The problem is that they are not actively asking permission.

They are technically legally asking permission through the EULA, but nobody reads these.

Apple do this differently, they require the user to opt in for each of their services, and except for a pitiful amount of storage, the user has to pay for a useful amount of storage. This makes the user the customer, instead of the product. They could make it easier to roll-your-own “cloud” storage by NAS, but I assume that it isn’t worth their effort.

This is one of the things I love about the Lemmy community. No one wants to argue, every one can be passionate about their opinions, but still respect other people’s passion.

I used Linux back in the 90s as my primary OS. They were simpler times. Since then I have used BeOS, various versions of Windows and (primarily) MacOS.

I am seriously thinking of going over to Linux as my primary OS because of all the TechBro “AI” bullshit that Microsoft, Adobe, Apple and Google are trying to ram down our throats.

The bottom has dropped out of the OEM software licence market. Microsoft have to find a different way of making money. Their loss-leading hardware sales have not borne fruit so they are getting desperate.

All they have left is services, which means that the only way the can actually make money is selling out their customers private information.

There is a difference between destroying looms, corrupting LLMs by feeding bad data and causing an uprising like the Butlerian Jihad of Dune or the Second Renaissance of The Matrix.

There are legitimate uses for vehicle telemetry being stored by the vehicle and uploaded to the manufacturer.

Identifying unexpected behaviour under certain driving conditions and being able to contact emergency services in an accident are two important examples. Remote diagnosis in the case of a breakdown is another.

None of these uses include selling the data to third parties or using the data to create a profile of the vehicle owner.

They all do. Google search is one big primitive Digital Assistant. Apple’s Siri is less functional than its predecessor Voice Control. Amazon’s product recommendation algorithm and Alexa are also successful digital assistants.

Meanwhile the YouTube algorithm, Netflix, and Metas recommendations are notoriously frustrating, pumping out irrelevant recommendations and obfuscating constant that you actually want to consume.

Microsoft haven’t had any effective Digital Assistants to date and must they feel like they are being left behind. Their attempts to emulate successful product from other companies are either unnoticeably irrelevant or laughably bad. Even the terrible content recommendations of Netflix and YouTube keep people hooked.

https://mastodon.social/@sdw/112203918268779518

Actually Indians.

Step one: start Chroming. Eventually you get so high (kill enough brain cells) that you chrome with blue paint instead. That is called Edging.

This is why they are doing it. They fear that Linux/MacOS/ChromeOS is eating their lunch. The problem is that their approach to preventing anyone else from eating their lunch is to make Shit Sandwiches.

‘Data Detectors’ in MacOS are just as bad. Just like how sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes a string of numerals is just a string of numerals.

It is not a phone number or a flight number or a ticket number, it is just a string of text that happen to all be numerals.

I asked Apple Support how to disable data detectors in Preview (MacOS’s native PDF and image viewer) so I could highlight some part numbers without MacOS trying to make a FaceTime call and they told me to use Adobe Acrobat instead! The problem is that Acrobat is worse.

Please don’t call them AI. They are “Language Learning Models” (or “Spicy Autocorrect” if you want to be cheeky).

Copilot is no more “intelligent” than Clippy from Microsoft Bob in 1995. It just appears to be to people who also have low intelligence.

Because the hardware is being made obsolete for a reason. They are inefficient compared to modern hardware, consume way too much power and there are cheaper and more powerful options available.

A modern ARM-based computer like the Raspberry Pi 5 can outperform most computers and laptops running Windows 10 and have a smaller environmental footprint.

The problem is that the obsolete hardware is not cost effective to decommission and recycle. They have not been designed for an environmentally conscious world.

I assume there is an ActiveDirectory policy setting which disables all the Bing and ChatGPT bullshit in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

If there is, can someone in our workplace IT department please roll that out so we can just get on with doing real work without stupid interruptions and questions from the OS. There is no situation where I would rather use Bing than DuckDuckGo or Google do stop asking me and stop reverting my settings after each software update. There is no situation where I would even think of using ChatGPT to do my job for me.

GAGYGF is Go And Get Your Guts F… GAGTGF substitutes “Your” for “Their”. “GagyGoof” does roll off the tongue a bit better than “GagTeeGoof”.

They have a lot of power, but that power is tied by goodwill.

Right now they are cashing in all that goodwill with price increases, more onerous privacy invasion and “sponsored” links in lieu of actually accurate search results.

I could justify the AU$30 per month for myself and my housemate, but at AU$43, they can GAGTGF.