Also, a bunch of Google Apps. Moto bundles those as well. You apparently don't consider them crapware, but other people disagree.

As for Facebook, etc, there's another class of "virtually pre-installed" apps (I forget what the actual term is) which aren't actually part of the system image. Instead, the system image has a list of apps the device will automatically download and install after factory reset, so they're present by default but you actually can remove them. Whether Facebook is really pre-installed, virtually pre-installed or not pre-installed depends, of course, on the OEM and how much Facebook is paying them.

Google's terms mandate, of course, that even pre-installed apps can be disabled. OEMs are not allowed to block that.

Not being much of a gamer I haven't followed this story (at all!) so the headline and initiative name "Stop Killing Games" made me think it was 1.3 million signatures from people who want to ban games in which people are killed. "No way that's going to pass," I thought. People love virtual murder.

Then I figured out that it's the killing of the games people want to stop, not the games that include killing.

Vaguely related, I had a serious EverQuest addiction ~20 years ago (the reason I gave up on any but the most casual of gaming), and I noticed a few weeks back that it's still available on Steam, and free to play, so I downloaded it and logged on, and even found my old character still there (though with zero gear because I gave it all away when I quit playing). The UI is dramatically different, but the general content seems the same. It's no longer very interesting to me, though.

The pre-installed apps are just as unremovable on Moto as any other (unless you unlock the bootloader; some Motos have unlockable bootloaders). It may be that you define their pre-installed apps as not crapware, but that's a judgement call, not a statement of technical fact.

Yes, that was the joke. Maybe too much of an inside joke, but isn't this supposed to be a nerd forum?

Disable, yes. Uninstall, no. If it's pre-installed it's part of the system image, which is mounted read-only and protected with fs-crypt. Actually modifying that would require root access to remount it rw and to disable fs-crypt.

That would also, of course, completely destroy the Android security architecture, leaving you wide open to all sorts of attacks. If you want to do that, get an Android device that has an unlockable bootloader (e.g. Google Pixel), unlock it, then do whatever you like. And be sure not to hire any evil maids.

I'd recommend ML-KEM and ML-DSA instead.

I also use the Claude Code extension with VS Code. The inline diffs it provides are quite clumsy compared to Cursor's.

The integration is a little better in Cursor; the main difference being the in-line edit diffs. But I bounce back and forth between Claude Code and cursor, so I end up just using the git diff view to look at changes about 80% of the time, so it's not much better.

Honestly, my reason for using it is that I have separate Claude and Cursor token budgets -- though I set Cursor to use Claude so I'm using the same model both ways.

If your government breaking into your house and applying hardware-level attacks to scrape your secrets out of the RAM of your running computer is seriously part of your threat model, it's almost certainly very, very far from your biggest concern.

Also, you should probably consider turning your computer off.

Entering and even taking the territory of an invader is fair and reasonable. If you don't want to be invaded, don't invade.

The people who would be surprised at this will never see the article in their feeds.

I'm not disputing the article's claims, just pointing out that it doesn't appear to be universal.

What I'm seeing is a significant uptick in job opportunities and recruiter pings coming my way. I haven't seen this much interest in several years. I'm a senior SWE with a focus on security and a solid resume.

My guess is that lots of senior SWEs are seeing this. Deep experience pairs very well with AI, making each engineer able to do what a team of several could do previously. This could obviously come at the expense of positions for the rest of that "team of several", though. Plus there's the other concern that if AI doesn't progress to be able to replace the senior engineer, too, the industry is eating its seed corn; when the experienced folks retire there will be no one to replace them.

That's not all companies, though. My own current employer (Applied Intuition) is hiring like crazy, at all levels and especially entry level. What's more, we're not the only ones because we're actually struggling to hire new grads. They come interview and things seem good, but then a large percentage of them decline our offer. I have no idea what we're offering new grads, but Applied's compensation seems generally good (I'm satisfied with mine).

My guess is the problem is that Applied falls into an awkward place in the Silicon Valley space of companies: Already quite big ($15B valuation) and close to IPO so the pre-IPO equity isn't likely to make you independently wealthy unlike an earlier-stage startup, but still pre-IPO so the equity can't easily be spent. So, new grads looking for a potential huge payoff are disappointed, and those looking for lots of immediate cash are also disappointed.

I have 40 kWh of batteries in my home, for backup and time-shifting, and I participate in a grid-stabilization program with my power company. The grid never draws significant energy from my batteries -- grid stabilization doesn't need a lot of energy, just a brief spike of power to keep things stable while the operator makes other adjustments. Historically this has been unnecessary because generation was from big spinning turbines and their inertia was enough to smooth out spikes and dips in demand. But renewable-heavy grids don't have the tons of spinning steel, so batteries increasingly fill the gaps.

What do I actually see when the power company draws from my batteries? I see an otherwise-unexplained spike of 5-10 kW flowing from my batteries and into the grid, for a period of 2-5 minutes. 10 kW for 5 minutes is ~0.8 kWh, which is 2% of my house battery storage. I see a draw that large maybe once per week; usually it's much less. Bottom line: the impact on my storage is insignificant, and my house batteries are smaller than what most EVs have (my EV has a 100 kWh battery pack).

What do I get for allowing the power company to do that? For the first year of participation, I got a check for $2000. For subsequent years I'll get bill credits of up to $50/month, applied to energy charges only. I'm not sure how much that will translate to, since my net energy purchase is usually zero (thanks to solar panels). It's a great deal for the first year. Beyond that... we'll see.

True, except that gold's actual usage price -- for industry and jewelry -- hasn't been its trading price for a very long time. As long as people have viewed it as a store of wealth its price has been inflated by that perception.

Working from home is an alternative, one that we should use more.

(Of course, I WFH full time and have for 20 of the last 30 years, so I have a bit of a bias.)