Curbing the Tech Thugs

He keeps this up, he could be a viable presidential candidate. This stuff is playing our right now in Apple vs. Facebook. Apple will be (or already has) implementing a security feature whereby users will need to opt in to being tracked by ads. Facebook is built on ad tracking without user consent or even knowledge.

Apple is by no means free from fault. They’ve given millions to “Black Lives Matter” for instance — which I see as a down payment on setting a different standard for black criminality. What else is “Black Lives Matter” really?

Still, major Schadenfreude as these two tech giants butt heads.

There is zero need for Facebook. Zero. It’s a cesspool of social dysfunction paid for by the company mining your personal information and profiting from it. Oh, and they act as Big Brother as well. What’s not to like?

The first act of a patriotic American is to have nothing to do with it. The second act becomes more difficult because to urge Congress to do something about it is a double-edged sword. These Communists love the idea of restricting speech against their opposition. Any “reforms” they make are going to be the equivalent of putting a fence around Washington DC.

The best we can do at the moment is starve it out — or perhaps urge other governors to act sensibly as Gov. DeSantis appears to be doing. I think one reason (from what I’ve read) that Apple is double-down on their privacy shtick isn’t personal against Facebook. These creeps all sleep in the same bed. I think it’s because Apple executive are anticipating Congress (or some future Congress) acting.

If looks are meaningful, I think Zuckerberg looks like the kind of creep you wouldn’t want anywhere near your personal data.



On the other hand, Apple’s homosexual CEO, Tim Cook, looks more like a helpful librarian.

Spoken like a true fanboy. I would expect nothing less (although I completely agree that Apple will win this battle). No disrespect meant to your source. I’m a fanboy of Apple as well, although our fandom comes in various degrees.

Samsung, in particular, makes great phones (Android). And from what I’ve read, they are the superior to Apple’s phones in many ways. “Apple” tends to be a status symbol. People are buying the name (and I bought Apple because it integrates better with my preexisting iMac). Not a day goes by that I’m not swearing at my iPhone. They are vastly overrated.

And my back-of-the-envelope calculation is that people are much more emotionally connected to Facebook then they are to the phones themselves (of whatever brand).

Whatever the case may be, Apple has worked very hard to get a squeaky-clean image. Run by a homosexual and dependent upon Chinese slave labor, the image is everything. And I would say that a CEO (grandfatherly homosexual trumps preppy-white-boy nerd) who looks like Mr. Rogers, and who for a long while now has stressed security and privacy, trumps Zuckerberg who looks like the kind of guy you’d see in a police lineup for insider trading and whose business model is inherently deceitful. Or an early-model android, like you said. There’s certainly something plastic about the man.

I totally agree that in the sense that people aren’t hooked on Facebook as a brand, just as a useful thing that most of their friends are using. But I don’t think there’s a lot of prestige being on Facebook. It’s utilitarian.

Apple, on the other hand, has a lot of snob-appeal to go with it. They give the appearance of being elegant devices, although I think a lot of crummy programming and user unfriendliness are needlessly packed in. “Look at the shiny things.” But so much of the interface seems like a botched job.

And I doubt these apps work much different between Apple’s iOS and the Android operating system. If anything, things will tend to work better on Android, at least if talking about the major apps. Apple’s Instagram app, for instance, is apparently total shit compared to the Android version.

Jobs was a complicated character, for sure. But he set the stage for Apple becoming the largest company in the world.

I quoted a job for the government the other day. I’ve done work with this particular department of the Navy several times already. But they have a new procedure for vendors. This includes signing a form that says you’re not using telecommunication equipment or services from a laundry list of what are presumably Chinese companies.

How would I know? Maybe my provider (CenturyLink) does. But the point being that with Russian hackers, the Chinese, and others, all attempting to crack into our computers, security is important. It’s something people can relate to. And Apple is not going down the wrong road by stressing security and privacy. And it’s hard to believe that Facebook can ever stand on anything but quicksand in defending their business practices.

But outside of the realm of security and in regards to free speech, I think all of these companies are of the same mind. It’s “free” only to the extent that you don’t contradict these core elements:

1) Women are victims
2) Blacks and other “people of color” are victims.
3) America is bad
4) Muslims are good
5) Homosexuals and all gender-benders are beyond criticism.
6) The planet is under dire threat from carbon dioxide

There are others. But that is the “new normal” we’re dealing with now. Trump didn’t create it but he made it worse.

I think the positions are now completely flipped. If we want to change things, we have to drop the radical pose for the radical ends. I don’t see doubling-down on Trumpism as anything but digging the hole deeper.

What Trump did was accelerate the moral high ground of Progressives and undermine whatever moral ground was left for everyone else. Normal Americans are now subversives, even if all they do is work hard, pay their taxes, take care of their families, and cause no trouble.

Now, I certainly do think a great deal of Progressive excesses will collapse upon themselves (and on the rest of us). But I see no road ahead to fight Big Tech and their Progressive-based censorship unless a significant number of people man-up. And I just don’t see that happening in the near future.

Instead of confronting this soft tyranny, most people of good will are finding ways to excuse it. That’s easier to do then confronting it and taking a stand. Christians (particularly Catholics) have been powerful in making soft excuses for this creeping tyranny. And this matters because there are no other major metaphysical outlooks that are inherently in competition with materialism. If they cave, there is not much left to stand against the Communists.

Big Tech works as Soma for the masses. We never probably did really think that an actual pill would be administered by the state (although legalizing pot comes close).

#7 is good.



There are always exceptions. But (knock on wood), same here. I’ve had a power supply go out on my Power Mac G4 (a known issue…they had some bad power supplies in this series). But my 2011 27” iMac (still my frontline computer) is still going strong The internal drive went tits-up about a year ago. But I had switched to external Thunderbolt SSDs in the meantime so it wasn’t missed. I have an old PowerMac 7200 from a long time ago…still going (although it’s in mothballs).



Yes. Definitely. Well said. And though I run a mom-and-pop store, there’s no getting around the utility of Amazon. It’s the way thingS are and the way things will continue to be for some time. The only thing I can imagine changing the paradigm is the Star Trek version of the 3D printer…sort of a Replicator. You don’t wait for Amazon. You simply buy the license/code online, feed it to your Replicator, and there’s your product.

I suspect there are a whole world of reasons the Facebook founder doesn't like Apple and Aten has hit on one that resonates with a non historian. However, if we go back to the late 19th century competition between oligarchs in oil, steel, rail and retailing had moved from just seeking competitive advantage to person animosity even what could be called small-scale wars were not unusual. 

Business is a form of warfare. The Asian books of strategy Sun Tzu and Book of Five Rings can be equally applied to business climate. The conquest of India was not accomplished by the English army but by a private army directed by the British East India Company, although not without the approval of the crown and parliament. 

So, Aten has a point and I say let them duel it out in the marketplace, in the consumers purchases and use,  will decide and may the best autocrat win. 

BTW
I have done several searches for news of Tim. He has not answered emails and it has been a month since he was last online. I fear the worst. 

Amen

Let’s hope for the best. If he’s gone, I still expect my spelling to be corrected from On High.

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who is having emergency medical issues. Anyway, he was relating to me that he was delayed getting emergency treatment because a chick (or a couple of chicks) were ahead of him in line. They were in for menstrual cramps.

Believe me, I’m not making this up. This is what he told me.