Thaldor

Leaving psychology behind, that is still a huge rift in scales of Grand Canyon. DayZ isn't even close to be violent game and it gets banned while I haven't heard Australia banning any movies in years. Like I can name a lot of games that are way more violent and harmful than DayZ in seconds but with movies Saws go quite a lot to the top category with gore, there is movies with a lot more gore than in Saws but they start to go silly with their content.
I just would like to imagine IARC meeting about Dayz going like:
"Is there violence?"
"Yes, but it's mostly against zombies and it's not really that bad"
"Anything else?"
"There's mention that there might be cannabis that can be used as medicine"
"BAN THAT SHIT RIGHT NOW!!!  BAN IT!!!"
"It's not really that bad, we gave American Psycho and Saw movies just R18+ rating and they are much worse"
"IT'S A VIDEO GAME! BAN THAT SHIT FROM THIS ISLAND LIKE ISLAND BANS TRAVELING WHEN SOMEONE SNEEZES IN AFRICA!"
 
And apparently that is quite close what really happened... Saló, or the 120 Days of Sodom isn't currently banned in Australia because "extra content on the DVD/BR release gives it context", like what? You literally allow selling pedo-scat-sadistic-porn movie and then ban a game that isn't even in the same realms than that movie (in sense that if I would need to choose between letting my kid play DayZ or watch Saló, I would fucking glue my kid to the PC chair, force feed it RedBull and Doritos and make it the youngest ever to pull out weekender playing only bad games than let him watch Saló because that's how "bad" Saló is). Cannibal Holocaust is also not banned in Australia today, and not really that many movies are banned in Australia today no matter how brutal, offensive, violent or just lewd they are, but games, tsk tsk tsk, better not hit that zombie with an axe, you might get banned.

Company rules #1: "Opinions about sexuality, politics, world and things that are far above your paygrade are like penises; it's nice that you have one, but keep your pants on."
 
"But that's oppression!" No, it's just damage control and probably at Alphabet they are learning this the hard way. Encouraging people to talk about politics and other flammable topics at workplace is like asking civil war, it would probably be workable within some small very tight company where everyone has more or less same opinions, but big companies, no chance it could work.

Company rules #1: "Opinions about sexuality, politics, world and things that are far above your paygrade are like penises; it's nice that you have one, but keep your pants on."
 
"But that's oppression!" No, it's just damage control and probably at Alphabet they are learning this the hard way. Encouraging people to talk about politics and other flammable topics at workplace is like asking civil war, it would probably be workable within some small very tight company where everyone has more or less same opinions, but big companies, no chance it could work.

Company rules #1: "Opinions about sexuality, politics, world and things that are far above your paygrade are like penises; it's nice that you have one, but keep your pants on."
 
"But that's oppression!" No, it's just damage control and probably at Alphabet they are learning this the hard way. Encouraging people to talk about politics and other flammable topics at workplace is like asking civil war, it would probably be workable within some small very tight company where everyone has more or less same opinions, but big companies, no chance it could work.

Studies about aggressivity have always been quite hard to make. The legendary Bobo doll study that is kept as some kind of corner stone in behaviorism studies is even questioned on many levels through the years (Kids see a video where adult hits and is aggressive towards Bobo doll -> kids are more likely to be aggressive towards Bobo doll, kids see adult being friendly/neutral towards Bobo doll -> kids are less likely to be aggressive towards Bobo doll; Study never disclosed do the children really know that the Bobo doll is actually made to be a punching bag or have they ever earlier played with Bobo doll which is actually quite a huge hole in the study, like think about never seen a fishing jig and you see a video where it is just thrown to the water without attaching it to the fishing line, what is the possibility that you just throw it to the water without attaching it to the fishing line? And then someone calls it waterproof study about how XX% of people are too stupid and trust YT videos and act like in them. Show a video how to use a punching bag, leave a kid in a room with exactly the same punching bag -> kid uses the punching bag as a punching bag -> kid is more aggressive because didn't hug the punching bag).

Not to mention those 2 words that are mostly heard only in Apple Stores when iDevice is brought to be repaired and which always at least 10-fold the price.
 

Not quoting any specific comment but now that we talk about platforms and free speech things can get quite interesting. Like earlier I said YouTube is a monopoly (not because there isn't competition but because that competition is basicly insignificant while YT having over 70% of the markets and the second one being Vimeo with just around 17% market share) and Google Search has even clearer monopoly by that merit and probably it's clear for everyone that Alphabet likes to do some "search optimization" with both services. I wouldn't really be surprised if Alphabet would do some "search engine optimization" to boost their own political agendas, like it wasn't a big secret that Alphabet burned quite some money to sponsor YT creators to make videos against the Article 13 and quite probably some news sites and others did also get their part of that money, with that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if Alphabet would have also made it so that videos and sites against the Article 13 would get more visibility in every Alphabet owned service.
 
