Old Man Yells at Cloud

There's an article posted on Slashdot about OpenAI complaining that DeepSeek distilled their models to gain an edge Link.

Against my better judgement, I clicked into the comments there and actually found something insightful with the level of snark I would have done myself.

Without further ado:

Dear OpenAI,

Go fuck yourselves.

For years, individuals, other companies, publishing industries across the board, and user groups have been fed the ever-loving fuck up with you stealing everything that isn't bolted down to train your fucked up vision of a future devoid of work, in a world that doesn't value humans when they don't work. And you and your ilk have proclaimed repeatedly that this is just the way things have to be, that the information belongs to you if it exists because you can access it. That there is no unfairness in you taking any information you can find because all information should go into training your new computer god.

And now that someone has done the exact fucking same god damned thing that you've been doing all along, you whine about it like a spoiled fucking child that had one tiny piece of its candy taken from a pile of ever-expanding, continually self-replenishing candy that will never end and never could end.

Fuck you, you entitled pieces of god damned shit. Combine this with your future visions of completely disrupting society for your financial benefit, while potentially causing the entire economy to collapse whether your visions come true, or you crash out in your quest and take the entire dream-o-sphere of Wall Street with you, and you are beyond disgusting. We're sick of your shit, and I hope to crap that this begins to drive home the fact that the term "corporation" does not deserve the respect it gets in society today. You are a parasite, through and through. And just because you found a tapeworm within your shit, it doesn't mean you aren't a tapeworm in society's shit yourself.

Good grief, some of us can't wait until you AI based companies stop being the 100% focal point of all world governments and all economic concerns. It's like we've handed the reins of society over to the most narcissistic, self-obsessed idiots in all of existence, and somehow they always find a way to double-down on the ugliest parts of humanity in their quest.

Warning: Site does not work well with DarkReader, so you'll need to deal with the flashbang.

Increasingly, we’re pushed to trash tech that should still work, such as Chromebooks, phones, and smart home devices, just because the software has expired or lost support. This database lists more than 100 tech products that have stopped working after manufacturers dropped support. It calculates the total weight of all these dead devices which have joined the 68 million tons of electronic waste disposed of each year.

Everyone here can think of a cloud-connected product that was killed because the company that made it stopped supporting it. While these corporations have forgotten their products, the US PIRG Education Fund has immortalized them in their Electronic Waste Graveyard.

With an estimated “130,000,000 pounds of electronic waste” produced since 2014, the amount of wasted resources is staggering. The advent of the cloud promised us reduced waste as lightweight devices could rely on remote brains to keep the upgrades going long after a traditional device would have been unable to keep up. The opposite seems to have occurred, wreaking havoc on the environment and pocketbooks.

Of course, we can count on hackers to circumvent the end of companies or services, but while that gives us plenty of fodder for projects, it isn’t so great for the normal folks who make up the rest of the population. We appreciate PIRG giving such a visceral reminder of the cost of business-as-usual for those who aren’t always thinking about material usage and waste.

If PIRG sounds familiar, they’re one of the many groups keeping an eye on Right-to-Repair legislation. We’ve been keeping an eye on it too with places like the EU, Texas, and Washington moving the ball forward on reducing e-waste and keeping devices running longer.

Summary from Hack-a-Day

The humble power bank has transformed from a simple pocket-sized battery into a feature-laden gadget that now sometimes includes screensavers, Bluetooth connectivity and built-in Wi-Fi hotspots. The Verge's Thomas Ricker highlighted the $270 EcoFlow Rapid Pro X Power Bank 27k at CES 2026 as a prime offender -- a device he declared "too expensive, too big, too slow, and too heavy." Its giant display takes 30 seconds to wake from sleep, plays swirly graphics and blinking eyeballs, and requires a screensaver while slowly draining the battery it's meant to preserve.

The feature creep is industry-wide. Anker no longer lists a display-less model in its 20,000mAh range, and both companies sell proprietary desk chargers. Basic alternatives exist -- Anker's PowerCore 10k runs $26 -- but they're becoming harder to find.

Didn't even have to add my own snarky gripe to this one.

I've got two of the older Anker 10k and they're nice. Just a simple ~~8 digit~~ seven segment display for the battery percentage and a tiny green LED for "trickle charge mode". I've also got the 20k version that's just as simple.

Lord help me when I have to replace them. Power banks are one of the few things I've learned not to cheap out on. The no-names are either wildly misrepresented in their specs, straight up fire hazards, or only last a year or less; sometimes all 3.

