I get what you’re saying but the forgetful customer is explicitly what they said they want, which is dumb any way you look at it.

I don't disagree on that.

Many times you’re forced into signing up for subscription, or coerced under the guise of a free trial. Now this wouldn’t be as bad if they came back and were like, “hey we see you haven’t used our service in a while, do you still need it?”

Maybe, but at this point I doubt that a forgetful customer would pay attention to it. What would really make the difference would be to renew the subscription explicitly. This way you could be forced to sign for a false free trial, but you would also need to confirm a subsequent subscription.

rather than just leeching money from the user. The system is designed to purposely allow the user to make these errors and that’s wrong any way you want to shape it.

Yes, this is another way to see it. But the solution in my opinion is not to eliminate the concept of subscriptions. The solution is to educate the customer.

Fine, but this is on the buyer not on the seller.
I mean, if you buy a subscription to something and then don't use it (or forgot to cancel while not using it) is not really a seller fail: you would have wasted your money even you'd have bought it without a subscription.

I get subscriptions are (mostly) bad, but it is not always a seller fault and the buyer should be aware of what he is doing or spending money.

Probably. But this way you have no control on who quit, with a good probability that are the better ones.

Wait, they give Europol access if and only if a swiss judge order it. They protect your privacy but neither you or them are above the law.

Why pay someone $200k/yeae when someone will do the job for $80k/year?

Assuming the same job's quality, a possible answer is "because to live where your company is you need to be paid $200K/year"

If we instead choose to wage peace, we look slightly weaker, and prevent a world war.

Man, you really need an history book and to study what happened before WWII.

Let me explain a couple of things.

Before WWII, in March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria on March the 12th with referendum on April the 10th (where the ballot were not secret and the vote were manipulate). After that, Europe did nothing because, like you, they thought that if they concede to this Hitler demand, he will not ask for anything else. Look for Anschluß Österreichs

Then look for Munich Agreement (October 1938) which granted Hitler part of the Czechoslovakia as last request for territorial expansion, signed just because doing this way they would have kept peace.

Then on March 15th 1939, Hitler bullied the Czechoslovakia president to sign the independence of Slovak (with the threat of invasion). The Slovak state then became Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia on March the 16th. Europe still does nothing, just because Hitler assured this will be his last request.

We all know what happened next, on September 1939....

It’s unlikely America is capable of advanced reasoning such as this, but I really hope we are.

Problem is: it was exactly this "advanced reasoning" that was the cause for WWII. Hitler did what he wanted because he noted that Europe did nothing at every step he tried.

Putin invaded Ukraine because he noted that the world did nothing when he annexed Crimea (and, btw, breached an agreement Russia signed with Ukraine).

Do you see the parallel ?

It is interesting to see how people seems to think that if Ukraine (the victim) surrender everything will be ok while nobody think that Russia (the aggressor) could just stop.

I've seen somewhere else... let me think... oh yes, in the 1930's, just before WWII...

That’s absurd, what is anybody’s source on this claim?

History maybe ?

Their privacy is non-existent while on duty.

True, but your privacy exists even in this case.

There is actually no reason for police radios to be encrypted.

Actually I can think of a couple of reasons.

One is that this way the parents of a violent crime or lethal incident victim can be informed about the condition before the press publish the news. Last year we had some cases here in Italy where the parents of people who passed away for some incident/crime discover it from the press even before the authority had time to inform them.
True, in this case is the press that is in the wrong, but they could do it because they had access to the communications.

Another is that maybe it is not a good idea to let criminals know what the police are doing to catch them.

BUT I understand your point given the news about US police I read around.

What I think about it is that if you think that all the US police officers are bad then I agree that the not having access to the radio communications can be a problem. The solution however is not to keep the communications open but to fix the US police.

This whole thread is a whole lot of hullabaloo about complaining about legality about the way YouTube is running ad block detection, and framing it as though it makes the entire concept of ad block detection illegal.

Nope, the point is that, at the moment, Google seems to look where it should not look to know if a user has an adblocker and they don't ask for permission.

Let put it in another way: Google need to have my permission to look into my device.

But it doesn’t stop Google from refusing to serve you video until you watch ads.

Which is fine as long as Google can decide that I am using an adblocker without violating any law, which is pretty hard.

Of course Google could decide that it is better to leave EU and it law that protect the users, but is it a smart move from a company point of view ?

Or, maybe, people realized that there is no reason to get a new phone every year.

They went for a retroactive pricing change.

Which in some countries could also be illegal.

Tell us the real reason for the push to be in the office or get the fuck out of my face.

A lot of middle managers than need to show that they are usefull and not a bottleneck or useless positions