The FTC is forcing John Deere to open up with repair info and tools, which is on one hand a good thing for a company to do, but on the other hand I wonder if this also undermines the free market and competition, ultimately creating ever bigger problems. Basically if the incentive to buy another companies trackers existed before and you erode that than John Deere's tractors may be more desirable. If we lose competition and are back where we started in a decade, but now with zero competition... then what???

I think it would be way better if we ended copyright and patents and let the free market actually work. When companies can more freely reverse engineer competitors products, including outright copying of binaries potentially (even if source is better) we're all better off.

"John Deere will be required to provide this level of access, equipment, and services for the next 10 years, monitored by the FTC. [...] John Deere has maintained that it already has robust repair resources for its customers, including service manuals and diagnostic equipment. In John Deere's press release, the company says the settlement is in line with what it has been doing all along, saying that 'the agreement reinforces Deere's continued innovation toward more flexible repair options, emphasizing increased access and transparency for customers. It formalizes Deere's ongoing commitment to expanding access to diagnostic and repair tools.'"

A extension called Knockoff automatically hides "sketchy" brands on Amazon, which are probably mostly just small Chinese entities producing cheap low quality product.

People are installing it in droves, but I have to wonder about something. So some of these "companies" have at least some products that are ultimately "OK" and sometimes they're even the only "OK" product on the market.

I'm in full agreement that 9 out of 10 items on Amazon are crap, but the problem is that not everything on Amazon is crap even when it's manufactured by (or branded with) a Chinese company name of which is clearly randomly generated or has a name of which no thought has gone into.

I'll leave out the handful of products from some of these companies that aren't complete crap, but as someone who literally evaluates and sources products from all over on a regular basis (and 95% of stuff comes from China) I can say while such a plug-in can be useful I'd be hesitant to write off all these companies in one fell swoop like that else you may have trouble getting your hands on some classes of product.

It's also worth pointing out that a lot of the "brand names" are shoveling shit as bad and sometimes worse than these Chinese brands.

For example, my company sources enclosures for our NAS product line direct from a Chinese company which complies with certain standards. The "brand name" of all the major NAS companies utterly suck because they don't comply with the standards and they lock you into their product line-up. Even things like hard drives that you'd think you could purchase from anywhere because there is a standard you can't because the NAS entity either restricts it artificially or artificially reduces the performance. The list of issues is a mile long though.

Wow- running Microsoft Windows is getting worse by the day. A unique identifier (or one of them anyway) that in some circles has been well known to exist for at least decades has no easy solution to opt out of. I previously thought the user in a recent criminal case where the government subpoenaed Microsoft data had simply failed to take appropriate steps to opt out of sending this data to Microsoft, but that is apparently wrong:

"While unique device IDs are common, the case has raised privacy concerns because the identifier can apparently persist across updates, has no simple opt-out, and may allow Microsoft to connect a Windows installation to activity on third-party services."

In other words, Redmond can track the online activity of your Windows PC without third-party browser cookies.

Unlike with Microsoft Windows the equivalent data (machine ID) isn't generally sent to third parties on GNU/Linux systems (though is used by DHCP clients, so still could pose some risk).

This is such a true statement:

"'Microsoft Windows is surveillance software,' cybersecurity expert Matthew Hickey alleged in a tweet."

So this 'loophole' lets banks charge whatever they want to merchants when it comes to credit/debit card fees, but ultimately it's something that increases the prices you pay every time you swipe your card, but the real problem isn't what they charge or can charge via this loophole, but the government's fixing of the market through regulation that artificially restricts competition in the market place:

"Now, big banks are looking on with envy because owning a network can mean exemption from a federal law that caps debit-card fees. Those fees collectively amount to billions of dollars each year across the industry, but banks have long complained the government-defined cap limits their ability to offer customers debit-card rewards and other services. Some have been exploring a small deal that could upend the rules, though they are worried about political backlash if they try."

The left hates technical solutions to economic problems, and the right is equally as bad even if in slightly different ways (it's not like they tried to end regulation of the financial industry that inhibits competition).

Point being we have a ton of perfectly acceptable solutions to high fees via cryptos, but regulators have cracked down on companies supporting cryptocurrencies like Monero making it more difficult for merchants to offer solid alternatives.

It gets worse though because the intermediaries that merchants use to take cryptocurrencies are being pressured not only into abandoning support for privacy friendly cryptos like Monero, but they're also being forced into doing absurd "know your customer" crap of downstream customers. They're taking people's crypto and refusing refunds b/c they 'fail' some "KYC" test. It's not just crypto, but prepaid cards too.

The humorous thing about this is that the college population is in decline so umm fewer Ph.D students actually makes sense:

"The number of students admitted to Ph.D. programs this fall dropped 15 percent from the previous year, according to data from over 50 top research universities, raising fears that the nation's capacity to produce new science could be diminished. The decline is driven, in part, by a chaotic and unpredictable federal funding environment under the Trump administration, as federal cuts are promised and then reversed, and budgets remain unclear.

A reduction in doctoral students could mean fewer scholars at universities to teach and mentor undergraduates."

