ChromeOS is a good idea if all they do is surf; security risks are pretty low. iPhones are also fairly safe, but the older they get, the slower they'll get and the more you have to support them. I've had to explain to my dad that eventually the software on the phone will be so old that new apps can't go on it. He looks at me in confusion and aggression and asks why, as though I'm responsible for Apple's planned obsolescence.
My family was ultimately able to convince my grandmother to get rid of her computers altogether, when her dementia really kicked in. I think we were lucky as she never really got on with computers, and would tell anyone who'd listen how computers 'came in' to her office the year she retired (in the 90s) and so never needed to learn.
> I've had to explain to my dad that eventually the software on the phone will be so old that new apps can't go on it. He looks at me in confusion and aggression and asks why
I’m with dad on this one! I have so much perfectly good hardware that becomes increasingly useless because Apple stopped providing updates, and 3rd party software developers insist that I’m running the absolute latest OS. I’m at that point yet again with an iPhone 7 that works flawlessly but when I go to get new apps, “SORRY LOSER. You need bleeding edge iOS for your bank’s stupid app!”
I’ll channel your dad’s aggression if I ever meet a Schwab software engineer in person. I complain to every Apple employee I know, too, but they all look at me like I’m crazy for not just buying a new phone every year.
You fail to understand how software development and maintenance works.
OFC you need an updated system that has all known security holes fixed to run homebanking apps.
Also, as a dev I would only support one config and not a myriad of different devices and operating system versions (APIs). Livelong. For 3$ purchase price. On all devices. For the whole family.
And imho Apple devices are supported much longer than most Android ones...
An analogy is not a valid argument. Analogies are useful for illustrating a concept, but a waste of time when trying to support a claim. Also, your analogy does not seem analogous to me.
Sir this is a Wendy's. We actually can not serve you lobster. Our kitchen doesn't support cooking lobster so sorry you will have to go find somewhere else.
> You fail to understand how software development and maintenance works.
OK, dude. It's not like I've been in software for 25 years, 15 of them being on mobile, both on the OS side and on the third party app side. But, yea, I fail to understand.
On the 3p side, I've heard all the lame excuses, and they are almost all excuses rather than reasons. The big one is that supporting older versions blows up the test matrix (the number of device/OS/API level combinations that need to be validated). I can understand if you're a hobbyist, you might not be able to afford to buy the "myriad of different devices" and aren't staffed to test your app on each one. But if you are any kind of serious business, you signed up for this investment when you decided to write apps. Throwing a couple of older devices running older OSes onto that test plan should not blow your budget, and if it does, you probably shouldn't be writing that banking software to begin with. Also, almost all of your testing is automated, right? (Please say Yes). So it's not like you need to hire more human testers as your test matrix grows. If you are unable to support more than the bleeding edge OS, it makes me wonder what kind of fly-by-night developer shop you are.
The second excuse is about valuing developer convenience over users. "Oh, the new OSes contain cool new stuff that we want to take advantage of, and it's a total bummer to maintain the code paths that support 'legacy' devices." You already have the code that runs on the previous OS or API level, you're choosing to get rid of it, deliberately throwing users under the bus, so that you can clean code up or at least not have to maintain it. Bad tradeoff IMO.
There are a whole bunch of other little excuses for no longer targeting older systems, and most of them boil down to either cost, laziness, or a skill issue. None of them respect the end user.
I have a little more sympathy on the OS side. Sometimes a major step forward on the hardware (particularly the CPU architecture) might make it really tempting to cut off previous versions. I still think both major mobile OSes cut off old devices way too early. I have PCs from the early 2000s that can still run modern Linux distributions, so support for old hardware is usually technically possible, just inconvenient and costly. I'm not asking companies to support devices from 20 years ago, but they could.
Your "security holes" excuse is ridiculous: All major OS vendors already provide security updates to at least 5 previous major OS releases. There is no security reason for an app developer to support only the bleeding edge latest OS.
