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You're not alone: This email from Google's Gemini team is concerning

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  • Last year's tech for next year's prices.

    That used to be true but no longer. For anything but gaming Apple's M series chips are amazing.

    I'm a 30+ year Windows and Linux user and developer that preferred machines I could build myself. A few years ago switched jobs and was given an M1 Pro for work... it's incredible how good, fast and low power the M series are. I've used my laptop 8 hours straight without plugging it in. That's simply not doable with any other machine.

    I still dislike their walled garden, and for high end gaming Apple's a no-go, but for most things it's hard to argue with how good they are. The machines may come at a premium, but they are high quality, work great and for battery use they don't have a rival.

  • MitID is hard-required to sign into anything government or personal information required. Previously people would be handed a key-card (a white, fold-out card with a bunch of numbers on it. The numbers were one-time use, so the card would eventually run out, requiring a replacement after a few months).

    These key-cards have been completely phased out. Now there is the MitID app or a key-device that is almost impossible to get (you'll basically have to prove that you don't have/can't use a smart phone).

    The MitID app has almost no features at all. It's specifically used for authentication. You log into the gooberment website or bank website, then a encrypted, constantly changing QR code pops up. You open the MitID app on your phone, scan the QR code, and then you gain access.

    This is all run through the private security company the Danish government has hired, called "NETS".

    I'm sorry you have to deal with this shit

  • That used to be true but no longer. For anything but gaming Apple's M series chips are amazing.

    I'm a 30+ year Windows and Linux user and developer that preferred machines I could build myself. A few years ago switched jobs and was given an M1 Pro for work... it's incredible how good, fast and low power the M series are. I've used my laptop 8 hours straight without plugging it in. That's simply not doable with any other machine.

    I still dislike their walled garden, and for high end gaming Apple's a no-go, but for most things it's hard to argue with how good they are. The machines may come at a premium, but they are high quality, work great and for battery use they don't have a rival.

    For anything but high end gaming, my kids 8 year old Chromebook is awesome and can still run for hours without a battery charge. And it cost $250 new 8 years ago.

    Tbf, I'm not in the market for a new device though. I'm happy you enjoy yours.

  • You're right, I'm an abuse enabler because I made an observation about companies being shitty. Very well said.

    Surely overreacting to my correct observation that did not reflect on you directly will make you seem more reasonable.

  • I was never a "Mac" person. But I took the leap to escape windows with the Mac studio ultra. I use video and photo edit tools a lot. Used my existing peripheral devices. Expensive but the most silent and powerful machine I've ever owned. Software is my only complaint at times but I'll live with it. I'll definitely continue down M series for my main device.

    In context of the larger thread, I need to figure out how to get graphene on my current phone. I nerfed the AI crap Samsung was forcing on me. But who knows if I got everything. I'll assume I didn't. Fdroid or graphene... That's my summer project.

    There's not really anything to figure out there days. Pretty sure if just installs through a chrome based browser.

  • I wish it had been. Circles were so much better than FB groups etc

    Ya it was pretty good. It was also pretty great for all the niche community groups. It had great photography, music, open source software, I remember Bernie Sanders was big early on on Google+ well before he ran for president. Google+ was the shit compared to Facebook/Instagram/Twitter. Google just fumbled by giving up on it too soon and not recognizing how good they had it with the photography and hobby interests groups. Their best shot at competing with Instagram and Twitter

  • I've been GrapheneOS on my pixel7pro since march and I have no complaints. Everything works, and I have control over what apps have access too. The only thing I will say is that if you need the camera to take gr3at photos, its not nearly so good with grapheneOS. I pretty much always have a mirroless camera with me anyway so it dosent bother me. I just use the phone camera for quick snap shots

    If you want you can install Pixel Camera (official Google camera) from Aurora Store, and deny it Network permissions and any other permissions you want. It still works pretty well for point and shoot but I can't speak for every single feature. Also you can install simulated services that the Gcam requires to function, without having to run Play Services.

  • Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.

    I swear all of this was predicted to happen by open source advocates of the 80s and they'd be called alarmists/whatever and then 30 years later you had Snowden leaks and all the surveillance bills and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all advertisement companies mining data through the software and devices they sell

    The best people can do is just keep using and advocating for Linux adoption. Try out degoogled Android or a more traditional Linux phone device. Need more users and funding to get the software kinks worked out. They're not as good as the high end Android and Apple stuff, but it's a process

  • Linux has become good enough to replace desktop operating systems.

