"What is it about Apple's gadgets that forbids mere mortals from looking inside?"
Nothing. Even without the law being passed, you can get the pentalobe driver, open your iphone, replace parts which 3rd party versions (if you know what you are doing), and close it up again. This law is forcing manufacturers to continue manufacturing parts for products they no longer produce, for 7 years.
Funnily enough iFixit's list of hard to repair smartphones is topped by a bunch of Android devices: https://www.ifixit.com/smartph...
The Samsung s10 scored a 3, the iPhone XS scored a 6, higher score means more repairable so in iFixit's opinion the iPhone is more repairable than a shit-ton of Android devices. I suppose it is time to grab the pitchforks, light up the torches and burn iFixit HQ do to the ground for spreading heresy.
Yes, well, Trump attempts to dictate "Thou shalt not purchase from company XYZ". No proof, just an assertion that they are not trustworthy. Because the country caught intercepting Cisco shipments and introducing backdoors into them is soooo trustworthy.
He's being an arrogant ass, continuing the usual foreign policy of the American government. Individuals Americans may be nice, but the US government is full of itself (and has been for decades, nothing to do with the current president).
Well Trump's alternate imaginary facts outweigh your 'theoretical facts'. You must not forget that the man is probably the most stable genius in the known universe;-)
You should not trust Chinese hardware because it likely is insecure. You can still use it as the alternatives are known to be insecure. Hence Huawei just has better quality at better prices.
Cisco had a good reputation once, but they blew it. Like pretty much any major US player. Boeing was one of the last ones to do so.
So your case boils down to: You should not trust Chinese hardware because it likely is insecure. You should trust US hardware even though it is proven to be insecure ? And I vividly remember Boeing being only one beneficiary of the US government spying on European companies (in this case Airbus) and handing their sensitive business communications to Boeing. When it comes to spying I don't trust the Chinese any farther than I can throw them, I don't trust the Americans even as far as I can throw them.
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2223272/60-minutes-torpedoes-huawei-in-less-than-15-minutes.html - There's mountains of evidence, you're just a moron. If you think this has anything at all to do with Trump, doubly so.
Gee your mama should wash your mouth out with soap. All that article claims is that Huawei copied US corporation's designs, that is IP theft. What that article is basically describing is what the US did to build up it's economy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, stealing IP from European companies shielded by the US courts who did not see any reason to punish US citizens for stealing IP from a bunch of foreigners. Now China is doing it to you, so stop yelling **UNFAIR* like a whiny little bitch, suck it up and start out innovating them. The Trump admin is wants to ban Huawei because it is claiming Huawei is using their products to conduct a NSA style spying and eavesdropping operation on behalf of China who they seem to think is warehousing the data like the US govt. does with the NSA and it's multi billion dollar datacenter. Apparently Europe should be alarmed at Huawei spying on them (even though the WH can't prove it) but they should buy lots of off the shelf US network equipment that gets loaded up with spyware at a NSA facility before it is shipped over the pond. If anything the Europeans have more of an incentive to ban Cisco over spying (since the NSA has already been caught with its pants down installing malware on Cisco equipment) than they do banning Huawei. If the Chinese intelligence evert gets caught spiking Huawei gear with malware like their American colleagues are so fond of doing they'll be banned until that can be proven the Chinese have a leg up on the US in this regard.
Cisco couldn't compete on a level playing field with Huawei, so they asked the Government to help them out.
Not just Cisco, the whole industry from network equipment manufacturers on to mobile phone manufacturers including Apple, Google, Microsoft and every US company that makes mobile devices based on Android & Windows. Huawei is a fierce competitor for all of them and the main purpose of bullying the EU into banning Huawei is about eliminating Huawei as a competitor to US corporations, spying is just a pretext. If Trump had any shred of evidence Huawei is spying for China he'd already have banned Huawei from the US market completely and shouted his evidence from the roof of the White House with a bull horn. Just wait until Xiaomi starts underbidding Google/Samsung/Apple on the US market and the latter's profits start to nosedive. I'll bet you good money that the White House will alluvasudden start claiming Xiaomi is spying for China, and I'll bet more money they'll not present a shred of evidence for it.