I am not saying this would be directly against free speech, but when a company has a service in such a situation where it really doesn't have competition and in modern society that service is critical it would be good to restrict that company from using that service to run their own goals outside of their business. 8chan is probably bad example as it is so extreme and Cloudflare isn't in the same kind of position as something like YT is, but let's say Cloudflare would go full left-wing and cut every and any ties with every site that host and/or support right-wing or they just give the potato server for them so that their sites run like shit, we get to the situation where we can ask can a company with significant market share (Cloudflare having around 30-40% market share) and critical service really freely choose their clients? I would say with Alphabet doing the same even the most devoted capitalist would say "no, they can't" because Alphabet has such a strong situation to affect the public opinion through their services. And just to note, Cloudflare is in more covered state than Alphabet, it wouldn't be clear for a long time that Cloudflare would be running their own political agenda because it wouldn't be right on your face (like with Alphabet doing the same with Google Search it would be on your face when you would Google "right-wing candidates" and a site listing them would be on the 3rd page after 2 pages full of sites only featuring and showing left-wing candidates), it would would be noticeable because slower page loading and sites being down more often but it would affect things quite a lot.
 
And I don't like to give any numbers at which market share percentage or what user number or how critical some service must be for this kind of restrictions to be on effect. I leave those for people far more wiser than me to figure out. But I still say that there should be rules by which companies with services that are critical and have significant market shares (I would like to think the more critical service is the less it needs market share to be affected) couldn't freely choose their customers but they would need to serve even those who might hurt their businesses. Like some cable ISP with some area where people can't choose other ISP to provide their cable connection couldn't refuse to serve the A.H. fan with flags and everything living on that area because that guy cannot choose other ISP to provide cable connection and it's still quite important thing to have. Or Alphabet couldn't refuse to host that A.H. fans videos on YouTube because YT is a monopoly and as such especially it should not be able to choose its customers freely (if those videos would include illegal stuff they should be handled through officials not through vigilantism, put the videos on hold and contact the actual officials like police and wait for their verdict, not ask your lawyer "can this get us into trouble?" and delete the whole channel just to be sure that the shit doesn't hit the fan).

Not to mention those 2 words that are mostly heard only in Apple Stores when iDevice is brought to be repaired and which always at least 10-fold the price.
 

Not to mention those 2 words that are mostly heard only in Apple Stores when iDevice is brought to be repaired and which always at least 10-fold the price.
 

Not to mention those 2 words that are mostly heard only in Apple Stores when iDevice is brought to be repaired and which always at least 10-fold the price.
 

Not to mention those 2 words that are mostly heard only in Apple Stores when iDevice is brought to be repaired and which always at least 10-fold the price.
 

Not to mention those 2 words that are mostly heard only in Apple Stores when iDevice is brought to be repaired and which always at least 10-fold the price.
 

Agreed, US is a shithole when it comes to their laws and how they enforce and interpret them. I think the free speech part is very well summarized in Madam Secretary S05E20:
"That's the problem with your so-called free speech. It is another weapon that can be bought and sold." ~ Konstantin Avdonin, Foreign minister of Russia
 
It's just too bad when it comes to the internet that US has the most power over it and what happens in the US affects the internet. Like only when allocating IP addresses IANA (American non-profit organization) has the greatest authority (IANA allocates the addresses to RIRs who then manage them in their own regions) and IEEE (American professional association) basicly rules over every standard that touches computers. Neither of them are bad or corrupt or anything like that but the problem is that they are under US jurisdiction and as so US has quite a power over the internet (not to even talk about backbone databases and other systems (from 1008 root server instances online 192 are in the US but from total of 1161 root servers 1014 are uphold by American organization) and the biggest corporations and everything they have).

With only affecting actually shit batteries it would be fair. But when it affects even in the case when the battery is taken from brand new iPhone and put into another same model iPhone, it turns into Apple waging war against independent repair shops, because even if those shops were to use authentic Apple batteries, there still would be customers demanding returns and raging over "service the battery" like that shop would have replaced the battery with authentic one and just because they wouldn't have the iProgram to sign off the battery.
And "losing money"... Apple charges 200$ for a battery change and independent repair shop charges around 50$. That is what I call a plain old ripoff (no, the battery itself cannot cost more than 20$ at max for Apple and the needed work takes probably 30 mins at top so as wages that doesn't even make 10$).

