Are there any precedents that companies got sued on this? Not that I doubt you, but it would be nice to see if it actually has teeth or not.

>If we lived in a sane world, people would simply pay for what they use

This is some proper, indoctrinated, corporate bootlicker mentality.

95% of the phones on the market will spy on you, send your data back to the mothership, and they will sell your data to 3rd parties, and they cost $1400-$2000. You pay for the phone which is not even yours after the purchase, and then you still get ads, spied on, and your data sold. Google has a very large monetary incentive already to protect their customers and they do jack shit about the malware/adware in the play store.

TVs are even worse. LG TVs were just found to spy on you and nearby devices while they are off. Do you think those TVs are free? No, they also cost a fortune.

The current state of the world is that even if you pay you will get ads, spying, and malware. Get your head out of your ass.

Achieving something rather than nothing is obviously better, full stop. Bringing dead parents into this is just self help book literature.

Most people's existence are very strongly tied to their job. Not being able to pay basic utilities and food just the first examples.

Obviously, nobody is going to blip out of existence when their layoff notice is signed, everyone knows this and nobody claimed that. If you stepped down from your philosophical post humanist highchair a bit, you would realize that.

No search, no making space in an existing page, no moving text around, cumbersome to take it with you everywhere, unlike a phone.

You don't really need most of this, or it can be solved simply by thinking and remembering.

By that logic you don't really need paper notes either.

I'm pretty sure I could post "standing in the fire is painful and bad for your health" and there would at least be one person in the comments saying "I actually like standing in the fire".

Of course you would! I'm sure you'd see some firefighters or arsonists who would respond in such a manner. It's a very natural thing for some people to find a positive of some kind in things that many people find to be a negative.

Sure intent matters but I still don't see how this warrants the government going after him.

MIT called up the government and said there's this guy. Whether they should have is debatable, but they did.

This is not about the products that are shipped, but the app itself. I would caution people to never install it as well.

Do you trust the X app? Whatsapp? gmaps? Where do you draw the line?

Is it one of these HN usual "ChInA BaD" psychosis ?

In order: no, no, no, and no. I accepted that I can't avoid google spying on me on android, if I could have a phone that works with banking apps without google's crap I would, but thanks to their safetynet racket it's not possible for me.

Oh no fuck that, business 101 is make sure that your checkout page works. There is plenty of competition in this sector, take your money elsewhere.

Most places I worked at cared very little for quality code, there was much more pressure on shipping fast even if it meant incurring technical debt, crap performance for end users, or developers leaving due to legacy code accumulation that nobody understood anymore.

I'm glad there is a tool that let's these companies have even shittier code shipped even faster. The faster they burn down the better.