Armenia is a Russian protectorate, Putin is now very angry with you due to your shameless attempt to annex a part of mother Russia into the American empire. You might want to avoid drinking any tea or touching a door knob without wearing rubber gloves from now on.
He asked you a question. You seem to be unable to answer.
The accusation was that "the left" is all for censorship, and they have large media companies on their side, presumably to do the dirty work of censoring people/things the left doesn't like.
You bring up Fox News and Sinclair, implying that they are supporting censorship for the right.
So it's quite reasonable and relevant to ask just who or what exactly are Fox News and Sinclair (and by extension the right) trying to censor? What people/ideas are so anathema to the right that they desire it to be hidden?
I know the right will yell and scream at topics like climate change and feminism and any kind of social welfare, but I don't think many are calling for a complete shut down of the debate or preventing people from talking about them (if anything, letting people talk gives the right wing more opportunities to ramble off)
I will also add something the other AC didn't: two wrongs don't make a right. It really doesn't matter if Fox/Sinclair/the right censors too. It doesn't make censorship a good thing. If anything, it (and Putin's latest move) is a demonstration that you shouldn't want censorship: you might like it when your side is in power, but imagine when your enemies wield that same power against you.
He was implying that the entire media in the US is a gigantic left wing cabal whose news output is censored by the Democratic party, the world communist conspiracy and what else?... the Zionist occupied government? Furthermore, the only exceptions to this are the brave souls at Sinclair media and Fox News who are the only purveyors of truly uncensored, fair and balanced new and generally just truth in the entire US media landscape. If you believe that I've got a big iron tower in Paris I'd like to sell you. I think the main stream media except Sinclair Media and Fox News has a certain centre left of Ann Coulter bias (or censorship as you call it), just like Sinclair Media and Fox News has a distinct extreme right of Ann Coulter bias (or censorship as you call it). The only difference between Fox News/Sinclair Media and the MSM as you on the far right like to call them, is that they pump their biased news sewage into different echo chambers.
Trump is probably checking to see if he can get away with that one too.
Um, it's literally the Democrats who are going all in for online censorship. They just conveniently have the private sector CEOs of the communications media on their site.
Your comment conveniently overlooks Fox News and Sinclair media. Is that because you think they are the only ones who are fair and balanced or do you just not count them as part of the communications media because you think they channel god's word straight into your living room?
is that if you've got a nicer car your phone syncs to it and you can control it from the dash, which is perfectly legal. If I can change the channel on my radio why can't I do it on my phone sitting in a dash holder?
Because you interact only a few seconds with your radio and you do it at long intervals. I've seen people interacting with their phones for extended periods of time while texting, surfing, working some app or god knows what else. That constitutes several orders of magnitude more distraction than the momentary distraction of pressing a preset button on your radio or rotating a volume knob which you can usually also do without taking your eyes off the road. I've been stuck behind people driving at walking pace down a road, driving over pedestrian crossings without looking, running lights only to overtake them at the next opportunity and find that they were texting. I've seen people so distracted by texting that are only shaken out of it when they end up driving onto the pavement or the lane divider strip. I'd actually be interested in seeing insurance company statistics over how many people end up driving into a light post or some other stationary object because they were so busy texting.
I am 100% certain people are going to be falsely accused because how are they going to verify that it was not a hands-free call or text?
The preponderance of the evidence is that hands-free calls are not safer.
The problem is not that your hands are not on the wheel, but that your mind is not on the road.
I'm pretty sure hands free is safer, I can control mine completely with buttons in the steering wheel or by voice command while keeping my eye on what I am doing. While that is still less safe than not answering the phone at all it is a damn sight safer than burying my nose in the phone while unlocking it, and then driving one handed while talking. Then there are these people who drive with both wrists on the steering wheel while they text as they drive.
The situation in Venezuela is actually multifaceted, but stems from one major problem - A single export economy - oil. When the US convinced OPEC to flood the market while it also did so, Venezuela was sunk already.
Maduro's mismanagement of his government is probably not entirely related, but there is no economic escape from a single export economy when the market drops. I don't want to say it's 100% that simple, but that's 90% of it.
Without income any country, socialist, capitalist, barter system, gnomes...they're going to have a tough go. Venezuela dug in their heels instead of branching out, isolationism and overreliance on Russia did not allow options.
