I didn't see you 41 day old reply to me until it was too late to comment on it. So here's a sarcastic "thanks for ignoring what I wrote" and telling me that exactly what I was complaining about is the solution to the problem I was complaining about.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46114935

1) I told you my household can't use Target or Amazon for unscented products, without costly remediation measures, BECAUSE EVEN SCENT-FREE ITEMS COME SMELLING FROM PERFUME CROSS-CONTAMINATION THANKS TO CLEANING, STORAGE, AND TRANSPORTATION CONDITIONS. SOMETIMES REALLY BADLY.

FFS. If you are going to respond, first read.

I also mentioned something other than "government intervention to dictate how products are made" as a solution to this issue, namely adequate segregation between perfumed and non-perfumed products.

And I care less about my wallet than I do about my time and actual ability to acquire products that are either truly scent free, or like yesteryear, don't have everlasting fragrance fixatives.

For people in my position, which make up a small percentage of the population (that still numbers in the millions), the free market has failed. We are a specialized niche that trades tips on how to make things tolerable.

SORRY TO EVERYONE ELSE FOR GOING OFF TOPIC.

I stayed on a workable Unity install on 2020.05 LTS for as long as possible, then switched to 2024.05 LTS, at which point Unity, for some reason, no longer functioned (even though I was using the Ubuntu Unity flavor). Tried Gnome for a while but what ultimately lost me was the notifications. To close out a notification without switching focus I had to, very carefully, click right on the X in the upper right corner. Otherwise it would activate the notification and switch focus.

I've got a workable setup with XFCE4, the whisker menu bound to the super key, a few panel plugins to make a maximized app have the same behavior as they did in Unity, and the Plank docking program (along with a brief shell script bound to the dock that kills and relaunches Plank when it starts moving out of place). The notifications work the same as they did on Unity - clicking on them dismisses them unless you click on the "activate" button to switch focus.

And that's fine. Just leave it that way and stop with the rolling feature updates that a person can't block because the only way you sell your software is as SaaS.

I emphatically disagree. See you at the ballot box.

> but it's not a major practical concern for any end users so far.

My wife came across a post or comment by a person considering preemptive suicide in fear that their ChatGPT logs will ever get leaked. Yes, fear of leaks is a major practical concern for at least that user.

Issues that do plague the current market in the US, that impact my household enough to notice, are:

1) Product trends. When a market leader decides to go all in on something, a lot of the other companies follow along. We've seen this in internet connectivity, touchscreens in new cars, ingredients in hair care products, among others. This greatly limits the ability of consumers to find alternatives that do not have these trends. In personal care products this is a significant issue when it comes to allergies or other kinds of sensitivities.

But in general just look at the number of people who complain about things such as a lack of discrete buttons for touchpads. Not even Framework offers buttoned touchpads as an option, despite there being a market for them.

It's obvious that it's the vocal, heavy spenders who determine what's on the market. Or it's a race to the bottom in terms of price that determines this. It's not the average consumer.

2) Perfume cross-contamination as an extension of chemical odors in general[0,1]. In recent years many companies with perfumed products such as cleaning agents have increased the perfume or increased its duration with fixatives. This amplified after so many people had their sense of smell damage during early COVID (lots of complaints about scented candles and the like not having an odor anymore, et cetera).

This wouldn't be a problem from a consumer point of view except that the perfumes transfer to non-perfumed products - basically anything that has plastic or paper absorbs second-hand fragrances pretty well. I live in as close as we can get to a perfume-free household, for medical reasons. It's effectively impossible to buy certain classes of products, or anything at all from certain retailers, that doesn't come perfumed. There are major stores such as Amazon and Target that we rarely buy from as we have to spend a lot of money, time, and effort to desmell products (basically everything purchased from Amazon or Target now has a second-hand perfume).

It's possible to have stores that have both perfumed products and non-perfumed products such that perfume cross-contamination doesn't occur. But this requires the appropriate ventilation, and isn't something that's going to happen unless one of the principals of the store has a sensitivity.

And then there are perfumes picked up in transit from the wholesaler, trucking company, or shipping company.

