Note that isn’t illegal, it just means the company doesn’t get to get out of paying unemployment when it happens. And that’s only if someone is willing to challenge them on it.

Don’t listen to what he said… But SD cards are generally not very reliable. They might be fine they might die on you silently after a week.

Higher quality ones are better of course, but the quality of flash in SD cards varies wildly. I wouldn’t store anything on an SD card that I don’t already have a second copy of somewhere. (If I want to preserve it and it would cause problems for me to lose it)

This is a pretty big overstatement.

DO NOT USE AN SSD to store your data long-term! Solid-state storage has a very short, finite life-span.

This has not been true for years. SSDs are generally more reliable than HDDs except in write-intensive applications (and even then… It really depends on what exact models you are comparing). SSDs have a life-span mostly talked about in terms of TBW (terabytes written) rather than years for a reason, if they’re powered on and not written too they’ll last as long as or longer than a hard drive. (Note: Powered on regularly, SSDs can lose data if stored unpowered for a long time (months)). If you just have an archival drive you’re not constantly erasing and rewriting data to, an SSD is a great choice. Reads also barely affect the lifespan of at all, so you can still access the data you want to protect (hell, write-lock the drive even and it’ll last decades if powered on).

What you want to do is buy an even number of hard drives, plug them in long enough to copy your data to, and then unplug them and store them in a climate-controlled area. bout once a year, copy the data to a different hard drive

This is just plain silly. Yes, the mechanical wear of the drives spinning up and down means they’ll die faster. But we’re still talking MTBF measured in years. And replacing a hard drive that’s barely used every single year? That’s not just bad advice it’s creating e-waste for no reason. Also note drives fail on a bathtub curve… If you have two good drives that lasted a year, you are increasing your chances of a failure by swapping them for two brand new drives… The best thing you can do for your hard drives is to not power cycle them constantly, any typical usage is fine. Also mechanical parts can actually wear out from disuse as well. Even archival services don’t go to these extremes you’re recommending.

If you really care about saving your data follow 3-2-1. 3 copies of your data (live, archival (external HDD or similar), off-site), two-different forms of media (HDD, SSD, cloud (yes cloud is an HDD or SSD but they have their own redundancy)), one off-site (in the event of a fire etc.)

Honestly 99.9% of consumers would be fine with a 2-2-1 scheme, 2 copies (live and off-site/cloud), 2 forms of media, 1 off-site. If you don’t trust Google or don’t want to pay for cloud storage, set up a server with redundant disks at a friend’s house. Just keeping a second copy on a server with redundancy is plenty of fail over for most use cases. 3-2-1 is for data centers and businesses (and any cloud service you rent from will follow 3-2-1…) Let’s not overcomplicate how difficult it is to keep data intact, if I tell someone to buy a new 12tb HDD each year they’re just gonna give up on keeping it safe.

Interesting, I know personally one of my concerns with self-hosting an individual Lemmy instance (after losing my first account to the Vlemmy.net shutdown) was the threat of being held legally responsible for things cached on the server. Say someone uploads something illegal and my server caches it. Seeing it as an option to turn that off is nice, and for an instance only meant to be used by one person I’d imagine caching won’t have a huge impact on load times

Not surprised but got a source on those password claims?

And no way can GM beat Apple or Android at a car interface.

Poor marketing from GM, Google, and most automakers. A lot of the interfaces are still gonna be Android-based, they’re dropping Android Auto not Android Automotive. Android Automotive being the actual OS that most car infotainment displays come with these days, and is made by Google. Android Auto is just the ability to connect your phone and project it to the display.

Still a shit move, but GM has nowhere near the capability to actually build a good infotainment OS from the ground up.

I can’t speak for the licensing costs of Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, I have no idea what they are.

But I do work in the automotive industry as an engineer. The sentiment is very much that it’s about getting customer subscriptions and customer data, to build recurring revenue streams that wouldn’t be possible if people are able to just use their phone and its apps on their infotainment display.

GM at least I know is sticking to Android Automotive, which is built by Google and they pay for anyway. Android Auto and Carplay are just additional functionality built on top of Android Automotive (the naming is bad - Android Automotive is the Google Android-based OS for car displays, Android Auto is the projection tech/api), they’re quite literally removing existing features on a product they’re already paying for.

I highly doubt Google is giving them a huge discount to cut those features, and if they are getting any it’s dwarfed by how much they want to make through subscription services to use your car.

Integrating Android Auto into Android Automotive is even easier than CarPlay, and GM is dropping it as well. It’s quite literally a built-in feature of Android Automotive that has to be actively removed.

(Just to keep the distinction clear: Android Automotive == A Google Android-based interface for car infotainment, Android Auto == An API for projecting your phone screen and relevant apps to an infotainment display)

It’s 100% about extracting revenue from customers by forcing them to use the manufacturer’s infotainment ecosystem and charge for recurring subscriptions to things your phone will do for free (and in an actually upgradeable manner).