No way. Life is way better with smart phones. Tap to pay, maps, always having a camera, always having my notes, working as a mobile hotspot, controlling my home security system. 25 other things.

This stuff used to be so much harder. I’m not going back.

I will freely admit there are some dangerous addictive and invasive aspects to it also. I’m ruthless about what apps I will grant permissions to. And I don’t browse the App Store getting tempted by their promises.

I think the appeal of our phones not having to be a computer and not needing all the same rigor and paranoia and extra steps of a computer was really exciting. But it hasn’t turned out to be true. So now I treat it like a computer and approach everything with that level of skepticism. And also treat it like the gateway to capitalism that it is and I am skeptical of anything that’s trying to take my data or money. I think with the right attitude it’s a net positive device in my life

Yeah same, I mostly just check the inbox for fun things my friends have sent. I’m not ready to give that part up yet

Pixelfed is good and has some great artists and photographers already there. The mobile app was pretty rough a few months ago but it’s getting better quickly.

It’s cloud storage and terrestrial storage. And it’s multi cloud. It’s the ultimate cloud hybrid!

That was a bad move. Sit outside instead and block the door where everyone can see you and you get press coverage. Breaking into his office just gives them a reason to lock you up.

It’s not even the rainy season in Seattle. It would’ve been a nice day to occupy the lawn.

In a rising tide of enshittification we all have to find higher, cleaner ground. Standing on a hill that seems to be above the shit for awhile is an ok strategy even if that hill is owned by someone else and might sink into the shit eventually. It’s working for now and it’s better than being in the shit. Not everyone can build their own hill, at least not right away.

Because this is one of the rare times he sat down at the keyboard to do the real work being done by people in this organization and he realized that it’s hard and he wants a shortcut. He sees his time as more valuable and sees this task as wasting his time, but it is their primary task and one they do as volunteers because they are passionate about it. He’s not going to get a lot of traction with them telling them the thing they do for free because they love it isn’t worth anyone’s time.

Oh good. Let’s nationalize the chip manufacturing so the government can install hardware security back doors.

Agreed I don’t get why anyone would invest in them right now. Five years ago you were joining a hype train, but how does anyone think their value is going to increase from today forward?

Their biggest appeal seems to be that their consumer product ChatGPT is a household name and has widespread consumer use. But consumer adoption of a phone app is a very fickle thing to stake a trillion dollars on.

Not only do you have to deploy them in a constellation, you have to deploy them in a descending constellation. They are constantly burning up all the time and you have to keep launching new ones forever just to maintain current capacity. It’s the perfect business plan to make SpaceX look better on paper.

That someone is so attached to this stochastic parrot is truly disturbing.

If it’s Internet connected and requires a cloud subscription service, you are just paying to be spied on and controlled. This is as true for dogs as it is for speakers and TVs.

DSL is distance-sensitive and only works within about 2-3 miles from a switch office. It also depends on line quality and the speeds degrade based on both factors. So old rural lines that haven’t been upgraded and are long hauls on single copper are basically doomed.

“OpenAI’s Sam Altman Expects To Spend ‘Trillions’ On Boiling All Our Oceans And Poisoning The Skies”

FTFY

Agreed. I get that the mission of Wikipedia is to make information available to everyone and purposely cutting off a whole nation from their information goes against their mission. But sometimes Wikipedia should play hardball, and if the UK elected a government that wants to block Wikipedia then the people of the UK shouldn’t get Wikipedia. The people of the UK will need to elect a new government. Or get a VPN. Or both.

Wow yikes. I couldn’t even get through a few minutes of one of them. I assume the prompt was “generate the most annoying video possible using random clips of humanoid cats and a soundtrack that induces aneurysms”

This is actually a problem for people in rural areas where broadband has not reached (and won’t because it’s not profitable). Cellular will be the best option they have left.

As long as the previous collections of archives are still intact. We probably don’t need all of their new spam posts in the wayback machine anyway

The “outsourced labor” is the most concerning part here. People who won’t have a voice and can’t protest the poor conditions

“sudden and unprovoked attack”

Apparently hunting something to kill it is not provoking.