I'm afraid you're missing my point. I'm arguing that Google needs to pay tax, because this is the law. Simple as that. You're arguing that Google shouldn't need to pay tax, because you think corporate taxes are evil. This is besides the point, as even if corporate taxes are abolished (good luck with that) Google did not pay the tax it owed.
Meh.
My point is the more important one. If Google hasn't paid the taxes owed under the law, investigation will find that and the taxes will be demanded, and paid. If Google actually has followed the letter of the law, then the French government is just engaging in some obnoxious (and probably illegal) intimidation tactics. Either way, it'll be resolved.
But the whole question is wrong-headed because corporate taxes are a very bad idea and should be eliminated.
Cue the shills saying that Google doesn't need to pay any tax
Not only should Google not have to pay any tax, no corporation should, because corporate taxes are evil and harm the people. The dynamics of markets mean that in the long run corporations never actually pay any tax regardless of the checks they write to the government. That's because regardless of whether or not they have tax expenses, their after-tax profits are determined by market forces, and their before-tax profits adapt to generate that net profit level regardless of taxation, because either they generate the returns expected by the market or their capital gets sent to others who will. They do this adaptation by pushing the cost of the taxes off on employees and customers. Mostly customers.
In short: corporations inevitably pass taxes onto customers in the form of higher prices and employees in the form of lower wages. Those that don't get squeezed out entirely.
So, only people pay taxes. Sometimes we pay them directly and know about it, sometimes we pay them indirectly, hidden in other costs. The latter situation is evil and corporate taxes create exactly that situation. It's evil because while taxes are necessary, in a properly-functioning democracy (of whatever form) it's critical that taxpayers know what they pay so they can act as informed voters. Lawmakers love corporate taxes because as far as the voters can see, the taxes fund the government at no cost to the voters themselves... but they're wrong. The voters do pay all of those taxes, every penny. And the taxes aren't allocated according to a nice, progressive scale, they are allocated however the corporations and their competitors decide.
Corporate taxes are evil and we should abolish them.
Corporate taxes come out of profits so prices don't rise (because of all of that wonderful free market competition) unless the corporation has a monopoly (which the government should prevent).
Nope, they don't come out of profits. There's a return rate that corporations have to achieve to attract investment, to have good bond ratings, etc. What this rate is varies by market segment (roughly correlated with segment risk), but there's also a sort of overall norm; companies either provide that rate of return or they fail, get bought out, split up, etc.
When you increase taxes you don't change any of that, you just force companies to adjust. In the short term their after-tax profit margin will take a hit, but within a few years it will be back up because they (all of them, collectively) will have adjusted. Wages will be pushed down, suppliers will be paid less, prices will be pushed up... but the profits will be back in line with expectations. Note that this also applies if you cut taxes: in the short term profits will rise, but competition will squeeze them back down to the expected rates.
I'm talking about long-term, steady-state equilibria here, of course. In practice it's more dynamic than that as innovations or particularly good or bad management boost one company or damage another, and there are market-wide periods of growth and decline, but overall, and over time, that's how it works: Companies will generate the market-demanded rates of return, or they'll be defunded in favor of others that do.
A great primer on this, BTW, is Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics". Be prepared for the fact that Sowell is a conservative, but if you can look past that he provides beautifully simple and lucid explanations of market dynamics.
I very rarely use any function keys except for the 3 volume controls. Certainly nothing I have to touch type. I suspect you don't use Mac OS X.
I use OS X, and I use the function keys a lot. Enough that I've toggled the setting so their normal behavior is as function keys and I have to hold the "Fn" key to get them to act as volume controls, light controls, etc.
When corporations pay less tax, real people have to pay more tax to cover the shortfall.
Real people pay it either way. One way they know about it, the other they don't.
We need to raise corporate tax so that real people won't have to pay as much tax.
You mean, so people won't know they're paying as much tax. The prices on all the stuff they buy will go up and their wages will go down so the corporation can pay the taxes.
My assumption is that the term "cash" is used to denote a specific asset class, i.e., highly liquid holdings of actual cash balance accounts or extremely liquid instruments like short-term T-bills.
