>"Android's back button might be going away entirely, replaced with a quick swipe to the left from the home button."
I have already been doing this on my Moto G5 for a very long time. You can change the fingerprint thing to be a back button by swiping to the left and home by tapping it. This removes the on-screen buttons that rob space. It seems to work relatively well. But it is NOT intuitive for someone like my Mom....
>"But ISPs -- never. There are simply too many of them to ever honestly say there is a monopoly."
Nonsense. Where I live, there is one and ONLY one option for ISP (where it is defined with usable speed/latency). This is actually the case for most Americans. Radio never materialized. Satellite is too slow and laggy. DSL is too slow, unreliable, and generally unavailable unless you are X feet from the CO. Cable companies use their cable right-of-way and infrastructure to pile Internet service on top in a way that works. And, again, in most areas, nobody else can use or replicate that infrastructure. I essentially have one and only one choice, which makes it a monopoly.
>"Telephone companies are still exclusive franchisees. They are a monopoly -- on wired telephone service. "
"Are they? I have at least two choices for land phone service- one from Verizon and one from Cox. So that actually isn't a monopoly at all. At least not in my city. But, in my State, Verizon was forced to allow third party phone services on Verizon lines! So there are actually several choices available to me. One I think was called "Cavalier" (my Mom actually used that).
>"Being an incumbent in ANY market is an advantage. But "incumbent" is not "monopoly".
If you are the only player in the market, by definition, you are a monopoly. It doesn't matter HOW it happened in the definition.
>"It's an economic monopoly if anything (and in most places it isn't even that), not a government-granted one."
When it came about because of government intervention in the first place... like it typically did with cable, does it matter? I am not saying there are any laws here PREVENTING competition. But their intervention caused the monopoly to exist. And that advantage they now have (and no requirement they share their lines) means the monopoly will continue to exist, as it has for many years.
Perhaps if 5G services get robust enough, they can finally break the cable companies' stronghold on ISPs. I am not holding my breath, though...
>"You're not missing anything, Iron Fist was terrible."
Well, at least I found it more interesting than Punisher season 2. I swear, I have tried for weeks to watch it. I have fallen asleep over and over during watching after the 3rd episode and can't seem to get past episode 5.
>"But I'm part of the problem I guess. I'm too lazy to cancel my monthly subscription and even though I keep telling myself it's time to cut them loose, I keep thinking they've got to improve sometime but they never do."
I think I fit into that, too. I kinda plan to wait for them to raise the price (which is coming soon), and THEN immediately cancel.
Of course, I will continue "DVD", since from that I continue to get actual get movies...
>"Sabetha Rep. Randy Garber sponsored legislation requiring the software installations and dictating purchasers would have to pay a $20 fee to the state, and whatever cost was assessed by retail stores, to remove filters for "obscene" material. No one under 18 would be allowed to have filter software deleted. "It's to protect children,"
Wow- rainbows and unicorns! Save the children! It is so easy, why didn't anyone thing of that before? Perhaps that software can magically also stop all spam Email and spam telephone calls and fraud and poverty and hatred too?
>"Why wouldn't anybody like this?"
Oh.... because it won't work. It is costly. It restricts freedom. It interferes with proper use. It requires locked-down devices. It will be abused. When it fails and filters something it shouldn't, it is an effective government ban on the first amendment. It will grease the palms of only certain vendors. I could go on...
And they still do. Their "gun violence" was already going down, year after year UNTIL their confiscation. Then it stalled before returning to the previous downward trend. "Gun violence" in the USA has also been steadily going down and down. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Now they regularly bust people with millions of dollars of drugs & no gun because the gun would be REAL JAIL TIME."
Duh, "the gun" would be "real jail time" in the USA when EXISTING laws are enforced. That is exactly what happened in Richmond, VA when the Feds started a program there. 5 year mandatory for illegally having a gun. That didn't require ANY additional non-sense gun control laws. And it didn't affect ANY of the good armed people who were legal. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Look at that.. they have way less kids killing kids than you Amerikuks."
Per capita, the rate they had before and after the ratio didn't change hardly at all. And the decreasing rate didn't improve over the decreasing rate in the USA. 103 countries have a higher per capita homicide rate than the USA. And the USA has a violent crime rate lower than 12 of the 17 most-industrialized nations. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"But yer guns make you freeeeeee"
No, good people having guns GREATLY reduces gun crime. It can be both a very effective deterrent and effective way to protect yourself and those you care about. Up to a 2.5 million crimes are averted every year in the USA by good (non-police) citizens using guns defensively. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Are you suggesting it's "abuse of power" to negotiate with corporations to bring their employment dollars into town, really?"
