jackstraw42

This does look like the one from what I've read. Will definitely be giving it a try once I can afford to pick up a Pixel phone.

I haven't said anything about Apple guaranteeing this, I just am saying that Apple seems more trustworthy to me. And unless you can prove Android is actually better, then I still believe that. I feel like people are misunderstanding my original post.

You would probably not be surprised that I would still trust a heavily regulated government that's occasionally broken rather than one that's run in a totally free market by all varieties of selfish interests.

That's fair. Unfortunately, like with the national politics here, we have two shitty options.

I'm sure there are lots more, too. There's no way Apple kept a complete hold on this.

> Would you even find out if an app has been sold to another company on iOS app store?

On this particular issue, no. But I also make a habit of not leaving old apps that I don't use lingering around on my phone. And I'm pretty sure I know all of those haven't been bought out by a data predator, apart from 23andme.

I just trust what Apple has done in other areas for my personal privacy and security, and I know they have insanely high and probably unreasonable standards for their app stores. and I don't install obviously predatory garbage apps. I feel like I could have only achieved this level of confidence in my mobile device with iOS. And to be clear that's just an opinion :)

Ok, thanks for saying that I guess. FYI I wasn't talking directly to you on the second line.

Apple has made policy changes and changes to the app store to make it clearer which apps to avoid. Apple really cares about my privacy, or they tell me they do and I believe them. I think they do because they know how important brand loyalty is to their customers. It's pretty much the thing Apple lives on, never losing the customer's trust. Google clearly leaves it more or less up to nature.

I don't really see how you can guarantee your Android phone doesn't have malware, I feel like you may be exaggerating here.

I also don't mind the downvote, but if you would please tell me how you are able to guarantee your Android phone doesn't have malware, please tell me instead of hiding behind a downvote. Otherwise my solution is don't use an Android device.

wow, downvotes on all three comments! thanks, stranger.

> F-Droid's curation saved me at least once when I wanted to upgrade my Simple™ apps and couldn't find them in F-Droid anymore, which led me to learn that SimpleMobileTools was sold to a company that closed sourced the apps[1] and that there's a free fork called Fossify[2].

> Had I installed these through Google Play, they wouldn't have cared about this particular change and I would've gotten whatever random upgrades the new owners pushed.

sheesh. I've spent my whole mobile device life on iOS and am just now learning an Android device. While I feel I have more control over the finer details of my personal privacy and security, this ecosystem is a total minefield if you care about avoiding spyware and malware.

I'm glad I trusted my instincts and only installed F-Droid first before any apps from the Play Store. Just now found the Isolation app so I can create a Work Profile and separate personal life from the life that the relentless data vacuums are constantly trying to pull from the simplest apps these days.

Neither mobile OS is perfect, but I feel like I was correct about Apple having the user's personal privacy still much more of a priority than Google. There was never any question if those were the two options, IMO. But it does seems like now, finally, Android might be ready to deploy as a mobile operating system for the public. I'm fairly certain that this Android ecosystem that's used its users for so long as guinea pigs (not just Android, but the full unrefined and frankly unsophisticated media sphere as a whole that's been figuring out how to effectively work on us) has harmed the last generation or two beyond repair.

This became all too clear when the first thing I did on my first Android device a few weeks ago was install an offline keyboard from devs with my privacy interests in mind. Spent a few minutes thinking about what it would have been like living with this shitty keyboard system on iOS and realized that honestly, I am lucky that I stuck with iOS through all of this and feel like my mental health is much better than it would have been had I been fighting a malware-riddled Android device this whole time.

edit: I'm not saying you shouldn't use Android or that it's a bad idea, I do think that it is solid enough now (and maybe has been for a while, I don't know) that I can safely protect myself after learning. But ask yourself if all Android users would take the time to properly learn? What about kids?

> Isn't family "skin in the game", in a fairly literal sense?

It is as long as the person really cares about their family. You sure they all do?

Do you understand what I was trying to say?

Well, I think you did a pretty good job of describing the resources that they are consolidating into that one party that controls the military. For now it's just the National Guard going into cities, but didn't they float the idea of sending Marines to LA? There's so much it's impossible to keep track of what's actually going on.

I've always been of the idea that 100 guys with guns gets wiped out with 1 bomb nowadays, so why do individuals arm themselves to the teeth and LARP in the woods? it is looking more like that's going to be a paramilitary arm, or "private consultants" to ICE and CBP. those resources aren't for nothing, and they certainly aren't for taking down the US military.

This is a WW2 figure who had a song written about him after he was martyred. It became the anthem of the Nazi party. I didn't ever hear about him in my many years in the US, until a few days ago on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Wessel

I'm not saying they didn't. But Britain didn't defeat Germany alone, and certainly didn't get the entire share of control after Germany was defeated. And after that the further decline of the UK showed that the power was shifting into the hands of those with wealth anyway, and here we are.