The # of students at the local university here dropped by about half and this isn't abnormal. While lesser universities are undoubtedly seeing more significant declines we shouldn't be too worried about the decreased funding so much as the lack of new humans being born and a decline in immigration. Immigration could help keep universities open and it would be particularly optimal to increase blue collar workers in addition to INCREASING immigration of foreign born college students. We don't want to be like Canada and see our cost of housing go sky high (something you don't even need for housing costs to go up given we're not producing enough housing as it is).

I'm convinced there should be a test required before people are allowed to manage their own finances. If you can't pass a simple test identifying basic scams you should be forced into a socialist dystopia (or otherwise agree to suffer the consequences so the rest of us don't have to pay for your stupidity). The rest of us should be able to run through a random sampling of scams and then NOT show any ID (when opening accounts or otherwise moving money/assets around).

"In one scam, reported Monday, an 84-year-old Clallam County resident believed they had received an email from their daughter with a photo. After opening the email, a fake Microsoft security alert appeared on the computer directing the victim to call a support number, according to the release. 'The victim was transferred to someone claiming to represent the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and was falsely told they were under investigation in a child pornography and money laundering case,' the release states. 'The scammers instructed the victim not to contact local law enforcement and claimed local banks were also under investigation. The victim was told their bank accounts were in danger of being seized and was instructed to purchase gold to protect their assets.' In three separate transactions, the victim purchased approximately $420,000 worth of gold and gave it to an unknown man waiting at the end of their driveway."

I always find it humorous when parents reply and make justifications for why we need bad laws (in this case it's in related to age verification for social media).

One parent (who probably should know better) said:

"In ever previous era, with every previous vice society has agreed to put at least some barriers in front of children and to do so in a mostly if not perfect way. Most 8 year olds cannot simply go get a case a beer anytime they want, and if they do there is ample opportunity for parents to find out about"

umm when I was a boy (ok, this is more like when my pop was a boy, but none-the-less the point remains) I could walk into a store and pick up beer and cigarettes for my dad.

More recently however (now actually in my life time) I could walk into a bar (and did at 16 alone in France) and ordered some bit of alcohol.

The point is that this is just logically misplaced thinking and wrong in so far as there is probably not a single "child protection" law that has been rolled out everywhere, actually needed, or been positive:

"society has agreed to put at least some barriers in front of children"

We can take this straight back to the early 1900s when the first laws were put in place to 'protect' children.

The consequences of restricting children from working for instance may have had good intentions (though it may also have been more about ensuring employment for adult men than protecting kids as our textbooks tell us... but lets not go there...) ... but ultimately it's either ignorant or intentionally malicious or something.

When a child has a choice of working and surviving or dying they're probably going to choose work even if that work is dangerous. It's naive and classist (akin to racist) to think you know better than them.

"In late May, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman — who has long predicted that AI will lead to seismic shifts in the workforce — said during a conference, 'We've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications.' Soon after, he told CNBC, 'Our industry underestimated how much we're going to be able to keep people at the center of everything.'"

Every time their has been some technological innovation whether it be factories and automation (vs skilled tradesmen), the motor vehicle, electricity, the light bulb, expansion of world trade, etc people get up in a puff about the world ending and freaking out because some percentage of the population will lose their job.

Yet... every time we end up with more new jobs and folks overall making more money. Efficiencies end up bringing the cost of living down and everyone ends up benefiting.

Somehow though if you point this out... you get 'but this time it's different!' when in reality it isn't and time just proves the opposite.

Entertainingly and disturbingly we end up with cruft in our laws that is the result of the initial fear and reaction which builds up and hurts people though. In the end we end up with a more dystopian government that then comes up with new reasons to justify itself. Example: Before the car became widespread drivers licenses were invented not for reasons of safety... no horse and carriages were far more dangerous. The reason had to do with bigotry against motor vehicle operators. Today the claim is "safety", but that isn't how it started. Until the late 1960s we had states without any written or road testing component to even ensure people could drive.

We live in a dystopia Geroge Orwell couldn't even have envisioned.

The attack on freedom continues in the totalitarian state of Australia:

"Australia plans to double fines for social media platforms that fail to keep under-16s off restricted services, after regulators found 70% of children with accounts remained active three months after the ban took effect. The government says the changes will also give the eSafety Commissioner more power"

Lets see... so you go after the big boys and lets just imagine for a moment every one of them starts demanding ID and there is absolutely no way around it. Somehow they even manage to prevent kids parents from using their IDs to help their kids skirt the ban and hinder kids from borrowing their parents ID when they're not looking. OK....

So the Internet is a big place right???? What stops them from getting on Mastodon via an instance in a jurisdiction that isn't under the control of Australia????

OK, so now ISPS are ordered to attempt to lock down the internet further by blocking some of the better known instances. Right, cause that's ultimately going to be necessary for this to work.

Well.. turns out that isn't enough because there are these things called VPNs. So now VPNs are blocked.

So kids start using Tor instead. You've got to beg the question of where is this suppose to end????

OK, so we build the great Australian firewall of 2028 to try and hinder kids from using Tor to get around the ban. Well, that's a back and forth thing, so ultimately a few more years pass... and now some commissioner has the power to arbitrarily block whatever whenever. Half the internet doesn't work, but kids are still getting around the blocks because they're subscribed to an email list that sends obfuscated texts containing unknown bridges that enable folks to skirt great firewall.