Comment by rootnod3
17 hours ago
Vote with your wallet. Fuck them.
You shouldn’t have to use LLMs to run your software.
Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.
17 hours ago
Vote with your wallet. Fuck them.
You shouldn’t have to use LLMs to run your software.
Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.
> Vote with your wallet.
Apple is too big for that. Hard regulation is the only way out right now. Maybe breaking them up too.
> Apple is too big for that. Hard regulation is the only way out
Apple is not 'too big' for savvy customers to choose differently but all the Mag 7 tech companies are too big for regulation to be a 'way out'. They now all have 'Regulatory Compliance' divisions which are about compliance as much as the 'Ministry of Truth' is about truth. Instead they are filled with highly-paid former regulators, lobbyists and lawyers who use their inside knowledge to avoid, skirt or nullify regulatory impact.
Company strategies are now purposely designed at conception to be almost impossibly difficult to prosecute or enforce. It's been working so well over the last decade that when the size of the prize is big enough, mega-tech corps are increasingly willing to just overtly violate regulations knowing they can fight in court for years until the govt settles for a reduced fine that's less than the profit already made.
> Apple is not 'too big' for savvy customers to choose differently
Except that won't matter. The "savvy" user is such a tiny minority and only an even tinier minority will be willing to coordinate a boycott. Its a drop in the bucket even if you do get a boycott going.
17 replies →
"[S]avvy customers" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. No consumer products technology company gets to be that large off the backs of savvy customers.
Yes they are because the alternatives are worse.
I think that it is necessary a radical political change in the US, akin to a revolution, to be able to pass and enforce meaningful regulation against big tech companies. It's the same as going against the military-industrial complex or big finance. They integrated themselves to this power structure that guarantees their interests come first not only in internal policy, but also in foreign policy. Big tech is a limb of the US empire.
Did you see how much flak Lina Khan got for pushing in that direction?
This issue was on the ballot and will be again.
3 replies →
No it's not. You can vote with your wallet right now. Nothing is stopping you.
I'm blind. Apple has explicitly said they wouldn't consider the "bloody ROI" of accessibility (will fund it no matter what). This is important to me. Software freedom is also important to me. What am I to do?
17 replies →
What if I want to vote against both Apple and Google but still be able to do my banking business?
23 replies →
Yes, I can vote with my wallet, but no, it doesn't make a difference. I've been voting with my wallet since day 1 by never buying an iPhone because of how closed it is, and unsurprisingly, this has done absolutely nothing to change how open the iPhone is.
20 replies →
vote with your wallet here is to make a new phone company that uses only these user owned devices.
its not particularly feasible to do for the end customer, similar to trying to buy EVs in the US when the upstream dealer decides whata available for you.
vote with your wallet is for the ultra-wealthy.
the rest of us can vote with our votes instead, and get much better results
4 replies →
But the alternative is another monopolistic tech giant. There is no viable third platform. So I agree with OP, the answer is breaking them up.
4 replies →
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
It'd be about as effective as voting blue/red in a solidly red/blue state. All you're doing is signaling about yourself.
I voted with my wallet and apple is still an untouchable giant conglomerate that does whatever it wants, what now chief?
1 reply →
Wake up. These mega corporations are too big to care now. Most people are uninformed or unaffected. America has been brainwashed into a FU I got mine mindset.
The tiny fraction of people willing to vote with their wallet has effectively a 0% chance of pushing big corporate to act right.
I think Corey Doctorow has the best retort to this. They want you to vote with your wallet because they have thicker wallets than you.
No. Regulation is the answer. Hopefully everything changes in November. That’s when GTA VI comes out.
Serious question: What alternative phones do you suggest? I've tried PinePhone and PinePhone Pro and it was painful.
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True. But so long as only 1% of people care enough to do this, and they can make >1% more profit per customer with their crap - then it's more profitable for them to continue the crap.
Many things are stopping you. I see this response all the time as a counter to inappropriate behavior by monopolistic giant entities.
It's the wrong way of thinking about the problem. The whole point is that they've gained too much market power for any individual to be able to stop them meaningfully, and that collective action using the power of government is the only way.
Any argument that tries to talk people out of that is on the same side as the tech oligarchs, in my opinion.
3 replies →
> Apple is too big for that.
I think you're wrong, but even if you're right, why wouldn't you vote with your wallet anyway?
You alone might not hurt Apple much, but it could certainly help whatever upstart competitor you choose to support.
I have not purchased any Apple or Google products in a decade. Straight up ignoring them is a perfectly viable call in the modern world.
And yet Google still knows everything about you.
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It's not only about driving Apple out of business. If you don't use Apple, you simply don't have to deal with any Apple bullshit. All your Apple-related worries just disappear. And you even have enough money left over to afford a separate non-rooted phone for your bank (in the unlikely event you need one).
