Comment by candiddevmike
1 day ago
I hate that this eventual e-waste wasn't standardized across vendors. It makes perfect sense for every phone to be a potential node, but the network is bifurcated (and possibly more bifurcations within Android due to Google's privacy-first approach...).
Maybe a hot take, but I don't think this is as awful for e-waste as many other things.
I've had a set of airtags for a good few years now (shortly before Covid, I think?) and they mostly just kinda work. They don't insist upon a need to upgrade, the only part that ever goes bad is the battery -- which is a standard, user-replaceable CR2032, and while batteries going into the garbage isn't fantastic, there's really only so much you can do as long as depend on them.
Like -- this announcement is technically an upgrade, but I've never been less tempted to actually buy into it because the existing product does what it does plenty well enough for my needs.
I do think it's a bit funny to highlight anything Google does now as privacy-first, though. I can't play back Youtube embeds in Waterfox because the browser's default privacy-preserving setting doesn't send referrer information to those embeds, which Youtube now requires for embeds to work. As much as I take issue with Apple's politics over the past year, they do tend to lean towards on-device logic where possible, and their work in the homomorphic cryptography niche has been interesting to follow.
Please don't put your CR2032 in the garbage. Use battery disposal points for that.
I use the terms interchangeably when it comes to batteries; I do use battery disposal bins, but I don't have any faith that the actual process behind the scenes is much less impactful for the environment.
It's like when I learned that many paper recycling programs end up combining paper with regular garbage, or finding out that plastic recycling is comically ineffective in its outcomes.
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