Indeed, and it … worked, in fact still does, exactly as expected.

surprisingly convincing

Why though? It’s literally designed to be convincing.

I don’t know how many 9s I do … but I don’t care. We should not think of metrics of uptime or scalability like BigTech, we’re not them. We’re not “selling” the same “product”. To me it’s about agency, empowerment, creativity, privacy, not uptime.

All my services are fine. I self host. Yes I’m quite pedantic about it. :D

In France at least internships are nearly 6 months long. It’s nowhere near as long as a normal project length but still, it’s quite a bit.

On the project aspect, it doesn’t have to be done this way. Contributing to existing project is totally feasible. One could contribute a plugin to PeerTube, a patch to the Linux kernel, etc. Sure one can start from scratch, and maybe in some cases it’s better (maybe less fear) but I think it’s rare to be an actual requirement from teachers.

even if i cant escape them i will try to give the minimum data possible.

Yep, one has to be pragmatic. We all wish our behavior was perfect at all time but sadly we must compromise and come to term with it.

Accepting that is important. I believe what can also help is to :

• avoid is possible
• if not, not provide unnecessary information (maybe the real name is NOT actually needed)
• delete what can be deleted locally (short history) and remotely (e.g. GDPR request)
• to data takeout regularly to be ready to move away any time
• isolate the problematic app (container, other device, emulator, etc)

… and finally, most importantly, minimize the actual negative impact. For example if one does provide data to Google or Meta then at least while blocking ads then their actual business model, namely selling your profile to advertising company, is lost.

i ask people to be aware that for some of us, our situations makes impossible to remove some of the meta, microsoft or google services.

Right, I’m not saying it’s necessarily bullying by people, it can be precisely by those companies. They make themselves as hard as possible to ignore.

Or worst because Meta itself make such plans cheaper, or even free (as they did in e.g. Brazil), when data is used on their platforms.

3 years of just theory is going to produce decent software engineers

Eh… isn’t everybody encouraged to do projects? Like isn’t every single class doing that? If so then it’s not just theory, it’s actual practice.

Also universities and engineering schools to suggest (some make it mandatory) to have internships. That’s also practice.

I think only CS graduates who plan to become professors are perfectly fine with “just” theory but everybody else has actual opportunities to go being that.

almost mandatory

That’s bullying talk. It’s the same everywhere… and what matters is the “almost” part. If people need you, they find a way. It might be SMS, it might be email, you might be left out from groupchat but you can still be reached.