My understanding is that corporate balance sheets include anything that isn't a business-related asset in "cash".
I'm also curious about the economic impact of cash hoarding like this. Presumably having this much capital tied up in short-term non-working assets is suboptimal in a macroeconomic sense.
I strongly doubt that they're in non-working assets. I don't know about the others, but I know that Google aggressively invests its cash holdings, and gets a nice rate of return.
My understanding is that it mostly gets parked in high liquidity accounts and instruments
Not so liquid, I think. Oh, I'm sure there's some amount that's highly liquid, but it would be foolish to keep all of it in such instruments, because the people managing this money know that there's no way it will be needed on short order. In fact, most of it can't easily be used to purchase companies or expand operations because the tech companies primarily operate in the US, and most of this cash is profit that was generated overseas and can't be brought into the country without making it subject to heavy taxation.
This, by the way, also explains why the tech companies are so cash-heavy: They're profitable enough that they can fund their US operations (the vast bulk of their operational costs) out of US revenues, but their products sell worldwide, and those overseas revenues can't be brought home without taxes taking a big bite. So, they leave most of the money in overseas investments until and unless they actually need it, at which point they bring in as little as possible, always preferring other methods of raising capital which don't have such a large cost.
Eliminate corporate income taxes, or even reduce them substantially, and you'll see that money quickly come into the US and be put to work here, either in investments or in expansion of operations. Having large cash reserves is generally not a good business strategy in most cases; it's generally more efficient to use the funds to grow the business and to rely on debt to weather short-term surprises, as long as the company is healthy.
I won't go into it in detail here (though I have posted about it many times), but this isn't the only reason we should eliminate corporate income taxes. It's not even the main reason. The main reason is that corporations don't actually pay taxes, people do. Corporate taxation is essentially just tax laundering, hiding the taxes from the people. When you buy a banana in the grocery store, you know how much sales tax you pay, and you know how much income tax you paid on the money you use to buy it, but what you don't know is how much of the price charged by the store is actually also going to taxes. Corporate taxes are evil because they hide the tax from the taxpayer. Taxes are necessary, but taxpayers need to know what they're paying so they can be informed voters.
Which is why I don't use Facebook as a source of news. I only use it to keep in touch with people I know, and ignore the rest of whatever else it offers.
Of course, that "Exabyte" drive could only hold 3.5 GB. You'd have needed some 2.6 trillion cartridges to store 9 EB. With modern tapes you could do it with only 41,000 cartridges.
No, it's not impossible. They're quite capable of updating all code which they authored, and pushing those updates themselves.
I see that you have an extraordinarily high opinion of the capabilities of Google engineers. Although we do have some really outstanding people, I don't think we're quite that good. I mean, theoretically it should be possible to decompile the binaries, determine from the decompilation how the OEM's source differs from the original source, apply the necessary patches (resolving any merge conflicts) and recompile to generate new binaries. That's a really, really tall order, though. Especially with the native-code components. You know what the Halting Problem is, right? I strongly suspect we're in that sort of territory.
They're also quite capable of changing their licensing terms such that all manufacturer cruft must be installed as user-removable apps, and the manufacturers are quite capable of complying.
Now you've gone beyond the assumption of superhuman engineering ability to assuming some form of mind control. Oh, in the short term it would probably work, but It would almost certainly push the major players into forming a consortium of their own and abandoning the OHA. They'd lose the Google apps, but that's not a big challenge. Many of them already have replacements for most everything, and they could arrange licensing deals to replace the harder remaining bits (like Maps; I'm sure MS would love to license them a Bing Maps app). The biggest challenge is the Play store, but if the top three or four OEMs allied they could easily replace that as well, especially if they pulled Amazon in.
Would it take some work to institute this? Definitely. Would it be much better for end users? Without question. Will it ever happen? Unlikely in the next 3-5 years, I'd guess, and in part that's because of apologism and complacency from those who should know better, but aren't pushing them to make it happen.
