Notices by Corbin Davenport (corbin@toot.community)

There are so, so many Apple bloggers and commenters regurgitating Apple's talking points about the EU this week, it's kind of shocking. You can build open and interoperable systems that are still secure: look at Android, the web, and email.

Apple doesn't want to open up because that's not profitable for Apple. Anyone saying it's for “privacy" or "what's best for users" or whatever is being disingenuous or ignorant. https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/03/19/the-eu-is-betraying-its-users-and-weakening-their-privacy-for-political-gain

The year is 2027. The average US phone plan now includes Disney+ with ads, Hulu with ads, HBO Max with ads, Netflix with ads, SiriusXM, easy payments with Affirm, a Roku streaming stick with ads, a three-month AARP membership, a digital redemption code for the Ben Affleck film of your choosing, parlay boosts, and a gun.

#MondayMotivation

@tk @doskel I think the newer N100 CPU is also entirely E cores lol

Not surprising, but still bad! "The BBC [tested] four prominent, publicly available AI assistants – OpenAI’s ChatGPT; Microsoft’s Copilot; Google’s Gemini; and Perplexity. 51% of all AI answers to questions about the news were judged to have significant issues of some form. 19% of AI answers which cited BBC content introduced factual errors – incorrect factual statements, numbers and dates."

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2025/bbc-research-shows-issues-with-answers-from-artificial-intelligence-assistants

I'll be doing a privacy and security checkup for all my software projects over the coming weeks. I don't want to collect your personal data, and I'm doing as much as I can to protect the privacy of anyone using my software projects.

More info: https://www.patreon.com/posts/120497418

@sudden @nocontexttrek The attack is in Enterprise 2x26, but this specific flashback might be in a later episode, not 100% sure https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Expanse_(episode)

Someone tell the kids Mastodon is a Chinese app. We can still win this.

The age of Facebook is over. The time of the Google+ has come.

This is probably more impactful than anything at CES this week. Every mainstream social network in the US has fully given up on moderating right-wing extremism, and we're all going to suffer because of it.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/07/meta-drops-fact-checking-and-loosens-its-content-moderation-rules/

I now have my very own John Mastodon. #plushtodon

Some tech news outlets are reporting that Microsoft has officially reversed course and will allow Windows 11 to be installed on unsupported PCs. That's not true, the support document they are citing as new evidence has been on Microsoft's site since 2021: https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/installing-windows-11-on-devices-that-don-t-meet-minimum-system-requirements-0b2dc4a2-5933-4ad4-9c09-ef0a331518f1

Internet Archive first archived the support document in October 2021, and the main warning messages haven't really changed. Microsoft is not changing anything here, but I wish they would.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/microsoft-reverses-course-allows-installing-windows-11-on-unsupported-hardware

No thoughts, just Mac OS 9.

Intel and AMD announced they are now working more closely on future x86 platform development. It seems like ARM is putting a lot of pressure on them to actually be competitive.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241015336152/en/Intel-and-AMD-Form-x86-Ecosystem-Advisory-Group-to-Accelerate-Innovation-for-Developers-and-Customers/

The real search results in Google are getting pushed down farther, and farther, and farther…

https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-lens-ai-overviews-ads-marketers/

It might be the nostalgia talking, but old iTunes is pretty nice. I don't know why Apple did vertical window controls or weird custom scrollbars, but I think I like this more than the current Apple Music app. Cover Flow goes hard.

It probably helps that I'm running this on a maxed-out Intel Mac Mini. iTunes was pretty slow on the PowerPC Macs I had at the time. #mac #apple

I think Apple should throw us a curveball at the event today. New Macs with FireWire ports? Maybe bring back the iPod Hi-Fi?

@Newmy We learned nothing from the Sega Nomad

It seems like Mastodon ran out of chances to be the mass-appeal Twitter alternative. Brazil is (probably) about to ban Twitter, and Bluesky is seeing record-level signups: https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3l2xupwbsfy2f

Meanwhile, there’s no real change in the rate of new Mastodon accounts. #fediverse #mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mastodonusercount/113053453865082420

The Barbie Phone is better than modern smartphones because it has a microSD card slot, FM radio, user-removable battery, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

https://www.hmd.com/en_int/press/your-barbie-dream-phone-is-now-a-reality-press-release