I would much have preferred the layoff to go ahead and all that talent go into competition with Meta. Then when the AI agents failed, they would struggle to recover.

But wishes are not reality.

I’m an Australian, The hole in the ozone layer was a real threat and my skin was definitely negatively affected by the amount of UV I was exposed to. When it was publicised, we saw a social and commercial shift in use of CFCs.

Aerosol cans with CFCs were removed and recycled (probably generating more waste, but whatever).

Mechanics and technicians working on A/Cs and fridges were much more careful with refrigerant.

10 years later, when the Hole recovered, we anecdotally observed less cases of severe sunburn. It may have also been a social awareness thing: with more people using Sunscreen et al, but the measurable reducing in UV was undoubtedly also a factor.

The benefit of removing airborne heavy metals (Pb-based paint and exhaust) is less measurable,but I feel that people with less exposure in their lifetime were more cognitive.

I also deal with a few people in my life who are CC denialists. They are also Y2K denialists so maybe they were exposed to significantly more lead paint than me…

Works for me 😏

I think that many people have moved on from commercial social media, I know that I certainly have.

Unless they are Federated, they are DOA. Maybe someone can create a Mastodon server from the ashes of their IP when they go under.

Crack it open and take out the GPS and cellular module.

Or relocate the entire unit to somewhere it will actually provide civic good like somewhere prone to Illegal Garbage dumping or as a trailcam for wildlife.

https://www.cehrp.org/dissection-of-flock-safety-camera/

This article may be out of date, but it is quite clear that Flock just ordered a bunch of parts off AliBaba, slapped them together in an injection moulded enclosure, added some vibe-coded software and pumped them out after greasing some palms.

They are free electronic components and modules that can be used for your own projects. Just make sure they are completely erased and serial numbers removed before reusing.

I reckon the Strait of Hormuz situation is a fabricated excuse to explain a diesel shortage due to Data Centre generators.

But it doesn’t work! You hear all sorts of anecdotes about a business who retrenched their workforce to replace with LLMs, everything comes crashing down and they have to rehire all their workforce at higher rates.

It would be interesting to see actual verified numbers. I am sure that a lot of useless people can be replaced with computers, but most of the time, all it requires is a very small sh script, it doesn’t need a monstrous data centre that uses more water and power than a human.

IIRC they are common SBCs and components. They can be broken down and components resold.

A lot of manufacturers sell vehicles at cost price in the hopes of making it up in after sales (parts and servicing). Most EVs require very little regular expense (cabin filters, brakes and tyres), so they try to make up the difference in subscriptions and “value added” services.

Sometimes those “value added” services aren’t adding value to their customers; they are “adding value” for business partners.

You would think that a car that is sold at a premium price would be exempt from these nasty little scams.

Reading the article makes me feel like it should be in Not The Onion.

It is interesting that they couldn’t replace sex workers with their unskilled robots, but they think they can replace teachers!?

These companies are so out of touch with reality that they deserve to go bankrupt. Their investors are so out of touch that they deserve to loose their investment.

All the GenBS systems do is generate crap so their logos are quite appropriate.

The problem is that their generated crap is being published and then fed back into them.

They replaced the security guards with the smell of their own farts AI.

One thing (only good thing) about Vista was that it rationalised Printer (and Scanner) Drivers.

The UI was consistent between printer manufacturers and everything could be accessed through one interface.

Then the Printer manufacturers complained to MS because they couldn’t have infinite branding all over the interface and the feature was dumbed down in 7.

Meanwhile Apple used the same UI for all Printers (based on CUPS) and didn’t even let a company logo appear in the interface.

Not all the Apple CUPS drivers were available for Linux CUPS so unfortunately Linux (at the time) still had their device compatibility issues.

Managers aren’t being held accountable for their management decisions either.

“Oh, I sacked our entire workforce and sold all the company assets, so the figures will look amazing this month.”

<one month later>

“Oh, the figures are down this month, a golden handshake!? Thank you very much.”

The thing is that these reports (and training material and industry analysis) is Deloitte’s bread-and-butter.

If they have begun outsourcing their product to an LLM, and believe that the new is comparable to the product they previously provided, they are admitting that everything they have ever produced is garage and no one should be paying them anything.

Advanced Data Protection does require all iCloud Ecosystem devices to be current.

Not every person can afford the latest and greatest.

I’m gonna play devils advocate here (and probably be monstrously downvoted);

ICEBlock stored the location data of all its users on Apples iCloud Servers. This the perfect target for ICE; a complete database of locations of every person who doesn’t want ICE to know where they are.

One assumption is that that Apple realised how tempting this data is to the current demonstrative administration and purged it before ICE could get their civil-liberty-abusing mitts on it.