Do you mean pothole?

Does it matter?

Your friend using Android or iOS may have typed your exact address, phone, signal id, gps, etc on her Google/apple account. And now?

If you fly to use you are giving more info.

Are you running your own bank? Pepper are you? What happens when you join job (tons of papers?)

The is so rare. Such things can happen even with bank accounts (if you are a foreigner in many countries).

If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.

>If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.

This can be fixed yourself, whether that's hopping into a TTY or having to boot a live environment and chroot in. You aren't at the mercy of some major company's support people.

Even without fixing it you should be able to get at the files on the drive for use on another machine, or backing them up if you're gonna reinstall.

Keep boot live environment? You always carry USB? Learn security. Chroot?

You don't learn or understand modern bootc?

It can’t happen to my macbook.

This happened recently to my kid and it was a nightmare of a week trying to resolve it.

I’d rather tie my identity to an org with customer service.

this does not mean anything logical. Billions use android. Some will be affected due to any company or ID etc.

Pretty sure you can visit your local apple store and see many people asking for shattered screen or lost iphone. They did lose their accounts.

Moreover even if you use macbook - if you lose google or apple ID situation is same. (for the majority) appstore is important. See your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48111545#48123885 you are happy to give everything to iCloud but don't like Google?

I can also store all my data in hetzner cloud. Use chromebook only as a hardware. If Google account is blocked then use Guest session. No account needed. Your turn?

Shatters screens and lost iphones don’t affect your apple account. Sign in to your new device with your apple id and your stuff is there.

Moreso, there’s no google store to go to for help if your google account gets locked.

Of course you can store data on a thumb drive (or hetzner cloud) and use that without a google id. Good luck with that. And it’s not scaleable for billions of users.

Again, apple provides support, google does not. I don’t want my livelihood dependent on a google id.

they do. You do lose 2FA with shattered screen.

Android phone can be used without google account (I do it). You cant even use Apple iPhone without.

I would be surprised about that behavior even for 10% people doing real AI usable work. Very few people buy new motherboard or CPU or gfxcard every 3 months?

Even now just because the latest Anthropic is super great doesn't mean people are not using other models. Not everyone is subscribed to only the best.

True.

Another worse offender is gitlab. They send promotions hidden as a part of this is obligatory account related into telling blah blah and adding BTW see these extra features for more payments.

Not just gitlab. I'm seeing this happen more and more. I'm assuming it relies on the fact that it's a nontrivial investment to file a government complaint.

Perhaps DPRK.

I mean deGoogle/meta etc is almost impossible

In concept what you say is correct but reality is complex. There are very few providers that implement friction free login/password and importantly security. A large number of email providers didn't implement 2FA until very recently. Even those that have terrible apps, ad infested, no app password or oAuth etc. so many governments use MS hosted services.

It is akin to Visa/MasterCard duopoly. It is hard to escape but even if one does it then it resulted only inconvenience. I still don't have my cards in phone - neither will google change path nor will govts force a change.

I don't see any contradiction here with what I said. If you feel that using Google for email is unavoidable, that can be the part that you keep using. You can still easily ditch a lot of other things. E.g. Pixel phone, Google Docs, Google Drive, AWS. Each of those has plenty of, arguably better, alternatives.

I've largely disconnected from big tech for years, perhaps 80%, and encouraged others to do likewise. When does the seismic shift happen?

I don't care for these 'bottom up' strategies because they don't have clearly defined success conditions and are more wishing than anything else. It also puts the responsibilities on consumers for 'not advocating (or voting) hard enough,' which imho is just another kind of diffusion of responsibility. Everyone ends up feeling bad for not doing enough to solve the problem when the reality is that coordinating social swarms or other sorts of collective action against tech giants with highly integrated command and lobbying structures is almost impossible.

> Each of those has plenty of, arguably better, alternatives.

That's the incorrect premise - for that 50% that you hope to ditch.

Pixel phone is not inherently bad. One can even buy them second hand.

The information lock in from US is impossible to escape for majority of connected world citizens.

I don't understand your point. We're talking about ways to reduce dependence on big corp products. Some people object on the basis that it's not always feasible. I've responded that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You've identified some products that you think you can't move away from. I've identified some that I think you probably can, and acknowledged that you might still by stuck with those others. I don't see how your latest comment fits in.

In the context of the present debate, Pixel phone is inherently bad because it's a Google product. You're putting money in Google's bank account when you buy one, and you're running your phone the way Google wants you to. The point of the debate is whether it's feasible to move away from such things. In the case of a Pixel phone, it is possible (to some extent, anyway).

> The marketing guys who made that decision urgently need to find another line of work, because literally a Labrador licking his

They already made money.

They know what works to make money by convincing CEO VP PM devs. I do hope they jump to the next company (please meta or apple) and do their duties.

IIRC, all these hardware exist. Software is not 100 % fine for them. The point is to have OS and password manager trust each other. Once this is done then all should work. That should allow for the browser to query the password manager for appropriate info. At the moment, password manager is poorly integrated onto OS.