Tag: freedom

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It seems like every business now has its own app, which usually offers remote ordering, as well as discounts. I do my best not to use any of them, because they demand (and transmit to the business) all sorts of private information from my phone. This seems to me like something my phone ought to fix.

Front screen of my phone, showing folders of the apps I use

It ought to be pretty easy on the phone to provide a virtual machine which only passes to an app whatever information the phone owner wants to pass on. For example, you could configure a video loop to provide, if the app wants to turn on the camera, or an audio file to provide if the app wants to turn on the microphone.

You could get quite fancy about things like location, if you wanted to. For example, a fast food app could be provided a random location, but one that was a configurable distance from the fast food restaurant. (I’m imagining that the fast food apps either already do, or soon will, adjust the price based on where you are. For example, if you’re already in the parking lot, they can raise the price, assuming that you’ve already decided to buy from them. They can cut the price if a competitor is closer to your location, to reduce the chance that you’ll stop there instead. The phone could pick a location to maximize your discount, to the extent that people had been able to figure out and share the algorithm.)

These sorts of tweaks would be easy to implement, but there’s no functionality in phones to provide them. It’s as if the manufacturers of the phones want to rat you out to every business with a phone app.

I resist by strictly limiting which apps I install on my phone. But I’d be a lot happier with a virtual machine which would put me in control of what data about me those installed apps could get.

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Cory Doctorow points out a key—and helpful to us—aspect of Project 2025:

These are the conflicts that are so central to the priorities of blocs that are so important to the coalition that they must be included, even though that inclusion constitutes a blinking “LOOK AT ME” sign telling us where the right is ready to split apart.

Source: Pluralistic

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In a NYT op ed, Mitch McConnell reminds us to avoid the mistakes of the 1930s:

“Of course, Americans heard much less from our disgraced isolationists after the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

Source: Mitch McConnell

Too bad he couldn’t say:

“Of course, Americans heard much less from our disgraced insurrectionists after the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

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An entire article on this, with no indication that the writer understands that students staying away from school are exactly the same as workers staying away from the office.

“The challenges have been compounded by an epidemic of absenteeism, as students who grew accustomed to missing school during the pandemic continue to do so after the resumption of in-person classes. Millions of young people have joined the ranks of the chronically absent….”

Source: Opinion | The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In – NYT

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One of the great things in Illinois is the libraries are structured as taxing districts. With voter permission they can levy a property tax, and then receive the funds from that tax. So there’s no danger that the city, township, or county will decide that it needs the money more. Or, as in this case, that the library is doing something wrong, and therefore shouldn’t get any money until they toe the line.

https://literaryactivism.substack.com/p/a-pennsylvania-public-library-had

(I normally don’t link to substack posts, but this one seemed important.)