I can agree that the typical Apple User around here seems to see themselves as some kind of intellectually superior ubermensch who has the authority to speak for every single individual.
But that does not reflect what I and most people I've ever talked to outside of the internet have seen first hand in Apple user outside of the echochambers of the internet where people celebrate their intellectual superiority and like to berate the Linux and Windows untermensch.

I've had people switch from iPhone to Android for example because it was "cheaper" and most complained that they couldn't handle the Android interface, so eventually they went back to iPhone. I see the same story with iOS vs Windows vs Linux (either of those combinations). There are just too many changes at once for a lot of people when they switch between platforms to not feel the need to go back.
I even have an anecdote with my parents' switch from an Android tablet to an iPad. They were reluctant at first and kept using the Android primarily over the iPad until several apps they frequently used were simply no longer working and I made clear to them that I can't fix it. Then they were more or less forced to get used to the iPad. Sideloading also never was an issue on Android, because they just didn't do it. It not being possible on the iPad without some kind of privilege escalation, which I'm fairly sure they're not capable of doing, gives me personally some piece of mind in that I know that I most likely won't have to fix it, but that really is minor concern to begin with.

I digress: The mistake that you make from my perspective is to infer from compliance that there's agreement, and beyond that keep deflecting. You use words like Elect and Choice in even in italics to put emphasis on that. While in reality that is a suprious connection to make.

Because if we applied that same kind of reasoning consinstelty, we could infer that from the fact that the Vast Majority of people which pays taxes does so because they Elect to do so. And then complain about the audacity to want to deprive people of their Choice to pay taxes.


From the evidence all we can really say is that people comply with what these companies do. And that happens mostly passively, because for the Vast Majority nothing really changes one way or the other. If you do not have further evidence to substantiate that they are only there because other platforms allow sideloading, then such infrence that they stick with Apple because of exactly that is simply not substantiated.
A similar problem exists with the idea of the Silent Majority which usually shares the individual's opinion that brings the concept of the Silent Majority up. But without actually finding out where they stand, you just can't really know.

And of course this cuts all ways.
The Vast Majority of people would go along with even more restrictive App stores, because it's still convenient and covers most of what they'll ever need. Likewise the Vast Majority would still go along with it if sideloading was allowed, because just like on any other platform the Vast Majority is likely to use the official stuff. The Vast Majority probably wouldn't even notice, just like with Android users.
On Macs you can also do what is essentially "side loading" and I don't see people complaining about all the invulnerabilities that arise from that either, quite possibly because the majority there also only uses the official stuff.
The thing is, in the end, "side loading" is an actual choice for most things. The best example for this would probably be Macs, which still has the reputation of being highly secure compared to platforms like Windows and that is despite you being able to just download stuff from the internet or from a physical storage medium and trying to install it. You'll get a warning if the software doesn't come from an indetified developer. And that's usually enough already to deter any halfway cautious user from proceeding and will prefer the official App Store.


And while we're at it, some people (proportionally significantly fewer) are locked into Macs just like others are locked into Windows.
The main reason there is because their workflow that they either do in a self employed fashion or because their employer has them do only exists in its entirety on that particular platform. And then you get other reasons like "the games my kinds want to play only work here". But this is really besides the point, because as mentioned before Macs already let you install what you want.

You're deflecting.
My point is that people who have developed a dependence on a product will go along with a lot of changes as long as the conveniences outweigh the change for the worse. For example I know a lot of people that have been telling me that they're "deleting twitter" for over a year now, and they're still using it on a daily if not hourly basis.

The twitter thing is actually a quite interesting social expriment to observe here. I do wonder how much it'll take to make the people that complain about wanting to quit actually do it. Until then, qualitatively at least the Vast Majority goes along with a lot of things until it becomes unbearable.

At that point arguing that not saying no, which going along with something essentially is, is a user choice becomes little more than a pretense, just as much as Adobe or Autodesk arguing that SaaS is a user choice, because they keep voting with their wallets.

On a free market where there was competing products too choose from, sure, users might go to the competition, but in situations like these where the markets are highly cornered due to lockin into products, that doesn't work properly any more.

I myself for example am tired of Microsoft's shit and have been for years. But since my main market for the software commisions I do is Windows users, where am I supposed to go otherwise? Anywhere else would cut my revenue to less than 5% of what I have now. So at least I thave to run Windows in a VM to offer proper support. Should I convince people to go to some Linux distro? I tried, lots of people in the "nerd space" tried. That seems to have worked out so great given how many people still use Windows on their PCs.

That is contrary to reality.
A ton of people still trusts Facebook, twitter, google, Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, Autodesk, and many other large companies that do shitty things.

The power of locking users into certain services with no real alternatives, that aren't at least very inconvenient, on the market that is stronger than on the larger scale than losing the trust of a number of people.

It's certainly convenient if you can reduce complex situations to a binary logic.
I've had a similar topic some time ago about the vaccines effect on transmission, concerning them not preventing the spread of the virus for the case that a vaccinated/recovered individual gets infected and progresses to an equivalent stage of infaction than a non vaccinated individual.

There the conclusion was that "vaccines don't work", ignoring the context that the vaccines (or recovery) still reduce the chance of being infected significanty and also reduce the time frame in which the pathogens are spread by an infected indivudal, thus still reducing transmission rates significantly.

There I then also asked where the idea that things must be 100% effective in everything came from. Didn't get any answers, though I suspect it might have come from some politicians or the type of "journalist" mentioned on my signature.


