet political issues. Would killing them be a good thing?
Elon Musk is actively poisoning people in Tennessee to make more money. I don't really care about his problems; if he's worried about his popularity he could try being nicer to other people.
The case against has basically fallen apart already. If he’s a murderer why does he walk free? The prosecutors will keep billing hours those. They need a scapegoat.
Some of it reminds me of the CCP, which I think is openly considered a model by some neo-authoritarians. Ubiquitous mass surveillance, social credit, and state capitalism with heavy control though regulatory pressure. I assume we will eventually see party men installed on boards of major companies, especially in media, tech, and entertainment.
The “tech right” is a major player here and a lot of those folks idolize China right now.
I think the US has been spiraling toward authoritarianism since 9/11 personally. This did not start yesterday or with the most recent election, nor is it exclusively the result of the right or the Republican Party. A lot of people to the left have also abandoned liberalism and ideas like free speech. There’s been a broad based shift away from liberalism and individualism and toward collectivism, which always leads toward totalitarianism.
Right wing collectivism comes in the form of racism and nationalism, while for the contemporary left its identity-grievance politics and a resurgence of Marxism.
“Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens?” is one of the questions I keep asking.
Individualism started dying when it became clear the problems we face are now too large for any one individual to overcome. Massive institutions crush the individual. You can’t chase individualist dreams as easily as you once could. It requires a lot of money and luck, and luck has run out.
Social media also made it easier for you to be a group thinker and reap the benefits of that. Being an individual gives you no clout.
> Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens?”
You mean in the aftermath of the great recession where most people were struggling economically and saw that the rules are only for little people? The 20-teens were the time of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party - I don't see how it can be
I think individualism increased, after the teens, in a "don't trust the experts, do your own 'research'" way. Regardless of one's politics, its hard not to be a conspiracy theorist when you see a conspiracy play out in front of your eyes, at your expense. You could draw a straight line between the GFC and the growth of the "burn it all down" contingents on the left and right - indeed, a lot of "Bernie bros" became Trumpers whole remaining true to that ethos.
> I think the US has been spiraling toward authoritarianism since 9/11 personally. This did not start yesterday or with the most recent election, nor is it exclusively the result of the right or the Republican Party. A lot of people to the left have also abandoned liberalism and ideas like free speech. There’s been a broad based shift away from liberalism and individualism and toward collectivism, which always leads toward totalitarianism.
On small example: The president openly ordering targeted killings started under Bush and was broadened to include US citizens under Obama.
Of course the dangerous concentration of power in the executive branch has been something the US has contended with on and off over the years. If you read The Federalist Papers, it seems clear to me that the architects of our government did not envision congress steadily abrogating its power; the expectation was rather that it would be jealously guarded by those it was granted to.
Power tends to flow uphill, so it seems like over time it's "natural" for power to concentrate in the executive. This has to be actively fought, and we haven't been fighting it. It's analogous to antitrust in the economy.
I would recommend 'Adapt! On a New Political Imperative' by Barbara Stiegler. The movement away from classical liberalism has been going on for far longer and was by design. It is very important to explicitly separate traditional or classical liberalism from neoliberalism when discussing these things. And just to be pedantic the term liberal should also absolutely be avoided when discussing anything involve impacts from the "new left" movement.
>Why did everyone across the entire political spectrum abandon individualism in the 20-teens
IMO they didn't - at least not explicitly. Individualism has been somewhat illusionary since the progressive era it is just finally coming home to roost. What happened is that the internet finally out ran the ability of the traditional media consensus methods at the national level as the internet generation aged in. So we are sort of in unknown territory where it is not clear any "expert" can play the designated role to drive the consensus required in the neoliberal system.
Where to go from there is an open question but her thesis is that the neoliberal system needs to be adapted in someway. Anyway that is largely the picture of the problem she paints. I'm not doing it justice but it is worth a read to at least place a lot of the problems people are observing in a mental and historical framework.
I think a good step is moving towards federating into smaller communities. The best of those ideas will get adopted by other communities. Basically the fediverse model applied to society. People already have this feeling intuitively and it is playing out with the push back against globalization.
The political quadrant is more important than ever compared to the mess of one-dimensional politics :
Right wing is economic (neo) liberals, while fascists are top wing center : these will (like a century ago) gladly use left-wing policies and rhetoric if they bring them the power they crave above all else. Or ally with corporations when convenient.
