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

Why aren’t they matching the 104%?

Without Manifest V3 support, better to just use Firefox instead. Or, for Firefox extensions that are not specifically marked as Android-compatible, a fork such as Iceraven instead.

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.

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.

Most should offer alternative support options, even if they can’t promote them directly in their apps (a monopolistic practice on the part of app stores), given that forking over 30% of a subscription’s cost to Apple or Google isn’t something I’d want to do just to support an app’s development.

“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.

Aside from the organization’s charter mandating editorial independence, the BBC being publicly-funded by the country’s annual broadcasting fee ensures that it does not need to pander to politicians to conduct its operations. It’s far more effective at this than PBS, which is more likely to be biased due to its need for corporate and charitable sponsors.

RT in contrast is only accountable to the Russian government, and ultimately Putin, and is thus unable to maintain editorial independence from the government’s national and foreign policy interests.

RT is a mouthpiece of the Russian government; the only “other side of the story” that would come from it would not only be misleading, but also promote the authoritarianism, war crimes, and aggression of the Russian government.

In an age when LLMs make reading the truth harder and harder, blacklisting publications that are guaranteed propaganda is essential.

In the same vein, even though I’m fully supportive of Ukraine and its right to self-defense, I don’t think people should use any of the equivalent American propaganda agencies (U.S. Agency for Global Media: Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, and Office of Cuba Broadcasting), since their reporting is often deliberately biased in favor of American foreign policy interests. Furthermore, there’s plenty of Western media sources not backed by state interests, so they’re never the only source on something anyhow.

The only reliable public broadcasting organizations are those with independent operations financed via public contributions, such as the BBC.

Private broadcasting organizations often have bias as well, with tabloids and extremist sources such as Newsmax being just as unreliable and misleading as state-backed outlets, so vigilance in maintaining a line in the sand between journalism and propaganda is essential.

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

For many Palestinian civilians, ‘all hell’ and more has already broken out.

Wanted to put Proton VPN on my Steam Deck, so it’s quite frustrating that even a distribution with millions of users doesn’t have a version of the program released for it, given that the alternative methods of using it don’t allow for easy server switching.

Legislation like that might happen in places like the EU, but in the US at least, unless lobbying rules are amended, consumers stand next to no chance against the commercial interests of advertisers.

If you’re the one paying for internet access, you should also have the right to determine the content that you’re paying to have access to. While something like pi hole could be used to metaphorically take down most of the billboards without impacting the ground below it, even everyday users should be informed about the data advertisers are getting from them, whether it is anonymized or not. Hiding an important setting about data sharing near the bottom of a page in settings doesn’t help anyone but the advertisers.

If you just want to browse Reddit and have a user script extension installed, you can use LibReddit Redirector to browse via a third-party frontend without turning off your VPN.

Good on the EU for supporting consumer rights over corporate profits.