Microsoft's OneDrive cloud storage service has drawn renewed criticism for a particularly frustrating behavior pattern that can leave users without access to their local files after the service automatically activates during Windows updates.

Author Jason Pargin recently outlined the problem: Windows updates can enable OneDrive backup without any plain-language warning or opt-out option, and the service then quietly begins uploading the contents of a user's computer to Microsoft's servers. The trouble begins when users attempt to disable OneDrive Backup. According to Pargin, turning off the feature can result in local files being deleted, leaving behind only a desktop icon labeled "Where are my files?"

Users can redownload their files from Microsoft's servers, but attempting to then delete Microsoft's copies triggers another deletion of the local files. The only workaround requires users to hunt down YouTube tutorials that walk through the steps, as the relevant options are buried in menus and none clearly describe their function in plain English. Pargin compared the experience to a ransomware attack.

Mostly posting this to see if it jump starts federation, but the rant applies.

It's like a bi-weekly event where LW just randomly stops sending traffic to random instances for 2-3 days. I give up. If it federates, it federates. Gonna just start divesting from communities there.

The first nag was on the google.com/chrome download page. Edge/Windows injects a toast message in the corner nagging you that "We're the same as Chrome, but you can trust us!" The only button takes you out of the Chrome download page while they play "Hide the close button" in the system dialog.

"With the added trust of Microsoft". Oh, fuck off! I'm not using Microsoft anything because I want to let alone because I trust them. In this case, it's because the shitty software vendor only develops for Windows. And in other people's cases, it's because it's the OS that came with the PC or corporate IT mandates it.

Edge's whole fucking shtick is "AI Powered Browser" which, by it's very fucking nature, sucks up every bit of information it can and feeds it back to the mothership. That's on top of the default Edge experience assaulting your senses with every fucking thing in the world crammed onto the new tab page. The default new tab page looks like what your grandma's computer in the mid 2010s looked like when it was infested with every adware/toolbar ever made.

The second nag was when you go to set anything but Edge as the default browser. The action you went there to perform demoted to a tiny secondary link.

Just goes to show: if you can't compete and provide something people want, just abuse your position to trick people into sticking with your garbage.

Note: I'm not defending Chrome here, but it's a hell of a lot less shitty than Edge and is the only other approved browser in my org.

Cross-posted from "I'm Tired of Pretending Tech is Making the World Better" by @juergen@feddit.org in !technology@lemmy.world

I'm tired of pretending tech makes things better.

I'm tired of kidding myself that all these apps, these chatbots, these "tools" are doing anything but dragging us into the mud and the shit and calling it progress.

I sat down at a cafe a few days ago, hungry and ready to order. But there were no menus at the tables - just a QR code on a hockey puck. My phone struggled to load the site to order a single cold brew, pop-ups to install the custom App kept obscuring the options, and I had to register with my phone number, email address, and first and last name to buy a $5 cup of coffee.

By the time I placed my order - paying a 1% fee to the app makers in the process - I would have happily paid double for the experience of simply flipping through a menu and talking to another human being.

You can call my complaints out of touch, but I'm no stranger to the other side. I've worked in hospitality intermittently for the past decade, and I still pick up shifts here and there. I can tell you right now that anyone working in a decent venue would rather have a line of people ordering at the counter than be juggling iPads and QR codes while barely interacting with human beings.

We keep adding layers of technology meant to reduce friction, but it just winds up abstracting us from other people, from our neighbors and communities, while forcing clunky, barely functional, and always extractive apps into every facet of our daily lives.

In some parts of the city, you can't even park your car anymore without downloading an app.

I used to say that I wasn't against technology. I believed in it and was hopeful, and I could still get excited about the New New Thing.

But that's not the case anymore.

AI by itself doesn't bother me per se (I'm not OP.) What bothers me is content is inaccurate or obviously just garbage. Unfortunately, it's the toupee fallacy again.

The EFF has complained that in general "smart" products for babies "collect a ton of information about you and your baby on an ongoing basis". (For this year's "worst in privacy" product at CES they chose a $1,200 baby bassinet equipped with a camera, a microphone, and a radar sensor...)

But today the Washington Post reported on a $1,700 bassinet that surprised the mother of a one-month-old when it "abruptly demanded money for a feature she relied on to soothe her baby to sleep."