Yes, it can be. I am not saying it necessarily is, but that it can be. Especially when it is given as favors, or due to their palms being greased, or due to a conflict of interest. And it can be very harmful to the tax payer if the total cost/benefit analysis is flawed or inaccurate.
>"I guess you didn't internally check your logic before you blurted again. Typical Trump traitor problems."
You need to find some meds or something. I am neither a Trump fan nor traitor. In fact, "Trump" has nothing to do with the discussion whatsoever. Perhaps you have "Trump derangement syndrome"? But, yeah, keep flinging unfounded insults safely behind your cowardly anonymity...
>"New York Mayor...' 'This is an example of an abuse of corporate power,' de Blasio told NBC"
I suppose all these major "incentives", bonuses, express permitting, promises, tax cuts, state-funded infrastructure for private benedit, and other such things are not "an example of an abuse of government power"?
>"If they banned ad blockers everybody would move to Firefox. They can't afford that."
I was about to post the same thing.
THANK YOU, FIREFOX
Whether you use it or not, the fact that it exists most certainly prevents a complete takeover by Google and the resulting lack of freedom. And my suggestion is, if you value freedom, privacy, open standards, and choice, to use Firefox whenever possible, and encourage others to do so, also. The days of Chrome being "much faster" or "better" on the desktop [MS-Windows, Linux, MacOS] are long since gone.
>"Somehow on Android, people don't move to Firefox so they still don't allow ad blockers in their [Chrome] browser [on Android]."
I also use it on Android, even though on Google's platform it seems to have an unfair performance disadvantage (I wonder why that is).
>"So how come no one starts a new ISP and undercuts Comcast?"
Because of government intervention. Almost all ISP's operate in a monopoly granted or created by local or state governments. That is certainly the case here. Nobody can compete with Cox, because the local government gave one and only one company the "keys to the kingdom: way-back-when and then allowed them to provide any services they want on that physical line. Even if the market is supposedly free in that sector, no other company was given the incentives that X got on the onset... so nobody else can afford to enter the market.
Now, the motive might have been good at the time, and Cox does cover 100% of the houses in all the cities involved, but the results are now high prices, less innovation, and mediocre service due to zero competition. Consumers have a choice of X or nothing.
>"So the predictable actions of a small percentage of consumers should be extrapolated to the general population?"
That certainly seems to be the current mindset of gun control advocates. Despite study after study showing such increased control does NOT stop or deter the tiny percent of bad people and DOES hurt good people.
With freedom, there is some risk. No matter what the thing is being discussed. If you want the freedom to repair things, there will always be some added risk. But without that freedom, things could be very bleak, indeed.
>"There are some people who believe they have a right to profit."
Profit is a requisition for business to exist. Without profit, a business cannot survive long. And without the expectation of profit, why would any business start in the first place. Profit is what allows capital to expand, savings for down-turns, attraction investment, incentive to develop, etc.
>" That doing what they did yesterday is going to work forever, and that they never need change anything at all. Those people don't deserve to stay in business."
Without profit, they won't. In a free market, other companies will come along who will innovate and can produce newer, better, different, and/or cheaper solutions and undercut the competition, forcing them to do the same or die.
>"Now if we want a start in fixing things simply disallow all export of produce and meats from US businesses and that would push down grocery prices quite a bit."
The economy is more complicated than that. If you cut all exports, there will be oversupply and prices will drop greatly. This is true. But THEN the free market will react and many agricultural businesses will not be able to survive on those lower prices. They will do a combination of shutting down production, raising prices, laying off workers, lowering quality, seek cheap replacement imports, etc... or go out of business. If you subsidize production more, then taxes go up and people have less money and their purchasing power goes down, which is similar to higher prices.
>"A difference in your return doesn't indicate anything about whether you paid more or less tax compared to earlier years"
That is true. But those of us who do their own taxes AND understand that witholdings has nothing to do with what taxes you actually pay, DO know how much less tax we paid for 2018.
>"You may have paid less tax and also seen a lower return because your withholding changed."
Exactly. In my case, it was about 6% less than taxes I paid last year (and I have no deductions or other changes- I took the standard deduction). This is despite having the smallest refund I have ever had.
>"But the assumption that the password database is secure is a big one. An unsalted password databases is a gold mine for an attacker."
Agreed. My biggest issue was their illogical jump from one example to a broad statement that can't be made.
