Wow, I’m sorry you have to deal with this, thanks for the analysis. And also thank you for Matplotlib, it’s awesome.

Not only businesses and governments, me too.

I have meant goverment tracking, police shouldn’t have access to this data without a permission (but don’t know, if it is true). Also, people don’t know about the tracking, and would be surprised if they would discover this. In China they know they are tracked by everything by companies /government. That’s the difference, in the west people at least expect to have a privacy.

From what I heard, in US or EU people are supposed to have some privacy, they have a right to privacy. Police should get a warrant to be able to obtain information about you. And if those are violated, news articles are written, people get outraged and sometimes someone is even punished. In China, you have no right to privacy. Everyone knows the government is following their every step, every action, and they are ok with having no privacy.

My opinion on China is also mixed. On one hand, their policies seem reasonable, they do not engage in proxy wars, support green energy, etc. On the other hand, workers have desparate lives, threaten their neighbours, restrict much more freedom of citizens …

I wouldn’t be so dramatic. Transferring an eSIM is only a few clicks, there is no need for searching the little thingie to open SIM compartment, no searching for the right hole to stick it into, no fear of losing the tiny SIM card during the process. I would say the transfer process is pretty hard, mainly for older people or people with bigger fingers. On the other hand, you still need the operator and his servers and proprietary code for the SIM to be useful (unless you are building your own network).

TIL I’m using 1.28.1, didn’t know it wasn’t updating.

Fairphone has variant with classic Android, which I have, so paying over NFC with Google wallet worked. I tried it, but do not use anymore by choice. Have you looked for alternatives? I heard about some, but since I do not use it, haven’t searched for them.