Why wait? Google is already dismantling Assistant as it switches to Gemini. Assistant is becoming less helpful as Google "prioritizes" experiences. arstechnica.com/google/2025/03…
how about instead of enshittifying their existing products that people currently use Google actually makes a product that people WANT to use. There's a novel concept.
I hope someone makes an alternative to it. Better is open-source, processes data locally and supports many of the commands the original app supported. The Assistant is a tool that I use a lot, mostly when driving as I can't use my phone while driving. Today it failed three times to postpone an alarm when I was driving and I had to stop the car and do it manually. At least the "enable voice directions" command worked for me today as, since I was on an unusual route, I noticed just checking my phone's screen was making me too distracted. If someone makes an alternative I'm going to completely remove Google's app from my phone (using adb as Android makes it impossible to do otherwise).
I still prefer Google Assistant, in the sense that it has more control over the phone and apps, and is "smarter" than Gemini in these cases. However, I really like Gemini's ability to translate and correct texts. That's missing from Google Assistant.
This NBC News graph is so frustrating. When Biden was in office, prices were lower, the US was trading with other countries, and the stock markets were on the rise, only 5 percent of Republicans thought the economy was “good” or “excellent”.
But now, when prices are rising, there is a trade war, and the US stock markets are crashing, 26 percent think the economy is “good” or “excellent”.
Voters are starting 2025 sour on the state of the economy and President Donald Trump’s handling of it so far, even as his election to a second term sparked an upswing in positive feelings about the direction of the nation, according to a new national…
Yeah - these kinds of “People say X” polls are really stupid without also providing an assessment of “reality”. The current state of the economy doesn’t actually change depending on how people *feel* about it. So show me what people think, but then also compare it directly to reality, and then explain why peoples’ feelings are aligned with, or diverging from that reality.
It is not frustrating. It is useful. Skilled politicians now know that using facts and science to reach that audience is a wasted effort, therefore other means have to be used. Hopefully other parties than republicans will be able to effectively communicate and influence that cohort.
There’s a psychological reason for this which was presented in a great TED Talk maybe 15 years ago. (I hope to remember the name of the speaker soon.) The essence of the talk was that people tend to have positive feelings about their choices, no matter the sequelae. Most folks tend to develop even stronger post-choice rationale for why the choice was a good one and also to report more positive feelings about the results of their choice. So the graph isn’t too surprising. I hope it’s updated on a monthly basis so we can see how it changes over time.
That's the natural outcome of the completely distinct information bubbles these groups live in.
In 2024: Dems lived in a world of economic growth, while Reps lived in a world where the US alone suffered from high prices due to inflation (caused solely by Biden)
In 2025: Dems live in a world if mass layoffs and inability to plan, while Reps live in a world where other countries "stop taking advantage" and immigrants will finally be deported (freeing up housing and lowering costs)
We've adopted a new cat! Her name is Wren. She is 6 months old, has one eye, and is mostly blind. She's been with us since Saturday.
She is very smart and *intensely* cuddly. She also seems very confident and friendly, and once she's a bit more settled we're gonna try various training things to keep her occupied.
The ghosts of the old Noricans fled into the depths of the mountains when they longer wanted to witness the shame of their descendants losing to the forces of Napoleon.
Dell is bidding farewell to its familiar desktop and laptop sub-brands. Inspiron, Latitude, Precision, and XPS are now simpler, more generic identifiers. Here's everything you need to know. pcmag.com/explainers/how-to-de…
A tough race for the rookies as F1 starts 2025 in Australia F1 teams show us who's fast and who's not at the start of the 2025 season. arstechnica.com/cars/2025/03/a…
The image is a two-panel comic strip featuring a character labeled "THE PARTY." In the top panel, the character, wearing a green cap and a red plaid shirt, is seen from the back, extending his arm as if to ward off something. The text above him reads, "A DEMON THAT'S THREATENING TO PULL THE ENTIRE DUNGEON IF WE DON'T ACCEPT HIS DEAL." The background is a clear blue sky with a few clouds.
In the bottom panel, the character is now facing forward, holding a gun in his right hand and firing it. The text "BANG" is displayed above the gun, with sparks and debris flying from the muzzle. The character's expression is neutral, and the background remains the same. The bottom panel is signed "THE END" and credits "NEIL + MARISSA KOHENY."
Provided by @altbot, generated privately and locally using Ovis2-8B
Putin's agent in the White House is shutting down Voice of America to ensure that Russia's global propaganda network, Sputnik, which operates radio services in more than 30 languages, will not get any pushback from the likes of us. dair-community.social/@ZekuZel…
🇷🇺 / 🇪🇹 Today, Russian state media outlet Sputnik expanded its broadcast presence in Ethiopia, opening an "Africa Hub" in Addis Ababa.