With only affecting actually shit batteries it would be fair. But when it affects even in the case when the battery is taken from brand new iPhone and put into another same model iPhone, it turns into Apple waging war against independent repair shops, because even if those shops were to use authentic Apple batteries, there still would be customers demanding returns and raging over "service the battery" like that shop would have replaced the battery with authentic one and just because they wouldn't have the iProgram to sign off the battery.
And "losing money"... Apple charges 200$ for a battery change and independent repair shop charges around 50$. That is what I call a plain old ripoff (no, the battery itself cannot cost more than 20$ at max for Apple and the needed work takes probably 30 mins at top so as wages that doesn't even make 10$).

Not quoting any specific comment but now that we talk about platforms and free speech things can get quite interesting. Like earlier I said YouTube is a monopoly (not because there isn't competition but because that competition is basicly insignificant while YT having over 70% of the markets and the second one being Vimeo with just around 17% market share) and Google Search has even clearer monopoly by that merit and probably it's clear for everyone that Alphabet likes to do some "search optimization" with both services. I wouldn't really be surprised if Alphabet would do some "search engine optimization" to boost their own political agendas, like it wasn't a big secret that Alphabet burned quite some money to sponsor YT creators to make videos against the Article 13 and quite probably some news sites and others did also get their part of that money, with that in mind I wouldn't be surprised if Alphabet would have also made it so that videos and sites against the Article 13 would get more visibility in every Alphabet owned service.
 
I am not saying this would be directly against free speech, but when a company has a service in such a situation where it really doesn't have competition and in modern society that service is critical it would be good to restrict that company from using that service to run their own goals outside of their business. 8chan is probably bad example as it is so extreme and Cloudflare isn't in the same kind of position as something like YT is, but let's say Cloudflare would go full left-wing and cut every and any ties with every site that host and/or support right-wing or they just give the potato server for them so that their sites run like shit, we get to the situation where we can ask can a company with significant market share (Cloudflare having around 30-40% market share) and critical service really freely choose their clients? I would say with Alphabet doing the same even the most devoted capitalist would say "no, they can't" because Alphabet has such a strong situation to affect the public opinion through their services. And just to note, Cloudflare is in more covered state than Alphabet, it wouldn't be clear for a long time that Cloudflare would be running their own political agenda because it wouldn't be right on your face (like with Alphabet doing the same with Google Search it would be on your face when you would Google "right-wing candidates" and a site listing them would be on the 3rd page after 2 pages full of sites only featuring and showing left-wing candidates), it would would be noticeable because slower page loading and sites being down more often but it would affect things quite a lot.
 
And I don't like to give any numbers at which market share percentage or what user number or how critical some service must be for this kind of restrictions to be on effect. I leave those for people far more wiser than me to figure out. But I still say that there should be rules by which companies with services that are critical and have significant market shares (I would like to think the more critical service is the less it needs market share to be affected) couldn't freely choose their customers but they would need to serve even those who might hurt their businesses. Like some cable ISP with some area where people can't choose other ISP to provide their cable connection couldn't refuse to serve the A.H. fan with flags and everything living on that area because that guy cannot choose other ISP to provide cable connection and it's still quite important thing to have. Or Alphabet couldn't refuse to host that A.H. fans videos on YouTube because YT is a monopoly and as such especially it should not be able to choose its customers freely (if those videos would include illegal stuff they should be handled through officials not through vigilantism, put the videos on hold and contact the actual officials like police and wait for their verdict, not ask your lawyer "can this get us into trouble?" and delete the whole channel just to be sure that the shit doesn't hit the fan).

I'm not saying it's illegal for YT or as bigger Alphabet to filter the content they host as they wish. But if you take totally hypocritical example that Alphabet decided to ban person X from their services, totally, completely, no traces, no anything, I would say at that moment it would become censorship. And I mean Alphabet wouldn't only ban the person X from using it's services and services it funds, but removed every single bit of information about this person X, Google search wouldn't give any hits, YT channel gone and any videos made about this gone also, Google Fiber terminated, every service funded through GV, Jigsaw and CapitalG terminated and banned, Google Drive gone, Android phone cut off from Alphabets services and just everything gone, you wouldn't find any information about person X or anything related to him/her from any Alphabet owned or funded service and person X couldn't use any Alphabet owned or funded service. How huge company Alphabet is and how many different ventures and services it has under it's thumb that person X could very well be deleted from the internet.
 
Not to even talk if that person X has a company and Alphabet would apply that ban to that company also. In todays world being deleted and banned from Google Search is a death blow for any company that relies on internet ads and visibility. I would say even Microsoft, Apple and any other mega corporation would feel it if they were removed from Google Search. And that could very possibly be read as censorship or discrimination because Google has been already quite few times in deep trouble over favoring their own products over competitors in Google Search results, straight out deletion from the results without some kind of law enforcement or other governmental or legal intervention would very well get Alphabet into very deep trouble.
 