While societal liberals are on the bottom wing, and regularly clash with anti-liberal socialists/communists (left center, but also left top).
(Proto-Antifa used to ally with Nazis to beat up Social Democrats, until Stalin had decided to change direction, it's wild how both the name and flag are still reused today despite that dirty history...)
I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control.
Control of the people comes from all sides. The end result is the same, but the methods are different, intended to make people happy to be controlled.
> I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control.
Control of the people comes from all sides
This depiction of Covid restrictions (restrictions that were actually relatively permissive given the seriousness of the disease and the unknown nature of the virus at the time) as though they were an authoritarian power grab by malevolent politicians instead of a health policy, is part of the problem.
Maybe if people had been willing to accept a small curtailment of their personal desires for a short time for the sake of the common good, rather than framing it as a dictatorial punishment,we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re heading into now.
None of the COVID measures had any effect on public health and yet they were enforced long after that became obvious to anyone watching the graphs the government themselves published. And the nature of the virus was known within weeks of it appearing - there were no real surprises from that point on. It acted very similarly to any other respiratory virus with the only differences being the unusually steep gradient in age effects.
COVID was 100% an authoritarian power grab by public health officials. Zero percent actual health. And public health is an overwhelmingly left wing and political field, being as it is the idea that health should be managed collectively.
That mostly mapped to population density, which maps to blue states because the main divide is urban vs rural.
More intense pandemic measures make more sense where density is higher.
But did we even have any true lockdowns in the US? Maybe in some cities, but we had nothing close to China or even Australia. Were there any places in the US with actual curfews where you were not allowed to leave, or anything like that?
I lived in California in the start of the pandemic and Ohio the rest of the time and neither place had true “lock downs.” I only saw businesses requiring masks and some jobs requiring the vaccine.
What I recall from looking into this is that under half of the states had stay at home orders with the force of law. My own perspective was similar to yours - governor issued a "stay at home order" that when you read the details it was really just a strongly worded suggestion. Of course my state was still often listed in national summaries as if the order was mandatory.
But there does seem to be states where such orders were legally mandatory. Were they enforced? Would they survive court scrutiny if someone was arrested for say walking down the sidewalk in open air? Did they have massive escape hatches (eg caring for family members) ? No idea.
In Indiana, there were groceries that had early morning for healthcare workers and elderly only. That helped limit spread as well.
Again, we had no real lockdowns. School was remote, which had its own really bad effects on early socialization.
I'm not at all sure what we should have did differently. Technically a hard lockdown for 6 weeks could mostly eradicate it everywhere. But a lot of people can't handle that.
What I do now know is our society and public kinda sucks, people will show up and do stuff sick, spread sickness, and not really care much. And our government has been getting steadily worse and worse as long as Ive lived. And my generation and younger ones are either in for a terrible time, or already IN a terrible time.
I wasn't really recommending anything. Was more just observations what happened here.
The 6 week lockdown was more a potential way to slow covid and basically knock it out across the country. But I'm not sure we could even do that if we wanted to. Most people only have a few days of food in their house.
I also note that domestic abuse skyrocketed also during the vaccine-less parts of the pandemic. There was a whole lot of weird.
However with RFK and Dr Phil (cringe) as heads of respective health agencies, I know if we get a new pandemic, we're fucked. These are the same idiots that think vaccines cause autism and horse dewormer cures covid.
> I would also remind the short of memory that during covid, the states with the most draconian restrictions were mostly left-leaning, and many were loathe to give up that control.
...
Some exerts from 3 different studies but you may find more if you want.
> This suggests that red states faced a more pronounced impact from COVID-19, experiencing elevated mortality rates compared to their blue counterparts.
> Red states had higher COVID-19 infection rates and deaths in 2021 compared to blue states.
> A study in June published in Health Affairs similarly found that counties with a Republican majority had a greater share of Covid deaths through October 2021, relative to majority-Democratic counties. The Yale researchers behind the new working paper say vaccine hesitancy among Republicans may be the biggest culprit.
There is a different between draconian restriction that saved lives, vs "FREEDOM" that resulted in more people dying but hey, they did not need a vaccine or mask. I hope it was worth it for those that had family *unnecessarily* die because of their own, or others "FREEDOM".
I think you confuse dictatorships with measures to help a to prevent deaths. Hey, i remember the "dictatorship" of required seatbelts outcry's. And yet, how many lives have been saved.
