That’s how it should be. But that’s not what the law says.

Only an incompetent or corrupt judge would let this even go to trial.

Like just about every judge appointed by Trump.

Yep. Backup and wipe before you get to the airport.

“It’s SOP for my business. The risk of phones getting lost or stolen at or near airports is high.”

On the Linux box I travel with, my main account is not shown on the list of user accounts when you login. There is a dummy account on the list. When I log into that, it has a full complement of apps and data, and the online email account it connects to is a secondary account I use for travel bookings, random notifications and other throwaway purposes. Financial data, important passwords, personal correspondence, etc, are not on that account. Just the usual stuff a non-computer-savvy guy my age would have: browsing, email and Facebook. If they ever comment on it being Linux, I’ll just say “my son set it up for me, I kept having problems with Windows.” But so far, the most they’ve ever done is ask me to show that the laptop can boot up. There’s also full-disk encryption so scans won’t tell them anything worth knowing.

The passwords I use are high-entropy. There’s no duress PIN, though I could set one up if so inclined. So far, I haven’t felt the need to.

In addition, how can you show intent to destroy evidence when you have no expectation of being detained or charged on any specific occasion, and have no idea what evidence they might be seeking?

They’re massive AI-powered false-positive factories.

Say what you like about that gang, it definitely makes lexical sorting of dates easy.

There was a pub in my town called the Bike Shed. I spent many happy hours there in futile discussions of marginal technical issues.

Alas, they’re now gone, I no longer drink alcohol, and the people I bikeshedded with have either died or moved away. I still occasionally shave a yak at work, though. Sometimes doing so is a necessary evil.

I’ve been thinking about founding a secular religion. One of its commandments will be “Thou shalt not be a mark.” You have a positive obligation to acquire at least a modicum of street smarts. It’s a special case of the principle of peace through being a hard target.

I understand that some people are incapable of taking on even that level of responsibility for themselves. They deserve special care. As for the unwilling, they’re like bad drivers who expect others to compensate for their recklessness. I’m sorry if they got conned by Musk, but things like that happen when you stick your finger into the rotating blade.

Yeah, but when 99% of the complexity of an app is in its config, having the config not be open is effectively the same as the app being closed-source.

It wouldn’t require blobs if the driver code were open-sourced.

Distro was the wrong word. I should have said “package” (though there are also distros that attempt to eliminate blobs within their packages). Examples include manufacturer-issued device drivers, software that allows integration of GPUs, several parts of Android that integrate with the underlying hardware, firmware of various sorts, and I can’t be arsed to remember more at the moment.

It’s odd to use npm packages as an example of anything worthwhile. They’re a mess. For a while, morons were making npm packages containing a single trivial line of code, and there were Node developers stupid enough to use them. Linux, the GNU utilities or even bind would have been less problematic examples.

As for the invisible hand, it was an expression first used by Adam Smith (the real one, not the knobhead crackpot who later assumed his name) to just say “huh, it just kinda seems to pan out somehow.” It has never been rigorously shown to actually work. And all the various known modes of market failure make it probable that there is no self-correction at all.

In a competitive market, there’d no longer be a US auto industry, except Tesla, and it wouldn’t survive much longer without massive subsidies.

And spied on to extract personal data we can sell.

“Help! We’re dying and need a captive market to survive!”

Without knowing the methodology the IIHS used to arrive at its claim, I’ll remain unconvinced.

It’s a state matter. Involving the Feds will mean nothing is done.

Mney where the mouth… uhh, would have been is what’s needed. Fines for driverless vehicles should be set at, say, four times those for vehicles with drivers, and strict liability for corporate officers for any harm caused to pedestrians, cyclists, other vehicles or drivers.