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I think you'll find that you agreed to it somewhere in their voluminous terms of service.

I looked it up and indeed, it's in section 1, paragraph C:

Your Device will periodically check with Apple for Apple Software Changes. If a change is available, the change may automatically download and install onto your Device and, if applicable, your peripheral devices. By using the Apple Software, you agree that Apple may download and install automatic Apple Software Changes onto your Device and your peripheral devices.

https://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iOS26_iPadOS26.pdf


Which is why your parent says this behaviour should be fined. Laws override "consent" between contracting parties.

He said it's "unauthorized access of his computer", even though he implicitly authorized it by clicking through the agreement (apparently without reading it).

If people actually read these clickthrough agreements and started sending devices back when they don't agree, it would encourage the industry to change.

No one "needs" an iPhone, they can support one of the open source phones with far less onerous terms.


You can still consider it unauthorized, if you do not consider the authorization to be valid in the first place. I can also get people to sign away their life on a contract, that's not going to mean anything, because signing away your life is not possible in the first place.

> If people actually read these clickthrough agreements

I would live in such a world too, but that is a fairy tale. In a lot of situations, you don't get to see the contract before you have signed it. I had the situation in a bank contract. The bank clerk tells me it's mandatory, to sign that waiver, I tell her it's not. She won't sign the main contract, until I signed that waiver. I tell her that's illegal. Doesn't matter. After I signed it, I get to read the waiver, it clearly states, that it is not mandatory, and whether it gets signed does not have any effect on the main contract, as is required by law (with citation).

Because of these things, the laws says some things can't be established and most other things must be established with informed consent. It's on the company to ensure that this is collected. No, a tick on "I have read and understand the Terms and Conditions" is not informed consent.

Honestly, we don't need any law changes actually, because most of these things the tech companies do is plain illegal in every step.

-----

On the first page of a web search: https://www.legal500.com/intelligence/germany/privacy/german...

The Regional Court of Berlin held in a judgment of 16 January 2018 (docket no. 16 O 341/15, German language version of the judgment available here) that Facebook's default privacy settings and parts of their terms and conditions were invalid. This judgment provides important guidance on consent and transparency.

Background

The Federation of German Consumer Organizations (Federation) sued Facebook and requested cease and desist regarding some of its default settings and terms and conditions.

The Federation argued that Facebook's default settings violated the requirement of explicit consent. For example, the default settings included a location service in Facebook's mobile app revealing the location of the person that the user is chatting to. In addition, boxes were pre-activated allowing search engines to link to the user's timeline.

The Federation also argued that various clauses in the terms and conditions of Facebook were invalid, including clauses that provide consent of the user (i) to transferring personal data to and processing personal data in the U.S. and (ii) using the name and profile picture of the user for commercial, sponsored or related content.

Judgment of the Regional Court of Berlin

First, the Regional Court of Berlin found that five default settings were invalid because the requirements of informed consent were not fulfilled. The court stated that informed consent requires that an organization must provide comprehensive information about the background and the scope of the consent in order for the consent to be based on an entirely free decision of the user. Default settings cannot be regarded as informed consent if the user is not explicitly and actively notified of the default settings in the registration procedure. Facebook did not sufficiently ensure that the user was aware of the default settings. The court noted that a "virtual privacy tour" that Facebook offered, but that was not mandatory, did not change this. Not every user would make use of this privacy tour and "realistically", most of the users would not further review the privacy settings.

Next, the court held that the consent declarations in the terms and conditions were not transparent and therefore the users were not able to give informed consent. With regard to the consent to the transfer of personal data to the United States, the court observed that the user was not informed about which categories of personal data were transferred, why they were transferred, how they are further used in the U.S. and which standards of data security are applied. Further, the court concluded that the consent language for using the name and profile picture for commercial, sponsored or related content was not transparent. The extent of the usage of the name and profile picture was not clear for the user and not further explained. The court noted that the example that was provided in the consent wording (i.e., use for a brand that the user likes) was not sufficient information about the scope of the consent.


IMO the notion that such one-sided agreements are not made under duress needs to die in a fire. I wish there were a viable grassroots political movement to remove the corporate boot from our neck; until that point, fuck these terms of servitude and every abuse they enable.

Often these clauses ARE deemed null and void, but you need to bring it to a court and who has time for that?

I thought Musk got an FAA telecom contract for Starlink back when he was effectively running the government (or at least running it into the ground)?

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/25/business/musk-faa-starlink-co...


>How do I use it on my desktop or laptop then

>What if I switch browsers on my phone

>What if I get a new phone

You can let Apple sync your passkeys between devices using iCloud Keychain. Then you can create a passkey on one device and have it available on all of your devices. Google also syncs passkeys to the cloud and lets you use them on Windows (with Chrome)

>What if I change from android to iOS or visa versa

I resolve this by storing most of my passkeys in my password manager. I still store the "important" ones (like online banking) in my phone so a password manager breach doesn't make me lose my money.

>What if I need to log into the site on my Wii U's browser?

Passkeys were designed to let you have more than one, so if you have a device that doesn't let you use your password manager, then just set up another passkey.


Nothing wrong with your answer itself, but having to be Apple or Google is a PITA. These account are ultra critical already and you will want maximum security to access them.

This means if you go on a trip somewhere you absolutely need two devices. If you kill your phone and want to buy another one ASAP, you wont be able to do anything with the new device until you can convince the platform it's you. With passkeys you're just SOL. Imagining if you needed a phone to get back from your trip - e.g. etickets, auth needed etc. - it becomes a nightmare scenario.

A third party manager makes it easier, but it's a lot less usable that the first party ones.

Reasonable people make different life choice, having to constantly think about backup strategies whenever I'm away from home would be so stress inducing to me.