Part of it is also Apple. They don't hesitate to break things across OS versions, whether it's on iPhones or Macs. Unlike Windows which will run basically anything ever built for Windows. Also AutoLayout is bad at adapting to new screen sizes. The iPhone app I built in high school targeting a 3GS was more futureproof than a lot of newer apps cause I just used C macros to calculate UI sizes/positions.
End result, even a simple "fart button" app has probably broken several times.
> Throwing a couple of older devices running older OSes onto that test plan should not blow your budget, and if it does, you probably shouldn't be writing that banking software to begin with. Also, almost all of your testing is automated, right? (Please say Yes).
Yeah but a lot of apps will require the very latest iOS for no reason other than the dev happened to build it that way per Xcode defaults, and some apps will also require you to use the latest version of the app at all times.
The replies you're getting are a bit reminiscent of the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" defense of firearms - like, yes that's true, but the gun makes it a lot easier to do.
Sure, maybe? But if you were gonna stack rank death machines in order of death (in the US at least) and ban them, it'd go something like:
Drugs and alcohol first (or drugs first and alcohol second if you split them apart), then pistols second, cars, knives, blunt objects, and rifles.
We tried #1 already, it didn't really work at all. Some places try #2 (pistols) to varying degrees of success or failure. Then people skip 3, 4 (well except London doesn't skip 4), 5, and try #6.
And underlying that all is 50 years of stagnating real wages, which is probably the elephant in the room.
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I'd posit that using an LLM to respond to a 10 page long ranting email is missing the real underlying problem. If the situation has devolved to the point where you have to send a 10 page rant, then there's bigger issues to begin with (to be clear, probably not with the ranter, but rather likely the fact that management is asleep at the wheel).
Is that even true? I feel like a lot of unhealthy foods are easy to eat with your hands, and a lot of healthy foods are hard to eat without a fork or a spoon
The story isn't about LLMs doing LLM stuff. It's about lawyers using LLMs as a shortcut for proper legal work, laboring under the delusion that it is entirely accurate, honest and 'intelligent', and the ramifications for the legal system.
Personal liberty arguments and all that aside, this comes across like the NZ government actually wanting people to smoke, so the tax income can fund tax cuts elsewhere. Quite sinister.
It's also wildly hypocritical regarding cannabis, which is just as much a drug and could provide huge tax windfalls besides cutting out the gang profits and enforcing safety/quality standards, but nooooo, just can't do that, simply impossible.
(Also New Zealander here, weird how many of us suddenly appear to post!)
I won't say it's not sinister, but surely it's not surprising? Every government with public health care is currently balancing the costs of treating smoking related illnesses with the amount of tax money tobacco brings in.
It's pragmatism rather than anything truly evil. Countries are big things to run ;)
wanting to get young people addicted so that they can be taxed.
it’s awful without the taxation, but that detail extends a message they didn’t have enough sense to hold back or at least sanitize - citizens live and die for the state, it does not exist for them, and the youth aren’t special in that regard - they were just an overlooked resource that wasn’t fully squeezed yet. and why wait until adulthood?
That's exactly what it is; the money they plan to acquire through this will be used to pay for the flagship taxcut policy of the largest of the three parties in the new coalition government (the National Party).
I have my share of issues from a personal liberty standpoint, but I know what selling us out to the tobacco companies looks like. (3rd rank National Party member is a former Philip Morris employee, and the second largest party, the ACT Party has a cutout org called 'NZ Taxpayers' Union' has been exposed in the past for taking tobacco industry money, which would be bad enough, but doing so while simultaneously running campaigns related to e-cigarettes)
Pretty much - the new gov campaigned for tax cuts and refused to tell anyone how they'd pay for it... and now we know.
Tax cuts for most will be negligible amounts, and the long term health costs seem to be ignored (even though we have a public health system!).
