zecg

Let me be reasoned and measured and say fuck the entire gallery of those assholes. I only use Signal now, but I'm fully willing to give that up as well if this goes through and go full GPG-encrypted e-mail with keys exchanged IRL. The only thing I use the smartphone for other than Signal is navigation and OSMand works offline perfectly, I'll just pop my simcard into the cheapest dumbphone I can find and occasionally connect my phone to wifi to download new vector maps.

I recommend "Careless People" by Sarah Wynn-Something

This reminds me to throw 10€ at Signal

"Authentic conversations", with single-serving people provided as matches by an opaque algorithm based on short video vibes, this might as well have been mental health services in Mike Judge's Idiocracy.

These are horrible two and a half backwards steps for usability but please talk to me about how your shitty bouba elements inspire emotion and communicate function. Fucking liars, what emotion is it suppose to inspire that bluetooth is now not turned off when I enter airplane mode and realizing I now need three clicks to shut it off. It's for your own location harvesting bullshit. This inspired me to ban all apps trying to update anything from the network, everything goes through Rethink VPN now and I'm certainly not moving to another major version after 15.

This is just shit, a horrible redesign. I'd much rather "truly express" myself by keeping high information density in the user interface instead of picking color palettes for this trendy "bouba" bullshit. It's as bad a redesign as the recent Bluetooth option, which went from a single click to turn it off (and respecting airplane mode) to multiple clicks and staying on between Android 14 and 15. Of course Google wants BT scanning to work even if you're in airplane mode, they didn't do it for my convenience. I've had enough and am not updating anymore, outside of security updates. Now I use Rethink as on-device VPN and every app, system or not, has no access to the network unless I explicitly enable it, no more nagging to update.

> AI is more or less the same thing — it uses our wonder to convince us of a simulacrum of intelligence when what we are really witnessing is, in a sense, our own childish excitement at a trick of anthropomorphisation

This claim would stand better if it wasn't able to solve math and physics problems I struggle with.

How is seeing 7 entries without scrolling better than seeing 20+

You don't have to use any DNS features, Rethink will happily let you set your DNS resolvers to whatever you like, you can just use it as an on-device VPN that allows you to block or isolate everything per app or per connection.

I have doubled my battery life on Moto Edge with Rethink DNS, blocking everything per app. There's so much junk I don't want to phone home that tries 50 times a day.

> Nobody will pay for a browser.

I would, if they offered a payment-only access to Firefox with no added services and no telemetry whatsoever. I'd pay 50€ a year for that.

I'd pay $50 yearly if they're willing to just work on the browser and remove their added value services and any telemetry.

Are we reading the same thing? They removed:

> We believe the internet is for people, not profit. Unlike other companies, we don’t sell access to your data.

and instead there's vague weaseling

> doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data“)

I'm not like most people, I am a bit stupid and have a very low threshold for what selling my data is.

> Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data“ is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love.

You can either have 2.5% of users who know why they are using your browser and are willing to make a donation or you can have nothing while we use a fork with your telemetry ripped out.

If you thought HP's crapware was insultingly bad before, wait until they start putting some 8b models trained on their marketing bullshit to helpfully shill wherever a sidebar can be planted.

signal.me links are used to join (and advertise) Signal groups

About as salient as the style of shoes he preferred.

I can't believe someone thought this will be a sustainable business bringing in money.

Yeah, fuck off, Mozilla. I don't want ads and will not see ads. I don't care if all the content that requires money goes away. In fact, I would prefer it.

You fucked up big time when you opted me into your "virginity preserving sex" without my consent. You should have written missives like this before pushing that option and EXPLAINED how it's preserving privacy.

> “One of the key factors for the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series is that the major selling point, Apple Intelligence, is not available at launch alongside the iPhone 16 release,” Kuo said.

Well, I might be the minority here, but I don't want a phone that promises to integrate AI and would be very careful that it can be completely removed before I get it. What I'm seeing from people around me, there's quite a few that don't want any AI integration in their devices.

I'm fine interacting with an LLM via browser or command line, a channel where it cannot know anything other than what I give it, but I'm not trusting a product that can be stealthily enshittified without me knowing it.

There's this

https://explorerplusplus.com/

> How is this different from being manipulated in the same manner by a human?

It can be done at scale for very little. I'm not touching AI because I can't know its biases, it can be enshittified and advertise without the user noticing.

> I'm very bullish on genAI, and I bought the new phone, but I really don't think the features shown are that exciting yet. It feels like they're laying the groundwork for more powerful AI to be ready to do things in your phone apps, and the current features are just paving the way

That was Assistant right up until they killed it for a new thing.

> The killer-app (that isn't porn) is going to be asking your phone to order food and it guesses correctly what you want while cross-checking availability, pricing, and discounts. Then a Waymo or Wing Drone delivers it.

This killer app of yours can be stealthily enshittified, you aren't privy to its decision-making process.

The batch editing is also handy

Absolutely horrible once again, great job Mozilla. Sharing on Android is so fucked, btw., that the only way I ever do it is by grabbing the URL, which seems to be more difficult than ever. I hope this bullshit is toggleable in Fennec.

> when you die, you’ll probably remember

Is this vacuous clickbait written by AI?

> I go to great lengths to avoid advertising.

It's a skill issue then, I do that too with resounding success, I haven't seen an ad in decades, either on pc or android. I don't use apps which have ads and only use browsers that support ublock origin on any platform.

> But I am also practical. The CEO makes a fair point that ads aren't going away.

So? I won't stop fighting. Especially since I seem to have won the moment ublock origin came out and that status is unchanged.

> This wouldn't work as an opt-in.

Yeah, because I hate that industry so much I'd rather not use a device than see an ad.

Once again, it's opt out.

> The study said only about 5% of lithium-ion batteries are recycled, and by 2040, there could be some 8 million tons of lithium-ion battery waste.

That can't be true?

Did Airbnb write this?

Just discard images and have the LLM describe them on the other side.