I’ve never been one to idle well. Back when I worked in industry, I would take on consulting work because I was pretty bored by Sunday, but then I became an academic. There’s an infinite supply of work to do! I can teach, research, code, and plot subterfuge to my heart’s content. I do that six days a week and then read and binge watch stuff on Saturdays. It’s great, and AI will have to pry those two days out of my cold dead hands if it wants to make me work four days only!

Then again, I could compromise. Perhaps I could plot subterfuge with the AI. Hmmm

Itâ(TM)s time we addressed these important issues. Now US diplomacy is great again. Weâ(TM)ll make peace bigly with the best words in the best fonts.

Ok, thatâ(TM)s my sarcasm quota for the day taken care of.

... that they have changed it to 'Louvre1'

Thank you! I'll see myself out.

Did you pay money for it? If the answer is no, then you are not the customer; you are the product! So applying that, this browser is designed for you to train the AI.

This works for everything online. Though I suppose there are some additional grades. Did you pay ENOUGH to sustain your usage? If the answer is no then you are partially the product. Companies that offer "free" things are evil little spies. Companies that offer subscription services that cost money are potentially not stealing your data or tricking you into doing things for them.

While I applaud the effort to try to keep Android open, I think it is futile. Even if this campaign succeeds, google will just continue to chip away at androidâ(TM)s openness until they achieve the closed off system they want. That, in turn, means that it is dying.

The thing is, googleâ(TM)s Android is an inferior product both in terms of capability and user experience. The only value proposition it held for me was its openness, and since that is a deprecated feature I decided to jump ship while my Android devices still had value. I sold my flagship galaxy lineup (ultra, tablet, watch, and ring) and bought the Apple equivalents.

I had to kick in about $50 to rebuy apps that did not have transferable subscriptions, but apart from that little annoyance the transition has been very smooth. The transfer of my last Google Drive file completed last week and now I am fully in Appleâ(TM)s clutches.

To say that this has improved my life is an understatement. The integration between Mac, iPad, and iPhone is just wonderful. Granted I no longer have a device with a usable shell in my pocket, but it does have an ssh client and that is almost just as good. That iCloud encrypts files at rest and has the ability to be configured in a way where apple does not possess the keys was a pleasant surprise. They are certainly selling privacy as a feature!

So there it is. I have given up. The walled garden is delightful. Appleâ(TM)s garden is green and is a joy to wander through. Googleâ(TM)s is more like a prison camp with muck raked over every surface and machine gun equipped cameras watching your every move.

Choose the pleasant prison. Itâ(TM)s better.

Ha! Made ya look!

99% of what I do on my phone is done through open source F-Droid applications. I have very little from the play store. Essentially, I have my built-in apps, Hearthstone, and then a few apps forced on me by modern society. Otherwise, my phone is a pocket linux machine with a bunch of F-Droid apps thrown in. So essentially, my platform is about to die. It's not so much that I am changing ecosystems as it is that Google is about to poison my ecosystem. So I'll simply be starting fresh in a new environment, and I would not choose Android over iOS.

Right now, you are correct. Once google locks out all independent apps, that will no longer be the case. If my phone will be reduced to officially allowed functionality, there is no need for much RAM, storage, or any sort of spec. It'll just be a terminal to which I can tether devices that I can control. So that just leaves the user interface and device packaging. In my opinion, iOS is the clear winner in that department.

Well if it weren't for the apps shackling me to a certified device, I would just run lineage os and be done with it. Unfortunately, my banking app and my employer's 2FA apps do not work with non-certified devices.

I could see this, but the fancy equipment is useless if it doesn't do what I tell it to. I'll be coming off a flagship Samsung to the crappiest iPhone that the market can provide. I'll bank, text, and pay my parking meter with it. What a good little citizen I will be.

If I'm going to be forced to wear handcuffs, I am going to have the shiniest handcuffs on the market and that is not Android. I tolerate android because it grants me the freedom to *gasp* run programs of my choosing on a computer that I own. Take that away and the value proposition is gone. iPhone here I come!

Well I, for one, had no idea just how many online services Microsoft offers. But when I let copilot take over, after teaching it my credit card info, I'm now subscribed to them all! :)

The rule for us has always been that as a private citizen, we can say anything we like. If we are acting as a government agent though, like if I am in the classroom or on a news program with my university logo proudly displayed under my talking head, then we are more constrained. Honestly, that is as it should be.

But yeah, there seems to be a push in the direction of because our paychecks are derived from the government then that extends into all sorts of other controls. Like giving to Wikimedia or a political party.

I think it's just a poorly formed sentence. Wikipedia gets no tax dollars, as far as I know. Unless you count the fact that they are a non-profit organization and so they don't pay some taxes.

I believe the subsidized people are the academic institutions which receive subsidies. Read that way they are alleging that people who work at publicly funded institutions are using wikipedia to influence the public. Probably part of their general crackdown on people like me (I'm a public university professor.) Hey! I guess that means some of your tax dollars indirectly go to wikipedia. My university gets tax dollars, out of which I get paid a salary. I turn around and give like $50 a year to the wikimedia foundation.

It's a $300.00 raspberry pi powered smart speaker that can rotate and tilt from side to side. That's not really disruptive. Really, I struggle to call this thing a robot. I could go as far as "toy robot", but then that makes it one of the most expensive products of its kind.