I agree that it won't happen. I disagree that that's because of any sort of complacency. As a member of the Android security team, I'm not the slightest bit reluctant to say that we see the lack of updates as the largest single problem we have and we've been working for years to try to fix it... but it's a really, really hard problem.
No, I think our better route is to continue applying soft pressure to the OEMs to get better at updates. We've had some luck with that, with several committing to monthly security releases at least for their flagship devices. I expect that to snowball, especially if consumers start using it as a factor in their purchase decisions.
OTOH, at least for single-family dwellings, it's pretty cheap to install electric charging infrastructure at home, because the electricity distribution network is already in place. It may need some small capacity upgrades, but not as much as you might think because vehicle charging tends to be done during evenings when other usage is low. And once car owners take that step, their need for refueling stations almost disappears. Home charging plus something like the Tesla Supercharger network (which requires a tiny fraction of the number of stations) for long-distance travel and you're done.
Yes, this will seriously disrupt the existing fuel distribution networks, but they really don't have any leverage to stop it, any more than buggy-whip makers and distributors could stop gasoline production and distribution.
What you say about optimizing for existing business infrastructure is true, but it's irrelevant when the old business infrastructure does not have any role in the new system.
Our ruling class needs someone to work their fields and build their luxury yachts, but can do without more art being produced, for at least the next quarter.
I think the ruling class cares a lot more about art than the middle class does, which is a problem for artists because the middle class tends to have a lot more money (in aggregate).
Is there a way to turn off the battery monitoring on their app by any chance?
No. Android, iOS and Windows all provide access to battery information to any app, and none gates access with any permission. I'm sure it never occurred to anyone that this was potentially-private information, and it is obviously very useful for apps to be able to adjust their operation based on battery level.
In what way does the US try to apply the DMCA in other countries? It definitely applies it to people in the US who are uploading/downloading to/from other countries, but I see no evidence that it expects the law to apply to people in other countries.
Note that much of US copyright law terms are derived from the Berne Convention terms, so it may appear that some aspects of US copyright law are applied around the world, but that's only because many countries have signed the treaty.
Actually no, if you drive into a flying bug that weighs over 10 pounds (enough to break the coating over the sticky surface) then you would most likely very much want this feature.
A 10 pound bug being driven into at 40ish mph would be enough to completely shatter your front windshield and cause significant damage if it was aligned such to hit your head. Potentially enough to break your neck and kill you if you were going at highway speeds (65 mph or more)
Silly question: are you by chance in Australia?
What about that rock tossed up by the car in front of you?
The 10-pound rock? You're already going to be having a very bad day, adhesive or no.
interestingly the country google is from completely disagrees with googles stance as they regularly make laws and rulings around data beyond its borders
Cite?
From what I've seen, the US frequently throws its diplomatic weight around and expects other countries to comply with its wishes, but I've never seen any expectation that US law applies outside of its borders, with respect to data or anything else. I'd be very interested to see examples where that's not true.
Disclaimer, I haven't used it, and it's been a while since I use Krita, so I'm not sure I could accurately compare if I had. The feature list looks pretty impressive. But the point is there's no reason you can't have a perfectly-functional Chrome app for painting. This is just the first hit on a search for "web painting app". There are others.
end to end means nothing, the end is Google, that is bad
No, the end is the other party you're chatting with. Google doesn't have access if you use incognito mode. Of course, you'll lose most of the features of Allo in incognito mode. If you're not in incognito mode, the communications are all encrypted, but it is between you and Google and Google and the other person, so the AI can do all of the assistant stuff.
Given that Google is in bed with the Alphabet (pun intended) agencies
No, Google is not in bed with the three-letter agencies. There is absolutely no evidence that Google ever has been in bed with them. Google complies with the law, nothing more. There is evidence (from Snowden's documents) that Google's inter-data center communications were being tapped, but Google moved quickly to encrypt them all to put a stop to that.
Of course, Google does analyze data in order to target ads to you, and any data about you that happens to get stored at Google is available for properly-executed warrants, subpoenas, etc. So if those things bother you, stay in incognito mode and don't use the assistant features, or don't use Allo.
