He uses other people's phones because it doesn't give any information about him when he does that. If nobody else around him had a phone, he just would get on life without making that phone call, or he would wait until he found a landline to make that call. But if the convenience already exists, he'll use it.
He's actually quite internally self-consistent. The principle he's adhering to is (1) he doesn't want to be tracked himself but (2) if someone else is already tracked, that doesn't necessarily track him. He still thinks you should choose to not be tracked yourself, but if you already made the choice to carry a phone, it's too late.
He will use servers or devices which aren't entirely free software because it's not practical to modify them. This is why he makes a big distinction between free software and hackable hardware. He considers these to be two different things. He believes that once you have the actual device and it's modifiable, you should be allowed to modify it. If the device is soldered and hardwired from the beginning, then it's simply impractical to require that hardware manufacturers allow you to modify it. This is why originally free BIOS wasn't such a big deal, until all BIOS became flashable, so now Coreboot is one of the causes of the FSF.
Saying that he will use any server that runs non-free software is a simplification of his position. He considers that sometimes you are merely being provided a service, and you should consider the conditions under which this service is provided. That's why he eschews the word "cloud", because it conflates a bunch of different things and makes people stop thinking about their relationship to a server. He does think that merely requesting a web page from a server running, say, Microsoft Server is ok, because that's just information the server is sending him, and it doesn't matter how that information got generated. He might consider that Microsoft Server would harm the sysadmins using it, not him.
His positions make sense. He's a huge aspie, so he spends a lot of time making sure everything he says falls into place logically. Part of his aspie condition is that he has tantrums and eats toe cheese. You should view those acts as that: a condition he has to live with. But this condition also makes him think very long and hard about the ethical and technical implications of the decisions we make about our computers.
I don't think he's internally consistent in the manner a rational person would expect. I think he's internally consistent in the same way a patient with multiple-personality disorder and delusions finds ways to justify where their lover Eduardo has gone and why he comes and goes a lot like the Pokaroo.
He's actually quite internally self-consistent. The principle he's adhering to is (1) he doesn't want to be tracked himself but (2) if someone else is already tracked, that doesn't necessarily track him. He still thinks you should choose to not be tracked yourself, but if you already made the choice to carry a phone, it's too late.
He will use servers or devices which aren't entirely free software because it's not practical to modify them. This is why he makes a big distinction between free software and hackable hardware. He considers these to be two different things. He believes that once you have the actual device and it's modifiable, you should be allowed to modify it. If the device is soldered and hardwired from the beginning, then it's simply impractical to require that hardware manufacturers allow you to modify it. This is why originally free BIOS wasn't such a big deal, until all BIOS became flashable, so now Coreboot is one of the causes of the FSF.
Saying that he will use any server that runs non-free software is a simplification of his position. He considers that sometimes you are merely being provided a service, and you should consider the conditions under which this service is provided. That's why he eschews the word "cloud", because it conflates a bunch of different things and makes people stop thinking about their relationship to a server. He does think that merely requesting a web page from a server running, say, Microsoft Server is ok, because that's just information the server is sending him, and it doesn't matter how that information got generated. He might consider that Microsoft Server would harm the sysadmins using it, not him.
His positions make sense. He's a huge aspie, so he spends a lot of time making sure everything he says falls into place logically. Part of his aspie condition is that he has tantrums and eats toe cheese. You should view those acts as that: a condition he has to live with. But this condition also makes him think very long and hard about the ethical and technical implications of the decisions we make about our computers.