>"As for any remaining practical purposes, you simply need something stronger than passwords, because humans aren't going to be any good at memorized ten character strings of pure gobbledygook."
Unfortunately, there isn't much else- not if one of the criteria is something you "know". You can add a second factor authentication, but that is usually something you have (phone, token, etc). But that alone is often worse security than just something you know. Other options would be something you are (biometrics) which can be very complicated, and somewhere you are (which is pretty good for increasing security). Not an easy problem to solve, since most require a lot of complex stuff, expense, inconvenience, support, and often is privacy violating (like I don't WANT to give my phone number or fingerprints to X).
>"NIST's latest guidelines say passwords should be at least eight characters long. Some online service providers don't even demand that much."
The example given is an old method and assumes the cracker has access to the stored encrypted password. Then the discussion turns to a wide/broad generalization about ALL password lengths, and web sites were the example. This isn't logical. An 8 character password is way strong enough if you don't have access to the stored data and all you can do is try brute force- which is easily defeated by throwing in delays or limits.
It also depends on the method used to store the passwords, even if you have access to the stored data,
No, it is why you "neuter". Spay is female. Castrate is male. Neuter is either male nor female. Yes, pedantic, but it one of those bad phrases that drives me crazy. It has been misused so horribly for so many years, it has become common now.
Saying "spay and neuter" is equivalent to saying "remove sex organs from female and remove sex organs from female and male". So either say "neuter animals" or say "spay or castrate animals."
Yes, most pets and all strays need to be neutered to stop the suffering.
>"The 3D printed component isn't particularly notable."
Indeed. But neither is having an "unregistered" firearm notable. The only thing that is the real issue is that he was not legally allowed to POSSES a firearm at all. It doesn't matter how he obtained it- made it, borrowed it, bought it from a dealer (that would have been very difficult), got it as a gift, found it; it was illegal in his case no matter what.
>"The school day starts at more or less the same time everywhere in India"
Well, perhaps THAT is the main problem then? Perhaps they should start school an hour later or earlier on the fringes. Or is there some law not allowing that? Wow, such a complicated problem.
Trying to force accurate caller ID is a good START, if it ever happens. However, it will not STOP the calls from occurring. It might help us DEAL with the calls. It might help report calls (if there was a way to do so). But as long as there is no enforcement and no tools for consumers and no criminal penalties, the calls will just keep right on coming. I don't know about you, but having an accurate ID on my home phone does nothing to prevent such calls from: Irritating me. Interrupting me. Waking me up. Forcing me to drop what I am doing to see who is calling. Or having to ignore the ringing and then put up with the 50% chance of then dealing with a spam voicemail I have to then play and erase. Or dealing with those messages when I get home. Similar issues with cell phone, although I have a bit more control on that. It is still no less annoying.
I want a way to press a button and report the call immediately to the police/enforcement agency/whatever, and then after they get X reports they get fined/shutdown/thrown in jail or something like that. If there are no real consequences, nothing will really change much.
>"You're completely ignoring all the people living in apartheid in Palestine, you're completely ignoring the daily human rights abuses against the Palestinians, etc."
I am not ignoring it, I simply pointed out that comparing Israel to China is like comparing a kitten to a tiger. They might both be felines, but there are some HUGE differences between them.
Looks like this so does not bode well for one of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal which envisions cris-crossing the USA with high speed rail. Next on the Deal's list for red pill economic reality - the paying for those who are "unwilling to work."
>"Is It Ethical To Purchase Electronics Products Made In China?"
Here are some reply questions: Do we even have a choice? Exactly what can I buy that isn't made in China? What is the proposed solution? Ban imports from China? Is THAT "ethical"? Drive prices up so high on products that poorer people here can't afford to buy anything? Is THAT "ethical"? Is it "ethical" to try and interfere with another sovereign nation's political and operational process? Even if we restricted trade based on "ethicality", how effective would that be? (We are far from their only market) And how much influence would we THEN have? Is there some difference between electronics/IT and any other products we buy from China? (Other than perhaps spyware, which has nothing to do with human rights inside THEIR borders).
Slashdot Mirror
>"Android's back button might be going away entirely, replaced with a quick swipe to the left from the home button."
I have already been doing this on my Moto G5 for a very long time. You can change the fingerprint thing to be a back button by swiping to the left and home by tapping it. This removes the on-screen buttons that rob space. It seems to work relatively well. But it is NOT intuitive for someone like my Mom....
>"But ISPs -- never. There are simply too many of them to ever honestly say there is a monopoly."
