> They more or less have to given the public/private relationship and who is responsible for what. It's not Google's job to name bodies of water, it's not a credit card company's job to censor.
They don't have to but they can, but monopolies and oligopolies don't have to and don't play by the same rules and they tend to have a lot of political and soft power. Especially in Google's case, it's not a stick a floating in the river and going wherever the current takes it. Brin and Page are (allegedly) sentient human beings and they still control the majority of the company. Maybe they couldn't pull of exactly what Musk is doing but there is a huge amount of space in between that and doing nothing.
I'm not alleging a conspiracy. It's almost self evident emergence given the nature of a company and a government. What is Google to gain for resisting the name change? Nothing. Status quo they benefit from a service that names things according to government convention. Their map wouldn't be very useful otherwise. If the government starts renaming things why do they care? This isn't some cult in the middle of nowhere, the federal government changed the name. If liberals don't like it tough maybe learn how to not choke away another election. Why would Google fight the government on the name change? There is no upside and it's not something they care about. More importantly it's not their job.
The same logic applies to credit cards. You think the MasterCard CEO is gonna risk his plush paycheck so a handful of degenerates can beat off? He doesn't care. It's not his job to decide that question and he doesn't want it to be. If the government wants to nationalize him however, then of course he will care. It's called a trade off and ultimately all successful people learn to navigate them. It doesn't change the fundamental truth in my point that many people blame corporations for alleged sins that in truth are caused by governments. The "Gulf of Mexico" thing and "credit card censorship" being two of many examples of this confusion in our discourse.
Is there evidence that's true though? I mean gross margins on subscriptions being negative since the API is seemingly very profitable (if the price is compared with the cost of serving very large open models).
As long as there is pressure from other providers serving cheaper models that are somewhat competitive without having to incur any of the R&D costs raising prices will be tricky.
Find one person who when asked if you they want the useful feature of LG always recording everything they watch on their TVs and selling that data to third parties without giving anything in return would answer yes.
I get the voice commands but it shouldn't be possible for them to always record everything anyone in the vicinity says without explicitly activating the command (and it should be impossible to hack it, i.e. it should be implemented in hardware not buggy software)
What features is Garmin missing, though? It seems to have most of the stuff you get with an Apple watch and IMHO the Apple watch is objectively exceptionally ugly compared to almost all smartwatches except the more garish "sports" themed ones.
Because it's technically opt-in. And AFAIK the the checkbox is more explicit in Europe and they probably do a bit ore to comply with GDPR. US is a free for all mostly when it comes to abusing consumers through contrived and unfair ToS agreements.
The terms of service in Europe [0] are actually very different to those in US [1], I wouldn't be surprised if the behavior within the EU is within EU GDPR regulation.
GDPR "only" covers your personal information (and personal identifiable information) anyway, it doesn't cover data used to profile you (e.g. the time of day the TV and the hours a TV is switched on is technically not personal information)
Either way, case in point: Check this hilarious statement in the US ToS:
"6. I understand and agree that Voice Information may, for the purposes set out above, be transferred to and processed in other countries (including Korea), some of which may not offer the same level of data protection."
Also, this one in the US ToS:
"9. I understand that this Smart Media Product is a household device. If this Smart Media Product will be used by more than one person, I represent that, in addition to agreeing to this Agreement, that I have obtained consent from all other members of my household whose information may be collected through this Smart Media Product and am providing consent on their behalf."
vs. Europe ToS:
"I understand and agree that Voice Information is generally handled by LGE in such a way that members of your household are not identified or identifiable from that information. Please be aware that this means that if several members of your household use Smart Media Product services we may not be able to distinguish you and your personal information from members of your household and those members may be able to see information (including some personal information) you have generated through use of Smart Media Product Services."
in the US. My LG TV has put up a giant TOS agreement thing and I can't use any apps until I agree. So I unplugged the ethernet cable and bought an Apple TV. problem solved?
Apple has little incentives to do that, though? They make money from selling hardware and are able to charge a premium (more than they could making by stealing and selling private user information) because they have a reputation. It would be very unwise to compromise that for pennies.
LG and other consumer electronics manufacturers have tiny margins compared to Apple so that extra percent or two they can make from stuff like this is pretty big for them.
For now. I wouldn't surprised that if enough people start doing this, they'll just put a cheap cellular modem in the TV. Or find open access points. Or make a deal with Amazon and others to exfiltrate information via a smart home speaker/assistant.
