So Google is now preventing people from removing location data from photos taken with Pixel phones.
Remember when Google's corporate motto was "don't be evil?"
Obviously, accurate location data on photos is more useful to a data mining operation like Google.
From Google: "Important: You can only update or remove estimated locations. If the location of a photo or video was automatically added by your camera, you can't edit or remove the location."
If virtual murder were possible, bloody Microsoft with pushing bloody Edge everywhere would be at the top of my list. Outlook defaulting to Edge is the latest bloody travesty.
Correct me if I'm wrong... it's not decentralized in a "power to the people" sense... right?
The hardware can be decentralized, but the software, algorithm, ads, and control are still centralized... right?
So, Jack Dorsey et all have found a way to get people to pay for the infrastructure costs while they rake in all the profit from centralized software control?
So a little while back @pluralistic discussed the #enshitification of the internet and it has me wanting to remind people that the pioneers of enshitification, from which techbro VCs got their inspiration, was undoubtedly the large home appliance oligopoly.
My parents had appliances thgat lasted 30+ years before replacement.
The appliances I got with my house in 1999 have all been replaced in the past 4 years (that is, they lasted about 20 years)
The average lifespan of such appliances made in the 2010's is apparently a scant 12 years.
But it's more than that...in my observation they are not only less durable, they objectively do an inferior job performing their actual purposes.
My new dishwasher looks spiffy and runs quiet but has a filter that needs cleaning 3 times as often and can't clean hot chocolate residue out of a mug.
My new fridge farts and also has some sort of disposable filter to replace.
My new clothes washer can connect to wifi but sometimes has a hard time rinsing.
The whole episode was undoubtedly conceived by the line "Ahsoka GOES to the planet and finds Sabine & Ezra". But they have to add some unnecessary peril (which has no stakes cos you know they'll all survive) and at the end, basically there's been no advancement to the plot other than "Ahsoka GOT to the planet and finds Sabine & Ezra".
If an adblocker is enabled, #Youtube seems to block videos on #Firefox after playing three videos with it enabled. The option is either disable it (not going to happen) or find a third-party client without the #enshitification
Do you recommend any #FOSS third-party Youtube clients?
On the #enshitification of #academic#publishing. Where scientists burn the candle at both ends, paying to read and publish their work, in what is the ultimate grift.
If you have it installed as all #Android phones are forced to, is it necessary to use #Chrome to suffer from its #privacy abuse, or does it do evil in the background regardless?
To say I’m disappointed in Automattic is an understatement. We’ve trusted them for over a decade to be open, flexible, honest, and safe for writing / hosting stuff on the internet.
And now they’ve betrayed that trust… for money, of course. If #Enshitification can come for Wordpress, truly no company can be trusted.
And to think, this was the year I finally gave in and subscribed to Jetpack to have reliable site backups. What's the odds my canceling won't be prorated? https://xoxo.zone/@fraying/112022136029097900
A bit ago someone here pointed to stupid and/or unsafe ads proliferating on YouTube. I talked about one I had seen with a heater defying the laws of physics. Here it is. Apparently it is the latest incarnation of a rolling scam (see link). This one has Steve the former NASA engineer (shown below) saving his family that were trapped in their house for days in a blizzard after the heat went out by inventing a new ceramic tile based heating system that can heat any room 34 F to 85 F in 90 seconds and keep it there against even a lay person's understanding of thermodynamics. See, he took his expertise building these systems for NASA, did we mention he worked for NASA yet?, to pull a Professor from Gilligan's Island feat to come up with this by reverse engineering the home HVAC unit and inventing the ceramic heating system...all while trapped in the house during a blizzard. But the evil HVAC industry wanted to sell it to consumers for a fortune but he decided to partner with friends to bring it to you directly. LOL.
Honestly the dialog isn't even self consistent. But apparently this and other renditions work enough that people keep buying these damn things. Since it is so easy to find its shocking that even out of their own self interest Google stops these ads from showing up. If you hear of a friend, family member, etc. talking about it give them the scoop it is BS ASAP. #enshitification#YouTube#scams#physics
"AI-generated content replacing links on some of the most valuable space on the internet, in particular, has left media types with a lot of questions [...]
The News filter disappearing from Google search results for some users this week won’t help publishers sleep any easier."
This sounds like a terrible idea, just designed to pay less staff. I hate the theater of screenings, but I trust a person to look at me and pass me along more than code.
Tech can't make self-checkout work consistently without choking, now imaging that with 100s of people in a line for something actually important.
Paramount+ is now entirely useless if you use a pihole to block New Relic, Doubleclick, and Braze. You literally can't watch the shows you paid for without providing minute-by-minute viewership data to multiple ad platforms.
Time to deny communication with your peers and family under certain conditions. This is late-stage dystopian, they now openly sell psychological profiling and breach of private communication with others as a feature. #AI#enshitification#dystopia#BoringDystopia#security
Hey @pluralistic isn't requiring registration to read a story part of the #enshitification you talk about? Because here's a prime example
Please practice what you preach and try the make the net a better place (eg. You could hold this content on your own blog, craphound.com, instead of locking it in a walled garden)
No, U-Haul, I do not want to install your stupid app so I can rent a trailer one time and then not deal with you for another three to five years. Just make your damn website work.
The state of the internet 2023
Discogs’ vibrant vinyl community is shattering (www.theverge.com)
A home for music diehards has been fractured by increased fees that are pushing sellers and shoppers to other platforms.