The main motivation isn't to reduce size and weight. The main motivation is to squeeze the customers for the last ounce of revenue.
The claim that reparability has to be sacrificed for reduction in size and weight is a lie that they reinforced through repetition. They can achieve it without that sacrifice if they wanted to - but it won't help their perpetual double digit profit growth target.
You can't bill it as imaginary just because you don't like it. Cases of stalking and spying using airtags are all over the news. And asking for people's privacy to be respected isn't anti-tech. You're just so full of strawman arguments and nothing more.
And it's rich for you to accuse me of bad faith when all you do to support your arguments are personal attacks.
Your last statement is a bit myopic about the implications of privacy. There are a lot of ways in which your data can be used against you, besides financial crimes. It can also be used to:
Deny you medical insurance/claims
Not show you job openings (by age, political views, gender, etc)
Profile you racially, politically
Manipulate your political affiliation (like in the US elections)
Target your kin - especially kids or parents in old age homes
There was a vlog by a foreigner in Xinjiang. Throughout the video, he ridiculed the foreign narrative of oppression of Uyghurs there - all the while recording the presence of a few specific individuals trailing him.
The thing with 23andme and other DNA genealogy profilers is that a vast section of the population knew that it was a stupid and dangerous idea. Perhaps there was better awareness about it than about any other technical problem that plagues our society. Despite all that, the other section of the population decided to simply ignore the loud warnings and outcry and managed to get their genetic information leaked. Even worse, the leaked information doesn't just affect them - it affects their relatives too. So potentially, a lot of people who didn't like the tests also have their information leaked. Some people just won't learn.
I totally agree in principle. Handing over your genetic information to shady 3rd parties is stupid. But how do you know it hasn't happened without your knowledge or permission? Technology exists that can extract DNA from fingerprints (the PCR that was used for covid-19 tests). Meanwhile, how many blood tests do you get in a year? How do you know what happens with those samples?
I wouldn't be surprised if these companies are the reason why this is not part of the trade agreements. As ironic as it is, companies themselves dictate how they are regulated and disciplined.
Airtags aren't just GPS trackers. They use the apple devices to ensure coverage. And no, Apple wasn't too enthusiastic about limiting its functionality until it became a PR disaster. Even the solution now is not satisfactory.
My point is that it is not correct that only gmail works.
Proton Mail and Fastmail are two such examples
I had Proton and Fastmail in mind when I wrote that reply - along with some others like Migadu. But the point remains - you need to be a large scale mail provider like any of them to bargain your way into deliverability. Self hosting is completely left out - a far cry from the actual federated design of emails.
It is a lot of work and fairly costly to get correctly setup and a real pain to maintain.
That is not necessarily true these days. There are a lot of turnkey bundles like mailinabox, mailu and mailcow that are easy to deploy, maintain and update. There are even projects that aim to combine all the necessary services into a single binary server - like maddy and stalwart. They provide everything necessary for running a mail server and ensuring deliverability. But they still don't get delivered on those large service providers.
There is very little reason to do it too
Paid services that don't sell you out is much better than big free ones that squeeze you for data. But I don't consider having our data on someone else's server as ideal. The ideal thing is that every home should have a cheap server with net/web applications that can be deployed with the ease of installing a desktop application. But we are going the wrong way. And those big monolithic abusive service providers are the biggest hurdle to achieving that.
As this WaPo article states, they doesn't even have to upload your activity online to be very invasive. Imagine mapping your room and your house and loading it online to share with your visitors - this will happen. It technically comes within what Apple considers as private - but is still very dangerous. The yard stick to judge Apple by is the case of airtags. They didn't care about the stalking problem of airtags until there was a huge uproar. And even then, the solution they released was very half-hearted.
I made that jump two decades ago. My last straw was the fact that Windows was making numerous connections online without my permission or even knowledge. One thing I can tell you though - Microsoft makes sure that you don't regret the decision to switch. I know that some problems in Linux can be frustrating - especially driver-related issues. But you eventually learn to solve them - a solution if often just a web search away. But the freedom you get in exchange is priceless. So, hang in there and your persistence will be rewarded.
If you're using emacs, stick to the GUI unless you have good reasons not to. The GUI is more or less a smart terminal. You're missing out on a lot of features if you opt for the terminal.
Awful as it sounds, it was still data you could hear and decode using handwritten software. Protocols from those days were ones you could interact directly with - using software like telnet.
No prizes for guessing who the international conspirator is. They should adopt the tagline "Wrecking democracies reliably - for generations (We also serve freedom in oil rich countries)".
Tbf, both are aggressive customer abusers.