You don't mind seeing a filtered view of the world that looks how you would prefer it rather than how it actually is?
What filtered view of the world? I know people have been talking for years about the possibility of Google search becoming so personalized that it filters out all contrary views but personalized search isn't that personalized, and I don't think it ever will be.
Data mining may be a concern, depending on your perspective, but the "filter bubble" really isn't. Not with Google search, at any rate. I think it is a concern on social networks and in online forums where people congregate only with those who think the way they do. And in heavily-slanted mainstream media publications.
So, I don't know the Instant Apps stuff that well. I haven't been involved with it. I'm sure that permissions must still be approved by the user. In the case of Marshmallow+ and the run-time permission model, this should work very nicely. I assume that on older devices it'll still have to ask all-or-nothing, up front (which users will, of course, click through without reading). I expect there are going to be tighter controls in the Play store on apps that support instant-run, but I don't know what that will entail.
Regarding system update not requiring a password, you're correct, Android doesn't presently defend against the "signed firmware attack" (though some OEM devices might, dunno), as I've been calling it. It's an issue not just for the FBI, which in the Apple case had a legitimate and legal interest in looking into Farook's phone (though I'm not convinced that was really their goal), but any other party who might be able to get a copy of, or even brief access to, the firmware signing keys. This is not a threat model the industry had seriously considered until recently. Android hasn't addressed it. Doing it right is also quite tricky.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid you're missing my point. I'm arguing that Google needs to pay tax, because this is the law. Simple as that. You're arguing that Google shouldn't need to pay tax, because you think corporate taxes are evil. This is besides the point, as even if corporate taxes are abolished (good luck with that) Google did not pay the tax it owed.
Meh.
My point is the more important one. If Google hasn't paid the taxes owed under the law, investigation will find that and the taxes will be demanded, and paid. If Google actually has followed the letter of the law, then the French government is just engaging in some obnoxious (and probably illegal) intimidation tactics. Either way, it'll be resolved.
But the whole question is wrong-headed because corporate taxes are a very bad idea and should be eliminated.
Cue the shills saying that Google doesn't need to pay any tax
Not only should Google not have to pay any tax, no corporation should, because corporate taxes are evil and harm the people. The dynamics of markets mean that in the long run corporations never actually pay any tax regardless of the checks they write to the government. That's because regardless of whether or not they have tax expenses, their after-tax profits are determined by market forces, and their before-tax profits adapt to generate that net profit level regardless of taxation, because either they generate the returns expected by the market or their capital gets sent to others who will. They do this adaptation by pushing the cost of the taxes off on employees and customers. Mostly customers.
In short: corporations inevitably pass taxes onto customers in the form of higher prices and employees in the form of lower wages. Those that don't get squeezed out entirely.
So, only people pay taxes. Sometimes we pay them directly and know about it, sometimes we pay them indirectly, hidden in other costs. The latter situation is evil and corporate taxes create exactly that situation. It's evil because while taxes are necessary, in a properly-functioning democracy (of whatever form) it's critical that taxpayers know what they pay so they can act as informed voters. Lawmakers love corporate taxes because as far as the voters can see, the taxes fund the government at no cost to the voters themselves... but they're wrong. The voters do pay all of those taxes, every penny. And the taxes aren't allocated according to a nice, progressive scale, they are allocated however the corporations and their competitors decide.
Corporate taxes are evil and we should abolish them.
What for? Just curious.
Emacs, mostly. Other things, but especially Emacs.
I see you don't get economics, and you're unwilling to learn. Okay.
Corporate taxes come out of profits so prices don't rise (because of all of that wonderful free market competition) unless the corporation has a monopoly (which the government should prevent).
Nope, they don't come out of profits. There's a return rate that corporations have to achieve to attract investment, to have good bond ratings, etc. What this rate is varies by market segment (roughly correlated with segment risk), but there's also a sort of overall norm; companies either provide that rate of return or they fail, get bought out, split up, etc.
