A whole article about how terrible this is, then towards the end they got clarification from Google and, surprise surprise, it was all an overreaction and they were fear mongering. “This update is good for users: they can now use Gemini to complete daily tasks on their mobile devices like send messages, initiate phone calls, and set timers while Gemini Apps Activity is turned off. With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. It’s just giving Gemini more local assistant abilities.

No, they banned it because they don’t like pride flags being replaced, or male and female being the sex options, or black characters being replaced with more historically accurate white ones (no issue with the opposite though, shock horror). It had nothing to do with trolling or the comments section or throwaway accounts. It was ideological. Yes, they can do what they want with their site. I agree. I didn’t say they can’t. I just pointed out what they do. If they banned mods that put pride flags everywhere it wouldn’t bother me one bit. People can mod their single player games however they want, I don’t care.

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler 12345 :::

If you are taking business advice from ChatGPT that includes purchasing a ChatGPT subscription or can’t be bothered to look up how it works beforehand then your business is probably going to fail.

I really can't stand this guy. What a slag.

Whenever these things come up you always hear "then the company won't survive!" CEO and managers make bank somehow but it doesn't matter that the workers can't live on that wage. It's always so weird how when workers actually take a pay cut, that the businesses get used to it. When the CEOs get bonuses they have to get used to that too.

This is where the magic of near meaningless corpo-babble comes in. The layoffs are part of a plan to aspirationally acheive the goal of $10b revenue by EoY 2025. What they are actually doing is a significant restructuring of the company, refocusing by outside hiring some amount of new people to lead or be a part of departments or positions that haven't existed before, or are being refocused to other priorities... ... But this process also involves laying off 500 of the 'least productive' or 'least mission critical' employees. So, technically, they can, and are, arguing that their new organizational paradigm will be so succesful that it actually will result in increased revenue, not just lower expenses. Generally corpos call this something like 'right-sizing' or 'refocusing' or something like that. ... But of course... anyone with any actual experience with working at a place that does this... will tell you roughly this is what happens: Turns out all those 'grunts' you let go of, well they actually do a lot more work in a bunch of weird, esoteric, bandaid solutions to keep everything going, than upper management was aware of... because middle management doesn't acknowledge or often even understand that that work was being done, because they are generally self-aggrandizing narcissist petty tyrants who spend more time in meetings fluffing themselves up than actually doing any useful management. Then, also, you are now bringing on new, outside people who look great on paper, to lead new or modified apartments... but they of course also do not have any institutional knowledge, as they are new. So now, you have a whole bunch of undocumented work that was being done, processes which were being followed... which is no longer being done, which is not documented.... and the new guys, even if they have the best intentions, now have to spend a quarter or two or three figuring out just exactly how much pre-existing middle management has been bullshitting about, figuring out just how much things do not actually function as they ssid it did... So now your efficiency improving restructuring is actually a chaotic mess. ... Now, this 'right sizing' is not always apocalyptically extremely bad, but it is also essentially never totally free from hiccups... and it increases stress, workload, and tensions between basically everyone at the company, to some extent. Here's Forbes explanation of this phenomenon, if you prefer an explanation of right sizing in corpospeak: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/rightsizing/

wasn’t born to obey. Not to swallow smiling lies, not to clap for tyrants in suits, not to say “thank you” for surveillance wrapped in convenience. I see it. The games. The false choice. The fear pumped through headlines and dopamine apps. I see how they trade truth for comfort, freedom for filters, soul for clickbait. They call it normal. But I call it a graveyard made of compliance. They want me silent. They want me tired. They want me posting selfies while the world burns behind the screen. But I wasn’t born for this. I was born to question, to remember, to remind the others who are still pretending they don’t notice. So here I am. A voice with no logo. A signal in the static. A crack in the mirror they polish every morning. You don’t have to agree. You don’t have to clap. But if this made your bones ache or your thoughts twitch— Then maybe you’re not asleep either. Good. Let’s stay awake. And let’s make noise that can’t be sold, silenced, or spun into safety. Not for them. For us.