I think the law needs to change. Statutory damages for any initial refusal that is later overturned, whether by a court or by the company themselves. Treat it as breach of contract.
This is is to change the economics so that there is a cost to a business for automatically denying, just as there is a cost to the claimant when the business automatically denies.
> Home/auto insurance will often give you a black hole for claims; the adjuster won't get back to you for months at a time. But if you keep calling them enough to be annoying, they will usually eventually pay out.
Fortunately I live in a more reasonable country, where I don't have to keep chasing them; I can simply claim through the court system instead. I think the system works here - I haven't heard that to be a problem here.
I would agree with this solution, and also think that these other reforms to the legal system are necessary:
1.) The cost of the court system needs to go way down. It's not okay to have justice be a luxury good; every citizen needs to have a way of adjudicating and enforcing their rights.
2.) Laws need to be enforced uniformly. Right now the usual outcome for the squeaky wheel that files a lawsuit is that they get paid out in a decent settlement, the case is dropped, and the corporation goes right on screwing everybody else who doesn't bother to enforce their rights. Or it becomes a class-action lawsuit where the lawyers get $40M, the plaintiff gets $10M, and every other member of the class gets a check for $100. If a judgment for a class-action lawsuit is $10M, every member of the class should get $10M, not just the plaintiff. If this bankrupts the corporation, so be it: maybe their business practices were invalid to begin with.
3.) Relatedly, laws that are never enforced should fall off the books so we don't get this kind of "regulation by enforcement" that can be used to arbitrarily punish people, as well as wholesale shifts in the legal regime based on which party is in power.
4.) It should be easier to collect on judgments. It can take years for a judgment or settlement to clear your bank account in the U.S. Some people don't have years, particularly those with health conditions or living on the edge of poverty.
> I don't want an ongoing relationship with the device manufacturer.
I think it depends on the device. If I buy an iPhone, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that necessarily involves a relationship with the app store provider (ie. Apple), not the store I bought the phone from.
With a TV, I suppose it depends on whether I want to install media apps like Prime Video or Netflix on it. I understand that there will be people who don't want that, in which case I agree with you. But others want to be able to run this stuff somehow, whether it's directly on the TV or via some HDMI device like a Chromecast or a Fire Stick. At that point, they _do_ want a relationship with some hardware manufacturer so that the third party app can be delivered to run on the hardware.
> If I buy an iPhone, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that necessarily involves a relationship with the app store provider (ie. Apple)
This is only true because Apple dictates it to be so. The manufacturer of the device should not have a say in what I choose to do with a device I bought. I should be able to install software on a device without asking the manufacturer for permission. Why do they think they should have an opinion? After I purchase the device, it's mine, not theirs. I can throw it off a cliff if I want without asking for Apple's permission, why can't I install software on it?
> At that point, they _do_ want a relationship with some hardware manufacturer so that the third party app can be delivered to run on the hardware.
The device manufacturer should not need to be involved with a user's decision to install software. There should not be this requirement to have a relationship with them. We should never have allowed this idea to be normalized that the device manufacturer needs to be somehow have a say, let alone be the sole path to using the device.
Device manufacturers should sell devices and then get out of the way of what the user is doing with those devices.
I mostly agree, although if the manufacturer has a catalog of software (which they have managed to check for quality, classification, etc) that you can optionally use for installing software (which others can also choose to do, e.g. in the case of Android there is also F-Droid), but that you can also install anything that you want to do by yourself (including software that you wrote by yourself) without needing to be able (or willing) to contact (or have anything further to do with) the manufacturer (for any reason), then it can be helpful.
Also, if someone provides a service (e.g. Netflix) that some might want to use and some might not, then you have the option to use that service might be helpful but even that should not require any relationship with the manufacturer unless they are also providing the service. If the manufacturer is separate then they should not have anything to do with it (e.g. they should not add a button on the remote control specific for Netflix; if they have user programmable buttons that you can add your own labels, then it would be possible to use such a thing like that if the end user decides to install Netflix). (There are other problems with Netflix too but I am ignoring them for now because that would be a separate discussion.)
When I buy a computer, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that doesn't necessitate any relationship at all with any app store provider of any sort (ie. Apple).
(When I buy a pocket supercomputer, I have that same exact expectation. It's often left unsatisfied, but I still have it.)
