I think another thing we lost was the sense of a software release being a complete, immutable product - and the development rigor required of that.
You might expect now and again to get some optional updates/patches later, but that was rare - and rarer still for most people to even know about them.
These days, software is never complete. Nothing is done. It's just a point-in-time state with a laundry list of bugs and TODOs that just roll out whenever. The software is just whatever git tag we're pointing to today.
I understand how/why it has become like this - but it still makes me sad.
It's exactly these kind of issues with statistics that cause us all kinds of problems. I'm glad you pointed this one out.
It reminds me of a YT video I was watching with similar issues about cancer mortality rates. We've been doing all these treatments, and cancer survival rates have been going up. So everybody cheers about how good the treatments are. But when you control for the fact that earlier detection puts more people into the 'cancer' category earlier, causing 'cancer' people to live statistically longer from diagnosis, then the benefits of the treatments mostly go away (for many but not all types of cancer).
And these kinds of misleading issues are all throughout statistics. See Simpson's paradox, etc.
This seems like an extremely broad brush. There are cancers that were literally untreatable and guaranteed death within years, that with treatment now can see patients living 5+ years. Lung cancer specifically, but others as well.
Let's assume fate has decreed that patient X will die of lung cancer at 70. Detect it at 68, dies in 2 years. Detect it at 64, dies in 6 years. Your early detection "increased" survival by 200%.
And I think there's a lot to his point. Fundamentally, cancer can be divided into three groups:
1) Slow growth. Leave it alone and it probably never harms the patient. Many prostate cancers fall into this category.
2) Fast growth. These are the ones where the oncologists hitting it hard can make a real difference.
3) Fast growth/fast spread. The oncologists don't have a chance. Some tumors can be slowed.
Unfortunately, our ability to figure these out (other than in hindsight) is limited. Both of my parents died of stuff that spread rapidly, in both cases treatment was a negative. (Although there was some palliative stuff for my father.)
I love the idea of the privacy switch, but I want more: I want a hard, electromechanical switch for each of: Mic, camera, GPS, wifi, cell, bluetooth. These can be tiny and aesthetically pleasing, as long as I can easily flip on/off the one I want.
The problem with having a single button, even configurable, is that it's all-or-nothing, and I might want different things at different times.
The PinePhone has 6 dip switches for this 1. modem, 2 Wifi/BT, 3. Mic 4, rear cam, 5. front cam, 6. headphone / serial port. They say it will stay in production for 2 more years, but a lot of the accessories (LoRa cover, keyboard, etc) are already gone.
If nothing else it is a fun platform to hack on. I'm currently hacking a toy OS for it, and the documentation for the SoC is fairly complete. I'd love an updated phone like this Jolly orange Jolla to hack on, but not at that price, and seems like it might be locked down.
Librem 5 has 3 hardware kill switches that are easy to access. Even if you suddenly receive a call and your mic was off, you can immediately turn it on and speak.
"Physical controls" are those that you can physically sense. My point was everyone needs different things, so it's possible to keep core functionality simple and let users add what they need, via extensions. Like dongle hell but better.
I mean since it's linux phone with (hopefully) open architecture, it should be possible to create an external usb device that exposes any functionality.
Like, to keep core functionality simple and open it for extensions ("extra battery", "knobs and switches", "ethernet" etc)
"... the appeal of burning it all down and living in a cabin in the woods."
I hope that's not what you think libertarianism is about. I'm sure there are libertarians who DO feel that way, but it's not a core tenet to personally isolate and live off the land.
Libertarianism sees not left vs right, but instead the people against the government. Libertarians focus on personal liberty and solving problems together, voluntarily, as individuals cooperating. A libertarian would say, for example, that if I think a bridge should be built, then I should either build it myself or convince other people to help me out voluntarily - but not use government to force people to help (via taxes, etc).
Libertarians are against force/coercion, and see government as the ultimate expression of force.
There are some loony libertarians, as there are of any political party, but most of us have pretty ordinary and mainstream beliefs and priorities.
Libertarians reject governmental force but provide no barriers to corporate force. There are innumerable documented examples of corporate force having greater control over the population than a government. These examples are not just historical but also include the time we are currently living in.
I don't think this is true of libertarianism. Libertarians reject use of force, except to prevent other use of force. I.e. I can use force to stop someone else from using force on me (or others).
Corporations are not exempt from this. A libertarian would support using force to stop a corporation from using force to coerce people to do something.
But Libertarians reject a premise that a corporation is required to serve you. You can opt-out and the corporation should leave you alone. But you are not entitled to service or employment from that corporation. Your rights cannot depend on the performance of another. I have a right to produce or purchase my own food, but I do not have an right/entitlement to food that I have not purchased or produced.
I still don't see how Libertarians can solve the current problems we have with corporate abuse of force. For example, if a company is a major employer in town and pollutes both the ground and the water, how is an individual going to push back against the company's power? How is an individual going to apply force to a corporation to get them to stop and/or clean up the pollution?
How can an individual or even a group of individuals stop a corporation from underpaying its workers so that they need to use some public assistance, food, or medical care?
There are many similar examples, but they all boil down to the asymmetry of power. An organization capable of employing many lawyers, or even a single good one, can grind you down until you have nothing left. I still see libertarians as having no answer.
I think the only way to fight back against corporate abuse is to build a stronger center of power. Something like a union, a citizenry willing to take collective action, or even a Government that is not beholden to corporate interests.
In your example most (not all) libertarians would agree that you need some regulation of those corporations to prevent or minimize external costs, or in some other way factor them in. But the regulations should be as local as possible, and directed only toward the stated objective, with a little other government control as possible. E.g. you can tax my carbon emissions, but you can't regulate my vehicle or fuel consumption.
For example, regarding pollution, prohibiting any discharge of the offending pollutants, or measuring and taxing them in some way - but with no requirements about HOW a corporation should meet these regulations or otherwise run their business.
Unions are fine, and people should obviously be free to join them if they want. But there should not be any laws that require or favor unions, and government employees should not be allowed to unionize.
A government beholden to corporate interests doesn't matter much if the government doesn't have much power. But with power comes interests and influence, always.
Nobody is doing it just "for the children" - that's just a fig-leaf justification for doing what many people want anyway: surveillance, tracking, and censorship (of other people, of course - just the bad ones doing/saying bad things).
IOW - People aren't turning off their brains about "for the children" - they just want it anyway and don't think any further than that.
In the past, and maybe even to this very day - all color printers print hidden watermarks in faint yellow ink to assist with forensic identification of anything printed. Even for things printed in B&W (on a color printer).
Would you leave one of the originals in each test visible at all times (a control) so that I can see the final image(s) that I'm considering and the original image at the same time?
I guess if you do that then maybe you don't need the cool sliders anymore?
Anyway - thanks so much for all your hard work on this. A very interesting study!
You might expect now and again to get some optional updates/patches later, but that was rare - and rarer still for most people to even know about them.
These days, software is never complete. Nothing is done. It's just a point-in-time state with a laundry list of bugs and TODOs that just roll out whenever. The software is just whatever git tag we're pointing to today.
I understand how/why it has become like this - but it still makes me sad.
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