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You could try NextDNS. It won’t let you designate access per app, but you can create custom blocklists. Short-term logging makes it easy to see at a glance which domains are being requested, and it doesn’t take long to get it all set up so that your apps only contact stuff which is strictly necessary in your view. Also comes with many blocklists to choose from, as well as other useful settings.
“When you connect your phone to the car via bluetooth or usb your phone will trust the car and hand over the data.”
USB charging I can understand, but seems odd that phones do not block data transfers (besides that needed to manage charging) unless the user explicitly permits it.
I guess people use Bluetooth to connect to car speakers, but again, why are the phones being so permissive with what they send?
Point is, one can decrypt each email individually. That slows an malicious attacker rummaging in your device from finding what they are after as much as it does you.
You wouldn’t be alone in wanting this feature, but for those who need rather than prefer to encrypt, the option to store locally in plaintext is a major risk. On balance it seems better for developers to pay heed to that than to our preferences.
For the rest of us, we can download the emails we wish to refer to with ease, or we can create aides memoire to make it easy to locate specific emails later.
Just as it inconveniences you to have to decrypt to search, it would similarly slow down anyone malicious who gains access to your machine.
Am in favour of allowing users to decide which features are best for their needs, but this seems like it would be easy to forget to reinstitute local encryption after a search, so can also understand why developers prevent storing in plaintext.
If you’re lucky, your library may have a language lab. They’d be far less common now that we all carry access to tutorials in our pockets, but those that existed are unlikely to have been ripped out.
Then, some countries run language learning institutes abroad with classes at all levels, group or individual, from basic conversation for fun through to examined courses in specialised language for people who are fluent or near fluent (medical French, engineering Spanish, business German, etc.). These would also have decent libraries if the idea of a course doesn’t appeal.
For online study, EDx hosts a lot of language courses run by leading universities. These are typically free unless you wish to sit a proctored exam to obtain certification of the level you attain.
Oh I don’t feel I’ve lost those means, and often prefer them still, but find even people of my generation who grew up without constant access to the internet fall to pieces at the prospect of looking in a book, a paper map or writing a letter, etc.
It is as if they forget the information persists without connectivity.
I feel like the things you list had more human input, as built, and more scope to take human feedback into account to amend any issues.
The latter could of course be similarly used to refine AI versions, but as cost-cutting is a major attraction, this seems unlikely to happen unless the AI is do poor that the errors cost too much otherwise.
As things stand, we now must guess what a customer service bot or search engine might understand, framing our terms to fit our beliefs about how massed groups might make the same enquiry. Relatively simple tech questions are met, not with the conversations initiated by people with similar queries, but with reams of links to material offering solutions to almost the opposite problem. I.e.: “how do I disable x on y?” must be asked “disable x y?”, but you’ll struggle to find any link which isn’t “y is great, learn about the cool new x feature on y”, x is great, enable x", “what to do if you cannot enable x”. Maybe some bots telling you why wanting to disabling x is futile & wouldn’t you like to learn how great x is? “Your life will suffer if you disable x. You won’t be able to do things you never ever & would never want to do if you disable x” Which, for some things, there’s some validity to some parts of that, but for disabling a bloatware messaging app? Not so much, and potentially just indicative of terrible architecture.
Perhaps I should be optimistic that AI will rapidly patch this type of issue, being able to return responses that have a good analysis of the query, but feel it is more likely that flawed AI will hijack the whole.
It has been a good run, but swathes of us have lost what were standard means of seeking information.
Have you considered putting letters written on paper in the post?
Seems unwise to give your child’s early life story to any of these companies, especially when mapped to a network of her relatives and likely including photographs which people may not be as diligent to keep private as you.
Your daughter cannot consent to this, and it is your duty as parents to protect her privacy until she is old enough to decide for herself what to share and where.