I do agree that they are very close; maybe I’m an Apple apologist, but I put ICEBlocker in the same class as Tea. They both claimed to be to protect their target audience; Tea was exposed as having been Vibe Coded by someone who knew SFA about user data security and ICEBlocker had a huge honeypot of user data that the government would love to subpoena.

That is exactly right. But the demographic of Pixel owners likely to install GrapheneOS (or Sailfish or Ubuntu Touch or whatever) and the demographic of GrapheneOS users likely to buy a Pixel probably has a fair overlap.

Long-term support is never something that Normies (that don’t want iPhones) contemplate. They would rather buy the cheapest phone; they don’t see the value in a software vendor supported phone. That is why Samsung is more of a household name than Pixel.

Google have also shown that their long-term support is pointless when they pivot and implement their own version of Apples “walled garden” on the Play Store and the Android ecosystem.

Their implied guarantee of openness is just as facetious as Apples implied guarantee of privacy.

I’m surprised it isn’t more.

Pixels are the reference platform for a lot of open-source phone operating systems. A disproportionate number of people who purchased Pixels are the type of person who did believe Googles motto of “Don’t be Evil”, even after Google abandoned the motto.

Now that Google is inarguably Evil (not Musk Evil, but definitely more Evil than Apple), these people are searching for solutions. They are gun-shy and are not likely to get an Evil iPhone, have a large investment in the Android ecosystem so are unlikely to pivot to Linux Phone, and the niche Android variants are more likely to be assassinated by Google.

GrapheneOS is the obvious choice. I’m surprised it isn’t a higher percentage.

In some fields, General Purpose LLMs are useful;

• Marketting copy that no one reads.
• Business reports that push an agenda for political reasons.
• Political analysis that puts an agenda for political reasons.

That is why they are being adopted wholesale by certain companies; marketeers and analysts for lobbying groups and political movements.

So yes, they are useless for any legitimate case, but are useful for justification of lies to certain gullible individuals (consumers and politicians).

That said, the fact that Deloitte was forced to (partially) pay the Australian Government back for a report that was all AI Dross is enheartening. The fact that it was only a partial refund and the company is not being prosecuted for Fraud is disenheartening.

It is Optimised.

Just not optimised for efficiency or ease of use.

It is optimised for extracting as much personal metadata as possible, feeding as many ads as possible, monopolising users attention and manipulating political opinions.

That is the thing about general purpose LLMs. They really are impressive to people with below average experience and knowledge in a specific field.

People who actually do know something; academics, professionals and hobbyists realise that they are completely useless for their specific use case.

Unfortunately then they use it for something they are ignorant about and then they forget how useless they are.

My old workplace had a stain like that just above the reps desk. It was directly below the toilet in the Executive Suite.

They were too “frugal” to get a plumber in and the stain kept getting bigger and bigger.

About a month after I left for a better job, one of my former coworkers told me that it finally gave way.

The manager came in to a huge pile of excrement all over the reps new laptop and splash stains (and accompanying smell) all throughout the phone room.

So glad I left.

But there will be no demand for their “product”. They may have money in the bank but no future business model.

Managers aren’t being held accountable for their management decisions either.

“Oh, I sacked our entire workforce and sold all the company assets, so the figures will look amazing this month.”

<one month later>

“Oh, the figures are down this month, a golden handshake!? Thank you very much.”

Insert “2025 year of Linux Desktop” meme.

Honestly though, the only thing keeping gamers on Windows are the requirement of these Rootkits and inertia.

I’m rereading the Watch series currently and almost every book hits very close to Current Affairs.

The Fifth Elephant feels like a peaceful interlude after GG (Popularism), MaA (Anti-Woke), FoC (Cultural Oppression of Minorities), Jingo (Nationalism).

I have expanded this read through to include Truth, MR and the Moist series.

Ironically the Truth will also be the least relevant, even though most of our current RoundWorld problems are caused by Media Moguls manipulating things.

I honestly don’t know any proponents of “intelligent design” who are female.

Except the Sycophantic Patriarchal TERFs who do everything their husbands tell them to do.

Once again, the EU ^^ is overstepping their mandate. There is no benefit to endusers if Google, Opera and Firefox are forced to use WebKit for rendering on iOS only. There are disadvantages for Opera, (who are Nowegian), but no other European companies.

There are huge benefits to endusers if their phones batteries last more than 15 minutes because Google and Opera are trying to backdoor their privacy.

^^ the EU’s regulatory bodies.

I think there is an ounce of truth in that, but Corporations don’t “want” things. Investors want dividends and ROI. Executives want golden handshakes. Employees want a pay cheque.

Someone is financing the Astroturf campaigns. Someone is directing who they lobby.

This is like saying that Safari is just a reskinned version of KDE Konqueror. It is patently wrong and oversimplifies the development processes.

While Apple did use Konqueror as a base for WebKit, and some of that code was pumped back into Konqueror, they are not the same. Chromium was also based on WebKit but has had so much code replaced that it is also essentially different code.

I recommend Ken Kocienda’s book “Creative Selection” about the development of the iPhone and WebKit.

Although I would prefer to roll-my own but Ubuntu Touch, postmarketOS and SailfishOS all run on the FairPhone.

YMMV for software support, but the non-Android Linux-based phone OSs will suit most people’s needs, as long as Angry Birds isn’t a killer feature of their phone.

It’s still amused by the whole USB-C push to “Reduce eWaste”.

By legislating that everyone should use USB-C, they generated a lot of eWaste in the form of legacy USB-A, B, micro, lightning, etc, as well as requiring more cables in the form of USB-C to USB-A, B, micro, lightning, etc. cables in the transition phase.

The various different types of USB-C cables (power only, data only, Thunderbolt 4, etc) as well as the glut of different incompatible USB-C interfaces has made things much worse.

It reminds me of the XKCD comic about introducing new standards to reduce the number of standards.

The credit card game bans are all coming from one Australian Religious group.

Similar Astroturf groups are being used to create fake grassroots community groups to PrOtEcT tHe ChIlDrEn.

There are lots of people who make that assumption. These are also the most likely demographic to fall for a fake App Store scam.

That said, Apple have done a piss-poor job pruning their “Walled Garden”. If they really cared about user privacy, Facebook would have been banned multiple times for privacy violations.