Only the Republican idiots like "Okie Warcrier" think it's entirely an "ideological" problem, lol, and the reason is simple also - Fox News Business isn't an educational resource, it's an echo-chamber for morons like him exactly.
That is true, but it still places most of the blame for the economic crisis in Venezuela at the feet of Chavez and Maduro. They made the conscious choice to set up a badly managed and corruption riddled single export economy, the Americans did not do that for them, Chavez and Maduro made that choice. You can't even blame that on Marxism because nothing in Marxist economic theory (whatever else may be wrong with Marxist economic theory) forbids you from using your country's considerable oil wealth to set up a diversified economy. That being said, I don't envy Venezuelans of having that imbecile Trump and his henchmen like Elliott Abrams, breathing down their necks chanting 'keep the oil, KEEEEEP THE OIIIIIL!!" like a bunch of zombies.
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime.
Did you even read those articles?... because they are just as critical of Maduro as the Americans. If those two links were meant to prove that Maduro is the only innocent in this entire sorry affair you failed, if they were meant to make the US look good you also failed:
The Time article starts with:
As Maduro’s authoritarian regime has plunged Venezuela into humanitarian crisis...
...and NPR has this to say: Venezuela was once considered the richest country in Latin America, and it holds the world's largest oil reserves. Many world leaders, analysts and rights groups blame Maduro for enabling the country's spiraling problems such as hyperinflation, crime, hunger and shortages of medicine and basic goods.
AKA : Freischutz knows nothing of the situation and is throwing his shit from monkey island, hoping for a hit... What a dipshit. We should breed it with Kendall and set it loose on the Chinese internet.
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime. I know for a fact that the a large number of the people running the various major tech industries in Venezuela have fled the country because they get better jobs, better pay and the rule of law elsewhere. Venezuela has bigger un-tapped oil reserves than Norway, Venezuela should be the Norway of S-America and yet it has the economy and political stability of the Weimar Republic. I don't like US foreign policy any more than the next guy and I most certainly despise the Trump admin but blaming everything that is happening in Venezuela on the US is naive in the extreme. I know the extreme Left is in love with Chavismo and would dearly like to salvage the reputation of that marxist experiment but I'm afraid it has proven itself to be a complete and utter failure. Trying to portray Maduro as some sort of martyr of US aggression is pointless. The man is manifestly incompetent, corrupt and has obvious autocratic tendencies. Having said that I sincerely hope that Venezuela will not have to suffer the Trump administration 'bringing them Democracy' because if that happens it will be brought by that butcher Elliott Abrams which would be a bit like bringing Oliver Cromwell back from the dead to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ireland. All in all I really feel too the people of Venezuela since it does not seem they have any good way out of the mess they are in.
Was Venezuela's 5-Day Blackout Caused By Cyberattacks -- or Wildfires?
... or was it caused by the best and the brightest fleeing the country and those left behind shorting out the grid because they have a very limited clue of how it works nor do they have the equipment to find that out or the materials to make proper repairs?
plus one or two photo editing apps. Basically if you don't install dodgy apps it's not a problem. The only odd thing is how many folks don't know any better.
You would be amazed at how many people do exactly that. Trying to get them to stop installing free games and dumb-ass gimmick apps is pretty much hopeless, I know that because I have tried. Also, some of these 'dodgy' apps are not at all obviously dodgy like the games and gimmick apps are. I've seen examples of malicious apps that are both not free, and do quite useful things from the user's point of view. Dodgy apps are not always easy to spot.
If the EU was capable of replacing google with homegrown options, it would have. The only thing google leaving would do for the EU is allow less effective alternatives have actual market share.
Google is what it is because it managed to take advantage of a particularly fortuitous situation in the internet/tech market during the 1990s to establish a monopoly that they aggressively defend because that monopoly position is a lot easier to lose than it would be to claw back. If Google went off to California to sulk they would be writing off their most profitable market after the US. Google's profits in 2018 were 136 billion dollars world wide if they were to go off to California to sulk they'd be writing off 40 billion dollars worth of revenues. If you think that is going to happen you are delusional and if you think it would take local competitors more than six months to fill that gap you are even more delusional. As for thinking that anybody who isn't American is somehow physically unable to come up with an effective alternative to Google is arrogant to the point of stupidity. I sincerely hope people at Google are the same species of arrogant exceptionalist as you are because that makes taking them down a few pegs that much easier.
