Generative AI data center energy usage is environmentally wasteful and will just raise the cost of energy for regular consumers.

Given the cost of replacing one’s phone or computer, being pro-EU in terms of new purchases is far better than doing nothing at all.

The problem is that Apple’s extensive marketing of Apple Intelligence has led to expectations that far surpass what the final product is likely to be.

Most people think generative AI is magic coming out of a hat, so even if Apple delivers at the same level as other companies, people will feel like they’ve been misled.

That’s a symptom of Google holding a monopoly over search results.

Real reporting will always cost more to produce than AI-generated propaganda, and if the former has a paywall and the latter doesn’t, people will inevitably end up reading the news that takes the least effort to produce, to the detriment of actual news reporting.

Requiring Google to both carry such content and pay for it at least ensures that it has an even footing with websites seeking to push propaganda instead.

The problem is that society has transitioned to a point where most people essentially go to Google and Facebook for all their information. Given the monopolistic power of such platforms on public opinion, there is a very strong societal interest to ensure that actual news, not merely the propaganda of the highest bidder, is what people have access to.

The responsibility of Google to pay for it can be argued, but as real reporting will always cost more to produce than AI slop pushed by propagandists, there is arguably a public interest in that as well. The alternative is legitimate news more often than not ending up with more ads and paywalls than propaganda, which will just result in more people reading sources based on less reliable reporting.

If that’s what the French want, then it’s Google’s obligation to comply and simply adjust advertising rates as needed.

Even so, there is a societal interest in objective news being available to the public, which means that search engines should be required to carry such content, profitable or not. All the more so due to Google’s monopolistic grip on the search engine market.

One shitty company suing another shitty company; nothing more enjoyable to watch!

“Look at all this data on your computer taking up space! Let’s store it in the cloud to lighten your load (and, more importantly, use it for marketing, tracking, and LLM training).”

-Invasive AI Agent

At least in the case of the Hisense TV I got for my grandparents, a “glitch” with accessibility controls (makes directional inputs unresponsive or multi-press at times) just so happens to make remapping the sponsored remote buttons impossible, as well as breaking the most common method of changing the system launcher, so screen size alone isn’t everything.

Although Hisense still tries to reinstall sponsored apps after I delete them, using Launcher Manager to set a custom launcher that allows for the hiding of unwanted applications and channels made it much more usable for my grandparents.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to redirect YouTube voice input commands to SmartTube Next, so if I ever replace it, that’ll be a factor in my decision too.

Also deceptive for them to list it on the Play Store as having 500,000,000 “downloads”, when the vast majority of those are non-consensual automatic installations.

It’d be great if California’s consumer privacy protections could be applied at the federal level, but as long as the Republicans retain the presidency, either house of congress, or the Supreme Court, it would either never get passed or simply get struck down and returned to the state regulatory level.

Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series and New Funky Mode