tornadoboy55's comments

That's patently false. Good luck enforcing US business law in Norway.

Your method also only works if you have a small social circle or don't go out much. Good luck planning a big party or trip without a Whatsapp/Telegram/Facebook group chat..

'because if I do nothing with my brain, I'll have nothing. But if you have your 2 million sitting around (in an investment account), it'll earn you 160.000 a year.'

Of those only WhatsApp and FB Messenger are globally relevant. (by that I mean have 1 billion+ users, globally distributed)

Consumers are bothered by games that get released much later (or not at all) on iOS instead of Android, or the other way around. They're not directly bothered by the cause, but they sure as hell hate the symptoms.

Just use Snowdens quote: saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need free speech because you have nothing to say.

To be honest, I actually ran a very private setup (Copperhead OS, Protonmail, MacBook with all non-draconian privacy settings turned on) for about 2 years, but in the end I realized I was gaining (almost) nothing compared to just Google's services, and losing a whole lot in terms of ease-of-use and integration. All in all its the same thing with privacy as it is with security: you can create all the good systems in the world, but if its a hassle, you'll run into privacy/security fatigue soon and the whole system becomes moot because you'll be the weakest link and start bypassing your own systems.

Yeah, it's like that almost everywhere in the world: girl pregnant, you don't want it? Shit, son.. time to be financially hamstrung for 18 years. Girl pregnant, you want to keep it? Shit, son.. you still don't have a say. It's fucking ridiculous.

> Many people caught growing at home are punished twice: first through criminal law, and then through civil claims like from energy companies and banks or landlords.

Why would the energy company sue you if you paid your electricity bill? Same for landlords or banks, if you paid your rent, who cares?

I would love for Google to be a gatekeeper of all ads. Malware, flashing banners etc. would all vanish overnight.

I'd be more scared to get stabbed in Glasgow than in Amsterdam though.

> Essentially you want to have your citizenship somewhere where your foreign income is not taxed. Have a legal residence somewhere with low tax/tax haven. Earn your money/host your business somewhere with low corporate rates, have your assets somewhere where they aren't taxed massively and spend your money somewhere with low levels of consumption tax/VAT.

How to be a societal leech and contribute the absolute least you can 101. Sickening.

Better than the US standard of letting untested genes or chemicals loose on the population and testing/regulating only when a problem starts popping up, no?

Not only that, you guys seem to have a big amount of techincal debt. The macOS client was writing like.. 100-200Gb a day just a few months ago, and that was going on for months already until the noise about it picked up in the media. Now the macOS client (somehow its always the macOS client..) regularly starts using 90% CPU at random and doesn't stop until you kill the process. Again, has already been going on for some time and there's a forum post about it but no one is doing anything... do the Spotify guys not use their own client?

Then there's the myriad of obvious gaps in features that should be there.

1. You can 'Heart' a track in 'Daily Mix', but you can't un-'Heart' it.

1b. If you accidentally dislike an artist in daily mix, you can't undo that, so that artist won't play anymore.

2. You can like an artist for a certain Radio (and remove the like in the playlist 'liked by radio') but you can't remove an 'unlike'.

3. You can have either a public playlist controlled by you, or a collaborative playlist that's secret. Why not a public collaborative playlist for which I can select which users can edit it?

With most of the above issues there's one overarching thing: counter-intuitivity. You can often do an action (heart, like, etc.), and do so by tapping or clicking on something, but tapping or clicking on the same thing doesn't undo the action (probably because you can't undo the action).. and wouldn't you want to have your friends be able to see/follow your playlist that you built with that one Techno-listening buddy without granting them all editing rights?

I still like Spotify because you have the largest library and are available on the most platforms (Windows/Linux/macOS/Chromecast/Sonos/Digt.Amplifiers/PS4), but its a choice of 'sucks the least' rather than 'is the best'.

Note that I said average person. They will never touch a command line, so apt-get is out, and the Ubuntu Software Center is buggy as hell. Compare that to macOS: Drag app in .dmg to 'Applications' folder: installed. Drag app from 'Applications' folder to trash: uninstalled. Need to remove all settings? remove the apps' concerning folder in ~/Library/Application Support and plist in ~/Library/Preferences. Yeah, I'd say that's pretty simple. And although the Mac App store has its flaws (draconian sandboxing) it also works like a charm.

Please don't put a smile after that. Corporate tax evasion is a blight on society and people facilitating it are scum. Pay your dues, just like the people of a society have to.

Snaps (and Flatpaks) are awesome for publishers of apps and laypersons though. There's a reason the average person sees the macOS style of installation (and removal) as the gold standard.

Dropbox isn't an OS storage, photo storage, mail storage, mobile devices backup all rolled into one (and all of that switched on by default) Comparing with Google Drive is fair, but the aforementioned stuff is why Google offers a fair 15Gb that you won't cap out soon.

I have almost 50Gb of free Dropbox storage btw, through referrals + events like the space race. But that's not really a fair fight anyway, since (aside from Dropbox) no one offers free space in exchange for actions..

Nothing is off. Everyone who has even a bit of business sense can very clearly see that Apple is maxing its profit margins. They're dropping anything (relatively) low margin like Airport and Cinema Displays. They're charging an arm and a leg for dongles they know people will need. iCloud is still capped @ 5Gb, yet iCloud sync now by default also syncs your Desktop and Documents folder. That's on top of iPhone and iPad backups, app data (both iDevice and Mac) and iCloud mail. And the price for more storage is not cheap compared to competitors.

No one except Americans themselves see the USA as the holy grail of modern democracy. That honor would probably befall one of either the West European or Scandinavian countries.

For me personally I still wouldn't risk it with meat or fish. What if the brand you actually eat wasn't researched and actually does contain BPA (or a similarly unhealthy replacement) and thus you ingest it? Better safe then sorry..

Besides that, its pretty easy for me buy either fresh or glass-stored food at the supermarket, both of which are safe (but that easy access could be just because I live in Europe and its more usual to cook at home here).