Very short term thinking to the benefit of tobacco companies and some short term increase in tax revenues (cigarettes are highly taxed in NZ).
Oh, they've also decided to bring back pseudoephedrine tablets too - which prior to being banned had meth cooks paying swarms of people $20 a pack for a quick trip to the pharmacy.
> they've also decided to bring back pseudoephedrine tablets too
I dislike many of their policies but I'm not convinced this one is wrongheaded.
While meth (called 'P' in New Zealand) was often manufactured from pseudoephedrine tablets here, the outright ban on this medication did not seem to have succeeded in lowering the availability of P in the country; after an initial rise in price and reports of lowering of purity, the street price has overall dropped from around 700 NZD / gram in 2009 to around 400 NZD / gram today, as described here[1]
It's just a strange policy for the parties to bring out as soon as they get into government - kind of like a back-door to taxing meth production (not sure how the economics work, but am I wrong?).
Especially given Act and National's "hard stance on gangs and crime" you have to wonder where their incentives lie.
Over here in the States our FDA has finally admitted that the pseudoephedrine replacements are medically ineffective and only work to generate pharma profits.
“For a long time, over-the-counter decongestant products like Sudafed had pseudoephedrine in them. Pseudoephedrine is effective at reducing sinus congestion during colds but is also an ingredient that can be used to make methamphetamine. As a result of abuse of pseudoephedrine-containing products by manufacturers of methamphetamine, federal legislation was passed moving those products behind the pharmacy counter, which made them harder for people to get ahold of for routine use. Since companies would prefer to sell products that people can just easily grab off the shelves, Sudafed and other well-known brands introduced new formulations with another very old over-the-counter active ingredient, phenylephrine. The problem is that phenylephrine doesn’t work, as the FDA finally concluded, unless you directly spritz it onto your nasal passages as with Afrin or products like that.”
But they would have profited anyway with the pseudoephedrine tablets.
I understand they're an effective treatment, the problem I see is that they end up in the wrong hands and pharmacies end up being broken into.
In NZ we've had a problem in the past couple years of people doing "ram raids" which is basically people stealing cars and smashing them through buildings to steal things as well.
Taking everything into account, to me it seems the downsides outweigh the upsides of selling these tablets.
What actual evidence do you base this on? The South African government banned cigarette sale during the lockdowns. Evidence suggests that black market cigarette sales surged and failed to return to previous levels after the ban was lifted.
The economic concern with banning cigarettes is you will have similar numbers of people smoking, but now you've lost the tax revenue on sales while you still have to carry the healthcare costs. You also have increased costs related to policing and adjudicating the ban.
New Zealand has public healthcare. Around 5000 people die here per year as a result of smoking, which reduces any taxes those people would have paid had they not died, as well as costing tax payers for the time they spend in hospital.
The ban on cigarettes here wasn't to be an outright ban but one staggered over a number of years.
There's been a gradual decline of smokers in NZ over the years, so there is some evidence that such laws could be helpful rather than simply creating a black market.
I'm a New Zealander too. I don't really see that this is going to improve their tax position much. How many folks turning 16 are going to take up cigarettes over vaping?
I mean, I agree, their position is stupid and if they already had a problem where they were reversing every policy of the previous govt regardless of merit, this compounds it by taking on a broadly popular idea.
However, I'm not all that comfortable with the ban. I don't smoke, I don't want my kids to smoke... but it still doesn't sit that well with me that you aren't allowed to.
I hate that we've voted in this awful right wing coalition because Labour was underdelivering. I don't see that either big party has any answers to the problems in NZ society right now - housing everyone and being able to see a doctor in good time. They both just piss around at the edges making inconsequential changes and messing with the curriculum. So I either have to be annoyed we have a govt that wants no change at all or a govt that wants change but cannot actually implement anything.
