Car company’s have been doing it for decades. There are legitimate reasoning; theft relevant parts for instance; you don’t want to enable vehicle theft and the “security through obscurity” model did work for a long time. Unfortunately for the manufacturers, most factory security systems are being cracked by locksmiths and vehicle rebirthers.

Another reason is for warranty claims. The manufacturer builds the cars to be the right balance of price, reliability, efficiency and performance. If you modify your vehicles ECU software, the engine may not be as reliable or efficient. If an “unauthorised repairer” changed the programming of the ECU, it can compromise the efficiency and reliability of the vehicle.

There are been plenty of accusations of “planned obsolescence” because a vehicle has died just out of the warranty period, after someone has fucked with the vehicle tuning.

Finally, the other reason, especially for Volume Manufacturers is that their vehicles are sold as a Loss Leader so they can make up the shortfall through aftersales. Some vehicle importers make deals with governments to lower tariffs on new vehicles, but increase tariffs on genuine parts, like what the Japanese industry and the Australian Government made in the 1980s.

Whether you agree with this logic is irrelevant; this is the reasoning manufacturers use for restricting aftermarket parts and labour.

When a “free-market” Aftermarket Aftersales industry causes the Genuine Aftersales industry to fail, Manufacturers will try to make up any losses through other channels, like requesting government subsidies “for the good of the local industry” or selling telematics data (which just “happens” to have personal user data) to data brokers.

From the report; “THIS REPORT AND ALL STATEMENTS CONTAINED HEREIN ARE THE OPINIONS OF GRIZZLY RESEARCH LLC AND ARE NOT STATEMENTS OF FACT.”

In other words, Grizzly Research didn’t do any research and are just making shit up.

If this report is true, it would reflect poorly on Apple and Google more than Temu.

iOS does have protections in place that prevent an App from modifying its own executable code; the current argument about Emulators in the EU is showing that Apple is very strict when it comes to this sort of thing.

Even if the App was able to reconfigure itself to access data it does not have permission to access, it still needs to ask for permission.

I assume Google have similar protections in Android.

Inferring that Trump was anything like John Wayne would make the Duke spin in his grave.

I used to write my Computer Science assignments in DocBook (XML). It would amaze the assessor’s when they said they wanted a PDF or PostScript or HTML or whatever and I would spit out a document custom formatted for whichever platform they wanted.

Then they would ask for it in Word DOC and I would be screwed.

Someone made a brick-built variant of this for a 48x48 baseplate using parts salvaged from the Starwars set 75334.

These sets were allegedly terrible and were being sold on clearance everywhere. They had some cool minifigs so people were offloading the bricks only on eBay for cents-in-the-dollar.

I now have two nice craterscapes for my Galaxy Explorer 10497.

Obligatory favourite brick; classic castle wall with cobbled window 4444p01.

Obligatory least-favourite brick; classic corner piece 4737. It was held by one stud top and bottoms and made for really unstable models.

https://i.redd.it/xz5fc4ae5hpz.png

Well actually, You can heat things up to a temperature where they do sublimate, without there being an ignition source.

“No smoke without fire” is a misnomer.

I had Corel WordPerfect for Linux.

You could modify the SGML codes to create documents that were compatible with all other versions of WordPerfect and MS Word, but he features that were supported in the document format, but not in the software.

For instance, I could change use more than the 16 colours that the Word for Windows UI allowed you to use, even though the displayed correctly in the WYSIWYG editor and printed correctly.

The problem is that they are not actively asking permission.

They are technically legally asking permission through the EULA, but nobody reads these.

Apple do this differently, they require the user to opt in for each of their services, and except for a pitiful amount of storage, the user has to pay for a useful amount of storage. This makes the user the customer, instead of the product. They could make it easier to roll-your-own “cloud” storage by NAS, but I assume that it isn’t worth their effort.

This is one of the things I love about the Lemmy community. No one wants to argue, every one can be passionate about their opinions, but still respect other people’s passion.

I used Linux back in the 90s as my primary OS. They were simpler times. Since then I have used BeOS, various versions of Windows and (primarily) MacOS.

I am seriously thinking of going over to Linux as my primary OS because of all the TechBro “AI” bullshit that Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and Google are trying to ram down our throats.

The bottom has dropped out of the OEM software licence market. Microsoft have to find a different way of making money. Their loss-leading hardware sales have not borne fruit so they are getting desperate.

All they have left is services, which means that the only way the can actually make money is selling out their customers private information.

This is what The Algorithms have been doing from the start.

It is only just now coming to light just how manipulative YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram are configured.

It isn’t about increasing Ad views or Viewer engagement; it is all about controlling viewer opinions and belief systems.

Great news, but does anyone else get Nanites/Grey Goo vibes from this?

I maintain that prior to Siri, the Dragon-based iOS Voice Command feature (on iPhone 4) was accurate and functional for most purposes, and did on-device parsing. If I asked “Call Mums Mobile” or “Play Jonathan Coulton” it would parse my contacts for a contact named (or nicknamed) Mum and parse my music library for an artist who’s name matched “ˈdʒɑnəθən ˈkoʊltn̩”.

For whatever reason, Siri records my voice, uploads it to the cloud and decides that I wanted to call “Moms homestyle kitchen” and play Drake.

It’s not about the current state of their OS, it is about the corporate attitude to users.

Microsoft are treating users not as valued customers purchasing a product, but as a resource to be manipulated and sold off to the cheapest bidder.

They may have backflipped on actual ads in the Start Menu, purely due to user backlash, but they still have game/app/bullshit recommendations and reinstalled garbage, unless you are a windows sysadmin and know jo to use a Profile Editor.

People want companies to stop trying to exploit them in every little way.

We can be satisfied by respecting us and treating us as customers, even when advertisers are throwing money at them.

I will purchase and play one game to 100%, or until my RSI starts flaring up. Sometimes, my RSI is so bad that I can’t play a game for several months.

I still have the 1 year of GamePass voucher from when I purchased my XBox One X. The way it is appreciating in value, I could sell it and buy a house!

What is the break point where purchasing the games is cheaper than resubscribing.