Some of this footage is from the launch ceremony, where Ethiopian parliamentary speaker Agegnehu Teshager, and Valentina Matvienko, Russia's Federation Council speaker were both present.
Sputnik, which already had a presence in Ethiopia, expands at a time when Ethiopian media outlets and civil society orgs face shutdowns, and the arrests of their members.
Today we (@fesix and I) released the .stp file of the @mntmn backplate and the .dxf of the laser engraved logo that we used to order at JLCPCB / JLCCNC.
Voice of America: Here's the first broadcast ("from New York to Germany"). "The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth". insidevoa.com/a/2365229.html #VoiceOfAmerica
The physics of brewing the perfect espresso "Channeling" during brewing process can lead to non-uniform filtration and lower extraction yield. arstechnica.com/science/2025/0…
Beer brewers have known about channeling, and it's effects on extraction for quite some time. I'd guess hundreds of years, if not more. Where is the cross-discipline knowledge? Researchers stuck in their channel with blinders on...
I'm looking for a mailing list / newsgroup solution (it can be SaaS or self hosted).
I need a couple things: - Easy subscribe and unsubscribe functions - Ability to send out mass emails to subscribers (basic functionality)
- Most important... and this is the weird part... I need all the subscribers to be able to "reply all" or to email the list as a whole, to also send messages to everyone. But I don't want them to be able to see everyone on the list.
I need an oldschool mailing list proper, where people can track the threads and replies, right.
All the marketing email lists are only top-down - the emailer mails all the recipients, but there is no allowing the recipients to email each other.
Edit to add better nomenclature (my brain is not forming words right now): - Allows for email discussion - Allows
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Question to the Fediverse:
I'm looking for a mailing list / newsgroup solution (it can be SaaS or self hosted).
I need a couple things: - Easy subscribe and unsubscribe functions - Ability to send out mass emails to subscribers (basic functionality)
- Most important... and this is the weird part... I need all the subscribers to be able to "reply all" or to email the list as a whole, to also send messages to everyone. But I don't want them to be able to see everyone on the list.
I need an oldschool mailing list proper, where people can track the threads and replies, right.
All the marketing email lists are only top-down - the emailer mails all the recipients, but there is no allowing the recipients to email each other.
Edit to add better nomenclature (my brain is not forming words right now): - Allows for email discussion - Allows for email threading - Email Newsgroup - that's a good one
GNU Mailman is the canonical choice. However note that these days running any kind of mailing list can be an extreme battle to get messages accepted by the large services (Gmail, Outlook, etc.) and even this assumes that you have an ISP that will permit you to access port 25 at your service level.
My point is that most service plans (non-business, anyway) don't permit access to port 25, and even when they do it can be a hassle to get it, and also to get proper reverse DNS control which you also need to get the majors (and pretty much anyone else) to accept your email (and increasingly, SPF, DKIM, DMARC). It's all about spam/phishing control, basically.
@lauren Because of the constant moving target that is spam, and because so many people have just decided to use one of the handful of mail platforms, the providers like Gmail have set some pretty high bars on what counts as mail worth delivering. Even if your hosted on a real server, there's a lot of config they'll check and your own provider will check before mail will flow. Also if you ever end up on their black list because people mark you spam, good luck getting off
Groups.io is a modern email group service and listserv alternative with no ads. Create mailing lists with calendars, files, wikis, and more. Better than Google Groups or Yahoo Groups.
I used mlmmj (part of your list) in the past. It does everything you want and is not too difficult to set up, but I struggle to find joy in that process.
If you don't want to self-host, Google Groups can be used – it works like a regular mailing list, and subscribers don't even need a Google account (you can subscribe and unsubscribe directly by sending an e-mail).
I'm on a list that uses Gaggle Mail (gaggle.email/#intro) for hosting. The list owner seems very happy with it, I've never had any problems using it, and it seems to have most of the features you want.
Mailman is what I would suggest too; we've used it for @ByMUG for… yikes, 19 years. We have an announce list, (one to many) and a discussion list, everyone on the list to everyone on the list.
@cR0w I am very curious to know the use case for something like this. I assume it’s effectively to get non-techies to use a forum of sorts without having them download an app or make a new account on something like Discourse?
We have a lot of members of my group that have used email and prefer to use email moving forward.
A group leader is using a single gmail account to send all the email correspondence from. They receive emails that want to sign up by someone texting them the email or emailing the main email. Then everyone just Replies All to the last email sent, as it has everyone's email in the CC section.
I'm wanting to upgrade it to where everyone does not have everyone else's emails, easy subscribe and unsubscribe, and where they can just email the main group email (or reply to it) to email the entire group.
We have a discord chat and we meet in person once a month as well.
