At this point their biggest product is probably Android. That’s a bigger marketshare than Microsoft’s and Apple’s put together. Yes, they’re fucking up now, but the battle is still theirs to lose.

When you have commodity money, the value of the money is derived from the value of the commodity.

The value of the commodity acts as a floor, but the face value is dictated by supply and demand, and demand usually exceeds supply, driving it significantly above the floor. Take gold, for example. Gold’s intrinsic values are (1) it’s pretty and can be used to make decorative items, and (2) it has some applications in electronics. It can’t be eaten, can’t be worn, and it’s too soft even to make tools out of it. Yet, its extrinsic value is huge, because it is publically seen as a good medium of exchange and so a lot of people want it.

Yes, TSMC makes the chips for iPhones, as well as Snapdragon processors used by many (but not all) high-end Android phones. Samsung has their own factory in South Korea, and Huawei has theirs in mainland China. Further, low-end smartphones and most dumbphones use Unisoc chips that are made in China.

As for desktop computers, Intel has factories in the US, and AMD (GlobalFoundries) in Germany and Singapore.

Yes, gold is a commodity, but when used as currency it is acting as a medium of exchange and not as a commodity. Same with pieces of paper with the sign of the reserve bank governor, or data on a computer’s memory. The gold, paper and hard disc all have intrinsic value, but when used as currency they are assigned an arbitrarily higher face value.

What if it was so small and light it was only electrons?

You mean, like how it is now?

And what if it accrues its value from the energy expended to create it?

You want more climate change? Also, value comes only from what someone else is willing to exchange for it.

Maybe using some sort of cypher to ensure anyone could verify it?

Why should anyone else be able to know anything about a transaction between A and B?

There are something like a hundred chip factories across the world. TSMC itself has around 20 (mostly in Taiwan). One dying would definitely raise prices, but we won’t be losing ‘most modern technology’. And of course they’d have lightning cables; they aren’t idiots.

I think they meant that if the students hadn’t told the company, they and their classmates could have done their laundry for free.

for the vast majority of the history of money it was based on a commodity that was valuable in its own sense.

True, but using grain or tools as a currency would make the modern financial system pretty much impossible. Even for simple banking, you need something small and light like gold or currency notes.

A true state backed cryptocurrency used interchangeably with physical cash could be quite useful.

What advantage does this give over a simple digital currency?

Mozilla is a nonprofit.

In my country, it was mostly large dams and hydroelectricity. But they have their own issues.

I couldn’t find details on this particular model, but all Nokia dumbphones released so far have easily removeable batteries and can be used as a murder weapon in a pinch.

Pixels are a minuscule fraction of Android devices. Google would get more money by improving Android than by trying to increase their own marketshare.

Yes, and they’ve tried to fix some of the issues. But at this point there’s a huge ‘establishment’ within the community that is resistant to any change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Systemic_bias

(This is for the English version. Other language Wikipedias will have their own issues.)

He said the quiet part out loud.

Maybe they are willing to sell and are just saying this to drive up the price.

Or maybe they don’t want a competitor to have access to their secret algorithm, and threaten them globally. This way they lose only one market.

Another possibility is that they will teach users how to use a VPN, and are confident that enough of their users will do it.

Or maybe they think saying they’re willing to shut down will make some of their users lobby against this bill / organise protests / call their representatives. (This probably won’t work.)

Companies are ultimately motivated by money. They will do whatever underhanded trick they can think up to get it.

Fair. I guess asking users to verify the ISO is just to avoid lawsuits. Buying USBs is more beginner-friendly than burning your own, but it would be very difficult to maintain an up to date list of sellers. They definitely need to explain GRUB and dual-booting better, as well as make it easier to repair / avoid the Windows overwriting GRUB issue.

Can’t you use Office and OneDrive online?

Verification is optional, but recommended. This is true for all OSs. Don’t do it if you can’t.

Note that I said to buy a USB or DVD with Linux. Burning your own is easy on Linux, but Windows puts up a lot of roadblocks. (One wonders why.)

GRUB works fine, but again, you only have to deal with it if you want to dual-boot.

Some sound cards used to not have first-party Linux drivers, so you’d have to find some third-party workaround. This is the only real problem among the ones you listed, but even this is pretty rare nowadays.