I do know cases where companies acted like mask would be just enough for any situation, which then lead to some of the largest local outbreaks on record in my region in Germany.
Situations where people basically worked within ams length for 7 hours a day within a fairly confined space, which was well over the 75 minutes (continous use) those makes were rated for.

Masks have their limits of course. They're not suited for such situations. However if you're going shopping for 15 minutes in a super market where there's usually plenty of space between people and you have decent ventilation, the (FFP2 is what they're called here) masks work well enough.

If you're not sure, then playing the lottery has better odds than explaining it again.

I for one am getting tired of the black and white logic.
Just because something isn't a 100% effective (not any things are in reality) people act justified like it's 0% effective.

That's even worse statistics. It's the kind of probability that people who play the lottery use, to conclude that the chance of winning is 50%, because either you win or you don't.

Thanks.
So that one source links to here showing 7,630 MAID deaths in 2020 and respectively 10,064 MAID deaths in 2021.

Cross referencing this with the data from here which concerns all causes of death, not listing MAID deaths as far as I can see as a separate category (probably it puts it into the "Other causes of death"):
For 2020 that would be 7630 out of 308412. Which is 2.47% and puts it at rank 7 of causes of death in that year.
For 2021 it's 10064 out of 311640. Which is 3.23% and would be rank 6.

Conversely "Intentional self-harm (suicide)" was 4152 in 2020 (1.35%) and 3769 in 2021 (1.21%).
Without further context that does look very disproportional.

Sources? Or at least some direct quotes so I can look myself for the sources?

The main issue here (I am not disagreeing with anything that you said, I just need to attach my reply to someone, lest it gets lost at the bottom somewhere) is twofold in my eyes:
First, a lot of people have a tendency to just read the headline and then form strong, polarized opinions based on just that. And 2nd, the article choose the headline to be rage-/click-bait-ish by being deliberately redcuctivist.

This is about making people with mental illness eligible for assisted suicide after what is supposed a lengthy assessment where the entire life history of a person is considered. Prior to this, mental illness as a sole condition, that is not with some physiological co-morbidity in place as well, was not able to qualify.
And since drug addiction is also classified as a mental illness within that system, people whose only issue is life long drug addiction would also qualify.

Now if the system is applied properly with the assessment or if there are also issues with it, I can't say as I haven't researched it deeper than just this.
But what I can say looking at the reactions here in the comment section to "the article" is that it's a really misleading article, very likely design to elicit rage instead of having a rational discussion about the topic.

As the majority shareholder, Sweeney made the decision to acquire Bandcam in the first place to get a foot into the "creator market place".
Epic also made a number of other acquisitions that have turned out to be not as smart as they thought it would be. Diversified too quickly in the hopes that their Fortnite metaverse would bring in enough funds to stem it all. But when that pretty much fell on its face they're now in a damage controll mode.

I don't see how I couldn't at least partially blame Sweeney here. It's just plain old mismanagement.

Sweeney went insane some time ago with things like pushing his idea of a metaverse where he gets to take a cut from everything.
Where I previously saw a competent software developer I now see someone who has gotten a bit too high on his own ego, joining the ranks of others who seem to be convinced that they can just will their imagination into reality.

We'll have to see if he continues to follow this path. Though for the time being, I expect more weirdness to come.

Fair enough.
Still, the things I said have happened before (happening again in China) and always have lead to misery, possibly because the power it gives eventually corrupted those that wield it.

So beware of that rhetoric that normalizes non consensual surveillance, which very often involves hooks for things that most people seek to protect like "children" and "property" from harm and theft. It's already critical enough as it is with phone tracking, where when I go to demonstrations already know that I should leave the damned thing turned off.

So was that a consensual thing or not?
The issue about the stalking that this is about is non-consensual tracking. And if you as a parent do that to your children ...

Comming from a former Soviet Satellite where widespread surveillance was used to crack down on people that didn't agree with the Neo-Stalinist government, extorting them, and if that didn't work incarcerating them and torturing them, the "think of the children" hook is a very familiar, and highly concerning one. There the dictator liked to present himself as a parent with all the citizen being his children that he cared for and only wanted the best for.

It barely qualifies as philosophy.
Because even in philosophy the burden of proof is an understood principle, that's in fact where the principle comes from. The idea of falsification being an important criteria for the scientific method also came from the field of philosopy (of science) from philosopher Karl Popper.

I reduce it to an approach of how to deal with gaps in human knowledge/understanding.
Science is supposed to look explanations that not only rely on inductive reasoning but are also backed up by deductive reasoning.

On the other hand you have a subset of people who goes "you can't explain this. It's a gap. Therefore, without evidence of my own, XYZ".
And from that we got the God of the gaps. Also the Aliens of the gaps, where then a bit later you had people arguing that maybe God(s) are aliens. And in more recent history we have the Simulation of the gaps.
In this case we have less strawman arguments where the "gaps" are often blatantly made up by claiming that scientists are baffled and then either juxtaposing a far fetched hypothesis with a strawman or at best weakman to use it for a false dichotomy, but I see the application of false dichotomy here nonetheless.
I don't see it that far off that people will argue that "God" runs the simulation. That they have figured out how to please "God" and then reap the benefits of their work by having their "consciousness thread" continue running on the "heaven hardware" or something like that.

Though I suppose at least some rhetorical tricks were used here by wording like "could support". Suggests some openmindedness and gives plausible deniability.
But having had to deal with Creationist types quite frequently who brand themselves as Sceptics, Openminded, "Just Asking Questions" not falling myself into the fallacy of hasty generalization has become difficult.