Recent searches
Search options
Rights don't give you power. People with power claim rights. Giving a "right" to someone powerless just transfers it to someone more powerful than them. Nowhere is this more visible than in copyright fights, where creative workers are given new rights that are immediately hoovered up by their bosses.
-
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/18/rights-without-power/#careful-what-you-wish-for
1/
@pluralistic "The power to exercise your rights" is an increasingly relevant concept in general. See also the crackdown in the US against protesters the government doesn't like.
@pteryx @pluralistic Any right you lack the ability to exercise is a right which you do not in fact have.
@EndemicEarthling economist brain: any right you lack the ability to exercise is a right that it is your revealed preference to have surrendered.
@pteryx @pluralistic
@EndemicEarthling @pteryx @pluralistic like having an #AMFM radio on your cell phone. No one can look me with a straight face and claim that a chip that can demodulate/modulate #CDMA/#TDMA etc. can't demodulate analog signals and give you a nice display to manage them. I remember this "debate" in the '90s.
@wb2ifs @EndemicEarthling @pteryx @pluralistic
Mine still does (Blackview). That's another loss to the dropping of headphone sockets - the headphone wire is the antenna for FM.
@wb2ifs @EndemicEarthling @pteryx @pluralistic There are legitimate technical reasons there WRT mixer tuning ranges etc. Something meant to run at carriers in the 1-2 GHz region might well have trouble tuning down to 100 MHz - much less 1 MHz for AM - without that being an explicit design requirement (perhaps involving extra hardware to bypass a mixer etc)
@azonenberg @EndemicEarthling @pteryx @pluralistic Hmmm. This article is interesting. "The FCC urged Apple to enable the FM chips in their phones in 2017, but Apple responded with a claim that their latest phones don't have #FM chips." https://www.lifewire.com/use-fm-radio-on-smartphone-4176272
@azonenberg @EndemicEarthling @pteryx @pluralistic once again, we can't have nice things because someone has to make a profit. Make sure there's an #AMFM radio in your #gokit.
@wb2ifs
I heard once a story that a 2G/3G phone was used to locate kidnappers by receiving GPS signals, passing them to law enforcement, as the phone couldn't process them.
IDK how much true is this, couldn't verify it.
@wb2ifs @EndemicEarthling @pteryx @pluralistic As I understand it, the silicon in most phones can already tune the FM broadcast band, but manufacturers do not enable these features. A big part of the issue is the antenna: one needs a dedicated wired headphone jack, and to connect the common/ground/shield lead of that jack to the FM antenna input via a DC blocking capacitor. Delete those components, and the FM receiver becomes useless. I have long been of the opinion that the FCC should mandate FM receiver capability, because in an emergency situation cell networks get swamped and traditional broadcast media is the best way to rapidly get information to the public. If every cell phone was an FM receiver, then most people would have a battery-operated radio on hand for emergency situations.