When you increase taxes you don't change any of that, you just force companies to adjust. In the short term their after-tax profit margin will take a hit, but within a few years it will be back up because they (all of them, collectively) will have adjusted. Wages will be pushed down, suppliers will be paid less, prices will be pushed up... but the profits will be back in line with expectations. Note that this also applies if you cut taxes: in the short term profits will rise, but competition will squeeze them back down to the expected rates.
I'm talking about long-term, steady-state equilibria here, of course. In practice it's more dynamic than that as innovations or particularly good or bad management boost one company or damage another, and there are market-wide periods of growth and decline, but overall, and over time, that's how it works: Companies will generate the market-demanded rates of return, or they'll be defunded in favor of others that do.
A great primer on this, BTW, is Thomas Sowell's "Basic Economics". Be prepared for the fact that Sowell is a conservative, but if you can look past that he provides beautifully simple and lucid explanations of market dynamics.
I very rarely use any function keys except for the 3 volume controls. Certainly nothing I have to touch type. I suspect you don't use Mac OS X.
I use OS X, and I use the function keys a lot. Enough that I've toggled the setting so their normal behavior is as function keys and I have to hold the "Fn" key to get them to act as volume controls, light controls, etc.
When corporations pay less tax, real people have to pay more tax to cover the shortfall.
Real people pay it either way. One way they know about it, the other they don't.
We need to raise corporate tax so that real people won't have to pay as much tax.
You mean, so people won't know they're paying as much tax. The prices on all the stuff they buy will go up and their wages will go down so the corporation can pay the taxes.
My assumption is that the term "cash" is used to denote a specific asset class, i.e., highly liquid holdings of actual cash balance accounts or extremely liquid instruments like short-term T-bills.
My understanding is that corporate balance sheets include anything that isn't a business-related asset in "cash".
I'm also curious about the economic impact of cash hoarding like this. Presumably having this much capital tied up in short-term non-working assets is suboptimal in a macroeconomic sense.
I strongly doubt that they're in non-working assets. I don't know about the others, but I know that Google aggressively invests its cash holdings, and gets a nice rate of return.
My understanding is that it mostly gets parked in high liquidity accounts and instruments
Not so liquid, I think. Oh, I'm sure there's some amount that's highly liquid, but it would be foolish to keep all of it in such instruments, because the people managing this money know that there's no way it will be needed on short order. In fact, most of it can't easily be used to purchase companies or expand operations because the tech companies primarily operate in the US, and most of this cash is profit that was generated overseas and can't be brought into the country without making it subject to heavy taxation.
This, by the way, also explains why the tech companies are so cash-heavy: They're profitable enough that they can fund their US operations (the vast bulk of their operational costs) out of US revenues, but their products sell worldwide, and those overseas revenues can't be brought home without taxes taking a big bite. So, they leave most of the money in overseas investments until and unless they actually need it, at which point they bring in as little as possible, always preferring other methods of raising capital which don't have such a large cost.
Eliminate corporate income taxes, or even reduce them substantially, and you'll see that money quickly come into the US and be put to work here, either in investments or in expansion of operations. Having large cash reserves is generally not a good business strategy in most cases; it's generally more efficient to use the funds to grow the business and to rely on debt to weather short-term surprises, as long as the company is healthy.
I won't go into it in detail here (though I have posted about it many times), but this isn't the only reason we should eliminate corporate income taxes. It's not even the main reason. The main reason is that corporations don't actually pay taxes, people do. Corporate taxation is essentially just tax laundering, hiding the taxes from the people. When you buy a banana in the grocery store, you know how much sales tax you pay, and you know how much income tax you paid on the money you use to buy it, but what you don't know is how much of the price charged by the store is actually also going to taxes. Corporate taxes are evil because they hide the tax from the taxpayer. Taxes are necessary, but taxpayers need to know what they're paying so they can be informed voters.
Which is why I don't use Facebook as a source of news. I only use it to keep in touch with people I know, and ignore the rest of whatever else it offers.
Me too. I use slashdot. There's no bias here.
Only 9EB? That doesn't sound like much...