There is a difference between people crying how their rights are removed, vs the general good of the population. Being selfish in a society does not make you a freedom proponent, but just a selfish person. If people want to live with all the freedoms in the world, great, go live in some mountain somewhere where you have no contact with others. But the moment you have a semblance of society, there will be more and more pressure to prevent individual actions from harming others. If you want to shoot your guns out in the open like Rambo when your a individual and do not harm to others, fine, have fun. But if your shooting your guns in any society structure where you have neighbors or people around, and you actions have consequences to those around, you will always have some form of governance that will "restrict" your freedom, as now your part of a society.
The issue become dangerous when that governance is MISUSED by those that pass laws and restrictions, that are not for the global good but for their own financial or power benefits. And i feel that people misunderstand the difference between what a social governance is and a autocracy governance.
This should be the top-voted comment of the whole thread. I used to teach history; it makes me roll my eyes when I hear comparisons between Nazi Germany and the current moment. It reflects both a lack of historical familiarity with the unique circumstances of Germany in the 1920s and 30s (including recently losing a world war), and also, as you say, a lack of knowledge of other more relevant historical examples — of which I’d also put Erdoğan at the top. It’s just a conversation-stopper and a rhetorical cudgel rather than a serious attempt at historical contextualization.
Surely the Venn diagram needs not be a circle for you to draw parallels, nor does the existence of a more direct comparison make other comparisons moot.
Surely the fact that the current ruling party has an influential faction who explicitly reference Nazi Germany as an ideal worth striving for is relevant to setting the current moment in historical context. Yes we're not LITERALLY Nazi Germany for a variety of reasons but that doesn't mean it doesn't paint a picture of what they want to do, regardless of how successful they will be or what that will look like in practice.
Personally I think the most apt historical comparison is the Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, but since we don't LITERALLY live in the Middle Ages and have ethnic divisions between Greeks and Latins one might say that's not a relevant comparison either.
> Whereas the Nazi Germany analogy ends with near-inevitable wave function collapse into "start shooting Nazis", other historical analogies might caution against encouraging everyone escalating into a violent conflict as the only imaginable course of action.
This is, is course, why it's the one preferred comparison.
That is largely irrelevant, they weren't in control of their own destiny at that point. What we learned in the 50s/60s was that the US leadership in the 40s/50s had a really good idea of how to build a country up and score diplomatic wins. They did amazing things in Japan and Germany.
Unfortunately, those people appear to all be dead. Now we have whatever Afghanistan and Iraq was meant to be.
As much as I lament the quality of leadership at the moment (and not just in the US) I am not sure that we can equate Afghanistan with Germany.
It is one thing to denazify a "modern western country" that shares most of your values, culture and religion, and that has had institutions for some time. It is another thing altogether to pull off the deal in a country that has never had a working civil society, civil institions, education, etc. Especially if you do not share it's culture or religion, and there is a part of the country that is still actively engaged in a military campaign to obstruct you.
Not saying that it couldn't be done, or that mistakes weren't made. Just that you can't compare the two like that.
The underlying theory that the GP is getting at is that Japan and Germany were easy to rebuild because they had existing institutions and a society that trusted institutions. The idea is that it is kind of a self fulfilling prophecy; germany and Japan will "remember" how to be civilized, but under different leadership, Afghanistan and Iraq cannot revert to that.
It leans heavily on assumptions about countries and institutions.
I don't doubt that, I was just explaining the argument. It has been recently popularized in tech circles by a viral appearance by professor Sarah Paine on the Dwarkesh podcast.
I am fully willing to believe that the US royally fucked up the rebuild of Afghanistan.
That could explain the success of rebuilding Germany, as it shared a lot culturally with the US, but what about Japan? Japan was, and to a large extent still is, a very alien culture, and yet the US rebuilt it extremely effectively.
East Germany definitly never was. And even West Germany was considerably behind the UK in per capita GDP in US$ after WW2.[1] It had catched up at around 1970. Since 1970 the two were roughly equivalent: some years one was ahead some years the other.[2] However, Germany is now considerably ahead of the UK in terms of per capita GDP measuered in PPP (ie. adjusted to local prices: aprox. 20% now, or 10 to 15 years (depending on your reference point).[3]
> East Germany definitly never was. And even West Germany was considerably behind the UK in per capita GDP in US$ after WW2.[1]
Germany was behind the UK even before WW2. Just the UK outproduced Germany in (e.g.) aircraft production, and that was even before the US got involved.