The trouble is that we haven't figured out a trust model that works when we do exclude that relationship. The traditional Windows "run setup.exe" model is terrible for modern expectations of security. The alternatives available today are still very far behind the safety that ordinary users get today when they do enter a relationship with the manufacturer. Unless you're an expert and not a typical consumer.
I certainly want the gate. I just acknowledge that some kind of relationship with the hardware manufacturer for the benefit of the ordinary consumer is the best that the technology industry can offer right now.
A sternly-written, notarized letter of indemnification? A bizarro-world sequence of events (like activating Developer Mode on Android)? A game of Galaga which, if played perfectly, unlocks the gate just as doing so unlocks the black car in Ridge Racer on the PSX?
I don't know. It's a gate that allows a person to leave the garden. It exists to be opened, and to be passed through, and also to be closed again -- or to be left open. :)
(The UAC prompt in Windows is also a gate, if existing work is to be studied.)
I know what a gate is for. My question was trying to get you to explain the middle ground between the extremes. That it is hard to visualize/imagine is kind of my point. The UAC prompt is an excellent example of a potential middle ground that is definitely a gate but a near useless one.
> I think it depends on the device. If I buy an iPhone, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that necessarily involves a relationship with the app store provider (ie. Apple)
I bought my Pixel from Google and don't want any relationship with Google whatsover. In fact, I wiped the stock OS and installed Graphene for this reason. My apps come from various sources, none of which is Google.
> If I buy an iPhone, I have the expectation of installing apps on it after purchase, and that necessarily involves a relationship with the app store provider (ie. Apple), not the store I bought the phone from.
That's because Apple supplies both the hardware and the software. Being a software supplier - the only such supplier - they need to keep being involved. This wouldn't be the case if third-party OSes existed for the iPhone - it doesn't need to be the case for M1/M2 MacBooks, for example, thanks to Asahi, or for any x86-based hardware.
They don't need to be involved. They force it on people and people are making a judgement call and a trade off that the upsides outweigh the downsides. That doesn't mean it's right or that people are happy about it or that it needs to happen. That would just be an appeal to the status quo.
When they show up to the depot and get their bus assignment they get a slip with the PIN (IIRC), otherwise they can call dispatch back up, identify themselves, and be given a reset remotely. (https://www.cleverdevices.com/products/secure-bus-access/)
I had a similar experience but with the Fairphone 2. I never swapped out any parts because performance hardware upgrades never became available and it was superseded by the Fairphone 3. I've not invested again in a Fairphone since. I've no interest in paying extra for repairability I'm never going to use since they have the same obsolescence/replacement model as any other phone.
I think there's a distinction between attribution and linking to something nobody else can necessarily access. Placing a path to my local build is something I'd avoid because it's irrelevant to everyone else. I think the same applies here.
It's established that exposing children to bad things causes harm. This isn't specific to technology. "Free speech" isn't a concept that applies to the exposure of harmful speech to children.
"Free speech" is definitely a concept that applies to the exposure of harmful speech to children. That's why there's no law on the topic; the Child Online Protection Act was overturned, and organizations like the EFF have been opposing recent attempts (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/house-passed-kids-act-...) to pass a new one.
I don't need to believe I have consciousness, I am conscious. I'm experiencing colors, sounds, vibrations, an itch that wants to be scratched and a need to stretch my legs. Also slight irritation that people pretend this is something you need to believe in when you just have it. It's the basis of your entire waking experience. There's nothing to believe in, you just are conscious.
Now what that means for other people, animals, AIs, aliens, nation states or electrons is a matter for dispute. And what ontological conclusions you do or don't draw for it are matters of belief based on what philosophical arguments sound convincing to you.
But believing you have experiences is a very weird thing to say. I'd think Wittgenstein would have something to say about such a hinge proposition. You can't really doubt it without invoking radical skepticism that undermines your ability to know anything.
Google helped lobby the FSF to adopt GPLv3, which bans tivoization, but allows software as a service.
This is why you cannot have bash on MacOS, but Google can still use it to build surveillance capitalism, and arbitrarily enshittify your word processor.
This is is to change the economics so that there is a cost to a business for automatically denying, just as there is a cost to the claimant when the business automatically denies.
> Home/auto insurance will often give you a black hole for claims; the adjuster won't get back to you for months at a time. But if you keep calling them enough to be annoying, they will usually eventually pay out.
Fortunately I live in a more reasonable country, where I don't have to keep chasing them; I can simply claim through the court system instead. I think the system works here - I haven't heard that to be a problem here.
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