They don't want them to leave either. It's very lucrative for Eu to keep fining google.
Really? The budget of the EU in 2019 is 164 billion USD, the total GDP of the EU was 23 trillion dollars in 2019. Whatever they are fining Google is pocket change to the member states.
Europe is already making a mint from unfair trade agreements with us.
The EU and US have no trade agreement, there was one in the works but the Trump administration made torpedoing it one of the first official acts of their administration.
I don't have a problem with fines per se. But the problem with the EU approach is they don't state exactly how to stop the behavior. They instead require companies to propose a solution, and they will reply whether or not they think the solution is good enough.
Huh?!?! What a load of bollocks. Google employs some of the smartest people on earth, I have every confidence in Google's ability to figure that little puzzle out.
How stupid. US has become a selfish hegemon since the II WW.
... and China is a corrupt autocratic plutocracy while Russia is a mafia state. However hegemonic the US becomes, we can handle them and we can. reason with them, China wants to be what it was during the time of the Tang dynasty and Russia... Russia is a type of kleptocracy that has no parallels in human history except perhaps the Roman Republic during it's descent into utter corruption and debauchery during the Jugurthine wars, except Russia has nowhere like the raw power Rome had even at that time and in such a humiliating state.
Slashdot Mirror
"What is it about Apple's gadgets that forbids mere mortals from looking inside?"
Nothing. Even without the law being passed, you can get the pentalobe driver, open your iphone, replace parts which 3rd party versions (if you know what you are doing), and close it up again. This law is forcing manufacturers to continue manufacturing parts for products they no longer produce, for 7 years.
Funnily enough iFixit's list of hard to repair smartphones is topped by a bunch of Android devices: https://www.ifixit.com/smartph... The Samsung s10 scored a 3, the iPhone XS scored a 6, higher score means more repairable so in iFixit's opinion the iPhone is more repairable than a shit-ton of Android devices. I suppose it is time to grab the pitchforks, light up the torches and burn iFixit HQ do to the ground for spreading heresy.
Yes, well, Trump attempts to dictate "Thou shalt not purchase from company XYZ". No proof, just an assertion that they are not trustworthy. Because the country caught intercepting Cisco shipments and introducing backdoors into them is soooo trustworthy.
He's being an arrogant ass, continuing the usual foreign policy of the American government. Individuals Americans may be nice, but the US government is full of itself (and has been for decades, nothing to do with the current president).
Well Trump's alternate imaginary facts outweigh your 'theoretical facts'. You must not forget that the man is probably the most stable genius in the known universe ;-)
You should not trust Chinese hardware because it likely is insecure. You can still use it as the alternatives are known to be insecure. Hence Huawei just has better quality at better prices.
Cisco had a good reputation once, but they blew it. Like pretty much any major US player. Boeing was one of the last ones to do so.
So your case boils down to: You should not trust Chinese hardware because it likely is insecure. You should trust US hardware even though it is proven to be insecure ? And I vividly remember Boeing being only one beneficiary of the US government spying on European companies (in this case Airbus) and handing their sensitive business communications to Boeing. When it comes to spying I don't trust the Chinese any farther than I can throw them, I don't trust the Americans even as far as I can throw them.
They've got Devices of Mass Communication. DMC!!! DMCs!!! America's biggest issue is everything they make is in China
America's biggest issue is that America's much worshipped moneyed classes moved America's industrial base to China.
https://www.networkworld.com/article/2223272/60-minutes-torpedoes-huawei-in-less-than-15-minutes.html - There's mountains of evidence, you're just a moron. If you think this has anything at all to do with Trump, doubly so.