Nonsense. Where I live, there is one and ONLY one option for ISP (where it is defined with usable speed/latency). This is actually the case for most Americans. Radio never materialized. Satellite is too slow and laggy. DSL is too slow, unreliable, and generally unavailable unless you are X feet from the CO. Cable companies use their cable right-of-way and infrastructure to pile Internet service on top in a way that works. And, again, in most areas, nobody else can use or replicate that infrastructure. I essentially have one and only one choice, which makes it a monopoly.
>"Telephone companies are still exclusive franchisees. They are a monopoly -- on wired telephone service. "
"Are they? I have at least two choices for land phone service- one from Verizon and one from Cox. So that actually isn't a monopoly at all. At least not in my city. But, in my State, Verizon was forced to allow third party phone services on Verizon lines! So there are actually several choices available to me. One I think was called "Cavalier" (my Mom actually used that).
>"Being an incumbent in ANY market is an advantage. But "incumbent" is not "monopoly".
If you are the only player in the market, by definition, you are a monopoly. It doesn't matter HOW it happened in the definition.
>"It's an economic monopoly if anything (and in most places it isn't even that), not a government-granted one."
When it came about because of government intervention in the first place... like it typically did with cable, does it matter? I am not saying there are any laws here PREVENTING competition. But their intervention caused the monopoly to exist. And that advantage they now have (and no requirement they share their lines) means the monopoly will continue to exist, as it has for many years.
Perhaps if 5G services get robust enough, they can finally break the cable companies' stronghold on ISPs. I am not holding my breath, though...
>"You're not missing anything, Iron Fist was terrible."
Well, at least I found it more interesting than Punisher season 2. I swear, I have tried for weeks to watch it. I have fallen asleep over and over during watching after the 3rd episode and can't seem to get past episode 5.
>"But I'm part of the problem I guess. I'm too lazy to cancel my monthly subscription and even though I keep telling myself it's time to cut them loose, I keep thinking they've got to improve sometime but they never do."
I think I fit into that, too. I kinda plan to wait for them to raise the price (which is coming soon), and THEN immediately cancel.
Of course, I will continue "DVD", since from that I continue to get actual get movies...
>"Sabetha Rep. Randy Garber sponsored legislation requiring the software installations and dictating purchasers would have to pay a $20 fee to the state, and whatever cost was assessed by retail stores, to remove filters for "obscene" material. No one under 18 would be allowed to have filter software deleted. "It's to protect children,"
Wow- rainbows and unicorns! Save the children! It is so easy, why didn't anyone thing of that before? Perhaps that software can magically also stop all spam Email and spam telephone calls and fraud and poverty and hatred too?
>"Why wouldn't anybody like this?"
Oh.... because it won't work. It is costly. It restricts freedom. It interferes with proper use. It requires locked-down devices. It will be abused. When it fails and filters something it shouldn't, it is an effective government ban on the first amendment. It will grease the palms of only certain vendors. I could go on...
>"Australia used to gave gun problems."
And they still do. Their "gun violence" was already going down, year after year UNTIL their confiscation. Then it stalled before returning to the previous downward trend. "Gun violence" in the USA has also been steadily going down and down. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Now they regularly bust people with millions of dollars of drugs & no gun because the gun would be REAL JAIL TIME."
Duh, "the gun" would be "real jail time" in the USA when EXISTING laws are enforced. That is exactly what happened in Richmond, VA when the Feds started a program there. 5 year mandatory for illegally having a gun. That didn't require ANY additional non-sense gun control laws. And it didn't affect ANY of the good armed people who were legal. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Look at that.. they have way less kids killing kids than you Amerikuks."
Per capita, the rate they had before and after the ratio didn't change hardly at all. And the decreasing rate didn't improve over the decreasing rate in the USA. 103 countries have a higher per capita homicide rate than the USA. And the USA has a violent crime rate lower than 12 of the 17 most-industrialized nations. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"But yer guns make you freeeeeee"
No, good people having guns GREATLY reduces gun crime. It can be both a very effective deterrent and effective way to protect yourself and those you care about. Up to a 2.5 million crimes are averted every year in the USA by good (non-police) citizens using guns defensively. But don't let facts get in the way of your beliefs...
>"Are you suggesting it's "abuse of power" to negotiate with corporations to bring their employment dollars into town, really?"
Yes, it can be. I am not saying it necessarily is, but that it can be. Especially when it is given as favors, or due to their palms being greased, or due to a conflict of interest. And it can be very harmful to the tax payer if the total cost/benefit analysis is flawed or inaccurate.