Technical solutions only go so far, at some point you have to put in place a regulatory framework that requires consent. The divergences between US-EU privacy policies, configuration screens, etc. show that the GDPR is slowly starting to do its work.
What LG (and Samsung and all the other electronics companies) are doing is profiling the user to sell targeted advertising. This is technically not personal information, and that's a grey area for those companies when communicating to the public.
People here generally don't like to hear that, but Apple is doing the very same. There's even a study-paper on how they do this without collecting personal information [0]
So when a company yells out how it's not collecting your "personal information", the statement actually doesn't cover what has been discovered here from all I can decipher from this "research"
Authoritarian dictatorships will always behave in seemingly irrational ways (from the perspective of sane politicians).
Dictators will always put their personal ambition and "career" first before their country's interests.
If Russia behaved rationally they would have made a deal with Ukraine (decades ago) that protected the rights of the Russian minorities in Ukraine and continued massively profiting from gas and oil exports into Europe.
> they would have made a deal with Ukraine (decades ago) that protected the rights of the Russian minorities in Ukraine and continued massively profiting from gas and oil exports into Europe.
Russia did, many times, last time in 2010.[0]
But the US and the EU didn't like it, so the coup in 2014 happened with American help[1] which overthrew democratically elected president of Ukraine who introduced the law protecting Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens.[2]
The law was repelled right after the coup and Crimeans supported the reunion with Russia.
Parliament did not vote to impeach the president, which would have involved formally charging Yanukovych with a crime, a review of the charge by the Constitutional Court, and a three-fourths majority vote in parliament—at least 338 votes in favor.[0]
In English, impeachment is often used loosely to mean parliamentary removal from office, which happened there. You're the one spreading misinformation with cope about foreign coups when Ukrainians simply kicked your clown out of their house.
Until they come up with a procedure to workaround the fact that there is no majority in the EU parliament and push it through anyway (like they did a couple of weeks ago with ChatControl 1.0).
That would be more like there being no setting to tell Meta to stop sending you cakes, but them continuing to send cakes. Except they take something from you, instead of giving.
There was opposition in parliament, though. It was only passed because they snuck it in while MPs had left for summer vacation, and the parliamentary rules are absolutely pants-on-head idiotic and default to passing proposed legislation if a majority of all MPs do not vote it down (rather than merely the ones present). In other words, they passed it by default without achieving any kind of majority, because there weren't enough people physically present to vote it down.
The EU never delegitimised itself more than it did with that act. Actively undermining parliament to knowingly impose legislation the population absolutely does not want validated every concern anti-EU advocates ever had.
That's a bit of a touchy subject that exposes the fact that the EU has repurposed a system for designing industry standards (not laws) and has a shaky legal foundation.
To some extent countries are bound by EU law, but what this means depends on the institutions and legal structure within that country. Although the EU tends to claim they have final say, but how can someone interpreting national law agree with that if the EU goes against the law they are interpreting? Even if the EU is right they can only ask members to acoid contradiction, they lack the force to demand it.
Ohh. But doesnt it push and control legislation? If it was just a standards body, couldn't countries governments just approve or deny recommendations at will?
It seems like its operating as a government too me, but maybe I am not seeing the whole picture.
Governments also codify into law that everything X standardizes is automatically a regulation for other standard bodies. Road and building standards work that way: they are just standards issued by a random association and the government has stated, that all developments in their jurisdiction need to follow this associations standards.
The government could also do this for the EU, it's called leaving the EU.
Some of its standards supersede national law (I think it was the regulations that did so, amd standards needed to be built into national law, could be the other way around).
And this makes a lot of sense with rules about food safety, product standards etc. It almost makes sense for privacy protections. It makes very little sense for surveillance laws.
> bend the rules of the EU that were established democratically
EU might occasionally get some things right but saying it's rules are "established democratically" is a slight stretch. It's a sort of a third degree democracy (that parliament is mostly imitative, has no real power and is easily manipulated) with all implementation details and most decision making being done by unelected bureaucrats.
Yes it is not perfect, but a company telling us where democracy is functioning or not is not a solution and if a company suggests it, that is arrogant and dumb.
They don't have to but they can, but monopolies and oligopolies don't have to and don't play by the same rules and they tend to have a lot of political and soft power. Especially in Google's case, it's not a stick a floating in the river and going wherever the current takes it. Brin and Page are (allegedly) sentient human beings and they still control the majority of the company. Maybe they couldn't pull of exactly what Musk is doing but there is a huge amount of space in between that and doing nothing.
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