    Now, we are back at square one. I’ll be the first to inaccurately declare, “This will be the year of the Linux phone.”

    Android... is a Linux phone..?

  • I've been Android and Windows user for pretty much all of my life. Vehemently anti Apple because of the company and I've thought the products are trash. I've been 100% Linux for over a year and a half, and if this Gemini stuff comes through, I will not have an android phone either. I have a Pixel and my old still functional Pixel. I need to try installing grapheneOS or something else and trial it to see if it will work for me.

    If Linux isn't an option for me in the future for whatever reason, I will be purchasing a Mac. I will never have a Windows machine for the rest of my life if I have any say in the matter, work being the obvious and uncontrollable exception. The fact that I'm even entertaining the idea of owning an iPhone or a Mac is really telling about how far Android and Windows and enshitified.

    Apple isn't gonna have your back on this either you minds well run to foss forever if this is gonna be your Hill to die on

  • I've been Android and Windows user for pretty much all of my life. Vehemently anti Apple because of the company and I've thought the products are trash. I've been 100% Linux for over a year and a half, and if this Gemini stuff comes through, I will not have an android phone either. I have a Pixel and my old still functional Pixel. I need to try installing grapheneOS or something else and trial it to see if it will work for me.

    If Linux isn't an option for me in the future for whatever reason, I will be purchasing a Mac. I will never have a Windows machine for the rest of my life if I have any say in the matter, work being the obvious and uncontrollable exception. The fact that I'm even entertaining the idea of owning an iPhone or a Mac is really telling about how far Android and Windows and enshitified.

    I've been using GrapheneOS for a couple months after having tested it on an older phone for a while. I'm really loving the level of control I have over what I give apps access to. If you have a spare Pixel to test on I definitely recommend it! I've been getting away from all Google stuff and finding free open source and self-hosted alternatives. I'm running in the opposite direction of all the AI and data-farming.

  • Is it really the people or just a subset of people that use Lemmy, the vast majority of people seemingly don’t care as is evidenced by the sheer number of people using things like social media.

    What might be important to use in this echo chamber isn’t reflective of society on the whole.

    I've been trying to tell people for 15 years. It hasn't worked a single bit. It's frustrating that people think they have nothing to hide when their carelessness and lack of tech knowledge is ruining the future of the next generations. I just can't try to explain it to everyone. They don't link the relation at all. I thought maybe eventually, they would just get it, but here we still are...

  • Nextcloud sucks in many ways, but it is functional and works for me.

    It has always worked fine for me. The occasional upgrade process is manual but literally just a command.

  • Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.

    This has got to be a prank.

  • Apple isn't gonna have your back on this either you minds well run to foss forever if this is gonna be your Hill to die on

    For sure, as long as that's a viable option for me, I'll do it, but if I don't have that option...

  • I've been GrapheneOS on my pixel7pro since march and I have no complaints. Everything works, and I have control over what apps have access too. The only thing I will say is that if you need the camera to take gr3at photos, its not nearly so good with grapheneOS. I pretty much always have a mirroless camera with me anyway so it dosent bother me. I just use the phone camera for quick snap shots

    Hey, what camera do you use? My phone is showing its age and I was thinking of getting a secondhand pixel, but I've also been looking at cameras to stand in for the phone camera.

    I was thinking I should go for beginner friendly and small.

  • Did you find a Google Drive alternative?
    I'm strongly considering Peergos, but still kinda shopping around.

    I just use Syncthing. No cloud, just keeps any folders I choose on any devices synced with one another. Never had a problem, and while the files yes accessible on the internet technically, they're not stored anywhere except the devices that have access to them. Works like a charm.

  • I swear all of this was predicted to happen by open source advocates of the 80s and they'd be called alarmists/whatever and then 30 years later you had Snowden leaks and all the surveillance bills and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all advertisement companies mining data through the software and devices they sell

    The best people can do is just keep using and advocating for Linux adoption. Try out degoogled Android or a more traditional Linux phone device. Need more users and funding to get the software kinks worked out. They're not as good as the high end Android and Apple stuff, but it's a process

    Do you have any good material to degoogle Android??

  • I swear all of this was predicted to happen by open source advocates of the 80s and they'd be called alarmists/whatever and then 30 years later you had Snowden leaks and all the surveillance bills and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all advertisement companies mining data through the software and devices they sell

    The best people can do is just keep using and advocating for Linux adoption. Try out degoogled Android or a more traditional Linux phone device. Need more users and funding to get the software kinks worked out. They're not as good as the high end Android and Apple stuff, but it's a process

    I've been struggling with figuring out how to get google off my phone. I don't know if I'm doing a bad job of searching or if I'm just dumb, but are there any good communities in Lemmy you can recommend on the topic?