>"I guess you didn't internally check your logic before you blurted again. Typical Trump traitor problems."
You need to find some meds or something. I am neither a Trump fan nor traitor. In fact, "Trump" has nothing to do with the discussion whatsoever. Perhaps you have "Trump derangement syndrome"? But, yeah, keep flinging unfounded insults safely behind your cowardly anonymity...
>"New York Mayor...' 'This is an example of an abuse of corporate power,' de Blasio told NBC"
I suppose all these major "incentives", bonuses, express permitting, promises, tax cuts, state-funded infrastructure for private benedit, and other such things are not "an example of an abuse of government power"?
>"If they banned ad blockers everybody would move to Firefox. They can't afford that."
I was about to post the same thing.
THANK YOU, FIREFOX
Whether you use it or not, the fact that it exists most certainly prevents a complete takeover by Google and the resulting lack of freedom. And my suggestion is, if you value freedom, privacy, open standards, and choice, to use Firefox whenever possible, and encourage others to do so, also. The days of Chrome being "much faster" or "better" on the desktop [MS-Windows, Linux, MacOS] are long since gone.
>"Somehow on Android, people don't move to Firefox so they still don't allow ad blockers in their [Chrome] browser [on Android]."
I also use it on Android, even though on Google's platform it seems to have an unfair performance disadvantage (I wonder why that is).
>"So how come no one starts a new ISP and undercuts Comcast?"
Because of government intervention. Almost all ISP's operate in a monopoly granted or created by local or state governments. That is certainly the case here. Nobody can compete with Cox, because the local government gave one and only one company the "keys to the kingdom: way-back-when and then allowed them to provide any services they want on that physical line. Even if the market is supposedly free in that sector, no other company was given the incentives that X got on the onset... so nobody else can afford to enter the market.
Now, the motive might have been good at the time, and Cox does cover 100% of the houses in all the cities involved, but the results are now high prices, less innovation, and mediocre service due to zero competition. Consumers have a choice of X or nothing.
>"So the predictable actions of a small percentage of consumers should be extrapolated to the general population?"
That certainly seems to be the current mindset of gun control advocates. Despite study after study showing such increased control does NOT stop or deter the tiny percent of bad people and DOES hurt good people.
With freedom, there is some risk. No matter what the thing is being discussed. If you want the freedom to repair things, there will always be some added risk. But without that freedom, things could be very bleak, indeed.
>"There are some people who believe they have a right to profit."
Profit is a requisition for business to exist. Without profit, a business cannot survive long. And without the expectation of profit, why would any business start in the first place. Profit is what allows capital to expand, savings for down-turns, attraction investment, incentive to develop, etc.
>" That doing what they did yesterday is going to work forever, and that they never need change anything at all. Those people don't deserve to stay in business."
Without profit, they won't. In a free market, other companies will come along who will innovate and can produce newer, better, different, and/or cheaper solutions and undercut the competition, forcing them to do the same or die.
>"Now if we want a start in fixing things simply disallow all export of produce and meats from US businesses and that would push down grocery prices quite a bit."
The economy is more complicated than that. If you cut all exports, there will be oversupply and prices will drop greatly. This is true. But THEN the free market will react and many agricultural businesses will not be able to survive on those lower prices. They will do a combination of shutting down production, raising prices, laying off workers, lowering quality, seek cheap replacement imports, etc... or go out of business. If you subsidize production more, then taxes go up and people have less money and their purchasing power goes down, which is similar to higher prices.
>"A difference in your return doesn't indicate anything about whether you paid more or less tax compared to earlier years"
That is true. But those of us who do their own taxes AND understand that witholdings has nothing to do with what taxes you actually pay, DO know how much less tax we paid for 2018.
>"You may have paid less tax and also seen a lower return because your withholding changed."
Exactly. In my case, it was about 6% less than taxes I paid last year (and I have no deductions or other changes- I took the standard deduction). This is despite having the smallest refund I have ever had.
>"But the assumption that the password database is secure is a big one. An unsalted password databases is a gold mine for an attacker."
Agreed. My biggest issue was their illogical jump from one example to a broad statement that can't be made.
>"As for any remaining practical purposes, you simply need something stronger than passwords, because humans aren't going to be any good at memorized ten character strings of pure gobbledygook."