Gee your mama should wash your mouth out with soap. All that article claims is that Huawei copied US corporation's designs, that is IP theft. What that article is basically describing is what the US did to build up it's economy during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, stealing IP from European companies shielded by the US courts who did not see any reason to punish US citizens for stealing IP from a bunch of foreigners. Now China is doing it to you, so stop yelling **UNFAIR* like a whiny little bitch, suck it up and start out innovating them. The Trump admin is wants to ban Huawei because it is claiming Huawei is using their products to conduct a NSA style spying and eavesdropping operation on behalf of China who they seem to think is warehousing the data like the US govt. does with the NSA and it's multi billion dollar datacenter. Apparently Europe should be alarmed at Huawei spying on them (even though the WH can't prove it) but they should buy lots of off the shelf US network equipment that gets loaded up with spyware at a NSA facility before it is shipped over the pond. If anything the Europeans have more of an incentive to ban Cisco over spying (since the NSA has already been caught with its pants down installing malware on Cisco equipment) than they do banning Huawei. If the Chinese intelligence evert gets caught spiking Huawei gear with malware like their American colleagues are so fond of doing they'll be banned until that can be proven the Chinese have a leg up on the US in this regard.
Cisco couldn't compete on a level playing field with Huawei, so they asked the Government to help them out.
Not just Cisco, the whole industry from network equipment manufacturers on to mobile phone manufacturers including Apple, Google, Microsoft and every US company that makes mobile devices based on Android & Windows. Huawei is a fierce competitor for all of them and the main purpose of bullying the EU into banning Huawei is about eliminating Huawei as a competitor to US corporations, spying is just a pretext. If Trump had any shred of evidence Huawei is spying for China he'd already have banned Huawei from the US market completely and shouted his evidence from the roof of the White House with a bull horn. Just wait until Xiaomi starts underbidding Google/Samsung/Apple on the US market and the latter's profits start to nosedive. I'll bet you good money that the White House will alluvasudden start claiming Xiaomi is spying for China, and I'll bet more money they'll not present a shred of evidence for it.
Welcome to the USA...
I live in Armenia.
It's spelled AMERICA, pal.
Armenia is a Russian protectorate, Putin is now very angry with you due to your shameless attempt to annex a part of mother Russia into the American empire. You might want to avoid drinking any tea or touching a door knob without wearing rubber gloves from now on.
He asked you a question. You seem to be unable to answer.
The accusation was that "the left" is all for censorship, and they have large media companies on their side, presumably to do the dirty work of censoring people/things the left doesn't like.
You bring up Fox News and Sinclair, implying that they are supporting censorship for the right.
So it's quite reasonable and relevant to ask just who or what exactly are Fox News and Sinclair (and by extension the right) trying to censor? What people/ideas are so anathema to the right that they desire it to be hidden?
I know the right will yell and scream at topics like climate change and feminism and any kind of social welfare, but I don't think many are calling for a complete shut down of the debate or preventing people from talking about them (if anything, letting people talk gives the right wing more opportunities to ramble off)
I will also add something the other AC didn't: two wrongs don't make a right. It really doesn't matter if Fox/Sinclair/the right censors too. It doesn't make censorship a good thing. If anything, it (and Putin's latest move) is a demonstration that you shouldn't want censorship: you might like it when your side is in power, but imagine when your enemies wield that same power against you.
He was implying that the entire media in the US is a gigantic left wing cabal whose news output is censored by the Democratic party, the world communist conspiracy and what else? ... the Zionist occupied government? Furthermore, the only exceptions to this are the brave souls at Sinclair media and Fox News who are the only purveyors of truly uncensored, fair and balanced new and generally just truth in the entire US media landscape. If you believe that I've got a big iron tower in Paris I'd like to sell you. I think the main stream media except Sinclair Media and Fox News has a certain centre left of Ann Coulter bias (or censorship as you call it), just like Sinclair Media and Fox News has a distinct extreme right of Ann Coulter bias (or censorship as you call it). The only difference between Fox News/Sinclair Media and the MSM as you on the far right like to call them, is that they pump their biased news sewage into different echo chambers.
Who is Fox News or Sinclair trying to censor again?
WTF are you talking about?
Fox news, as in the company who just hired the former head of the DNC to try to bring a more balanced view to their reporting?
That's like pouring a shot glass of water into a bottle of vodka and claim you'll no longer get drunk if you empty the bottle over the next half hour.
Trump is probably checking to see if he can get away with that one too.
Um, it's literally the Democrats who are going all in for online censorship. They just conveniently have the private sector CEOs of the communications media on their site.
