What's interesting here is they no longer need to hack and crack devices through loopholes and backdoors schemes.
All the data they need are already collected by private corporations with the pro-active collaboratron of the users themselves ("Click here to agree to the terms and conditions").
Now I'm tempted to start an online service to issue visas to all destinations for World Passports owners...
Assume the communication with the app it through Internet. The car must have a 4G chip (too early to see 5G in cars, I think?). So no matter what you pay, it won't work when 4G is retired. With marketing pushing to get new standards always faster, 4G may not last another 20years.
Anyway, bear in mind that once you subscribe, they will most likely collect detailed data about how you use the features and sell that as well...
In theory, yes, you could make a mess, and any firmware is supposed to be certified to allow the device to be used.
In practice, this has been a convenient excuse to keep a whole chip with a separate OS in every smartphone, and it is very difficult to isolate from the rest of the system (see Graphene OS efforts).
I say all firmware should be opensource. Whether you're allowed to change them or not is a separate question... for now.
Half of the job is to fix issues with existing suff, the other half is to make working stuff more complicated and problematic (aka "upgrade"), so that we're still paid to do the first half.
I kind of hope it's real. Down that path at some point they'll decide the whole Internet and all modern technologies are satanist and leave Internet for good. They can embrace the Amish lifestyle, it's a win for the rest of us.
This might be an unpopular post but so'll be it: Mastodon is the existing proof that Meta could kill Mastodon any time.
Mastodon was using a protocol compatible with GNU Social: OStatus, but some features were quickly added without consideration for other implementations.
So when per-post privacy were introduced, for example, they were very public on GNU Social, because their devs had no idea this was coming. And GNU Social was blamed for it.
Instead of having more users, GNU Social is now (almost?) dead. Of course it's not just because of the above. But it wouldn't have been set back so much without Mastodon.
Now, Mastodon is opensource, has more features and some compatible implementations. I run Pleroma myself. But why would one think Meta could not cripple them both?
I use to say "all extremes call for their opposite". Since almost no information ever transpires about this whole scandal, the opposite is to release all the names to the public. It was to be expected. If we were trusting the justice system, this would seem inappropriate. But we have what we have, and making the whole list public is the only guarantee we have that not one of the "bad" guy can escape public's attention. That of course, is valid only if the list is comprehensive and some names have not already been taken out.
It is indeed unfortunate that a lot of people who didn't deserve and didn't want any bad attention will get some.
I'm not saying I agree with the move. I'm saying it was to be expected.
[Edit made: grammar & missing words]
Should we let mommacusses know how old Internet is?
Nuclear plants consist mainly of a shitton of concrete (and only the best sort is good enough). The production of that concrete causes a terrible amount of carbon emissions upfront.
Actually, if you compare them to solar or wind at equivalent service, it's not that straightforward:
Renewables installed capacity is nowhere close to their actual production, nuclear can produce its nominal capacity in a very steady way.
Wind turbines also need a lot of concrete, and much more metal for equivalent output. Solar panels need a lot of metals.
Renewables need a backup source to manage their intermittency. It's most often batteries and fossil plants these days. I don't think I need to comment on fossil plants, but batteries production also has a very significant carbon emission budget, and is most often not included in comparisons. Besides, you need to charge the batteries, that's even more capacity required to get on par with the nuclear plant.
With all of these in consideration, IPCC includes nuclear power along with solar and wind as a way to reduce energy emissions.
The government, of course! Right before giving it to you free of charge because why not?