Since around Nixon (maybe?) there has been a gradual post-WW2 deregulation that really accelerated under Reagan and now with Trump its accelerating again. More and more keeps shifting into the hands of unelected, wealthy individuals who see that their power keeps growing and growing and as far as I can tell, won't stop until they have it all. It doesn't make any sense to me why that looks like a stable world to them, but the one thing that is certain is that there is no 2nd amendment that will stop the billionaire club.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying this is obvious and nothing needs to be done, or that I'm totally wrong or what? Or saying that I'm being a conspiracy theorist by seeing parallels?

Yes, I am not downplaying the role of the British and hoped no one would take it that way. The British were the first on alert as far as I know, and without them it would have been a whole lot worse.

USA swoops in towards the end (a large cost as well, but not as much of it and not on their doorstep) and takes a big role in creating the new world.

The Allies defeated Germany, not the British.

Excerpts from this have popped up in Reddit comments quite a bit the last few years. At first it did feel out of place, but now I'm going going back and listening to Dan Carlin talk about the headspace of society before something like Nazi Germany happens. With all the Executive Orders and lawlessness from the Executive Branch and throughout our federal government with this new regime, it's pretty clear they're attempting to do their part to usher in the chaos. "They" are the ones who have the most resources who will rebuild and control after everything goes to shit, like how Europe and the US thrived after WW2 because they were the winners/rebuilders. Currently the right wants to skip the messy war part required to take control of a government and skip to the implementing changes part. Whether or not that actually happens, well right now they're trying to push the left into drawing the line.

I have no idea where our current "line" is but it's not the same as it was last time and who knows what it will look like if we have some kind of civil war out of this.

edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc

The other day I watched this interview with Dan Carlin from 4 years ago and near the beginning the interviewer says something like "I don't think any of us want to draw any comprarisons to current nations and Nazi Germany"

that caught me, because why not? Of course no one wants to actually create parallels, but do we see any? maybe we didn't see as many then, and it was more of a worry in 2021 about even thinking about the possibility of tipping MAGA into that territory. but then again after January 6th we should have seen that they basically don't have a line and are just pushing it gradually. They don't really know what to do when they get the new power either, but the people who could stop it may not even realize it because they haven't had to deal with this kind of thing before. like invading Greenland? taking it from Denmark? how do you even create a response to a suggestion like that? so nothing happens and they see what else they can do.

another edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpWvz0dR3wc&t=570s

The really interesting part of the interview gets going around the 7:50 mark, but here Dan talks about the options if you're an average citizen trying to figure out what to do. A litany of poor options if you're trying to pick a side right now really resonates with me.

As is tradition. The right is always blameless and right.

> The US is being left behind, by its own self sabotage.

Is self-sabotage what it is? To me it seems so intentional it's hard to call sabotage. As an American I can only assume that you are thinking these people are making innocent mistakes? It's not entirely their fault they're being manipulated, but it is their fault they're being driven by some core hatred for an other.

“Prove me wrong”

Not going to engage, but you are absolutely burying your head in the sand, bud.

you're still burying your head in the sand.

you realize it too.

"...or you know, involuntary lethal injections. Just kill em." -Brian Kilmeade, Fox and Friends

well, you can't get the same stuff done that the folks with influence can. like they're working with a better toolbox.

> I don't think I've ever seen a school essay back then that wasn't obviously written by a parent, i.e. the ye olde times version of "chatgpt write this for me"

man. this didn't really exist in my midwest USA public education in the 90s/00s, I felt like I had to work hard for all of my grades and the teachers were actively trying to derail me from my goals. there was never a sense of, this work is an example of "good enough".

it wasn't until college that I had teachers who weren't so adversarial and actually seemed to care about teaching.

So now that the GOP has gone masks-off fascist, does that mean that Wikipedia is going to have an even bigger bias until the fascist revisions are complete?

I'm concerned that we're entering or living in some kind of modern dark age. Everyone in the world is part of one network (more or less) for the first time in human history, and information spreads like wildfire but there's no systems in place to make sure it's "good" information. That's being put entirely on individuals to decide for themselves (family, friends, etc be damned) while at the same time, Republicans are taking away any public services that help make informed decisions. Supposedly this means more freedom (or strength?) but really it just means more ignorance.

perfect username. I guess it was too long ago for some people to remember the joke?

Surely this is ragebait.

ah, so the government missed a dip and made their own. nice.

From your link:

> Famously, the "leprosy" of most translations of the Bible as far back as the Septuagint represents a multilayered historical process of confusion. The state of ritual impurity known to the Hebrews as tzara'ath (צָרַעַת, "struck")[9] seems to have been a conflation of various skin disorders, owing to the undeveloped state of medical science at that period.

Difficult to be certain that "leprosy" in the Bible is the same one we're talking about today.