Indeed. I had an Exabyte tape drive back in the 1980s.
Of course, that "Exabyte" drive could only hold 3.5 GB. You'd have needed some 2.6 trillion cartridges to store 9 EB. With modern tapes you could do it with only 41,000 cartridges.
No, it's not impossible. They're quite capable of updating all code which they authored, and pushing those updates themselves.
I see that you have an extraordinarily high opinion of the capabilities of Google engineers. Although we do have some really outstanding people, I don't think we're quite that good. I mean, theoretically it should be possible to decompile the binaries, determine from the decompilation how the OEM's source differs from the original source, apply the necessary patches (resolving any merge conflicts) and recompile to generate new binaries. That's a really, really tall order, though. Especially with the native-code components. You know what the Halting Problem is, right? I strongly suspect we're in that sort of territory.
They're also quite capable of changing their licensing terms such that all manufacturer cruft must be installed as user-removable apps, and the manufacturers are quite capable of complying.
Now you've gone beyond the assumption of superhuman engineering ability to assuming some form of mind control. Oh, in the short term it would probably work, but It would almost certainly push the major players into forming a consortium of their own and abandoning the OHA. They'd lose the Google apps, but that's not a big challenge. Many of them already have replacements for most everything, and they could arrange licensing deals to replace the harder remaining bits (like Maps; I'm sure MS would love to license them a Bing Maps app). The biggest challenge is the Play store, but if the top three or four OEMs allied they could easily replace that as well, especially if they pulled Amazon in.
Would it take some work to institute this? Definitely. Would it be much better for end users? Without question. Will it ever happen? Unlikely in the next 3-5 years, I'd guess, and in part that's because of apologism and complacency from those who should know better, but aren't pushing them to make it happen.
I agree that it won't happen. I disagree that that's because of any sort of complacency. As a member of the Android security team, I'm not the slightest bit reluctant to say that we see the lack of updates as the largest single problem we have and we've been working for years to try to fix it... but it's a really, really hard problem.
No, I think our better route is to continue applying soft pressure to the OEMs to get better at updates. We've had some luck with that, with several committing to monthly security releases at least for their flagship devices. I expect that to snowball, especially if consumers start using it as a factor in their purchase decisions.
OTOH, at least for single-family dwellings, it's pretty cheap to install electric charging infrastructure at home, because the electricity distribution network is already in place. It may need some small capacity upgrades, but not as much as you might think because vehicle charging tends to be done during evenings when other usage is low. And once car owners take that step, their need for refueling stations almost disappears. Home charging plus something like the Tesla Supercharger network (which requires a tiny fraction of the number of stations) for long-distance travel and you're done.
Yes, this will seriously disrupt the existing fuel distribution networks, but they really don't have any leverage to stop it, any more than buggy-whip makers and distributors could stop gasoline production and distribution.
What you say about optimizing for existing business infrastructure is true, but it's irrelevant when the old business infrastructure does not have any role in the new system.
The newer Samsung phones self-disable when rooted, unfortunately. I can't find a good replacement for my Note2 that has wireless charging.
The Nexus 6 has wireless charging, and has an unlocked bootloader.
Our ruling class needs someone to work their fields and build their luxury yachts, but can do without more art being produced, for at least the next quarter.
I think the ruling class cares a lot more about art than the middle class does, which is a problem for artists because the middle class tends to have a lot more money (in aggregate).
Is there a way to turn off the battery monitoring on their app by any chance?
No. Android, iOS and Windows all provide access to battery information to any app, and none gates access with any permission. I'm sure it never occurred to anyone that this was potentially-private information, and it is obviously very useful for apps to be able to adjust their operation based on battery level.
Is there a way to turn off the battery monitoring on their app by any chance?
If that sort of thing bothers you, don't use Android? It's unlikely Uber has access to that information on iOS.
iOS apps have access to battery level and state: https://developer.apple.com/li...
The DMCA.
In what way does the US try to apply the DMCA in other countries? It definitely applies it to people in the US who are uploading/downloading to/from other countries, but I see no evidence that it expects the law to apply to people in other countries.
