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Comment by Mordisquitos | Hacker News Reader

We've had decades of 'simple warning signs' or measures as complex as coastguards and yet people are still periodically lost in the wilderness, badly injured, or even killed. Education clearly isn't working here either — what restrictions should we impose on people's right to roam to solve this?

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You clearly know the answer here since you used the word “periodically”. There’s a massive difference between hundreds and millions. No one is stopping you from buying a non Google phone, no one is stopping you from running calyx or graphene. Mitigation for the things that affect the most number of people is how the world works.

> Mitigation for the things that affect the most number of people is how the world works.

Millions of people hurt themselves, physically hurt themselves, every day, doing things that we could easily restrict. Yet we still allow them to buy knives, glassware that can break, hammers, power tools, non automated vehicles of all kinds, the list goes on.

We also spend a lot of time educating them on the dangers, far more than is spent warning about online scams, and we do it at a far earlier age (age 0, for some of them).

Of course we still allow the sale of safe knives and plastic mugs, so people are free to choose; that point still stands. I'd argue that there is more competition in tableware, and less friction shifting between it, than there is in mobile operating systems.

Physical goods are much easier to regulate and legislate than digital worlds. You choose to take a specific level of transit when traveling places, guided by your risk aversion and other things you know. But some stuff you don’t know, like the things that go on behind the scenes to actually make those things safe. From road markings to the type of joints used in train tracks.

This is the exact same thing. We don’t spend time educating users of roads on how the road stripe width affects their safety, nor about how train tracks carry radioactive material through their communities every day. We let the companies and governments work to make things safer for everyone, even if it comes at the expense of some.

I honestly can’t believe I’m having this argument. Making things safer for the world should be a goal we all strive for, even if a very very incredibly small minority lose a tiny tiny bit of what they want.

> No one is stopping you from buying a non Google phone, no one is stopping you from running calyx or graphene.

Google and phone manufacturers have been actively moving in that direction and have a long history of being actively hostile to those things. This is just another move on the same board to restrict these freedoms.

> No one is stopping you from buying a non Google phone

You mean, the iPhone, which restricts everything even more?

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