The analogy is a bit shaky IMO, as you can certify individual, heavily modified, foreign or even self-built cars in EU member states.
For cars, the local certification authority themselves decides what is road-worthy or not, not VW et al. You can add third party parts without the manufacturers consent. This is not the case for Android or iOS attestation, you're pretty much at the mercy of the foreign manufacturer and their local laws.
May I infer from your response that your quarrel is not with a central authority having the final word in what code you're allowed to execute on your own device, but rather that it should be the government and not a corporation signing the binaries that are permitted to run?
If you're expecting a perfect analogy, you're not going to find one. Law in its application also doesn't deal in exactness, but in generalities and vibes: that's why lawyers argue, and judges decide.
I'm familiar with the process for individually certifying unique and modified vehicles in several European countries. Invariably, the process is costly and onerous, which serves as a deterrent.
You cannot prove the absence of e.g. a Veracrypt hidden volume or similar, though. Even if you honestly give up your key, you could still be either
A) held in contempt of court, if the authorities do not find what they expect for some reason and accuse you of using such techniques or
B) if you specify that such behaviour by law enforcement is overreach, have a clean way out for criminals, codified in law, heavily damaging the impact you may expect of such a law.
Because what is the alternative, with the same level of convenience and support by (online) shops? Genuine question, because I do not know any and would be happy to.
Wero is not supported by most shops (yet), Credit / Debit Cards often charge fees if the payment goes to a foreign country, direct transactions cannot be undone.
Theoretically the alternative is whatever collection of local mobile payments EMPSA[1] manage to shackle together, but they’re taking an exceedingly long time to do it.
The problem in Munich is that everything must go through a single two-track part underneath the city center, which is at absolute capacity. If anything breaks down there (and it does, often, very often), even a small delay in a single train, all trains get delayed or skip stops.
In my experience, you have to take at least one train early if you do not want to come late regularly. Even e.g. the main airport train line, used by tourists, often turns around before the actual airport due to delays.
If you live in the city itself, it's fine, you also have other options. If you live further away, it's barely acceptable to very bad, IMO.
It is reliable-ish, but more "Amtrak Capital Corridor"-reliable than "JR Yamanote Line"-reliable.
You should qualify the "often" for people not living in Munich, as some may interpret it to mean "several times per day" or "several times per month".
I agree that, in cases where being on time is essential (like catching a flight), allowing for a train malfunction so that you can reach your destination with the next one is a good strategy.
Even if only a few women are abusive and gossiping, they will doxx a lot of innocent men. At that stage, that entire app should be treated as illegal and shut down, instead of hoping that Apple legal will find the time to settle each complaint. The entire app is a toxically bigoted concept that gets a pass because the term 'women's safety' is attached to it.
I'm failing to see how this app is legal. States like Arizona have recently passed anti doxxing laws. Posting any information on this app with the intent of social pressure, harassment, etc is illegal in those states.
At the very least, the app itself might be legal using the "public forum" argument but the content posted on there definitely leaves the users in a legal gray area.
I can see the argument on both sides but this is asking for a case to be brought just so the law can be fleshed out.
I recently saw a screenshot from one of these apps (so I can't guarantee its authenticity. But it's not an inconceivable scenario). Someone posted a man in there with his photo. The elephant in the room is that the man is dead! His ex-wife (with whom he had children) is enraged by this and is demanding to have it removed. Instead of addressing her concern, one of them decides to report her!
Now this may be an anecdotal argument. But when it pertains individual rights and human dignity, even a single violation is sufficient to question the ethics and legality of such endeavors. An important fact here is that nobody has absolute rights. Any rights are valid only as long as they don't infringe on someone else's rights. So, smearing, maligning and vilifying someone cannot be justified in the name of 'women's safety'.
This is one of those cases where you can't find a balance between both sides. One side is objectively wrong. Ruining the lives of any number of innocent men must not be an acceptable compromise for ensuring women's safety. There must be ways to achieve that without causing such widespread collateral damage. Their argument to the contrary is not just lazy, it reeks of hubris and contempt.
I don't usually care about downvotes, but it's alarming when those votes are in support of a bigoted stance like in this instance. I don't support doxxing, defamation or bullying of any innocent person, including women. But why is this utterly detestable act being justified and upheld when the victims are men? Would the response be the same if the genders in that message were swapped? This is just a single example of how unabashedly sexist the HN crowd in general (and the corporate world in general) has become. I hope that the individuals who strike at the opposition to such toxic behavior are very proud of their irrationally lopsided sense of justice and their contributions to a very fractured and bitter society.