The internet-connected bassinet... reliably comforted her 1-month-old — just as it had her first child — until it started charging $20 a month for some abilities, including one that keeps the bassinet's motion and sounds at one level all night. The level-lock feature previously was available without a fee. "It all felt really intrusive — like they went into our bedroom and clawed back this feature that we've been depending on...." When the Snoo's maker, Happiest Baby, introduced a premium subscription for some of the bassinet's most popular features in July, owners filed dozens of complaints to the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau, coordinated review bombs and vented on social media — saying the company took advantage of their desperation for sleep to bait-and-switch them...

Happiest Baby isn't the only baby gear company that has rolled out a subscription. In 2023, makers of the Miku baby monitor, which retails for up to $400, elicited similar fury from parents when it introduced a $10 monthly subscription for most features. A growing number of internet-connected products have lost software support or functionality after purchase in recent years, such as Spotify's Car Thing — a $90 Bluetooth streaming device that the company announced in May it plans to discontinue — and Levi's $350 smart jacket, which let users control their phones by swiping sensors on its sleeve...

Seventeen consumer protection and tech advocacy groups cited Happiest Baby and Car Thing in a letter urging the FTC to create guidelines that ensure products retain core functionality without the imposition of fees that did not exist when the items were originally bought.

The Times notes that the bassinets are often resold, so the subscription fees are partly to cover the costs of supporting new owners, according to Happiest Baby's vice president for marketing and communications. But the article three additional perspectives:

• "This new technology is actually allowing manufacturers to change the way the status quo has been for decades, which is that once you buy something, you own it and you can do whatever you want. Right now, consumers have no trust that what they're buying is actually going to keep working." — Lucas Gutterman, who leads the Public Interest Research Group's "Design to Last" campaign.
• "It's a shame to be beholden to companies' goodwill, to require that they make good decisions about which settings to put behind a paywall. That doesn't feel good, and you can't always trust that, and there's no guarantee that next week Happiest Baby isn't going to announce that all of the features are behind a paywall." — Elizabeth Chamberlain, sustainability director at iFixit.
• "It's no longer just an out-and-out purchase of something. It's a continuous rental, and people don't know that." — Natasha Tusikov, an associate professor at York University

And if you're assuming the software vendor I'm dealing with was the lowest bidder, you are correct.

Not affiliated with this, lol, but it was recommended to me in another comment thread, and it seems to be relevant to what this community is about. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I do have it on order.

I'm also still fine-tuning the direction of this community. I'm thinking something between Digital Minimalism and Neo-Luddism with a side dish of "this is what's pissing me off about tech lately". Like, I'm not against tech by any means, and I still like it, but I don't want to be enslaved by it. Anyway, suggestions are welcome for that.

Synopsis

"Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and don't, bring value to your life."--Ezra Klein, Vox

Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world.

In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.

Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction.

Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions.

Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control.

Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.

Neo-Luddism: Today, new technologies are being used to alter our lives, societies and working conditions no less profoundly than mechanical looms were used to transform those of the original Luddites. The excesses of big tech companies - Amazon’s inhumane exploitation of workers in warehouses driven by automation and machine vision, Uber’s gig-economy lobbying and disregard for labour law, Facebook’s unchecked extraction of unprecedented amounts of user data - are driving a public backlash that may contain the seeds of a neo-Luddite movement.

As Gavin Mueller writes in his new book on Luddism, our goal in taking up the Luddite banner should be “to study and learn from the history of past struggles, to recover the voices from past movements so that they might inform current ones”.

What would Luddism look like today? It won’t necessarily (or only) be a movement that takes up hammers against smart fridges, data servers and e-commerce warehouses. Instead, it would treat technology as a political and economic phenomenon that deserves to be critically scrutinised and democratically governed, rather than a grab bag of neat apps and gadgets.

I don't know if it's the platforms, the users, or both, but it just annoys the ever loving crap out of me that cloud storage is basically used like a digital junk drawer.

There's this article about how Gen-Z doesn't apparently understand how filesystems work which kind-of, maybe, explains things a bit. Again, I blame tech for that.

Even with search, I can't find half or more of the files co-workers swear are in there.

And I know they know how to put things into folders. We were using an on-prem fileserver until 4 years ago, and they filed things just fine. Now files just go into a "bucket" and they expect you to rummage through it to find what you need.

Ooh, look at my shiny, new uPhone 24. It's so thin, you guys! (proceeds to put it into a bulky-ass case)