As an old man yelling at clouds, I've been hanging onto a car from the 80s. Not only does it have physical controls, the controls are directly attached to the mechanical systems they operate. Currently the door locks are a little sticky (I need to pull the skins and lubricate everything). The electric solenoids can't quite overcome the friction, but with a little extra pressure I can muscle the lock to open or closed.
If the controls were a touchscreen, OR an physical switch that operated the locks electronically, the locks simply wouldn't work at all. I hate all the latency and ignored commands from physical buttons that work through software almost as much as I hate touchscreens.
The empowerment and psychological difference between a world where I /make/ things happen and a world where I /request/ things that may or may not happen feels like it is often overlooked.
I'm not a gambler, but when I consider it I think the worst thing that could happen to me would be to win a substantial but not life-changing amount of money. I think that's where most people get hooked. They get lucky once (or a few times), then get completely sucked in trying to replicate that success.
I would argue the opposite, that having members of government who CANNOT be prosecuted like normal citizens is not compatible with democracy. I would think arguments to the contrary would have to assume other impediments to a properly functioning justice system, such as politically motivated prosecutions, widespread selective enforcement, etc.
Exactly. And the same is true of the judicial system btw, who must stay separate from other powers, meaning that it also has to police itself, which can create its own issues.
These are just the (little) costs of democracy. If you aren’t ready to pay them, you haven’t really considered the alternatives.
Carriers have also sold customer location data, no search warrant required. Though we can rest assured that the FCC has slapped the carriers' wrists with the utmost seriousness.
> but no one wants to use a pay-phone when they have their own mobile!
I have a hobby-level interest in avoiding pervasive surveillance, and have been thinking about ditching my phone more often. Something like no-cell Tuesdays.
What if I have a family emergency? I don't have a desk phone, but I could pay more attention to my work email.
What if my car breaks down? I could use a payphone, except those don't really exist these days. I could walk to the nearest gas station and ask to use their phone, but they would probably think I was crazy.
The other thing payphones used to have (at least here and there) was an attached phone book with Yellow Pages where I could find a tow company. Lets say I do manage to beg access to a phone, how do I know who to call?
Now that everyone carries all these things in their pocket, other systems for handling these problems have atrophied.
If the car breaks down maybe ask a stranger to look up the number for a truck and hit dial, then hand the phone to you. In a public place, of course. If I were in a gas station and someone who was dressed normally asked me that I probably wouldn’t refuse.
Your family memebers should be able to send you encrypted text messages using the MeshCore network only, with no dependence on cellular network or the Internet.
They just need to be in range of your repeater or in areas covered by other nodes that can transitively reach yours. If you are too far from other repeaters to connect, you might need to arrange for some intermediate repeaters being installed. But due to their solar nature (with solar charged battery for night operation), only a secure mounting is needed - this makes gaining permission of their installation a lot easier. With good placement a repeater has a range in dozens of kilometers.
Some example hardware currently recommended for use:
I use a TCL Flip for this purpose. Phone calls and texting work well enough, the web browser is painful on the small non-touch screen but works in a pinch, and the phone can create an LTE hotspot.
Sometimes I also carry my smartphone but I don't /need/ to. I've told my family and trusted contacts that any emergency should be a phone call.
To me this suggests that the problem is not cost, but lack of competition, either in production or in pricing. My understanding is that there are sufficient laws to ensure competition, but they are not widely enforced.
> My understanding is that there are sufficient laws to ensure competition, but they are not widely enforced.
That's correct, the laws exist but it's up to the executive to enforce them. The US has not meaningfully enforced any anti-trust laws since the Microsoft web browser bundling case in the 90s. There was a brief glimmer of anti-trust being resuscitated by FTC during the Biden admin, but the tech company monopolies got so spooked by that that they brought all their resources to bear in 2024 to ensure their guy won, and he did. Anti-trust remains dead in the US for at least another generation.
Crazy how anti-capitalist the US has become. The deep capitalist thinkers believed capitalism needs government oversight to keep markets healthy, but for some reason we stopped following that belief.
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