Note that much of US copyright law terms are derived from the Berne Convention terms, so it may appear that some aspects of US copyright law are applied around the world, but that's only because many countries have signed the treaty.
Actually no, if you drive into a flying bug that weighs over 10 pounds (enough to break the coating over the sticky surface) then you would most likely very much want this feature.
A 10 pound bug being driven into at 40ish mph would be enough to completely shatter your front windshield and cause significant damage if it was aligned such to hit your head. Potentially enough to break your neck and kill you if you were going at highway speeds (65 mph or more)
Silly question: are you by chance in Australia?
What about that rock tossed up by the car in front of you?
The 10-pound rock? You're already going to be having a very bad day, adhesive or no.
interestingly the country google is from completely disagrees with googles stance as they regularly make laws and rulings around data beyond its borders
Cite?
From what I've seen, the US frequently throws its diplomatic weight around and expects other countries to comply with its wishes, but I've never seen any expectation that US law applies outside of its borders, with respect to data or anything else. I'd be very interested to see examples where that's not true.
Downside is, you can only use web apps. Suppose a kid wants to use the excellent Krita and learn some real painting skills, just to name one.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sumo-paint/dpgjihldbpodlmnjolekemlfbcajnmod?hl=en
Disclaimer, I haven't used it, and it's been a while since I use Krita, so I'm not sure I could accurately compare if I had. The feature list looks pretty impressive. But the point is there's no reason you can't have a perfectly-functional Chrome app for painting. This is just the first hit on a search for "web painting app". There are others.
Chromebooks currently serve a nice niche of cheap laptops with great performance if you don't need local apps.
Actually, Chromebooks have supported local apps for some time. They're browser-based apps, but they run locally (disconnected) and use local storage.
end to end means nothing, the end is Google, that is bad
No, the end is the other party you're chatting with. Google doesn't have access if you use incognito mode. Of course, you'll lose most of the features of Allo in incognito mode. If you're not in incognito mode, the communications are all encrypted, but it is between you and Google and Google and the other person, so the AI can do all of the assistant stuff.
Given that Google is in bed with the Alphabet (pun intended) agencies
No, Google is not in bed with the three-letter agencies. There is absolutely no evidence that Google ever has been in bed with them. Google complies with the law, nothing more. There is evidence (from Snowden's documents) that Google's inter-data center communications were being tapped, but Google moved quickly to encrypt them all to put a stop to that.
Of course, Google does analyze data in order to target ads to you, and any data about you that happens to get stored at Google is available for properly-executed warrants, subpoenas, etc. So if those things bother you, stay in incognito mode and don't use the assistant features, or don't use Allo.
You don't mind seeing a filtered view of the world that looks how you would prefer it rather than how it actually is?
What filtered view of the world? I know people have been talking for years about the possibility of Google search becoming so personalized that it filters out all contrary views but personalized search isn't that personalized, and I don't think it ever will be.
Data mining may be a concern, depending on your perspective, but the "filter bubble" really isn't. Not with Google search, at any rate. I think it is a concern on social networks and in online forums where people congregate only with those who think the way they do. And in heavily-slanted mainstream media publications.
So, I don't know the Instant Apps stuff that well. I haven't been involved with it. I'm sure that permissions must still be approved by the user. In the case of Marshmallow+ and the run-time permission model, this should work very nicely. I assume that on older devices it'll still have to ask all-or-nothing, up front (which users will, of course, click through without reading). I expect there are going to be tighter controls in the Play store on apps that support instant-run, but I don't know what that will entail.
Regarding system update not requiring a password, you're correct, Android doesn't presently defend against the "signed firmware attack" (though some OEM devices might, dunno), as I've been calling it. It's an issue not just for the FBI, which in the Apple case had a legitimate and legal interest in looking into Farook's phone (though I'm not convinced that was really their goal), but any other party who might be able to get a copy of, or even brief access to, the firmware signing keys. This is not a threat model the industry had seriously considered until recently. Android hasn't addressed it. Doing it right is also quite tricky.