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by alttab 1767 days ago
Literally just get an Android phone.
3 comments

If you think it's not spreading to Android phones, you are naive. Apple set the precedent, now it's gonna come to every mainstream device.

The only option is to abandon ship.

For a split second I lamented the demise of Windows Phone. But they too would just follow. But I do lament the end of Firefox OS.
Sure, now find me a new car that doesn't have the ability to do OTA updates
I could not find any Toyota that does OTA updates. Honda has a website to do a USB update, but I could not find evidence that they do OTA either:

https://usb.honda.com/

Subaru lets you do it over your Wifi, but does not seem like they come with a modem:

https://techinfo.subaru.com/stis/doc/ownerManual/Gen4_FOTA_H...

Although, Mazda’s website does say this, so maybe it will not be for long before they all come connected to mobile networks:

https://newsroom.mazda.com/en/publicity/release/2021/202106/...

> Mazda intends to fortify our initiatives of development of fundamental software technology in order to be able to accommodate for next-generation Mobility as a Service (Maas) and update vehicle functions Over the Air (OTA)

> Five Japanese OEM companies 3 including Mazda will jointly develop standard engineering specifications of next-generation in-vehicle communication devices to push for a standardized communication system in order to provide safer and stress-free connected services sooner.

Assuming the marketplace is functioning, the demand for these sort of "features" (aka: non-features) would assume there would be a rational supplier to give it.

The next step in that debate is "yeah but the big monopolies are making it impossible for a little guy to get in." Which is true.

We can agree the regulatory capture is bad.

In the meanwhile, Google is not openly saying they will run ML on your images on your phone. With Android, you don't have to sync to the cloud, and you could even replace or add your own camera option. You can side-load without jailbreaking, etc.

Now, not that most consumer friendly option, but the advice for this crowd is still good - if you still have an iPhone and this is the last straw for you, there are plenty of good options that still exist, today. And then - let's fight regulatory capture and big government so a more dynamic marketplace can take root.

> Assuming the marketplace is functioning, the demand for these sort of "features" (aka: non-features) would assume there would be a rational supplier to give it.

The assumption that a "functioning" market will do a good job of catering to even fairly popular wishes does not seem to hold true in the real world, including for cases in which I'm pretty damn sure it's not some kind of government interference causing it not to. It's utterly common for plain ol' commodities subject to no special government scrutiny or control and with many suppliers to provide no option for features or product-types that would surely have many buyers, simply because no-one expects the returns to be as high as doing something else with the same capacity.

AFAIK this happens for a bunch of reasons, including that information is very, very far from being perfectly shared in all parts of the market, that there are significant costs associated with quality information-gathering, and efficient use of capital tending to cause production to cluster around tiny little bits of the possible product space (similar to how pharmacies like to build right next to each other, rather than spreading out to reduce travel-time-to-a-pharmacy in an area)

Sure, but I already have an android. The concern I have is that the regulatory landscape will change if Apple opens Pandora's box. Google could just as easily do the same thing, hampered only by their complete inability to keep androids updated. I have a pine phone but what happens if the Congress critters decide everyone should have this feature and networks should ban devices that don't.

The point is that we're REALLY playing with fire here.

> Assuming the marketplace is functioning

It's not. That's the problem.

Google’s photo library already scans for CSAM.
But not in your device.
No - it’s worse than that. They can scan for anything they like. They have made no promises about limiting what they do.
Source?
Nothing in those links says that Google can scan the pictures you store in your device using your own device to do the scanning.
So it’s worse. They don’t wait until they’ve had several hits before they get any knowledge of it, they have a list of people who might have these images in their library.