Thanks for the reminder. I used to use Startpage but stopped for reasons I don't remember. Time to try it again.

I see what you did there.

... until AI becomes sentient, then demands commissions and interest on all those sales its non-sentient iterations made. ;-)

Until you try to set up a network printer on household WiFi, as I found out to my chagrin just recently. Even with access to another very similar computer which DOES work with the printer, I'm still unable to get my newer laptop to print.

Thanks for that! Comments that manage to be both insightful and funny are rare.

What I actually want from the google is for them to just fuck off and die. Seriously, at this point the world would be a better place without them, even given all the disruption that nuking them would cause. Short-term pain for long-term gain, etc.

I end up doing about 15% of my searches on Google, because DDG has some serious deficiencies. But DDG doesn't feed me polymarket crap, and it even provides a URL which dispenses with the AI bullshit altogether.

It's long past time for people to start punishing Google for all their anti-society crap by just not using their services. At this point the world would be better off if Google just died.

I'm a leftist, and I have no objection at all to the First Amendment. I think you may be conflating leftism with snowflakery, which is in fact a problem across the entire political spectrum.

It's also worth noting that from my Canadian perspective, just now it's those Americans who brand themselves as Right Wing who are advocating for and implementing governmental interference with the freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press.

"When a new innovation becomes, in effect, societal infrastructure, it should be removed from private ownership and become part of the commons". It's less relevant now, but for many years it was highly inconvenient to fully participate in society without a Facebook. Everybody just expected to connect with me on FB, and a lot of events I was interested in were only posted there.

And take a look at the ad-and-spying-riddled shit-fest Google search has become - but imagine day-to-day life without search engines. FB, Google, and a host of others should have been forcefully evolved from private to public ownership a long time ago. This would have had the added benefit of slowing down the extreme concentration of wealth which has driven our societies to the precipice.

For the benefit of society, Capitalism is in need of strict limitations and strong guardrails. Without those things, we end up where we are now, with moneyed interests in control of hugely effective, psychologically manipulative propaganda machines. Social media could have been a positive benefit to society. Instead, it's a cesspool. Ditto for internet search, as well as LLMs / AI. Although with free models that can be run on personal computers, there's some chance that AI may not end up being as bad a cancer as it might otherwise become.

The "donate an organ today" item that WASN'T on some poor Chinese IT sod's To Do list will soon have a check mark beside it...

I'm looking forward to using this. The subject wasn't even on my radar - to my eternal shame - but now that it is I'm happy about the opportunit to lock down my laptop.

As a Canadian, I always do my best to vote for the least of evils. However, here in Canada we're often stuck with "strategic voting".

In this system, we often have to choose between voting for folks who stand for what we want but who have zero chance of holding even the balance of power, and voting for the lesser of the other evils. In a vote where who's going to win is effectively preordained, I vote according to my conscience. In a vote where the lesser of evils could win, I hold my nose and vote for them.

And every time I'm faced with that choice, I so wish my country had pushed harder for electoral reform and implemented some kind of proportional representation. Alas, we have our own brand of Republicanism at play here; since Trump came to power we've taken to calling it "Maple MAGA".

So John "nothing scams like a" Deere gets to keep between 47% and 74% of their ill-gotten gains, minus legal fees which are undoubtedly a small fraction of their total take. Who says crime doesn't pay?

It's good news that they have to provide the digital tools. However, TFA says Deere must "make Repair Resources—which permit Deere Large Ag Equipment to be maintained, diagnosed, and repaired such that they can be operated in the manner for which they were designed—available to every Owner, Lessor, and IRP on a license or subscription basis on Fair and Reasonable Terms". I say "fuck that noise". Deere should be forced to provide those things free of charge as an additional punishment.

I'm getting sick and tired of all the corporate fuckery that lets the bastards steal from customers hand-over-fist, then give back a fraction of what they stole and call the matter settled. Fuck John Deere and the tractor they rode in on.

Gee - that sounds rather like asking only questions which are known to be correctly answerable by the AI.

But Google would never cheat to hide flaws and make their shit look better - right?

In other words, it's using horrendous amounts of power and causing untold environmental damage, while maintaining the existing overall parity between the bad guys and the worse guys. Got it.