A notable exception to the trend of poor/unknown quality in consumer products is the outdoor product market. I buy a lot of gear for skiing, canyoneering, climbing, cycling, backpacking, and other sports. In these sports, the safety and functionality of gear is critical. And you spend enough time using and evaluating the gear that many (if not most) users become experts. Perhaps this type of market is the exception that proves the rule.
> Signaling, however, grows stronger the larger the out-group is – as long as the out-group knows about the in-group. This is why luxury car manufacturers deliberately extend their advertising campaigns to people who will never be able to afford their cars: they are increasing the size of the out-group by educating people about the in-group.
I assumed that car advertisements were only targeted at those who might possibly buy the car. I didn't think that car advertisements could be "educational material" about how cool your friend/acquaintance is for driving this car.
I recently switched from Android to iOS just for iMessage. SMS is quite unreliable even in 2023. SMS messages don't have the same delivery guarantees as IP-based messaging services. And often I have internet access, but spotty cellular service. The thing that pushed me over the edge was that my carrier happened to block all my SMS for a day. I only found out about it later in the day, after I had missed many (unrecoverable) messages. To avoid this, I could either blindly trust some other carrier, or use IP-based messaging. In my area, all my friends use iMessage. Ideally, people would use Telegram, WhatsApp, or even Matrix, but they don't. It's not uncommon to leave someone out of a group chat just because they don't have iMessage--the alternative is a subpar MMS experience. At some point, I'll probably buy a cheap Mac Mini and run BlueBubbles, but for now it's nice to not have to worry about messaging reliability, and I get the added bonus of being able to Facetime my family members, who all use iOS.
I was just thinking of doing this myself. I'm hoping Apple doesn't shut it down. I recently switched to an iPhone because all of my friends use iMessage (I'm in the US). I'm not happy about having to switch, but it's how they choose to communicate and it's a heck of a lot better than SMS/MMS. I'm planning to buy a used Mac Mini and connect it to some messaging gateway or build my own. Then I can use whatever phone I want (used to be a pinephone user).
I use Arch on my Pinephone (https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Pine64-Arch) and I have used it for the last year. Call audio quality (outgoing) is very poor for me (I think I need to configure ALSA or something). SMS and MMS now work well. Web browsing works. Everything is quite slow (2-10 second delay to open calls/messages/web browser).
Previously I used SXMO and Mobian. SXMO is fun to script. I got tired of having to script everything after a while. Mobian works out of the box. But they don't have the newest software, so I switched to Arch.
I use US Mobile (https://www.usmobile.com). They're an MVNO on the T-Mobile and Verizon networks. I use their T-Mobile offering because I couldn't get MMS to work on Verizon. To fetch MMS, I use the T-Mobile APN (fast.t-mobile.com) instead of US Mobile's APN.
Would it be possible to create a business where you:
* Buy the cheap hardware at wholesale prices
* Strip the surveillance tech and/or re-flash the firmware
* Sell the "dumb" product for the same price as the "smart" one
In this case, the "smart" vendor would likely lose money if they're selling below cost. So the only difficulty would be a legal one... I'm not sure if it's legal to buy a product, modify it, and then re-sell it.
For me the theme of this narrative is that PG always relentlessly pursued what he wanted: AI, art school, Florence, Lisp, etc. He would often find out after pursuing those things that he didn't really want them, but that was helpful feedback. I'm usually stuck wanting things but not pursuing them so I don't know if I would really want them. It seems better to take initiative and go for it.
It seems reasonable to me for colleges to refund their students right now because they must be saving plenty of money on facilities management. But they still have to keep all of their professors on payroll, and my university is even offering jobs to students who need them, so I don't think their operating costs have significantly decreased.