  > With passkeys you're just SOL.
No more so than if you lose access to the device that's required for Google/Apple MFA prompts, neither of which use SMS and depend on a proprietary approval flow.

If you lose your phone in 2026 while on a trip to Italy and try to enter your Gmail user/pass from your wallet, there's about a 100.00% chance you'll hit a "let's verify you're you" gate, that's been the case for 5+ years.

With passkeys I'm not stuck clicking Yes in the Gmail app or typing in the numbers on Apple hardware, I can skip the Apple/Google specific MFA nonsense and keep the passkeys in Bitwarden where they sync seamlessly between devices.

It feels truly liberating being able to skip MFA everywhere and login with 1 click, like a throwback to the golden age of using a password manager in 2010. Before passkeys it started to feel like I was spending 5% of my waking hours every day copying 6 digit codes from phone/email/TOTP after twiddling my thumbs for 15-30 seconds.


>This means if you go on a trip somewhere you absolutely need two devices

If you want multi-device redundancy, you have to carry a second device of some type, it's hard to get around that. I almost always travel with an iPad in addition to my phone, so I have a second device.

In addition, my wife (who travels with me so if my iPhone is stolen, hers might be too) is one of my Apple account recovery contacts, plus I've set my sister as an addtional recovery contact, so even if I'm out of the country and I have to activate a new iPhone, I can call her to help with the recovery. So all I have to do is find an Apple store and buy a new phone.

I also carry a USB key tucked into my luggage with the recovery kit (encrypted) for 1Password so I can activate 1Password on any new device and have access to my passwords and whatever passkeys I don't have in iCloud.


I just don't use Google or Apple accounts for everything. I don't want my whole life in the hands of some big tech deciding how I should prove to them that I'm me.

I did use Microsoft 365 (business version) for my email but they also decided I should use their MFA app so I left. I did have my yubikey as second factor but they keep pushing their stupid authenticator app.


Apple can sync to my wii u?

I updated my reply to be more complete.

Eventually you'll probably be made whole (unless the bank isn't one of the ones that waives your $50/$500 liability). But usually they won't return your money until after they resolve the dispute so your account is still missing the disputed money which could make you bounce checks or be unable to use your debit card until the dispute is resolved.


But that's not what happened when someone steals your debit card number. Once the teller enters the deposit and you walk away from the window, the money in your account is yours, the cash the robbers stole is the banks.

When someone steals your debit card number and uses it, it's your money that is debited from your account, not the banks, and debit card transactions have much different rules than credit card transactions where you're generally not held responsible at all for fraudulent transactions)

But with debit card transactions, you can be responsible for up to $50 of fraudulent transactions reported within 2 days, and $500 for those reported within 60 days. And the bank is not required to return the money while they investigate the fraud.

Though many banks waive those liabilities and treat debit card disputes the same as credit card disputes (but still may not return your money while they investigate, so you could be bouncing checks when someone makes a $1000 fraudulent transaction if you can't float the $1000 yourself while they investigate)

I refused to allow the bank to issue me a debit/ATM card against my primary checking account, fortunately they are one of the few banks that still offer a dedicated ATM card so even if I lose the card, it's useless without the PIN.


I had no problem buying a ream at Staples.


If it hasn't been retrofitted out, then it's still in use today. That sentence would only be incorrect if the new solution was retrofitted on all aircraft.


> is so elegant it’s still being used today

I think it's the "so elegant" part that's wrong. It's not still being used today because it's so elegant. It's still being used today because the old helicopters haven't replaced it.


I think elegance has to do with the technology of the time. Some clever design that is cheaper/better than you would otherwise think possible given the era. There are probably many elegant aspects to Roman aqueduct engineering, but they would still get replaced with modern materials during a retrofit.


if it was less elegant from a function/cost perspective, it would have been replaced a long time ago.


Since the radiation source is only exposed if it's indicating a potential main rotor crack, and it's not a very strong radiation source in the first place (so it's not like it allows long distance tracking), it seems like a minor risk -- if the radioactive capsule is exposed, the pilot is going to be returning to safe place to land.

Beta particles typically only travel a few meters in air before they lose most of their energy.


>It's not clever satire because unlike say, the Gulf of Mexico, South America is an actual real geographical designator in common usage.

It's almost as dumb as renaming lake Ontario to Lake America to "punish" Canada (presumably because it shares its name with the province of Ontario), when that lake has had its name since the 1600's (before the USA or Canada even existed) and is based on a Native American Iroquoian word. And the province of Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around.

But at least with South Park, I can understand their motivation.


My point is that the satire doesn't work because it doesn't understand the issue at hand. A fictional American town being renamed to to South America doesn't actually capture the absurdities or issues of the current American administrations actions and directly undermines the message because the name they picked is another actual place name, rather then a made up vapid one (which is the case with "Gulf of America" and "Lake America").


The pattern is "take a place name and change the last word to America" (Gulf of America, Lake America, New America)

The fact that applying that to produce "South America" which is a real place--and a continent at that--precisely amplifies the absurdity

I have to say, though: inverting the trope of "you can't make people laugh at a joke by explaining why it's funny" by trying to stop people from laughing at a joke by explaining why it isn't funny is a truly Kaufman-esque bit of comedy


> My point is that the satire doesn't work

"If you have to explain satire to someone, you might as well give up"

  -Barry Humphries


The Coffee issue is easy to solve, just bring a pitcher of water with you in the morning to pour into the coffee maker - it's what I did when my home office was in a spare room above the garage. The walk from his back yard to the indoor bathroom is probably shorter than the walk he'd have in any office.


Its gross but a pee bottle is what I'd do.


Really? Why not step outside and help water the plants? It is your backyard, after all.


That's what I do but I don't really have any neighbours in eyesight.


that feels pretty excessive


Not in terms of cost.


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