One has to assume that they've done market research, and that their target customers are those who -somehow- are in love with the concept of home automation, and especially to give FOMO to their friends for not being 'up-to-date enough' with new tech.Turns out that there are also some pretty major annoyances to being trapped in these types of walled-garden software ecosystems. Sometimes down to the level of show-stopping ones.

I'm sorry, the app-bricking episode was enough for me, it would take an awful lot of goodwill for them to ever be on the shortlist of audio products I'd want to own; however this is written knowing full well that I am most certainly not a part of their target audience. This move towards AI features reeks of 'marketingspeak' being written by numpties for a press release to hopefully help pump stock valuations up; and of solutions in search of a problem to solve rather than striving to offer the types of features which will tangibly improve their listeners' experience with music.

TL;DR: The 'smarter' you make your products, the 'dumber' you also seem to imply your customers are.

While they don't seem to mind being used as poster boys for Cory Doctorow's 'enshittification' (audio edition), that'll be a giant nope from me, on principle.

"the agreement reinforces Deere's continued innovation toward more flexible repair options, emphasizing increased access and transparency for customers. It formalizes Deere's ongoing commitment to expanding access to diagnostic and repair tools."

It's as if the corpo lawyers and copywriters are only ever capable of gleefully basking in the meaningless and empty marketingspeak they customarily feed to press releases?

This could lead one to wonder if after a while they themselves actually start believing what such gigantic piles of manure are saying? (being that manure emits methane, self-gaslighting doesn't seem too far-fetched)

I don't understand how this was classified as 'Troll' unless those with mod points felt so guilty for someone spelling out exactly how this addiction can be fought successfully that they subconsciously needed to lash out.

Because out of the few replies to this topic, this one felt the most realistic at offering a way to combat the brain rot, it didn't attack anyone else as the author limited his/her comments to their own personal situation, and (agree with it or not) generally felt coherent enough.

ELI5 Please

...yeah, this left me a bit dumbfounded. And by the way, I also use a similar enough method to successfully keep my 'screen time' to a minimum.

Heck, with an older Android phone laying around, this may just be the kind of thing that gives me an incentive to install Graphene OS.

Tech nerds may be a minority, but this absolutely feels like a defining moment when a group of people takes a principled stand against the utter stupidity and ignorance lawmakers everywhere insist on supporting.

Wherever they are on the planet, here's hoping it inspires others to join the resistance.

One has to love how the same group of goons dressed up in business suits that gave us the world-famous ROOTKIT can proclaim themselves defenders of songwriters' rights when their beancounters will surely hatch up a scheme where their rent-seeking lawyers will demand a percentage of any such earning which they will claim to have earned because of them supplying the underlying technology that made the settlement possible.

Not to say anything of the endless amount of billable hours which will be generated by the quasi-infinite number of frivolous lawsuits potentially clogging up the courts. This is so dystopian, it hurts. Why? Because why stop at current releases for that matter, when this system can also be used to retroactively sue people for 'appropriating' material on music that was created in the past. And even worse, it could be used to selectively sue certain enemies, and give a pass to other friendly entities.

EARLY CANDIDATE FOR THE 2026 ENSHITTIFICATION AWARDS. (you pick the category, but I'd suggest "Most Adversarial Use of AI")

I can't believe that we've collectively come to this, and all the while also proudly announcing UFC fights on the White House Lawn next year.

But figures don't lie, and (if one is to believe statistics) the ever-widening gap between the poorly educated incapable of reading basic books, seeking cheap mind-numbing gratification and those who spend their time studying, self-improving and pursuing cultural passions was ultimately going to lead to such outcomes.

No joy here, no FAFO, just the mere realization that Idiocracy most certainly appears to be advancing at a much faster pace than even Mike Judge predicted.

Even before this latest round of restrictions (which probably has something to do with WMG getting into a partnership with them) the TOS were reasonably tortuous and convoluted; as documented in several very detailed YouTube videos by legal experts. They basically never gave users much privacy, as IIRC it squarely represented that UDIO could do as they pleased with the outputs, required attribution in commercial use, and at the very least could use them for training

For those who want to seriously dabble in generative AI for music, there are a good amount of self-hosted solutions available which can be run locally, and where there is no watermarking, no fingerprinting, no copyright claims or other cumbersome restrictions. The only difference is that they'll have to make the effort to install and run the LLMs on their own server's GPU, and learn to administer the box.

So many variations on this dark and very tone-deaf theme of cultural alienation could be used to create startups that drain money from the VC pool or from crypto bros for short-term profit.
Since it's associated with AI, (and just as with the DotCom bubble), charlatans will have a chance to actually get their idiotic projects funded because VCs often fall victim to hype for things they don't understand.

Obviously, I'm not going to list any of these variations that easily come to mind, lest some may actually inspire unsavory operators to run with the ideas.
All the same, it feels as if it's pretty much down to human nature to try every possible permutation of dumb 'business models' before settling for the most stupidly offensive one.

I never used Vine, but resurrecting large swaths of our early online culture sounds like a project worthy of some support. (even if Dorsey is involved)

Cynicism and irony aside, how can we not want to support any initiative giving more permanence to cultural ephemera? I'm sure some interesting and very unique content can be snipped from some of these clips, and it can only lead to further remixing and mashing up into platforms that are currently trendy like TikTok.

... is Bill Murray playing an endless game of 'whack-a-mole' with gophers in the movie Caddyshack.

Not saying that it's pointless (yet) to do so, but it sure seems headed that way.

At some future stage, all of this enforcement will not be worthwhile or manageable anymore.
The one thing that comes to mind is Gabe Newell, who proved that piracy is only a problem when the stuff isn't easily available. One could wish that publishers would come to their senses and roughly offer everything in a similar fashion to what Steam has been doing with games.

The user has a library, where all of the stuff they purchased remains permanently available, including offline and it's made frictionless so that it becomes a pleasure to use the platform, instead of constantly being stifled by territorial restrictions, DRM, some titles being unavailable, whatever other arcane legalese which make the experience so frustrating that people pragmatically get frustrated and resort to piracy.

Thanks so very much for sharing this lovely online novel, indeed so relevant to the topic at hand.

It'll be something I treasure and recommend from here on out.

It's kind of scary that those who enact these rules don't realize how much more motivated teenagers will be, because they'll have the added thrill of accessing something that's forbidden.

Anyway, for the rest of us, what some think of as an annoyance will probably just be a unique opportunity for vendors of VPN services to easily gain market share.
The entire thing will just place undue burden and complexity for these sites to satisfy the Nanny State, and help contribute to some epic-sized data leaks.

#whatcouldpossiblygowrong

"So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish" suddenly makes so much more sense now.

Looks like Apple are doing their very best to ensure that users such as myself will never use one of their NKB 'Nanny Knows Best' devices.
Wouldn't be surprised if the next bit was "Oh and by the way, we had some of your videos sent to our contractors //for quality assurance and training// or whatever else"

This whole idea of being tethered to their apps within the ecosystem is bad enough, but this just feels like a bridge too far.

What's so special about Facetime anyway, just Signal FFS. It does video calling, group chats (especially great for Pentagon employees) etc..