I’ll vote with my vote thank you. My table’s manufacturer shouldn’t get a say in what I put on my table, and Apple shouldn’t get a say about my phone either.
These clearly anti-consumer practices should just be illegal.
Which country does this vote happen in?
Last I heard even EU policy was ways off of that target.
Also: EU policy is very shcceptible to political tides. Sure now we love to scream sovereignty from the rooftops but that is guaranteed to change eventually.
> Apple shouldn’t get a say about my phone either.
They operate the factories manufacturing the phones. They have total say about their phones, and you have no say. Your almighty powers within the Linux terminal doesn't extend beyond it.
And my table manufacturer operates the factories that makes it, that doesn't mean we give them the right to dictate how we use it.
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I'll vote with my vote as well, and my vote will not be for candidates who equate computers with tables. Hacking isn't a human right. Go buy a different phone if you don't like Apple's phones. There are a bunch to choose from.
Idk what point you think you're making, but human rights aren't an absolute law of nature, it's something we decide on.
> Hacking isn't a human right.
Hacking is such a loaded term for "the right to use the thing I purchased how I see fit".
> Go buy a different phone if you don't like Apple's phones. There are a bunch to choose from.
This is beside the point (and may not always be true). The ability for the manufacturer of a thing I bought and ostensibly own to tell me how to use my property.
It's really not that hard to understand. The fact that it's a computer doesn't change anything.
I agree with you except that "Hacking isn't a human right" part
This comment made me think that someone should pull an ArtCraft on Android or iOS by making a good linux phone skin, with high performance auto-updating wrappers for various web apps to make them as convenient as mobile native ones. Then we can actually ditch the big corps and bask in our LLM-enabled open source utopia. Hmmmmm.
Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive
I don't expect that to happen, but I do expect Apple et al to spend trillions of tokens hardening their platforms against users and red-teaming to find these sorts of holes before release.
Fair point. The megacorps probably are able to outspend pretty much any grassroots mmovement bar maybe a government led one.
> Vote with your wallet
The loss of your purchase is insignificant compared to the money Apple and Google make from their walled gardens.
Plus what other viable options are there in this duopoly?
Apparently there’s a popular 3rd option in Asia but is there any support for western apps? And how are you going to convince a million other people to switch?
Many Android phones are not unlockable without hacking. They use cryptography to protect the bootloader and to get the unlock code for your own phone first you need to provide them all your information.
Where would you point said wallet? Google isn't far behind Apple on this from, ahead in some ways, and many (all?) of the FOSS Linux powered phones cost even more than iPhones do.
Then maybe you’re onto something here: the hardware is subsidized. Point being that if you want the cheaper, subsidized device, you have to make some compromises.
That holds only as long as people can afford the unsubsidized prices or do without. I'm not sure that wither are tenable given modern life at least in the US.
> and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.
Running local models is getting -cheaper- every month in spite of rising hardware costs due to intelligence compression innovations like Bonsai2.
I build operating systems for a living using only consumer GPUs at home.
> Vote with your wallet
If that would work, I'd be writing this on my iPhone Mini.
It did work. You're just a very small minority of users, as are most people here.
What is your current phone?
>Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.
The local inference threshold has been crossed already. Its possible to achieve big model like performance through agent harnesses with local models.
There are already open weight models that are quite capable and can use any provider.
> Vote with your wallet. Fuck them.
Easier said than done. Because, "Apple can do no wrong" is the general public perception. Look at any wrongdoing by Apple - whether they were caught slowing down the phones, degrading cameras on purpose or even the lawsuit where they were caught spying on people's voice recordings. There will always be some NPC defending them as if the billion dollar corporation gives a shit about them.
That or "Apple is the only pro-privacy company in the world" despite there being an active lawsuit against them for the exact opposite.
So, I say: Vote with your wallet. Fuck them...and the fanboys.
> degrading cameras on purpose
What's this about? I can't find anything, except some random Reddit posts.
Buy Jolla phone
> Vote with your wallet.
But what are the options?
This. The only mainstream alternative is Android, and I'm already "voting with my wallet" against Samsung, Google, and the rest for violating user privacy even more than Apple does.
And while you're at it, make real change happen in the US national elections by voting for a third party! That'll show them!
How are running local ones going to become cost prohibitive? Indications are that Nvidia has been channel stuffing (artificially inflating perceived demand), which suggests massive oversupply of GPUs.
> Give it another 6-12 months until the big AI shops shut those capabilities down and running local ones becomes cost prohibitive.
If Murican lobbying/corruption tries to snuff AI that threatens the Hutt cartels, China will accelerate it.