I would add a caveat to your statement. It might not be just through a lawsuit but the threat of a lawsuit. A lawsuit will cost big money, but having a lawyer right the company a letter shouldn’t cost more than a couple of hundred bucks. Most people give up immediately and that’s what they are counting on. Worst case scenario is what? Tack a couple of hundred on to the thousands you will already owe? Basically a drop in a bucket.

Also, as scummy as the profession and some lawyers are, there are plenty who just want to do right by people. I have only paid a lawyer once, but I have talked to around half a dozen in my life time with questions about the law and some of the issues I was having. One or two probably spent at least a couple of hours on me over the course of a month or two when you factor in the initial 20-30 minute conversation, reading the documents I put together, and answering some of my follow up emails, and despite my insisting they charge me, they were insistent on not doing so.

(I suspect because in many of the situations what was happening to me was morally wrong, but legally more or less fine just barely grazing the gray area, and taking payment for their time could be construed as them acting as legal counsel as opposed to just answering some questions)

I was basically hooked from the start. Probably just a personal preference thing, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. I still haven’t been able to read through any of The Lord of the Rings, and yet see my first sentence, lol.

It’s an LSposed/XPosed based app called YouTube Adaway. It also enables background playback.

That has been my specific issue with paying for any Google product always. I understand when I am using a product for free that I am not necessarily the customer and that money has to be made off of me or the users more generally somehow. That’s “fine” (ish, not really, but that has more to do with issues of security than anything).

However when I pay for a product or service, I want to now be the customer and I want to be in control of my data and have the company cater to me. If, when paying for a Google service, there was some legally relevant things in place that insured I was no longer being tracked and used to generate revenue via third parties I would gladly pay. Probably more than they are charging now, but instead they want to have it both ways which is just not OK with me.

What I find the most hilarious is that on a rooted Android phone there is an app that hooks into the YouTube app and eliminates adds in it. Even when my PC with Firefox and UBlock get temporarily blocked in the battle between Google and ad blockers my phone using the standard app still doesn’t have adds.

I don’t know something about it is very satisfying to me.

Are we talking about me specifically or people in general? I’ll assume general as I was just relaying a personal anecdote to show that my point/thesis wasn’t just a hypothetical as I do know how to get around it in my specific case.

In the general context, that’s not a great solution for most people as it is beyond their skill or time set. For the most disadvantaged people just having the ability to have a phone at all and a place to reliably charge it is an issue. There is also the issue is practicality. When I take public transit where I live, the app pulls up a QR code on my phone they gets scanned. I’m not even sure I could fit my laptop screen into the space to scan the QR code if I was emulating Android.

So I guess my thesis here is that systems should be made more accessible and inclusive rather than requiring those in the minority to either have to put more effort in using a workaround to reach functional parity or end up left out all together.

Unfortunately yes, and I would go even a step further and say a smart phone is a basic necessity. More and more companies and even government services are operating on the assumption that everyone has a smart phone. I have encountered various services where if a person didn’t have a smart phone they literally can’t use it. I even have personal experience with it.

My landlord uses a company for payments that can only be interacted with via an app on a smart phone. There is no web portal option. There is no option to mail a check. There is no option to setup a direct bank transfer. I was essentially strong armed into it since the place itself was (and still is) better than almost anything else I saw and is a reasonable price.

He’s not wrong…

I’m not convinced the employers know that. At least not the ones that ultimately control hiring. Granted, I’m not CS, I’m in the Mechanical Engineering world and it seems like a similar issue has existed (for possibly different reasons) for the last decade or so. That goes double for the skilled trades that our work heavily relies on. Companies don’t want to spend the time and money developing new talent, they just want to find already developed talent.

They may throw some money and lip service at some school or community programs, but they don’t really take on the responsibility of insuring a sustainable ecosystem of people in the industry. Like a lot of issues it’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma. I’m not sure how it is in other parts of the world, butat least in the US, with some rare exceptions, I don’t see people and companies changing from being selfish to trying to maximize the benefit for all without changes in policy, and the likelihood of that is well…

Doing work, solving problems, and failing is often the best way for people to learn. I will damn near get fired before I let management schlep menial busy work onto an intern or tell them look but don’t touch. If an intern has to do some kind of mind numbing repetitive task, it won’t be anything that I myself haven’t already had to an equal amount of or at least will be doing side by side with them. As you said, they are there to learn, not fill a hole management was too cheap or lazy to do. .

It is probably worth while to note that in my industry interns are generally paid pretty well. My internship back in the day paid about double what my job in IT paid when I took it.

Shit. You got me there. Carry on I guess.

A single company shouldn’t be able to dictate how the web works.

Drink More Glurp!

My Fairphone 5 had it in Android 13 and my Zenfone 6 had it in Android 12.

I would have to disagree for the city and state that I live in. Google Maps is much more accurate and up to date than OSM and the directions are better too. Not to mention sometimes knowing to route around construction and whatnot. OSM and whether it’s better than Google Maps seems to be very region dependent.

I contribute when and where I can but there isn’t a huge user base here.

Windows 10 DLC just dropped. Copilot added from Windows 11.

No? Higher levels of education are generally correlated with more liberal attitudes. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/

Unless that’s not what you meant, or I am missing something?

Makes sense to me. One of the deciding factors for me was the ease of bootloader unlocking. After getting fucked by Asus on my Zenfone 8 Flip when they started with their heel turn, the FP5 seemed like one of the better options for a company that would “always” have the unlock option.

Currently I am running it rooted with the original fully updated ROM, but I plan on installing Lineage OS on it in the future. Since I hadn’t ever installed a custom ROM and because I didn’t have a backup phone anymore, I bought a cheap OnePlus phone to practice installing Lineage on. Although the OnePlus was relatively easy to unlock, the FP5 was even easier.

Currently typing this on a Fairphone 5 that I imported from Europe. I would personally say no in terms of it being an answer to the above poster. At least as of now. I’m not saying I dislike the phone. I’m fairly happy with it, with the only real complaint being battery life.

Although it is easy to repair, as far as I am aware none of the phones really share any parts or have an upgrade path which is what I would really like to see. Similar to the Framework laptops (which I also own and just upgraded). I think the SoC in this phone will last me for quite some time, but if the Fairphone 6 ends up having a much more energy efficient screen, I would love if I could install it on my current phone, but that is highly unlikely as far as I can tell.

Home Depot has trucks that can be rented for a similar price, lol.