It’s not that they now changed something with data collection and sharing within the update. They always did it, all services free of charge do it and most that cost money likely take the extra money as well.

It’s now that they tell you in a short and informative way (1st sentence) and ask for your consent.

What’s really infuriating, are websites and services that have an “Accept All” button but no “Reject All”. Instead you have to manage individually and sometimes I have to flip 30 separate buttons to disable data sharing, where they even call advertisers a ‘necessary 3rd party’ requiring interaction on top.

I think the article only mentions the prices in the Google store, which are way more expensive than other shops. The Pixel 8 128GB is currently available at 550€.

So the Pixel 8a at 570€ would be the more expensive model.

It’s just a setting like so many other things. You can put in individual IPs you trust or IP ranges.

It seems Plex has figured out lots of Plex ‘server admins’ are just normal Windows users and click OK on everything w/o reading any change logs or checking any settings. So it’s easier and saver to enable a lot of things right away. Admins can just go into settings and adjust it.

As you didn’t read the article:

“This move seems driven by the government’s interest in collecting and centralizing biometric data for identification, tracking, and surveillance purposes,” he said. Omar agreed: “Probably to keep track of the refugees.”

They hand out SIM cards to track those SIM cards. Using a certain messaging app on the phone or not doesn’t change SIM card tracking within the network.

Especially living in a city, this looks interesting to me. ‘Fast’ charging I’ve seen was in the range 30-60 min but then it’s like the phone, from about 20% up to 80%. So living in a city, I’d have to wait for half an hour for half the battery.

With a swap-station, it could be nearly as fast as a fossil fuel stop. About 2 minutes for a 0% to 100% stop.

This also allows for smaller batteries, for smaller cars, for lighter cars. You don’t need to carry a lot of overall range if you can swap/refill to 100% in 2 minutes.

As the prices are mentioned in US-Dollar, this offer is likely only available in the USA. E.g. I’m currently getting a Black Friday offer for the full price of 1.099€ for the Pixel 8 Pro but a 100€ store voucher is included.

It’s disappointing that they only exclude the information use regarding ads.

So they will still track everything users do and profile them, just like any other free user. And they can sell to everyone else who pays for user data (e.g. AI learning, market research etc.). With that wording, they could even sell to ad companies, if they e.g. use the data for some algorithm optimisation in their tech department. So they leave the door open to keep selling the data to 3rd parties, while already charging the user ‘starting at’ 12.99€.

In a way kinda. It’s problematic though that China is using Uyghur forced labour to produce cheap solar panels.

This of course allows them to undercut any other manufacturer, driving them out of the market. So the delivery chain is getting kinda small and the products have forced labour attached to them.

“China uses Uyghur forced labour to make solar panels, says report” Published 14 May 2021 (Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636)

I’m quite disappointed by most comments so far talking about RAID and data loss. That is not what RAID is for at all.

RAID is for uptime/availability. When a drive fails, the system will keep running and working. For companies, that would lose thousands of currency per hour with a downtime, this is super important that the system keeps running. At home, it’s convenience that you can order a new drive and replace without hours of setting up and copying before you can watch the next episode again.

Backups are against data loss. If a single drive fails, a RAID fails or you get some encryption malware or an employee destroys stuff on purpose, then everything is destroyed. It doesn’t matter if it was a single, any RAID, HDD or SSD. You order a new drive, make a new volume and restore the data from your backup.