deliriousdreams

I had always heard that a East Asian populations tended to have very dry ear wax. I guess it never occurred to me it was possible to just not have any.

… The ear wax thing is wild. Is this a known phenomenon? Does your PCM know you don’t have ear wax? Did they tell you that during an exam? How did you find out?

Sounds like you should just set up your own instance and IP block as you see fit.

I’m sure this will make people who use it feel better, but as a form of protest it does nothing. Unless you’re gonna install this extension on a bunch of public computers.

Lots of people who have taken to the internet at large may not understand the root cause of why, but they do know Google’s reputation for killing projects and enshittification. That discussion is happening everywhere. And you should also note that a lot of the early adopters of Google Now and Google Assistant (including the hardware) are tech enthusiasts who absolutely did have the realization at one point or another about how these companies were essentially rifling through their emails and other information they were collecting in order to provide such detailed information. There were multiple articles about it (from outlets and blogs that these kinds of people follow). Perhaps once Google assistant became more mainstream (where people were more likely to pick up assistant enabled devices and such in Target or the like), those people didn’t realize. But they still see the enshittification.

There’s a lot of people claiming “no one wants this”.

Thing is, people loved this when they introduced it with Google Now back in 2012. They literally used to trawl your inbox and tell you when to expect packages, when you had appointments, when your flight and hotel were booked for/when to leave for the airport.

All of that was useful information and it was free. Later their assistant could call to book you a table at a restaurant or add things to your shopping list or whatever. Some of this functionality started off very clunky, but it could absolutely be useful. But slowly but surely people started realizing that they were the product and that in order for Google Now and assistant to do this stuff it had to be reading emails and processing information in the cloud. We didn’t have devices that could do that kind of processing on phone.

After backlash (and likely because it wasn’t making them any money because they hadn’t figured out how to monetize the product yet), Google got rid of Google Now and Google Assistant took over.

it did some of the same things but distracted users from what was missing with flashy new hardware and smart home things. Lots of people loved that stuff too.

Then Sonos sued and forced them to kneecap their products. Suddenly the honeymoon was over in a big way. Some of the most basic smart home features were broken and in such a way that people who used them were irate.

Some of those integrations and functionality returned eventually. But right in the middle of that Google launched Gemini and it sucked at most all of it. It keeps getting “better” supposedly. But for a lot of smart home users the magic has been lost. They want what they had and lost and Gemini isn’t even a reasonable facsimile of that.

So it’s more that people are frustrated with Gemini and angry at Google for killing another service they found useful.

People still want technology to make their lives easier and more efficient. But they also want privacy and for things to just work. Google hasn’t made a product that just worked in a long time and AI isn’t going to be it.

I think it needs to cover infrastructure too.

I need some time to think about what you wrote before I respond. I need to switch gears here and also give some thought to how such a thing would play out.

I’m not arguing against free speech here. Granted I also didn’t downvote these comments.

The main problem is that the original comment and subsequent comments don’t explain what the alternative is. It isn’t just the US that has such laws (as I tried to demonstrate by posting an alternative law from the UK.

The thing is, generally the rights of an individual generally stop where the rights of another individual start and vice versa.

The original comment doesn’t even explain what part of either the ruling by the country in question or the threat of legal action on the part of Cloudflare they disagree with, nor did they explain how that is in any way related to free speech.

There exist whole countries that have internet that doesn’t use Cloudflare’s services. Cloudflare is a big player in the DNS space but they aren’t the end all be all of the internet.

If the concern is that Cloudflare’s threat to leave the country will amount to censoring free speech because websites won’t be available due to the lack of Cloudflare services, that’s a problem with the infrastructure of the country in question and their ability to provide DNS blocking as a service (forcing them to rely on a business that is provides said services in exchange for money).

That same money can be used to stand up a Cloudflare alternative.

Reliance on tech corporations is not an excuse to claim free speech is being detrimentally affected by censorship.

Even if it was, the least the original commenter could have done was offered alternative solutions.

Corporations have rights. Quite literally. They are legal entities. We aren’t required to use their services. They aren’t required to provide said services.

"In the UK, Article 10 of the 1998 Human Rights Act protects our right to freedom of expression: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

In this case public authority is the government.

Governments have an obligation to prohibit hate speech and incitement. These are dangerous. Restrictions can also be justified if they protect specific public interest or the rights and reputations of others. People imposing the restrictions (whether they are governments, employers or anyone else) must be able to demonstrate the need for them, and they must be proportionate.

The choice for Cloudflare or any company that operates in the jurisdiction of the government enacting the law is to obey the law or not do business in that governments jurisdiction. It seems like that’s exactly what Cloudflare is suggesting they will do if the government tries to force them to adhere to said law. That’s their right as a company.

I’m not saying cloudflare is a good company. My argument isn’t that pulling out of the country is a good idea.

My main concern and the reason that I responded to your comment in the first place was because you tried to make this about freedom of speech, and as it pertains to this discussion I’m not really sure what your argument is except that your idea of free speech is predicated on the idea that the freedom of the people and their speech should in some way negate the freedom of the company.

The threat of legal action on Cloudflare’s part seems to be to do with the fine that the government is trying to force on them for refusing to agree to obey the newly enacted law. It’s normal for corporations to fight civil penalties like this.

Your argument doesn’t seem to be that it costs tax dollars (it does), or that it’s unfair because you or I wouldn’t have the same opportunity due to monetary limitations to legally fight the government. Or even that if you or I didn’t agree with the law we couldn’t just up sticks and leave the country. Your argument seems to be that somehow, by standing up for the rights they do have, this company is somehow blocking free speech? I’m asking because I still am not sure I understand.

Corporate censorship is not illegal. If you come to my house spouting Nazi rhetoric I have ever right to call you out on it and kick you out of my house.

There are laws deliberately protecting the people’s right to free speech that is not infringed by the government.

Now if you want to talk about how we should remove companies/corps rights as entities, we can have the conversation.

Trump was banned from Twitter and it was a good thing because it was them enforcing their TOS/EULA rules in a reasonable manner that doesn’t play favorites. Because the average person like you or me couldn’t say a lot of what Trump said on the platform and not get banned.

That doesn’t mean Twitter is a good company. There are no good companies. Corporations are not your friend. But they also aren’t government entities and they shouldn’t be. So if the state wants to sponsor the internet as a utility it can create its own cloudflare-like service for the purpose of DNS blocking and block whatever it wants. But cloudflare isn’t a state sponsored utility. It’s a corp. It has every right (whether you agree it should have rights or not) to not operate in countries it doesn’t want to operate in.

and the citizens are doing?

Not with that attitude we don’t.

Who could possibly have seen that coming. It’ll be Trump supporters who donate next.

I have found that if I don’t focus on the person talking it helps. But I still write things down.

They probably have to do so as part of their job. A lot of newsworthy stuff still (unfortunately) happens on twitter or is posted there.

Listen. That e-ink display I’ve got tucked away in a screenshot and an open tab is important and I will look at it later and decide whether I want to do that project.

It’s wasn’t an indictment on you or anything. I tried to click what I thought was a link, figured there was a mistake and then went looking for the actual article to get some context.

Since it was a 404 article I read and I know they do paywalls (and I sub to them so I don’t get the paywalls) I didn’t want to share that link because people might not be able to view it.

https://lemmy.world/post/40009551

I had to Google the article and I believe it may be paywalled. I sub to 404 media so I am not restricted from seeing it.