And that who decides when company is big enough. In tech cases and even some others there has been used this very simple metric about when company is considered monopoly even when there is competition: When that competition is insignificant, like Google Search vs. BING or any otehr search engine market shares probably 90% vs 5% that is clearly a monopoly because there isn't a single search engine that could be considered realistically compete against Google they just barely exists; Windows vs MacOS same thing market shares are still around 80% vs 10% and against some Linux distro which shares the rest with others, there just isn't any realistic competition in markets; YouTube could be also realistically a monopoly which relies a lot about do we see Netflix, Hulu and others as it's competitors and how does services like Facebook which include user uploaded videos, but if we take those now out and look at the services that are exactly like YT like Vimeo, YouTube has a clear monopoly with market share probably in the 70-80% (73.37% by Datanyze), well, after looking that up YouTube is a monopoly clearly, that 73.37% market share compared to the next biggest being Vimeo with only 17.48%, next 4 services are <2% each and after those <0.5% and falling fast to the scales of 0.0X% and under, there isn't at least by Datanyze any real competition for YouTube because even that Vimeos 17.48% market share makes just a dent on YouTube and YT could buy Vimeo many times over if they saw them as that great threat.

I'm not saying it's illegal for YT or as bigger Alphabet to filter the content they host as they wish. But if you take totally hypocritical example that Alphabet decided to ban person X from their services, totally, completely, no traces, no anything, I would say at that moment it would become censorship. And I mean Alphabet wouldn't only ban the person X from using it's services and services it funds, but removed every single bit of information about this person X, Google search wouldn't give any hits, YT channel gone and any videos made about this gone also, Google Fiber terminated, every service funded through GV, Jigsaw and CapitalG terminated and banned, Google Drive gone, Android phone cut off from Alphabets services and just everything gone, you wouldn't find any information about person X or anything related to him/her from any Alphabet owned or funded service and person X couldn't use any Alphabet owned or funded service. How huge company Alphabet is and how many different ventures and services it has under it's thumb that person X could very well be deleted from the internet.
 
Not to even talk if that person X has a company and Alphabet would apply that ban to that company also. In todays world being deleted and banned from Google Search is a death blow for any company that relies on internet ads and visibility. I would say even Microsoft, Apple and any other mega corporation would feel it if they were removed from Google Search. And that could very possibly be read as censorship or discrimination because Google has been already quite few times in deep trouble over favoring their own products over competitors in Google Search results, straight out deletion from the results without some kind of law enforcement or other governmental or legal intervention would very well get Alphabet into very deep trouble.
 
And that who decides when company is big enough. In tech cases and even some others there has been used this very simple metric about when company is considered monopoly even when there is competition: When that competition is insignificant, like Google Search vs. BING or any otehr search engine market shares probably 90% vs 5% that is clearly a monopoly because there isn't a single search engine that could be considered realistically compete against Google they just barely exists; Windows vs MacOS same thing market shares are still around 80% vs 10% and against some Linux distro which shares the rest with others, there just isn't any realistic competition in markets; YouTube could be also realistically a monopoly which relies a lot about do we see Netflix, Hulu and others as it's competitors and how does services like Facebook which include user uploaded videos, but if we take those now out and look at the services that are exactly like YT like Vimeo, YouTube has a clear monopoly with market share probably in the 70-80% (73.37% by Datanyze), well, after looking that up YouTube is a monopoly clearly, that 73.37% market share compared to the next biggest being Vimeo with only 17.48%, next 4 services are <2% each and after those <0.5% and falling fast to the scales of 0.0X% and under, there isn't at least by Datanyze any real competition for YouTube because even that Vimeos 17.48% market share makes just a dent on YouTube and YT could buy Vimeo many times over if they saw them as that great threat.

At least in Finland both of those need very good reasons to be forced on employees and they both need to be in the work agreement, not when you are being fired. Non-compete clause especially needs to be VERY WELL argued like any normal coder or UI-artist can't have a work that would be so critical for company that they can be forced to sign non-compete clause, even middle management jobs are on the verge to not having really that kind of knowledge as whole that they can be made to sign non-compete clause. Also non-compete clauses are always timed and usually less than 6 months (over 6 months and the company really needs to have some actually strong reasons, we talk reasons like nuclear launch codes or skeleton keys for home alarms level of reasons, just knowing the business and how the company runs and how whatever-their-product-is works can't really be that strong reason). Also non-compete clauses come into play only when the person quits, if fired they don't have effect except in very very rare cases and again they need to be valid in the first place and they need to have extremely good reasons (because most of the stuff that companies think that someone could leak are covered with NDAs which again are in place anywhere from 2-10 years and they really don't need any reasons to be put on).

