A team of CS engineers at NSA.

1-2 people in privileged positions either at the point of assembly/programming deployment to ensure the code is delivered. - for each company which is basically just alphabet, Samsung, and Apple or their chip providers which is about five companies.

This does not seem all that impractical - how many people are dumping firmware from in the wild consumer cellular devices and reverse engineering enough of the code to see if this functionality exists or not? Anyone with that skill is likely making a killing doing other work.

These are all solvable problems but no one has the will because the people empowered are too fucking comfortable watching the planet get destroyed while people die deaths of exposure and despair by the millions.

Build rail and deploy bussing like you fucking want it. Make it so good Japanese and European civil engineers ask you for help.

Noise?

That’s an engineering problem.

Teacher ratios?

Your property taxes too low for the services your community needs. Notice how I said need - it’s necessary. 20-1 is high, 30+ plus and your local governance is criminally incompetent.

You’re distracted by change and upset that you need to adapt to a world that’s moved past you. Tale older than the dirt we walk on.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-hutchins-center-expla...

Zooming back out, whatever pain comes from breaking Google up today will be less than the pain of doing so in a decade. Even more broadly, the pain of breaking up any monopoly (a matter how small) today will be less than when their breakup is as or more pressing than any of the historical antitrust cases.

As Senator John Sherman put it, "If we will not endure a king as a political power we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life."

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, ATT/Verizon/Tmobile, and hoards of smaller but similarly situated companies behave as kings shaping markets, acting without accountability or culpability, and shaking down the public at their whims. The gospel of the stock market has paralyzed our legislators from taking action to put these corrupt, wasteful, polluting and abusive businesses in their place or out of operation.

You forgot school shooters exist.

2. Hospitals should not have executives.

3. Hospitals should be community funded with backstop by the federal government.

4. PE is a cancer - let the doctors treat it.

Or, we could build robust systems that can tolerate indefinite down time. Might cost more, might need more staff.

Pick one. I’ll always pick the one that saves human lives when systems go down.

Iirc the same optout method is used opting out of WiFi scanning.

Blanket behavior like this should always be opt in with explicit informed and uncoerced consent. A laughable proposition in this corporate world but a worthy aim nonetheless.