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"Kill a tree just so that you can feel morally correct and the author gets a 2¢ royalty? "

As others have said, you seem shockingly unaware that trees are GROWN specifically for making paper.

NO ONE is cutting down premium "old growth" forests to make paper..

Nice "virtue signal" on your part, too bad you did not spend 5 mins to learn where paper comes from first.


Adding to this, region restrictions on video content.

There are TV shows which are made in Canada, and unavailable on amazon prime in Canada, yet are available on amazon prime in the US?

In Canada, amazon prime tries to push me to getting yet another subscription?

There are also shows Amazon prime owns and refuses to broadcast in Canada? You might be able to say that prime doesnt have redist rights on some shows, but their own "prime originals"?

After fragmenting the market like this, what did they expect people would do?


To be fair, that is probably partially fallout from the Canadian content regulations and possibly other law regarding corporate ownership. Not sure because it has been over two decades since I was current in that stuff.


They actually just passed a new law last week to legislate even more CanCon meddling on online streaming sites, including YouTube and social media feeds.

Canada subsidizes an entertainment industry that mainly produces things nobody wants to watch, so they're regulating companies to algorithmically force it on Canadians.

The amazing shows and movies that have come out of Canada in the last 20 years are popular because they're good... not because of some visibility issue with the rest of the fodder from companies that spend more on admin related to lucrative tax breaks and grants than they do actually producing content.


My impression back then was that the TV cancon rules were a disaster, and the music ones may have helped more than hurt, after the first 10 years or so.


In my experience, usually Prime content is on Crave in Canada. But a whole lot of Canada just has a pirate Kodi box anyway.


> I think the people complaining in this thread would complain about anything.

So much THIS!

If they were free, people would complain that you still have to pay property taxes/utilities.

Everyone LOVES to criticize but that same group rarely offers solutions, lest others criticize them.

Here (Ontario, Canada) housing is a major issue for the reason you list : Nobody is big enough to push back and make it happen.

Try and build anything here and you will be NIMBY to death. I ride my bike by an area where they are tying to build low-rise apartments and everywhere you look are signs protesting it.. where should they build?


Let us guess, you are also fabulously wealthy? For some odd reason fictional spies seem to be very wealth as well.

If you worked for CSIS it is unlikely you would be posting that you worked there, same for the CIA. Did you somehow just transfer to the CIA and as a "foreign national" all the confidential material marked "NOFORN" was suddenly available to you, a foreigner?

Declaring yourself a "spy" in public.. Any chance you have yet to reach the age of majority?


I'm sorry but reading your posts here is just comical.

Can you explain why there are countless stories such as this:

NSA staff used spy tools on spouses, ex-lovers: watchdog https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-surveillance-watchdog...

You keep writing they were not spying on US citizens, but clearly they were or NSA employees would not be using it to spy on friends/family would they?

Did they coin the term "LOVEINT" because this was a one-off situation?


If you bothered to read your article, you would notice it said that they spied on foreign lovers outside the US. https://slate.com/technology/2013/09/loveint-how-nsa-spies-s... goes into more detail. One of them searched for the email addresses of an American girlfriend, but that search would have come up empty unless it was mentioned in an email from a foreigner outside the US being wiretapped.


It sounds to me like that user is arguing in bad faith. We know that intelligence agencies attempt to influence online discussions about their own activities; it wouldn't surprise me to find out that they're being paid to post here as part of a US gov disinformation campaign to sway public opinion in favor of NSA. That or they've received all of their education on the subject by the perpetrators.

Either way, it's clear they're not coming from a place of promoting transparency or a critical perspective of the government's actions. There's nothing wrong with being a patriot but this is a conversion about government misbehavior, not a loyalty contest.

It's probably best to just ignore them, which is what I'll be doing going forward.


Sometimes you find a very underrated comment here, and this is one of those instances.

I NEVER subscribe to free trial offers simply because of the number of negative posts about how hard it is to cancel, and the pain involved.

It absolutely does hurt "good actors".


I do sub to free trials, if I have the time/energy to immediately cancel afterward. I never leave it until later for the above reasons.


More and more I've been seeing the pattern where if you cancel a 7 day trial on day 3, it ends immediately.


Still solved by my approach. If you sign up and cancel immediately and the trial is over before you start, you just move on from that service.


This is what i find most interesting about this whole debate.

Read the comments on the article itself, it is just full of "i dont want to do this".. so great, don't sideload apps (no one is forcing them to), but why are they so keen on preventing others from doing it as well?


Apple's leverage has given it de-facto regulatory power that it has, to a considerable extent, used in my favor.

It might be that nothing changes if sideloading is made much easier, or other browser engines allowed, or whatever. But, that's not guaranteed.

Since I like the current situation—at least, better than the alternative of having no one push back on things like spyware-loving megacorps—I'm not in favor of risking changes to it.

My ideal situation would be that a lot of what Apple prevents on their platform were illegal everywhere so it'd hardly matter, but the US, at least, does not seem to be heading that direction anytime soon.

So, that's why. It risks changing the current situation such that I would find it worse, overall, and I'd prefer not to risk that.


> Apple's leverage has given it de-facto regulatory power

Indeed. This is called "being an monopoly" and "using anti-competitive practices to control a market, in violation of anti monopoly laws".

Yes, anti competitive practices work.

Yes, being a monopoly works.

And yes, it has produced some good things like Apple's focus on privacy.

But it has also produced other very not good things, like the 30% Apple tax.