And for real, who really needs this level of security with all of the drawbacks of having a >1000$ burner laptop?
 
The amount of expertise and trouble to dig out auths and biometrics and use them in right places is still quite immense. For probably 80% of people a good password is enough security on their laptop and from that 20% group who actually and for real need something stronger, good software based encryption is enough for the most of them. For over 99% of people laptop with burner memory is overkill in scales of shooting a fly with ICBM.
And for that probably 0.01% of people who really need burner memories, that burner memory is enough and burner laptops are more or less always too inconvenient for any use (apart from laptops equipped with T2-burnerchip the ones I have seen are A) cheap as hell looking B) can be hardly called even workstations with their performance C) they are meant to store vulnerable data that you don't want anyone else to see, they are not flashy and expensive and made to edit YouTube videos about your Starbucks coffee, they look and seem like those laptops you wouldn't even take if paid to take and definetly wouldn't risk getting caught stealing).

Because it taxes smaller businesses harder than bigger ones meaning the smaller ones need to grab whatever they can however they can.
20% flat tax doesn't sound that bad, but for a company that might have just and just some profits that 20% is a lot while some company like Google can just laugh at that 20% because it hardly even touches their vault (they probably don't even pay taxes because they have money for "creative accounting").
Progressive taxation instead makes it so that everybody (who pay taxes) hurt as much. That small business hardly making any profits pays less taxes because even small sums can be felt in their pockets while big companies that make huge profits also start to feel the taxation on their pockets.
 
Also don't say "they wouldn't pay taxes if we would tax them more", because they already don't pay taxes in full anywhere.

If that is the level where things are taken "seriously", I have some bad news for you about 99% of the net...
Comparing anything to Facebook is like comparing homeless to Bill Gates and questioning "Why don't you just stop being poor and buy a mansion?"
Also in that end we have YouTube, which is now slowly dying platform because moderation has been taken too seriously and there is more falsely flagged and demonetized videos than videos that really needed moderation.

Possible? Yes. Will Apple do it? Quite probably never, because even removing removable SSD was too much to ask from them. I would even argue that those suites needed to do the data recovery are situated only in Apple headquarters and you need to be someone important enough with deep pockets enough for Apple to use it for you.
 
At least I'm not arguing Apple should stop using the T2-chip. I'm just arguing making the T2-encryption default and forced for machines sold to consumers is fucking ridiculous and mindless. Look at any other manufacturer with build-in TPM module and with all of those you need to specifically activate it and setup encryptions to use it and they also quite often offer failsafes at least for models that are sold also for consumers.

Currently macs are the only ones where one component, that doesn't even have anything to do with storage, causes total data loss. Even Lenovo now days has backup systems for TPM enabled laptops for data recovery in cases where the laptop has completely failed with only storage surviving (you can swap the whole MB and even the whole laptop and place the earlier SSD to the machine and few commands, recovery USB-stick and personal password and the data can be uncrypted and encrypted with the new TPM module).
 
With macs even broken webcam can cause total data loss, because the T2-chip trips and refuses to uncrypt the T2-encryption on the SSD.

No. Even in worst cases even with encrypted drives you have possibility for data recovery, with T2-chip zero chances, 100% data loss no matter what is the case. SSD recoveries are expensive as hell, but possible, with T2-chip no amount of money can recover your data. TPM modules do the same thing as T2-chip which is why they are usually not sold with MBs and they are never activated on default (because people are stupid).
 
Also that the T2-chip fucks up your mac in ways that are beyond comprehension. Webcam broke = dead mac because security, microphone fucked up = fucked up mac because security, WiFi card broke and Apple repair costs +800$ while 3rd party could just take the broken module off and put new one in -> impossible because security, PSU died and once again Apple replace +800$ -> impossible for 3rd party to repair because security, whatever fuck decides to fuck up and fry some chip that isn't just a resistor or transistor that doesn't have single bit of smart in it -> FUCKED UP mac, please pay Apple +800$ for repair, oh and also fuck your data, single bit cannot be recovered and Apple is lazy as fuck to do any recovery (even when it was as easy as taking one screw off, pulling gently the SSD out of its socket, put it to the side to a safe place, replace the MB and/or whatever, taking the SSD from the safe place where it was placed, gently push it to the socket and secure it with a screw; Vóla, not a single bit of data was harmed in the process).