My partner and I specifically avoided diamonds (and ultimately all gemstones) for our engagement rings. We went for unobtrusive silver rings, then shelled out for good quality gold wedding rings from a craftsperson we both knew. I think we spent about $1500 on rings in total and, can you believe it, our marriage has not fallen apart because we didn't spend thousands of dollars getting shiny rocks for our fingers.
Perhaps, but it's pretty sad that we buy things just because they're expensive. In most cases it's just a waste, and you're only hurting your own bank account, but when it comes to diamonds, it actually causes harm.
And yes, I did buy my partner a diamond engagement ring. I wish I'd tried harder to see if she could be happy (or happier, even) with something else, or at least a lab-grown diamond.
its just a marketing stunt that became a culture icon in a society weak to commercial propaganda last century. Its basically a tacky display of status or a modern bride price, something socially incompetent nerds find funny outside the blood part
Labour actively avoid doing anything the Tories can spin to weaponise the electorate against them. They don't feel bold enough to reverse anything the Tories have done, because the Tories will spin it as Labour taking away our freedoms or charging us too much tax whatever nonsense.
> Labour actively avoid doing anything the Tories can spin to weaponise the electorate against them
Except on immigration, where the roles are reversed [1]. That's why immigration to the UK increased post-Brexit, despite the referendum being an expression of anti-immigration sentiment [2].
They take even longer to any electoral payoff (even if it's positive), both because of the legal minimum age and because younger people tend to participate less in elections.
They don't have to physically vote. They just give their ballot slip to a "Community Leader" and he fills them all in for the candidate. See Tower Hamlets as an example.
The only irregularities I know about in Tower Hamlets were (1) illegal at the time, (2) caught, (3) not of a large enough scale to change the result, and (4) were cited as a reason for the change of law forcing all voters to present photo ID at the booth[0].
Also: What ballot slips? You don't get a ballot slip if you're not on the electoral register, and that only happens at voting age. Waiting for migrant's unborn kids to reach that age will always take longer than waiting for their parents, who, again, don't start off able to vote as soon as they arrive.
[0] this in turn was condemned as a way to suppress votes from various communities (because e.g. some of the ID was allowed if you were a pensioner, but the identical equivalent ID for students wasn't).
If your own policies are so easily weaponized against you then maybe your policies aren't very good. Is it so hard to believe that regular voters might have ideological reasons for preferring a smaller, less intrusive government that imposes lower taxes?
And blaming a hostile media is entirely too facile. Other politicians and parties have managed to win despite such obstacles by crafting messages that actually inspire voters.
> Is it so hard to believe that regular voters might have ideological reasons for preferring a smaller, less intrusive government that imposes lower taxes?
Those wanting a "smaller, less intrusive government" should certainly avoid the Conservatives, then; given this government's authoritarian agenda has included:
- Criminalised being noisy (Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act)
- Authorised police to stop and search without suspicion, and the banning of individuals from protesting (Public Order Act)
- Overruled a devolved government (an unprecedented action), specifically to intrude on the personal freedom of Scottish citizens.
- Violated rights (of citizens and non-citizens) so often that they're considering scrapping the Human Rights Act, and withdrawing from international rights bodies.
Those wanting "lower taxes" presumably didn't want this government to raise National Insurance (breaking a specific manifesto promise not to), or their sharp upward trend in most taxes (other than stamp duty and fuel duty; both nominally and as a percentage of GDP) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-r...
whether that was the right choice will be seen in a 20 year timespan, given how soviet-like the direction EU has started taking looks like they might end up winners in this equation.
> given how soviet-like the direction EU has started taking looks
Then they should have left in twenty years. Britain has managed one of the more drastic peacetime reductions in wealth, influence and stability of any rich country post WWII.
The collapse of the USSR to Russia et al might count as a "rich" country doing worse. Can you name any others? Now I think about it, I suppose the loss of the British Empire itself might be one… after all, that was what got it excited to join the European project in the first place, though given national attitudes I'm sure the fact that the French boycotted it initially probably also helped sell the idea.
