#ownership

Like, id praise tf out of it and give all the love they could ever need

Id obviously never send anything myself

But id like to see them sort of reliant on my words after a bit,you know?

Our x86-based PCs allows the user to install and run any compatible operating system; we can even replace the BIOS.

In theory, ARM-based smartphones can do anything a traditional x86 PC can do. In practice, phone manufacturer have made either impossible, extremely hard, or very inconvenient to choose what software runs your phone.

Samsung used to let its buyers unlock the bootloader on both North American and International variants. Samsung removed that feature for North American versions since the Galaxy S5. This year, Samsung removed the option to unlock the bootloader on all samsung devices running OneUI 8.

I have a samsung galaxy Tab A9+ that was powered-off until recently, and the tablet updated itself without any prompt, message or warning. I used to have the option to unlock the bootloader before it updated itself.

And Samsung was clever. They designed their devices in a way that makes it impossible - without exploiting a security flaw or accessing confidential binaries - to revert the system update. When the system installs an update, it checks if the binary is official (signed by samsung) and checks the microscopic fuses that the processor will physically blow up for every new system update : this is permanent.

"The swing between #AIutopia and #AIapocalypse, which fills the feeds, mostly misses the seam where the real question lies. Both camps agree on the fact that matters: #intelligence now carries enormous social force. The fight is over direction and #ownership, over ends, over who gets to steer."

Q) What is meant by 'special' in the Dick story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Shortest answer yet: in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 'special' means a human whose intelligence has been damaged by radioactive fallout, someone legally and socially downgraded — a person who is still biologically human but no longer fully recognised as such by society.

Dick uses the term with several layers of cruelty baked in.

1. The literal definition

A special (sometimes called a chickenhead) is:

a human whose IQ has dropped below the government‑mandated threshold

usually due to genetic damage from nuclear fallout

legally barred from migrating to an improved lifestyle

treated as socially inferior, often mocked or pitied

They are considered 'genetically damaged stock' — a phrase that tells you everything about how dehumanising society operates.

2. The social meaning

Being labelled a special is essentially a civil death:

You lose the right to leave Earth

You lose access to many jobs

You are treated as less than fully human

You become part of the 'remnant population' left behind on a dying planet

Dick uses the term to show how a bureaucratic label erases a person’s dignity.

3. The thematic meaning

'Special' is a mirror held up to the novel’s central question: what counts as human?

In the book:

Androids are biologically artificial but often more articulate, more self‑aware, more emotionally complex than humans.

Specials are biologically human but stripped of rights, status, and respect.

So the term 'special' exposes the hypocrisy of a society obsessed with biological purity while simultaneously failing to recognise empathy, suffering, and personhood.

It’s the Dick way of saying:

Humanity is not guaranteed by biology. It is guaranteed by how we treat one another.

4. Why the word 'special' is bitterly ironic