But, it is at least comforting that people are now saying the quiet part out loud, which is "yep, Apple had anti competitive market power the whole time, I just like monopolies".


> But, it is at least comforting that people are now saying the white part out loud, which is "yep, Apple had anti competive power the whole time, I just like monopolies".

It's... been the entire argument, the whole time, for the "please don't change it" side. I'm not even aware of another angle on it. It's never been "quiet".

> I just like monopolies

I like my life being better than it might otherwise be. In this case, yes, that means I'd rather this monopoly stick around at least a while longer. I'm entirely not a fan of black-and-white positions on most issues. Monopolies generally suck. In this case, however, one particular monopoly seems to be giving me significant benefits I might not otherwise have. Now, if I could trade Apple's monopoly for a harsh crackdown on monopolies across the whole economy, that'd be easily worth it—yes, please. Just to "liberate" iOS devices, though? Nah, I'd rather they leave it alone.


> . It's never been "quiet".

Well, it gets conveniently ignored anytime someone would bring up problems with said monopoly.

For example, the 30% Apple fee is a consequence of their anti-competitive market power.

And yet, if you start complaining about that, the response will be to pretend like the anti-competitive market power doesn't exist, and that you should just "go publish on a different app store" if you don't want to pay that monopolistic fee.

You can't have it both ways here. You cannot say that you like their monopoly power, and then pretend like it doesn't exist when the same exact market power allows Apple to extra 30% of the money from the app store market.

> Now, if I could trade Apple's monopoly....... Just to "liberate" iOS devices, though? Nah, I'd rather they leave it alone.

Well then you should blame Apple for the situation we are in now.

People wouldn't be forced to regulate Apple, if they hadn't been abusing their market power for a decade.

If Apple had instead chosen to lower their app store fee, to 5%, then we could have gotten the best of all worlds, which is a focus on privacy, and no monopolistic fees.

Its too late for that now. If only Apple hadn't fought these efforts so much, they could have given everyone a worthwhile compromise.


I like the phrase “de-facto regulatory power.” Not only is it the case that we don’t have to deal with annoying stuff like “enable the facebook store to download our app,” that is, poorly behaving apps in non-official stores. It also takes away one of bluffs that Facebook and friends could make. They don’t even have the ability to say “Apple, make your rules more permissive or I’ll open up a Facebook store.” They don’t even get to negotiate. It is great.

If alternative app stores were allowed, I’d probably download a GNU iOS store. But that’s about it, and it just isn’t worth it.


It's probably a misguided fear based on how bad things are even with the App Store, but I'm worried about each company moving its software to its own sites and requiring a more complicated, frustrating, or more privacy-invasive process to use the software over the requirements set by the App Store.


> Read the comments on the article itself, it is just full of "i dont want to do this".. so great, don't sideload apps (no one is forcing them to), but why are they so keen on preventing others from doing it as well?

because it's going to make unscrupulous companies like google/fb/etc all force you to go through their app clients to install their sideloaded apps, without any of the scrutiny and control the apple store has provided historically. that's not really a world I want to live in. While yes, I can just uninstall those apps, some are nearly intrinsic to a mobile experience, like the youtube app.


Shouldn’t most of the protections come at the OS layer? Weird tracking nonsense isn’t stopped by App Store policy alone (far from it!)


Apple can and has threatened to pull apps from the store for unscrupulous behavior. Absolutely no one is claiming that the app store itself provides protection. It's the fact that Apple can decide who gets to publish on a device that over a billion people use.

I'm also not really sure how OS level protections would prevent an app from sending out data it shouldn't. Apple is acting as a regulator here because no one else is.


Similarly how they do it on Android?


1) Android doesn't restrict spying as much as Apple does,

2) Android is far, far less lucrative per-user than iOS.

Maybe sideloading on iOS will work out like Android has. Maybe not.


You will be forced to if say an app you depend on goes outside


Why do you keep posting misleading information over and over again on this topic?

People are literally PROTESTING the closure, but yet here you are, once again with your BS...

The one "lying" clearly is you...

https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicago-walmart-closures-p...

CHICAGO - Activists protested the closure of four Chicago Walmart stores Thursday morning in Chatham.

https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/chicagoans-blast-walmart...

Community activists gathered at 84th and Stewart in Chatham at the site of one of four Walmarts that is set to close, slamming the retailer’s decision.

“Everything I go into this store, it is packed with people,” said Father Michael Pfleger.


Why not spend 20 seconds and GOOGLE it and find out for yourself.

what changed? The laws around prosecuting shoplifters:

"Previously, if you were charged with theft or retail theft, and the value of the item or items taken was over $300 you could be charged with a class 4 felony. A class 4 felony carries with it a penalty of between 1-3 years in prison. The new statute has raised the value of the item to $500."


300->500 threshold strikes me as a relatively minor change akin to inflation, this seems unlikely to be the primary driver.

My impression is that a lot of people are struggling to make ends meet, and stealing from a walmart employed by careless slackers is always a more attractive option than from your neighbor or straight up armed mugging/robberies. I highly doubt the $500 felony threshold is what's green-lighting them vs $300.


A PS5 is more than $300 but less than $500 as an example.


No single items over $200 are readily accessible in any WalMart I've been to, certainly not in the last decade. But the whole expensive electronics behind lock and key practice started long ago...


Speaking of "Wrong"...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10112809/Chicago-bl...

https://chicagocrusader.com/shoplifting-a-big-problem-at-loc...

But you just put "wrong" with zero facts, this surely makes you right..


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