It's called a mistake. People do things by mistake.

I carry my phone in my back pocket all the time, specialy in the office where I spend most of my non-home time. It's far more comfortable than cramming it into my front pocket.

Moving with a big phone in the front pocket is also annoying: my hip and leg bones make contact with the phone, and the pressure is noticeable. By contrast, my ass is soft.

Before sitting down, I remove it. Sometimes I forget and sit on my phone. And then I remove it.

Since my phone does not bend, nothing happens.

That"s the dream being sold, which everybody buys.

In practical terms, social mobility is very low.

> Verified app stores, for example, are about providing security to the end user, not about disrespecting the end user.

Everything a company does is for the bottom line.

App stores are there for lock-in, and for taking a percent of the sale.

The security features are a (fortunate) side effect: the company uses it as selling point.

If Google trade secrets are relevant for national security, non US governments shouldn't allow Google to operate without revealing those trade secrets to their intelligence agencies.

I would like to remind international users that making use of American technology makes you a pawn in the current trade war.

The US is a counterparty risk.

Huawei is a nice example here: even Chinese SOEs are critically dependent upon US technology.

It is just not possible to buy any modern workstation/desktop, laptop, or smartphone without exposure, as you put it, to "US counterparty risk". Buying an Apple workstation is not significantly riskier than, say, a Lenovo workstation.

And by your logic, wouldn't buying a workstation from a Chinese manufacturer also make you a pawn in the current trade war, albeit a pawn for the other side?

Any meddling by any other country would have not had the same effect.

What you are saying is that, because of the pervasiveness of US tech, all organizations having US a companies as members are at risk.

Time for the world to route around this single point of failure.

You should probably relay this information to those spending huge amounts in advertising.

I have a good friend who spends millions of dollars in advertising every year, and who is convinced that almost none of that has much impact on customer behaviour.

There are exceptions, of course, and advertising can be effective, but there is a lot of wasted money spent trying to persuade people of things.

Exactly, the mind is the most unstable part of them all, specially given the high levels of ignorance (mostly lack of skepticism) prevalent in the US and the world, pretending reading a text can't change it because its origin its "Twitter" is very naive.

I disagree, people have the views they have because of a wide variety of "real" reasons, based on their personality, their peers, their education, etc.

A tweet, or even a series of cunningly-crafted tweets, will not change someone's mind enough to change their vote.

Your solution is (was?) to use your own email address (with your own domain) with email forwarding to your gmail address. This way you do not make your gmail address public, and can move frontends easily.

This does not solve the fact that your email archive is in gmail though.

I would assume that your archived emails would be available for download via IMAP. Is that not the case?

Not if your account is locked. You need to back them up periodically manually while you still can.

The program to do this is called offlineimap.

The situation is unbearable. We can not continue like this. US technology companies have accumulated too much power.

The EU should start requiring contractual assurances by technology companies for customers of US products, guaranteeing that:

- data is 100% portable between providers

- services will not be disrupted in case of political conflicts

Failing to provide these assurances should be punished with steep fines, and eventually by forbidding said companies to operate on the EU markets.

Supposedly, the GDPR handles point #1.