2xpress

Indeed a good point. Had the US elected representatives had better morals none of this would have ever happened. It would have been pre-empted decades ago. But we have no influence over their morals, only an ability to vote for or against them. Those elected by definition are the best people available. So if they don't have good morals that means the whole society does not have good morals. I suppose the best we can do is to try to have better morals ourselves and hope to positively influence the rest of society to make better moral choices...

All that is hard, and that's why evil like Putin prevails...

At least those are "allies" and not existential threats.

I do not support Cook and Pachal getting arrested over submitting to Putin over their employees being held hostage, but they should definitely pull Apple and Google out of Russia and Communist China. US government should help out, at least by prohibiting US citizens from traveling to these regions without a special exception. Should be easy to do during the pandemic anyway, beats me why the government is so weak about it.

There is F-Droid but Navalny app is not on it https://search.f-droid.org/?q=Navalny&lang=en Android does also allow installing apps directly from APK. (Crapple separate issue.) Too bad Navalny team did not try to go open-source route.

They also could have just uploaded their database of candidates to Github.

And only charged with misdemeanor "battery" without any enhancements. Had the perps not been police it would be multiple felonies + enhancements for things like gang activity and firearm possession. Looks to me like the DA does not want to upset the police and their unions and is only doing the very minimum to make an impression that he is working.

The proper approach is not to replace the police, but to transform the police, by implementing systems to systematically weed out any crooked, violent, lazy, and unprofessional officers. Such systems have already been implemented for many other professions, just not for the police, due to police unions and their huge influence on politicians. So the progress is very slow.

According to https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/202005103 FairPhone does not ship to United States, and according to https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047326452 "When it comes to the United States and Canada, 4G(LTE) will not always work..."

The phone and parts can likely still be obtained over eBay or similar.

Has anybody here tried to use Fairphone in the US, and if so, what was your experience, and with which carrier?

Sorry, but aside from an occasional guy pushing an ice cream cart, I do not normally see vendors at local parks in United States. I recall once I was solicited to buy firewood at a county park, but when those guys saw the park ranger coming they drove away. I cannot think of a single instance when I saw a bolted-down structure selling food or anything else in a park, or anything with commercial signs. Those belong on a regular street in a business district.

The closest I've seen to what you're describing is designated areas for food vendors at county fairs, food trucks at swap meets, and vending machines near the restrooms at highway rest areas.

Regardless of the "rent", I do not see how shipping lockers are appropriate for a park. Even the post office does not put mailboxes inside a park. And if this is OK for Amazon does that mean UPS, FedEx, AliBaba, and whoever else can join in??

Yes, this is what corruption looks like.

From the article:

... Ald. Rosanna Rodriguez (33rd) said a Park District supervisor told her the lockers in the park at 3259 N. Elston Ave. were installed there by mistake. Chicago Park District spokeswoman Irene Tostado wouldn’t confirm, saying only, “The locker was installed in the correct park.” ... Rodriguez on Friday asked the Park District supervisor to move the lockers to a more appropriate location... ... A total of 68 Amazon lockers are being installed at Chicago parks across the city, according to a list provided by the Park District... ... Rodriguez said the lockers are a symptom of a larger budgetary issue the city is facing.

“When you have public institutions that are not well-funded, and can’t function with the budget they’re provided by the government, they need to look for other sources of revenue. This is how we get a company like Amazon to have a presence in our public parks. It’s disheartening,” the alderwoman said. ...

Conclusion:

It looks like Amazon is only half the problem here, the other half being corrupt local government bureaucrats taking bribes from Amazon.

But the nature of FOSS software is such that if an undesirable feature is added it can be taken out by the user or the project can be forked.

Like Teracube and Light Phone. For ppl in Europe I recommend Fairphone -- probably the best phone there is right now.

Indeed it is still possible to get a Pinephone, Librem 5, or an Android phone with an unlockable bootloader such as Fairphone (in Europe), Teracube, and lots of Samsung Galaxy phones and put LineageOS on it.

The issue is that "the masses" just "go with the flow" and act like if everybody else is jumping off a cliff then it's ok to jump off a cliff too, and it is these mobs that move the markets and determine which products and services become the most popular.

However, in relatively free countries it is still possible to live one's life on one's own terms and not be in the same herd with the sheeple. It is definitely possible to live life without an iPhone and to have an Android phone with F-Droid rather than the Google Play Store as one's primary phone.

It's really weird how an obviously bad law that's been active for 11 years now and hurt so many people has not been fixed yet.

Perhaps you are being sarcastic in the parent comment, but United States "screwing" its successful people and forcing them out means that these successful people will no longer contribute to United States, but to their new home country instead.

Without their contributions the Unites States will be less successful, thereby "screwing" everybody in it.

This trend within United States is especially ironic and alarming considering that United States gained its success specifically by giving home to persecuted people from other countries with capacity for success. Conversely, other countries, some obvious examples being Nazi Germany and USSR, were not successful specifically because they forced out their successful people.

>> For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect.

So why did the other carriers not want to participate?

Could removing barriers that prevented the other carriers from contributing be a better solution than replacing the one bad carrier with a government bureaucracy?

Stop selling food?? That's just evil!

It's ok to sell food, and every dollar they spend of food is one less for ballistic missiles.

Individual boycotts go together with individual voting for better politicians who will build better policies regarding PRC.

Economic sanctions and boycotts lead to overthrow of governments all the time, that's how USSR collapsed.

And when hundreds of millions of people are living in what is effectively just a very large concentration camp that can harvest anybody's organs at anytime then that's the worst kind of "crippling poverty" there is.

I don't know why the parent is getting voted down, not buying PRC is good advice. Cheap slave labor is the main factor that allowed PRC to grow into a superpower. Ironically, they developed using Taiwan as their model (with the Taiwanese corporate helping -- Foxconn).

Since the tariffs a lot of goods that used to be made in PRC are now (at least assembled) made in Vietnam. I personally regularly pay more just to avoid PRC goods. And PRC goods only seem like a bargain at first glance. I only buy PRC when there does not appear to be an alternative, but it still feels shameful and dirty.

I only wish that the government keeps raising the tariffs on PRC higher and higher. It is truly a shame it was not done immediately post Tienanmen Square massacre.