I hope someday to win Powerball or Mega Millions so that I can start a company dedicated to perfume-free household basics. That are guaranteed to still be perfume-free on delivery.

0 - https://www.drsteinemann.com/faqs.html

1 - https://dynamics.org/Altenberg/CURRENT_AFFAIRS/CHINA_PLASTIC...

1) Have this law only apply B2C.

2) Stop having rolling feature updates except on an opt-in basis. It used to be that when I bought an operating system or a program it stayed bought, and only updated if I actively went out and bought an update. Rolling security updates are still a good idea, and if they break UI functionality then let the end customer know so that they can make the decision on whether or not to update.

For hosted software, such as Google office, is it really that much more difficult to host multiple versions of the office suite? I can see issues if people are collaborating, but if newer file formats can be used in older software with a warning that some features may not be saved or viewable, then the same can be done with a collaborative document vis-a-vis whatever version of the software is opening the document.

My wife recently went 0patch and some other programs to cover her Win10 when Microsoft stopped updating it. She still got force updated two updates having to do with patching errors in Windows' ESU feature that blocked people from signing up for the 1-year of ESUs. She let those updates happen without trying to figure out a way to block them as they have no other impact on her operating system, but it would have been nice if Microsoft have been serious about ending the updates when it said it was.

I am not a programmer, but come on. This was done in the past with far less computational ability.

In the US, commercial activities do not have constitutionally protected speech rights, with the sole exception of "the press". This is covered under the commerce clause and the first amendment, respectively.

I assemble DNA, I am not a programmer. And yes, due to biosecurity concerns there are constraints. Again, this might be covered under your "does no harm" standard. Though my making smallpox, for example, would not be causing harm any more than someone building a nuclear weapon would cause harm. The harm would come from releasing it.

But I think, given that AI has encouraged people to suicide, and would allow minors the ability to circumvent parental controls, as examples, that regulations pertaining to AI integration in software, including mandates that allow users to disable it (NOTE, THIS DOESN'T FORCE USERS TO DISABLE IT!!), would also fall under your harm standard. Outside of that, the leaking of personally identifiable information does cause material harm every day. So there needs to be proactive control available to the end user regarding what AI does on their computer, and how easy it is to accidentally enable information-gathering AI when that was not intended.

I can come up with more examples of harm beyond mere annoyance. Hopefully these examples are enough.

I cracked the screen on my work laptop last year, but IT set me up with a replacement screen. It's so much nicer having discrete buttons than a clickable trackpad, so I skipped on an upgrade. Still does everything I need it to do for work (including working with Windows 11).

And the vast majority of things I do on either laptop involves a web browser.

Bull. Free markets are subject to a lot of pressures, both from the consumers, but also from the corporate ownership and supply chains. The average consumer cannot afford a bespoke alternative for everything they want, or need, so are subject to a market. Within the constraints of that market it is, indeed, best for them if they are free to choose what they want.

But from personal experience I know damn sure that what I really really want is often not available, so I'm left signalling with my money that a barely tolerable alternative is acceptable. And then, over a long enough period of time, I don't even get that barely tolerable alternative anymore as the company has phased it out. Free markets, in an age of mass production and lower margins, universally mean that a fraction of the market will be unable to buy what they want, and the alternatives available may mean they have to go without entirely. Because we have lost the ability to make it ourselves (assuming we ever had that ability).

2) Business speech is limited in many, many ways. There is even compelled speech in business (e.g. black box warnings, mandatory sonograms prior to abortions).

I only connect my smartphone to data about three or four times a year, and then only to update some apps or check on an internet outage. It is becoming more difficult to do this as the alternatives to a connected smartphone disappear. The same will become true with the rest of personal info (such as biometrics). More and more the only alternatives will be your latter two.

And even if that wasn't the case, education in general actually speaks to a variety of personalities: The self-motivated learner, the self-improver, the intellectual explorer, the goal-oriented achiever, the rules-based structure seeker.

Edit to add: Also, you failed to learn the lesson that you can't always quit in the face of tyranny. Did you never have a history or civics class in high school?