Yep. -- I noticed that the first link of my comment is somehow not working. Here is another reference for those who want some numbers. It is a German publication ("Deutschland in Daten", PDF) but the relevant tables should be understandable anyway:
For GDP per capita in "International dollar"/"Geary-Khamis-Dollar" for Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Great Britain, USA in the period 1850-2019, see p. 312 and 313.
According to this publication, 1930, 1940 and 1950 the German GDP per capita was about 75% of that of Great Britain. However, there was a big dip right after 1945 shown in the second table.
The German "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder") of the 1950s and 1960s was in essence not an outperformance of other western countries in absolute terms, but a catching-up process with them. The same holds for Japan. The process lost momentum, when parity with most of the other major economies was reached.
However, the USA have always been considerably ahead since WW2. -- So much to the slogan "Make America great again". It seems to be based on a very distorted self-image of having a backward economy, for which I have no sound explanation as an outside observer. And even if it were not about the general economic situation, but about a growing disparity inside the country, then a solution to better the situation, when the country is already so much ahead economically, cannot come from outside, but must be domestic.
It’s something of a red herring. Britain got the largest slice of the Marshall Plan money, they just wasted it on things like trying to maintain the Empire. One thing you’d learn from the book is Germany definitely wasn’t in a good shape in 55.
I suppose it's easier to achieve "growth" in percentage terms when you're starting from a low baseline (because your entire country got flattened by invading armies.)
It turns out that the British were one of the allies and about 380,000 of them died fighting the Nazis, so they have a good claim to having defeated Germany, with help from their friends.
Yes, I am not downplaying the role of the British and hoped no one would take it that way. The British were the first on alert as far as I know, and without them it would have been a whole lot worse.
USA swoops in towards the end (a large cost as well, but not as much of it and not on their doorstep) and takes a big role in creating the new world.
I'm not saying they didn't. But Britain didn't defeat Germany alone, and certainly didn't get the entire share of control after Germany was defeated. And after that the further decline of the UK showed that the power was shifting into the hands of those with wealth anyway, and here we are.
Since around Nixon (maybe?) there has been a gradual post-WW2 deregulation that really accelerated under Reagan and now with Trump its accelerating again. More and more keeps shifting into the hands of unelected, wealthy individuals who see that their power keeps growing and growing and as far as I can tell, won't stop until they have it all. It doesn't make any sense to me why that looks like a stable world to them, but the one thing that is certain is that there is no 2nd amendment that will stop the billionaire club.
No it doesn't.
They didn't "invest", they took everything that wasn't bolted to the ground, and then they took that too. A third of the country was taken away and millions of Germans displaced.
My father worked as a mechanical engineer in West Germany after the war. He told me the French removed all the machines from the factories and took them to France, then the Americans installed much better new machines in their place.
The Marshall Plan was a real thing.
My father also told me that before the Americans decided on the Marshall Plan, they considered other plans (also named for American generals IIRC) one of which involved sterilizing all German men.
hollerith says >My father worked as a mechanical engineer in West Germany after the war. He told me the French removed all the machines from the factories and took them to France, then the Americans installed much better new machines in their place.
The Marshall Plan was a real thing.
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So damned funny!!8-)) The phrase "Grasping defeat from the jaws of victory!" comes to mind.
> The US is being left behind, by its own self sabotage.
Is self-sabotage what it is? To me it seems so intentional it's hard to call sabotage. As an American I can only assume that you are thinking these people are making innocent mistakes? It's not entirely their fault they're being manipulated, but it is their fault they're being driven by some core hatred for an other.
The "idea" that was executed on here was a non-starter to begin with. You don't get anywhere by lighting everything that seems like waste on fire and burning it to the ground, learning its effects later. A modern government is not something that is riddled with waste so much that it does nothing. Their first target, USAID, as far as I could tell had no idea what was coming. They didn't even seem to bother to look into what they did, just the cashflows. Which of course will seem wasteful if you don't have a human heart with feelings, it's called U-S-A-I-D. Saying the idea was good here is like giving them the benefit of the doubt that sure maybe they can't read or understand anything, but let them axe these things without a second thought? Come on, you shouldn't let Elon off that easy.