I have a fantasy where I’m a powerful executive at Volkswagen. I’m in a meeting where this idea is presented. I ask who thought of it. Someone raises their hand. I smile broadly. I ask who else thinks it’s a good idea. Others raise their hands. I call security and have all those people escorted out of the building. Those of us who remain set about manufacturing small, efficient & affordable electric vehicles with manual windows & door locks, and a not a single touchscreen anywhere. The End

…which is an epidemic right now

Yes, it fucking is.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24027112/volkswagen-chatgpt-openai-voice-assistant-cars-ces

The funds aren’t sitting there doing nothing. They’re available in case Beehaw ever needs them. I didn’t donate to a non-descript charity. I donated to Beehaw with the understanding that those funds would be used to stabilize the organization, whether it changes from Lemmy to some other platform, or whether it experiences another sudden quadrupling of membership overnight. That’s what the money is for. If you put it in some kind of HYSA, it could be growing at 5% per month. Why shoot yourselves in the foot by giving it away?

The conspiracy theory I’ve heard is that Mozilla is basically paid opposition to Google. Their leadership is being paid (by Google) to run Firefox into the ground without actually going out of business.

I’m absolutely with you. Having run face-first into MongoDB more than once, I finally learned not to trust the hype around these things.

What an absolute shitshow this is going to be. If I want a digital assistant, I’ll get one. Keeping concerns separate is what has always worked. This reads like Elon wanting X to be the “everything app”. That ship has already sailed. The web is the everything app. Back when the web was new, you had AOL and Yahoo wanting to be the “gateway” to everything. How did that work out? My gateway to everything is my bookmarks folder. I don’t want AI in anything I use locally unless I explicitly enable it and ask for assistance. IMHO, this is the reason so many digital assistants have failed (especially Microsoft’s); because they tried to anticipate your needs rather than STFU and stay out of the way.

I’m old.

/rant

Good. I hope SMS Messenger happens next.

It’s a fork of LineageOS. Not sure how excited about it I’d be. Willing to give it a try tho.

First choice: Get a used new(ish) Pixel and flash Graphene OS. Second choice: Get a used older Pixel and flash Lineage OS.