Unfortunately, there isn't much else- not if one of the criteria is something you "know". You can add a second factor authentication, but that is usually something you have (phone, token, etc). But that alone is often worse security than just something you know. Other options would be something you are (biometrics) which can be very complicated, and somewhere you are (which is pretty good for increasing security). Not an easy problem to solve, since most require a lot of complex stuff, expense, inconvenience, support, and often is privacy violating (like I don't WANT to give my phone number or fingerprints to X).
>"NIST's latest guidelines say passwords should be at least eight characters long. Some online service providers don't even demand that much."
The example given is an old method and assumes the cracker has access to the stored encrypted password. Then the discussion turns to a wide/broad generalization about ALL password lengths, and web sites were the example. This isn't logical. An 8 character password is way strong enough if you don't have access to the stored data and all you can do is try brute force- which is easily defeated by throwing in delays or limits.
It also depends on the method used to store the passwords, even if you have access to the stored data,
>'Live trap the cats, get them spayed/neutered"
Get them spayed/castrated OR get them neutered. Spay is female, castrate is male. Neuter is either/both.
Otherwise, agreed.
>"This is why you spay and neuter "
No, it is why you "neuter". Spay is female. Castrate is male. Neuter is either male nor female. Yes, pedantic, but it one of those bad phrases that drives me crazy. It has been misused so horribly for so many years, it has become common now.
Saying "spay and neuter" is equivalent to saying "remove sex organs from female and remove sex organs from female and male". So either say "neuter animals" or say "spay or castrate animals."
Yes, most pets and all strays need to be neutered to stop the suffering.
>"The 3D printed component isn't particularly notable."
Indeed. But neither is having an "unregistered" firearm notable. The only thing that is the real issue is that he was not legally allowed to POSSES a firearm at all. It doesn't matter how he obtained it- made it, borrowed it, bought it from a dealer (that would have been very difficult), got it as a gift, found it; it was illegal in his case no matter what.
>"The school day starts at more or less the same time everywhere in India"
Well, perhaps THAT is the main problem then? Perhaps they should start school an hour later or earlier on the fringes. Or is there some law not allowing that? Wow, such a complicated problem.
Trying to force accurate caller ID is a good START, if it ever happens. However, it will not STOP the calls from occurring. It might help us DEAL with the calls. It might help report calls (if there was a way to do so). But as long as there is no enforcement and no tools for consumers and no criminal penalties, the calls will just keep right on coming. I don't know about you, but having an accurate ID on my home phone does nothing to prevent such calls from: Irritating me. Interrupting me. Waking me up. Forcing me to drop what I am doing to see who is calling. Or having to ignore the ringing and then put up with the 50% chance of then dealing with a spam voicemail I have to then play and erase. Or dealing with those messages when I get home. Similar issues with cell phone, although I have a bit more control on that. It is still no less annoying.
I want a way to press a button and report the call immediately to the police/enforcement agency/whatever, and then after they get X reports they get fined/shutdown/thrown in jail or something like that. If there are no real consequences, nothing will really change much.
>"You're completely ignoring all the people living in apartheid in Palestine, you're completely ignoring the daily human rights abuses against the Palestinians, etc."
I am not ignoring it, I simply pointed out that comparing Israel to China is like comparing a kitten to a tiger. They might both be felines, but there are some HUGE differences between them.
Looks like this so does not bode well for one of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal which envisions cris-crossing the USA with high speed rail. Next on the Deal's list for red pill economic reality - the paying for those who are "unwilling to work."
>"there absolutely is an ethical responsibility to avoid purchasing products made in China, just as there is with Israel."
Did you just compare the human rights/freedom situation in China to the free/democratic ISRAEL?? Seriously?
https://object.cato.org/sites/... (USA 17, Israel 49, China 135)
https://www.heritage.org/index... (ISA 12, Israel 27, China 100)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Israel #1 in middle east)
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/2... (Israel #10 of happiest people on earth. USA #14. China- not even on list.)
https://www.jewishvirtuallibra...
>"Is It Ethical To Purchase Electronics Products Made In China?"
Here are some reply questions: Do we even have a choice? Exactly what can I buy that isn't made in China? What is the proposed solution? Ban imports from China? Is THAT "ethical"? Drive prices up so high on products that poorer people here can't afford to buy anything? Is THAT "ethical"? Is it "ethical" to try and interfere with another sovereign nation's political and operational process? Even if we restricted trade based on "ethicality", how effective would that be? (We are far from their only market) And how much influence would we THEN have? Is there some difference between electronics/IT and any other products we buy from China? (Other than perhaps spyware, which has nothing to do with human rights inside THEIR borders).