If Bluesky becomes evil, you just configure your AppView not to trust their verifications.

Of course, that's the problem: right now we mostly have one AppView (bsky.app), which is the current SPOF in the mitigation plan against the "Bsky becomes the baddies" scenario.

But yes, that’s exactly why the American right makes taxation so cumbersome and horrible: to make people think that taxes are bad, as there’s this assumption you can have civilization without paying for it.

[citation needed]

The alarms themselves should be able to work even without network connection, but you won't get to use any of the connected features, loosing all the "smarts" that they charged about $100 premium over other smoke alarms for.

It seems the current plan is to let the device reach their use by date before they shut off the servers, but Google being Google, who knows if they won't change their mind and decide to shut off the server before that.

This is not only immoral and vile, but borders on the psychopathic. The man should have never been allowed to make any decision affecting public health.

It does gives free technical education and experience for some recruits (not necessarily the top, and that experience isn't always teh best), but of course that affects tech employment - you'd see higher rates of service across tech employees, as that service gave them a jump start on their tech education.

That said, even if the Israeli military decides to draft a person, that person can stand up and refuse. It ain't "free" (may result in imprisonment,) but it's a choice that even if too few make, it is one, and making it is a strong signal about what kind of person they are.

The latter would cost them more, both to initially implement and to maintain.

It'd be interesting to see which items they'd decide are not worth the forking cost and would be enabled world wide then, and what they consider enough of crown jewels to be limited to the EU.

Tesla remotely disable cars when they decide to, as they claim that they sell you the car, but only license the software. You get to keep the car, but loose the license to operate the software needed to actually make it useable.