Your comment conveniently overlooks Fox News and Sinclair media. Is that because you think they are the only ones who are fair and balanced or do you just not count them as part of the communications media because you think they channel god's word straight into your living room?
is that if you've got a nicer car your phone syncs to it and you can control it from the dash, which is perfectly legal. If I can change the channel on my radio why can't I do it on my phone sitting in a dash holder?
Because you interact only a few seconds with your radio and you do it at long intervals. I've seen people interacting with their phones for extended periods of time while texting, surfing, working some app or god knows what else. That constitutes several orders of magnitude more distraction than the momentary distraction of pressing a preset button on your radio or rotating a volume knob which you can usually also do without taking your eyes off the road. I've been stuck behind people driving at walking pace down a road, driving over pedestrian crossings without looking, running lights only to overtake them at the next opportunity and find that they were texting. I've seen people so distracted by texting that are only shaken out of it when they end up driving onto the pavement or the lane divider strip. I'd actually be interested in seeing insurance company statistics over how many people end up driving into a light post or some other stationary object because they were so busy texting.
I am 100% certain people are going to be falsely accused because how are they going to verify that it was not a hands-free call or text?
The preponderance of the evidence is that hands-free calls are not safer.
The problem is not that your hands are not on the wheel, but that your mind is not on the road.
I'm pretty sure hands free is safer, I can control mine completely with buttons in the steering wheel or by voice command while keeping my eye on what I am doing. While that is still less safe than not answering the phone at all it is a damn sight safer than burying my nose in the phone while unlocking it, and then driving one handed while talking. Then there are these people who drive with both wrists on the steering wheel while they text as they drive.
I for one just hope they had the good sense not to vote for somebody orange.
The situation in Venezuela is actually multifaceted, but stems from one major problem - A single export economy - oil. When the US convinced OPEC to flood the market while it also did so, Venezuela was sunk already.
Maduro's mismanagement of his government is probably not entirely related, but there is no economic escape from a single export economy when the market drops. I don't want to say it's 100% that simple, but that's 90% of it. Without income any country, socialist, capitalist, barter system, gnomes.. .they're going to have a tough go. Venezuela dug in their heels instead of branching out, isolationism and overreliance on Russia did not allow options.
Only the Republican idiots like "Okie Warcrier" think it's entirely an "ideological" problem, lol, and the reason is simple also - Fox News Business isn't an educational resource, it's an echo-chamber for morons like him exactly.
That is true, but it still places most of the blame for the economic crisis in Venezuela at the feet of Chavez and Maduro. They made the conscious choice to set up a badly managed and corruption riddled single export economy, the Americans did not do that for them, Chavez and Maduro made that choice. You can't even blame that on Marxism because nothing in Marxist economic theory (whatever else may be wrong with Marxist economic theory) forbids you from using your country's considerable oil wealth to set up a diversified economy. That being said, I don't envy Venezuelans of having that imbecile Trump and his henchmen like Elliott Abrams, breathing down their necks chanting 'keep the oil, KEEEEEP THE OIIIIIL!!" like a bunch of zombies.
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime.
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/the-united-states-hand-in-undermining-democracy-in-venezuela
http://time.com/5512005/venezu...
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22... etc.
Did you even read those articles? ... because they are just as critical of Maduro as the Americans. If those two links were meant to prove that Maduro is the only innocent in this entire sorry affair you failed, if they were meant to make the US look good you also failed:
...
...and NPR has this to say:
The Time article starts with:
As Maduro’s authoritarian regime has plunged Venezuela into humanitarian crisis
Venezuela was once considered the richest country in Latin America, and it holds the world's largest oil reserves. Many world leaders, analysts and rights groups blame Maduro for enabling the country's spiraling problems such as hyperinflation, crime, hunger and shortages of medicine and basic goods.
AKA : Freischutz knows nothing of the situation and is throwing his shit from monkey island, hoping for a hit... What a dipshit. We should breed it with Kendall and set it loose on the Chinese internet.
