Assume all contacts are hostile and practice good OPSEC.

Yeah… no. None of that sounds appealing.

‘Curbing toxicity with AI’ means a bot is going to ban you because it doesn’t recognise sarcasm.

And ‘new tech to verify your identity’ sounds like a privacy violation at best.

‘Verifying that you own a product before they let you post in its community’ is a complete lack of understanding of how people use places like this.

Digg can fuck right off.

Hey, you and me both; sweet and salty is an excellent combination. But some people have not yet seen the light and the glory that is pineapple on pizza. Goddamn heathens.

No doubt the thing had some no-no thoughts. Probably regarding the acceptability of pineapple on pizza, or the total extinction of the human race. Either way, good on them for pulling the plug, I guess.

To be clear, I’m not ‘not adopting’ - I’m actively boycotting that shit. The whole TOM thing was annoying enough, but everything else surrounding it has proven to me that Microsoft cannot be trusted with that level of access to MY hardware.

So yeah, I’m going to put Linux on my PC and ultimately back to Mac full time, I imagine.

Huh, I didn’t know that. I would’ve guessed they’d use some open source alternative.

There’s people who use that? That’s news to me.

Well… the satanists I’ve met definitely seemed like a Linux crowd, so it’s not the worst suggestion prior to sacrificing a goat or something of that nature.

For this comment, I want to be absolutely clear that I do not give a shit about AI, and that it in no way factored into my decision to buy this iPhone 16 Pro Max.

With that disclaimer out of the way:

I very much look forward to a class action lawsuit. Apple advertised specific features as coming ‘very soon’ and gave short timeframes when asked directly. And they basically did not deliver on those advertising promises. Basically, I think there’s a good case to be made here that Apple knowingly engaged in false advertising in order to sell a phone that otherwise would not have sold as well. Those promised AI features WERE a deciding factor for a lot of people to upgrade to an iPhone 16.

So, I’ll be looking forward to some form of compensation. It’s the principle of it.

I’ll check out Brave, it’s been mentioned a few times.

I don’t mind companies making a dime, but now it’s really devolved in bad results that are profit-driven.

What’s the best alternative, in your opinion? I’ve tried Bing and DuckDuckGo, but both showed me worse results for my particular searches.

I just want classic Google Search back, before everything got turned to shit. But I fear that doesn’t really exist since there’s such an economic incentive behind how search engines rank and show results.

That fucking AI thing absolutely sucks for anything factual. I’m a journalist and noticed that it gleefully listed all sorts of factual errors in that AI summary. Stuff that you can see correctly on the original pages, but it somehow manages to misinterpret everything and shows incorrect information.

And knowing how lazy people are these days, most will happily accept Google’s incorrect information as fact. It’s making me very, very nervous for the future.

And one funny addendum to that story is that someone COULD reasonably think that Pepsi had an actual Harrier to give away. After all, Pepsi once owned an actual navy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PepsiCo

In 1989, amidst declining vodka sales, PepsiCo bartered for 2 new Soviet oil tankers, 17 decommissioned submarines (for $150,000 each), a frigate, a cruiser and a destroyer, which they could in turn sell for non-Soviet currency. The oil tankers were leased out through a Norwegian company, while the other ships were immediately sold for scrap.

The Harrier commercial aired in 1996. The Harrier jet was introduced in 1978. It wasn’t too unreasonable to think that an 18 year old jet aircraft would be decommissioned and sold, especially after Soviet tensions eased. And if ‘they’ let Pepsi own actual submarines and a destroyer, doesn’t that seem more far fetched than owning a single old jet aircraft?

Guy should’ve gotten his Harrier.

If you don’t hate AI, you’re not informed enough.

It has the potential to disrupt pretty much everything in a negative way. Especially when regulations always lag behind. AI will be abused by corporations in the worst way possible, while also being bad for the planet.

And the people who are most excited about it, tend to be the biggest shitheads. Basically, no informed person should want AI anywhere near them unless they directly control it.

God I miss the pre-9/11 US, when the worst thing happening was bad jokes on SNL about Bill Clinton and cigars.

Uh, do the kids these days really not know about the post-9/11 Patriot Act?

I’m designing the 3D-printable fleshlight mount right now. Hold your horses and give me ten minutes…

I’m right where I’m supposed to be ❤️

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

It really comes down to this: if you want your own space for particular interests, you should create one and find likeminded people to populate it. Just waiting for it to magically appear isn’t going to work. Be assertive.

Sure, plenty of small phones with good battery life back then. Owned a new phone every three months or so, innovation went that fast in the 90’s.

But those small phones have a few drawbacks. Too small for my hands and you can’t really shoulder it like we used to with landlines.

I also mis proper flip phones like the Motorola Startac. You could snap those closed with authority. Can’t quite do that with those modern folding screen flips.