Interestingly, the pendulum at least in my friend group starts to kinda swing in the other direction, i.e. non-technical friends start to indirectly ask (me as the tech guy) about blatant piracy for (visual, Spotify is still very much accepted) media and (TOS-violating[1]) ad blockers for ad-supported streaming.
I cannot overstate how unexpected this was and is to me, we talk about people in their mid-twenties with jobs - maybe (video) streaming / subscriptions services actually overplayed their hand in the current economic climate.
Doesn't make me super optimistic in this regard.
[1] even if most of it is void in my jurisdiction anyway
Number of competing video services with distinct libraries has kinda put it back in vogue, I think. No one I've ever talked to is really happy about paying for more than 1-2 streaming services, especially if some of them only have one show they're interested in. If that show is really tempting it becomes tempting to just pirate Severance or what have you instead of signing up to one new service for it on top of Netflix et al.
In my experience people tend to just move between services. A month on Netflix, then a month with Disney etc. The convenience of having those apps built-in to TV's and easily installed on phones shouldn't be overlooked. If you want easy access to your pirated content from all your devices (including TV's, phones, tablets) you have to have a bit more tech experience and be willing to deal with a bit more inconvenience. For most just rotating services subscribed to is much easier.
IMO, if you lobby for a thing which does not do harm to other people, you are not the bad guy. If you do, you are. Lobbying itself is not immoral.
The oil and gas industry, and the tobacco industry et al., lobbied (and lobby) for things which they know were (and are) doing harm. This isn't the case here, IMO.
Code is not an asset in all (I would even argue most) cases - proven by companies which open source the vast majority of their code and live from service contracts or certain addons to it, and basically pay developers to commit to open source software.
Often they buy market- or mindshare. There is no way in hell e.g. Akamai wouldn't have been able to bootstrap "Linode 2". I'm unable to see the secret sauce why OpenAI couldn't have created their own VS Code fork instead of buying Windsurf. But why do that if you can acquire their existent customers / market share? Additionally, the term "acquihire" didn't plop into existence with no precedent.
Being able to immediately get a full deductible for salary, which in many (western) countries is the norm for virtually all businesses, does not strike me as particularly immoral. It's a normal office job, developers do not create gold out of thin air.
Big tech isn't even the most affected by this change, they (often) have obscene margins - small software companies do not.
> if you lobby for a thing which does not do harm to other people
The reason this is being discussed now is because of its inclusion in the Big Beautiful Bill which will kill the poorest in society by kicking millions off Medicaid and food stamps and increase the debt to unsustainable levels.
So if you support this tax cut for software developers you are the bad guy.
Ah. Thanks! Since the letter only calls it "reconciliation bill", I didn't make the connection. Not an American here, oops. Maybe creating "mega bill bundles" isn't the best idea in general. ^^'
I still think this specific reversion / change, for itself, would be something you can lobby for, though. It itself doesn't do harm, the push to include it in this specific bill may do (if it is the thing which tips the scale for it to be accepted).
This "tax cut" is (and was) simply the status quo in most western countries for virtually all businesses, e.g. in the EU. It itself is not immoral, as long as you see developers as normal office workers, which they IMO are.
The existence of silicon valley giants and their faults notwithstanding.
These are ccTLDs, though, ICANN is out of the picture there, they have no authority after delegation. It's the fault of DENIC, the German ccTLD local operator. DENIC is a German entity, they are very much within reach of regulators.
(That's also the reason why foreign ccTLDs of, eh, semi-stable countries, e.g. .so domains, are risky - should the local operator start to lose it at some point, no-one can help you, neither ICANN nor IANA)
The domain registry isn't even relevant here - the authorities can go directly after Liferando - who are doing business in Germany - no matter what TLD or other medium they use for their fraud.
IMO "not ideal" is still a euphemism. Even if you do this, often throwing away decades of branding, there is a high chance that Lieferando aka Just Eat Takeaway.com will still not only register a similar domain again, but that it will rank higher than your website anyway, even with the "worse" domain.
You have a small restaurant, often using things like WiX or Squarespace, against a tech company with a dedicated SEO team. Good luck.
For cars, the local certification authority themselves decides what is road-worthy or not, not VW et al. You can add third party parts without the manufacturers consent. This is not the case for Android or iOS attestation, you're pretty much at the mercy of the foreign manufacturer and their local laws.