The funniest part of all this is the two-facedness:

When the tech bros are doing the Democrat's bidding, all is good in the universe.

When the tech bros are with the Republicans, it's faciscm, it's the return of the reich, it's this and that and the other thing.

Because of that, none of you two-faced twat's bitching is of any note. FOAD.

FWIW, I saw the Obama / Biden / Tech relationship as insidious, fascistic, and Orwellian, just to illustrate my point.

And I will always view it as such. Tech was colluding with government to silence half the country. FOAD.

Of course AI chatbots spout biased nonsense.

So does every news show, every newspaper, every new site.

Their job was never to report the Who, What, Why, When and Where. Their job is to make you do your masters' bidding.

"If you read the papers, you're misinformed. If you don't read the papers, you're uniformed." --attr. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain

Pulitzer Prize is named for one of the two biggest liars in journalism in history, one that along with his competitor dragged us into the Spanish-American War.

Always remember that, and the Tonkin Gulf Incident.

Forget it, and you will be unwittingly doing what others tell you to do.

In 1973 I was 4 years old. My side was the side of cookies, frosted flakes, hot cocoa and Scooby-Doo.

Years later I realized 1973 was the beginning of the end.

But now, I really think the seeds of our destruction were planted in 1965, before I was even born.

Been downhill ever since Apollo. Our last hurrah.

Did Copilot write this? Anytime I see "quietly" I get the feel AI wrote it.

Been creeping in for a bit. First in news, then in the stock ticker, tv, music, books, and now maps.

All passed off as helpful "suggestions."

The ones that really torque me off are "suggestions" in books, tv and music. I've disabled what I can but some of this can't be turned off.

Apple makes enough with hardware alone. They don't need to whoreify the whole "ecosystem."

I let 'em know what I think of it, but that all goes to the bitbucket. No one gives a rip. 2.5 billion is not even a dime's worth of pocket change, to them.

I won't move to Android, because that's Alphabet, ergo 100x worse. So here we are. I feel like Dark Helmet. Surrounded by assholes. Greedy assholes.

At least, for now, apple ads aren't *bam* in your face like others - but a "sponsored" result is an ad by another name.

I"m starting to understand the desire, of some, to move out to the woods, in a cabin, sans grid.

I'm a practitioner of "guerilla hi-fi" - you buy used, or build it yourself out of old schematics, rescue gear off the curb, etc.

o Speakers: 39 year old horns from Klipsch
o Receiver: 21 year old digital from panasonic
o Turntable : 49 years old Thorens
o Tape deck: 10 year old PC
o CD Player: Old beater Sony DVD
o Streaming: 20 year old Airport Express, hooked up with toslink, paired to my phone. AirPlay whatever I want from whatever "app" I want. Or from my own internal MP3 collection.

Not being beholden to a vendor like Sonos: Priceless

Sonos can go suck it. I can't even fathom its use case.

I get to stream whatever I want, and have studio-grade sound, all with kit nearly as old as I am.

Really? You must be in BFE or something.

Here where I am - somewhere in South Florida - FPL has consistently jacked up our rates, for a variety of stated reasons - including feeding the new colos.

Your experience != everyone else's.

My power bill has increased by about 20% DESPITE switching to LED lighting, which reduced my light draw from about 700w to maybe 50w for the whole house minus home cine and bathroom.

My power bill has increased DESPITE setting higher aircon temps.

So yes -- datacenters are absolutely jacking up rates, and have completely made irrelevant the change to LED.

I want my tungsten lamps back. A pox on the next son of a bitch who mandates a switch to a "higher efficiency" light, only see all those gains in efficiency wiped out by a much bigger power user.

The small drop in demand from going to LED is gone. Now, we have a massive increase in demand, supposedly solely to AI.

RAM, and other related prices, through the roof.

Happy, yet, tech bros? Not only did your greed jack up the global demand for electricity, now your insatiable thirst for cash and power make it so hardware's that much more expensive.

We abandoned our beloved tungsten, for this?

Do this to me, and I'll sue. I don't care for what -- the usual bullshit of "emotional damage" and "mental anguish" and all that.

I encourage every person erroneously flagged to do so. The only thing that hurts corporations is a hit on the wallet -- so hit their wallet, hard, and often.

I'm not amused by it. The human on the other end is hoping the "AI" chatbot will give them results stripped of all SEO bullshit.

This alters that behavior. The chatbot will be unduly influenced by the ad, and the user will be unaware of this influence.

The answer is obvious: Online advertisement must die.

It's hard to parse sentences some of the words are.

Do not the cat.

Models and meteorologists want a *vertical* sample of the atmosphere. The ideal sensor would not bend, deflect, or drift off with the winds aloft. Balloons do a *lot* of drifting.

The soundings returned by the balloons are all skewed to some degree or another.

Every time you wash your car, hose off the underside too, then go for a long-ish drive to dry it all out.

Ziebart is still a thing.

Waxing the undercarriage is also still a thing, and now there's even better - silica coatings, ceramic coatings.

You do'nt get a car to last by being a passive customer, you get one to last by being an active steward.

And yes I've lived in rust belt. In snow country where sand and salt are used. I've worked on machinery that required the ultimate persuader - the blue wrench. (the torch.)

Today I live in sunny south florida, the car is garaged since day 1, and I still hose off the undercarriage at every wash as if I still was in snow country.

For every risk, there's an action you can take to reduce / eliminate that risk. in cars it's keeping it clean, on top and under the car, too.

I wouldn't know - my UI is toggle switches, rockers, rotary controls, levers.

The few times i've had to drive a "new" vehicle with touch-everything, they've all been uniformly terrible.

And I can't stand Tesla build quality. Have a co-worker with an S. It's mid-70's Detroit build quality. Loose trim, things that don't line up, panel gaps that aren't perfect, etc etc.

I'm keeping my current wheels until death do us part.

if the wheels fall off I put em back on again.

Light, stickshift, simple, joyful. No watchful eye. No connection to any network. It does have a black box that can be played back tho.

But today's cars? An affront to privacy, an affront to the person who enjoys driving, an affront to basic decency.

Maintain your old cars, folks - they don't make 'em like they used to now, and this time is far worse than prior shockwaves.

Stuff like this makes the federally-mandated screen seem downright tame.