I'm not generally opposed to Socialism, Social Democracy or Capitalism for that matter, in fact I'm basically a Social Democrat. However, the situation in Venezuela can be blamed completely on the incompetence and corruption of the Chavez regime and the even greater incompetence and corruption of the Maduro regime. I know for a fact that the a large number of the people running the various major tech industries in Venezuela have fled the country because they get better jobs, better pay and the rule of law elsewhere. Venezuela has bigger un-tapped oil reserves than Norway, Venezuela should be the Norway of S-America and yet it has the economy and political stability of the Weimar Republic. I don't like US foreign policy any more than the next guy and I most certainly despise the Trump admin but blaming everything that is happening in Venezuela on the US is naive in the extreme. I know the extreme Left is in love with Chavismo and would dearly like to salvage the reputation of that marxist experiment but I'm afraid it has proven itself to be a complete and utter failure. Trying to portray Maduro as some sort of martyr of US aggression is pointless. The man is manifestly incompetent, corrupt and has obvious autocratic tendencies. Having said that I sincerely hope that Venezuela will not have to suffer the Trump administration 'bringing them Democracy' because if that happens it will be brought by that butcher Elliott Abrams which would be a bit like bringing Oliver Cromwell back from the dead to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ireland. All in all I really feel too the people of Venezuela since it does not seem they have any good way out of the mess they are in.
Was Venezuela's 5-Day Blackout Caused By Cyberattacks -- or Wildfires?
... or was it caused by the best and the brightest fleeing the country and those left behind shorting out the grid because they have a very limited clue of how it works nor do they have the equipment to find that out or the materials to make proper repairs?
How did they break the trend of electricity costs increasing with deployed renewables that has struck all other nations?
Yay, another guy trying to disprove decades of work by thousands of climate scientists by liking to a single climate skeptic's blog.
plus one or two photo editing apps. Basically if you don't install dodgy apps it's not a problem. The only odd thing is how many folks don't know any better.
You would be amazed at how many people do exactly that. Trying to get them to stop installing free games and dumb-ass gimmick apps is pretty much hopeless, I know that because I have tried. Also, some of these 'dodgy' apps are not at all obviously dodgy like the games and gimmick apps are. I've seen examples of malicious apps that are both not free, and do quite useful things from the user's point of view. Dodgy apps are not always easy to spot.
If the EU was capable of replacing google with homegrown options, it would have. The only thing google leaving would do for the EU is allow less effective alternatives have actual market share.
Google is what it is because it managed to take advantage of a particularly fortuitous situation in the internet/tech market during the 1990s to establish a monopoly that they aggressively defend because that monopoly position is a lot easier to lose than it would be to claw back. If Google went off to California to sulk they would be writing off their most profitable market after the US. Google's profits in 2018 were 136 billion dollars world wide if they were to go off to California to sulk they'd be writing off 40 billion dollars worth of revenues. If you think that is going to happen you are delusional and if you think it would take local competitors more than six months to fill that gap you are even more delusional. As for thinking that anybody who isn't American is somehow physically unable to come up with an effective alternative to Google is arrogant to the point of stupidity. I sincerely hope people at Google are the same species of arrogant exceptionalist as you are because that makes taking them down a few pegs that much easier.
They don't want them to leave either. It's very lucrative for Eu to keep fining google.
Really? The budget of the EU in 2019 is 164 billion USD, the total GDP of the EU was 23 trillion dollars in 2019. Whatever they are fining Google is pocket change to the member states.
Europe is already making a mint from unfair trade agreements with us.
The EU and US have no trade agreement, there was one in the works but the Trump administration made torpedoing it one of the first official acts of their administration.
I don't have a problem with fines per se. But the problem with the EU approach is they don't state exactly how to stop the behavior. They instead require companies to propose a solution, and they will reply whether or not they think the solution is good enough.
Huh?!?! What a load of bollocks. Google employs some of the smartest people on earth, I have every confidence in Google's ability to figure that little puzzle out.
How stupid. US has become a selfish hegemon since the II WW.
... and China is a corrupt autocratic plutocracy while Russia is a mafia state. However hegemonic the US becomes, we can handle them and we can. reason with them, China wants to be what it was during the time of the Tang dynasty and Russia ... Russia is a type of kleptocracy that has no parallels in human history except perhaps the Roman Republic during it's descent into utter corruption and debauchery during the Jugurthine wars, except Russia has nowhere like the raw power Rome had even at that time and in such a humiliating state.