  • Google’s Gemini team is apparently sending out emails about an upcoming change to how Gemini interacts with apps on Android devices. The email informs users that, come July 7, 2025, Gemini will be able to “help you use Phone, Messages, WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off.” Naturally, this has raised some privacy concerns among those who’ve received the email and those using the AI assistant on their Android devices.

    I don't have Gemini loaded to my phone and I have Google assistant voice command disabled

    But a few days ago I was having a conversation with my son next to me on the couch with my phone sitting on the arm of the couch.

    When I asked him a question, gemini answered with a prompt on the screen I have never seen before and haven't since.

    It still creeps me out

    I looked up what the prompt for gemini is supposed to lol like and this looked nothing like that. It looked more like a popup dialogue box from a browser but the only browser I use is opera and it is set as default

  • [Horses] Phones Ruined Everything

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    I found this really interesting and thought provoking. I loved the line how ultimate optimism is not always misplaced.
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    While I agree, everyone constantly restating this is not helpful. We should instead ask ourselves what’s about BlueSky is working and what can we learn? For example, I think the threadiverse could benefit from block lists, which auto update with new filter keywords. I’ve seen Lemmy users talk about how much time they spend crafting their filters to get the feed of content they want. It would be much nicer if you could choose and even combine block lists (e.g. US politics).
  • The Decline of Usability: Revisited | datagubbe.se

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    I blame the idea of the 00s and 10s that there should be some "Zen" in computer UIs and that "Zen" is doing things wrong with the arrogant tone of "you don't understand it". Associated with Steve Jobs, but TBH Google as well. And also another idea of "you dummy talking about ergonomics can't be smarter than this big respectable corporation popping out stylish unusable bullshit". So - pretense of wisdom and taste, under which crowd fashion is masked, almost aggressive preference for authority over people actually having maybe some wisdom and taste due to being interested in that, blind trust into whatever tech authority you chose for yourself, because, if you remember, in the 00s it was still perceived as if all people working in anything connected to computers were as cool as aerospace engineers or naval engineers, some kind of elite, including those making user applications, objective flaw (or upside) of the old normal UIs - they are boring, that's why UIs in video games and in fashionable chat applications (like ICQ and Skype), not talking about video and audio players, were non-standard like always, I think the solution would be in per-application theming, not in breaking paradigms, again, like with ICQ and old Skype and video games, I prefer it when boredom is thought with different applications having different icons and colors, but the UI paradigm remains the same, I think there was a themed IE called LOTR browser which I used (ok, not really, I used Opera) to complement ICQ, QuickTime player and BitComet, all mentioned had standard paradigm and non-standard look.
  • Anthem Demo - Napster plus Distributed Machine Learning

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    Niemand hat geantwortet
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    encourage innovation in the banking and financial system What "innovation" do we need in the banking system?
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    P
    Unfortunately, pouring sugar into a gas tank will do just about zero damage to an engine. It might clog up the fuel filter, or maybe the pump, but the engine would be fine. Bleach on the other hand….
  • Massaging the neck and face may help flush waste out of the brain

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    Segue into sexy time
  • Whatever happened to cheap eReaders? – Terence Eden’s Blog

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    This is a weirdly aggressive take without considering variables. Almost petulant seeming. 6” readers are relatively cheap no matter the brand, but cost goes up with size. $250 to $300 is what a 7.8” or 8” reader costs, but there’s not a single one I know of at 6” at that price. There’s 10” and 13” models. Are you saying they should cost the same as a Kindle? Not to mention, regarding Kindle, Amazon spent years building the brand but selling either at cost or possibly even taking a loss on the devices as they make money on the book sales. Companies who can’t do that tend to charge more. Lastly, it’s not “feature creep” to improve the devices over time, many changes are quality of life. Larger displays for those that want them. Frontlit displays, and later the addition of warm lighting. Displays essentially doubled their resolution allowing for crisper fonts and custom fonts to render well. Higher contrast displays with darker blacks for text. More recently color displays as an option. This is all progress, but it’s not free. Also, inflation is a thing and generally happens at a rate of 2% to 3% annually or thereabouts during “normal” times, and we’ve hardly been living in normal times over the last decade and a half.