We're seeing the same in the US. I wonder the where this rise in authoritarianism will lead, especially in the current timeframe where it's so easy to push out misinformation to win narratives and robotic armies you can control with a small team are right around the corner.
Pretty soon revolutions will be impossible and the masses will be slaves to whatever conditions the rulers desire.
Once there was another republic and empire. It also had a Senate, the original one. In this republic populism became also strong, there were even civil wars. Later strong army leaders removed the republic (and then reinstated it on paper). It was not necessarily a dark time for their minions (Pax Augusta). In the end the empire broke down in the west. Much later also in the east, but some say it lives on in the Russian empire (for example Putin). Often enough in history though if a society moved fast in one direction, it would regress to the mean. We'll see.
The difference is the ability to command an army of robots and not having to rely on humans with free with that can turn against you. The (increasingly) mass surveillance society we have combined with robot armies that can police you, enforce whatever rules they want, and oppress you will be imo an unstoppable force. Especially when combined with misinformation controlling the narrative and making half the population thinking there's nothing wrong with any of it.
It's not the Tories alone but the mainstream media that they are in bed with, which has an overwhelmingly right wing/neoliberal bias. The stories of Rupert Murdoch's influence on our politics are not exaggerated.
The last time Labour secured an election victory on the back of a Tory government was when Tony Blair got into bed with the media and played hard ball with PR and spin, all the way back in 1997.
I've no idea what Starmer's strategy is but it seems to be successfully keeping the media's attention on the current government's incompetence.
I don't think Sunak is incompetent, I just think he has his own agenda to enrich himself and his cronies at the expense of the country.
Just look at how Shell and BP got new oil licenses right after they signed massive outsourcing contracts with Infosys, his in-laws business.
Or the way that Tory party donors made millions inflating the prices of PPE purchase during the Covid crisis.
Tory peer Baroness Mone still hasn't faced any legal sanction or paid back £30M she initially said wasn't resting in her offshore bank account.
I contend that Sunak is incompetent in his duty to the country. He is not fit for leadership.
You support that point. His interests don’t serve the country, they serve his interests. By definition that makes him a corrupt or otherwise incompetent leader of the UK.
Starmer's strategy is to just be plain boring. The Tories have made such a mess all he needs to do is not bring any attention on himself or the party and they pretty much win by default. He knows full well that the media in this country will use anything they possibly can to nail him and the Labour party in general, so he's being as boring as he possibly can. Once Labour are in power you'll see some actual policies that the right wing media will attack relentlessly but at that point he's got at least five years, with likely a sizeable majority, to do whatever he wants. And so long as the country feels better in six years time than it does now he's probably got a very good chance of winning the following election as well. The Tories have really fucked up bad this cycle, I reckon it'll be at minimum two election cycles until they're even considered again. With the current poll numbers they may even be relegated into being the third party. There is one major wildcard in the room though which is the potential for a Nato country to get dragged into war (e.g WW3 breaks out) in which case who fucking knows what will happen.
> they may even be relegated into being the third party
This would be hilarious, especially given that second place almost certainly won't be the LibDems given how many people still hate them.
The idea of the SNP being His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition tickles my fancy almost as much as the fact that religions of the leaders of the SNP and the Conservative Party meant that we've now had a Hindu and a Muslim seriously discussing the possibility of a partition of the United Kingdom.
Come on. Even the BBC, which the Tories always say is against them, openly called Jeremy Corbyn "unelectable", right after he won the vote for party leadership. And those statements went unchallenged, while much smaller statements against Theresa May or Boris Johnson were vehemently debated and shouted down.
My family was ultimately able to convince my grandmother to get rid of her computers altogether, when her dementia really kicked in. I think we were lucky as she never really got on with computers, and would tell anyone who'd listen how computers 'came in' to her office the year she retired (in the 90s) and so never needed to learn.