@cR0w Gods, that sounds like such a headache to deal with. But having worked with the less tech literate, meeting them where they’re at is the only feasible solution a lot of the time. Props to you for biting the bullet 🫡
@phillip @cR0w - Hahaha, yeah, when I spun up this group I realized that ALL of my last collaborative interactions these past couple of decades have been with hackers.
Like... even my language is so steeped in 1337speak and jargon that normal folks didn't understand me.
I said something like "Oh, I'll spin up a server real quick" and they were like... Wat. What's a server? And what do you mean by "Spin up?"
And I was like... Spin up. You know... like... spin up spin up. Huh...
Hahahaha!!!!
So yeah, if I want to build community and mutual aid movements, I have to design the solution around the people that use it, not force the people to use a weird ass (to them) solution.
@cR0w That’s so real! I always end up testing the waters in conversation by introducing slightly more complicated terminology until the other person looks confused. Then I walk it back and have a base level of their understanding I can work with from there it’s very easy to live in our own tech bubbles 😂
Okay! We ended up going with Gaggle Email (gaggle.email)
Edit: (HT to a friend for pointing out that nothing is known about this company. They dont put up anything about their team and no corporate info is available. Their domain whois is under privacy lock. For all intents and purposes assume this is a honeypot run by Elon Musk for all the nefarious reasons - seriously. - The stated goal of their free tier is to get people using and telling others about it. So I fell for that con. I'll keep the below messages in tact along with this message here)
Gaggle has a really nice free tier and is up front about their financing (even at the free tier).
It allows for simple joining, unsubscribing, administration, and moderation via web app.
It allows for newsletter sendouts.
It allows for privacy for folks that have joined the newsgroup. With a setting toggle, no one in the group can see anyone else's email address.
Most importantly, for me, it allows group members to email on
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Okay! We ended up going with Gaggle Email (gaggle.email)
Edit: (HT to a friend for pointing out that nothing is known about this company. They dont put up anything about their team and no corporate info is available. Their domain whois is under privacy lock. For all intents and purposes assume this is a honeypot run by Elon Musk for all the nefarious reasons - seriously. - The stated goal of their free tier is to get people using and telling others about it. So I fell for that con. I'll keep the below messages in tact along with this message here)
Gaggle has a really nice free tier and is up front about their financing (even at the free tier).
It allows for simple joining, unsubscribing, administration, and moderation via web app.
It allows for newsletter sendouts.
It allows for privacy for folks that have joined the newsgroup. With a setting toggle, no one in the group can see anyone else's email address.
Most importantly, for me, it allows group members to email one email address to email the entire group and it allows folks to reply to that email to carry on a thread via email.
Are you using a desk mouse like some kind of… normal computer user? Why, beg the heavens? For you could be using an air mouse, of your very own creation! [Misfit Maker] shows the way. Check o…
Musk’s DOGE Declares a Living Person in Seattle Dead, Cancels His Social Security and Empties His Bank Accounthttps://dailyboulder.com/musks-doge-declares-a-living-person-in-seattle-dead-cancels-his-social-security-and-empties-his-bank-account/
In the 90s, MS's "Where do you want to go today?" ad earned derisive snorts from professionals. A concurrent coffee klatch opined, "It ought to be 'Here's where you're going today'", at which a bystander interjected, "Yeah, but Apple's is 'You're not going anywhere!'"
Do you ever have to force all that enthusiasm, Phil, or does it always come naturally?
I find it endearing, but have always been curious about that, 'cause I sometimes have a really hard time tapping into the enthusiasm reservoir even for the stuff I love the most.
One thing I've tried to figure out is what the daily eclipse would be like for someone living on a vaguely Earth-like gas giant moon.
I figure the gas giant, being in a roughly Earth-like habitable zone of insolation, would be blue with white H2O clouds. And I'm pretty sure the gas giant would appear as a ring during the eclipse. But how thick of a ring? How bright? How "lumpy"? I can't figure those details out.
Generative AI is enabling a brute force attack against the algorithms that control reality. AI slop is taking over every algorithmically controlled social media platform and search platform, and the tech platforms are helping:
the future of mastodon depends of the absence of algorithm. The tiktok or other platform problem is only there Algorithm. People need an algorithm transparency law. And people don't move faster out from platform than the AI-devil move for making elected faschsite.
My latest: Generative AI is enabling a brute force attack against the algorithms that control reality. AI slop is taking over every algorithmically controlled social media platform and search platform, and the tech platforms are helping:
Back in January, I compiled all of the unique versions (that I could find) of a specific meme that was getting some AI slop farm attention: mstdn.social/@shawnbrown/11386…
Attached: 4 images
"What does God mean to you?": A collection of 66 unique YouTube video thumbnail images featuring religious-themed, pro-Trump, AI generated propaganda.
“What this means, and what I have already seen on my own timelines, is that human-created content is getting almost entirely drowned out by AI-generated content because of the sheer amount of it.” Algorithm spaces are useless for building community now.
Gen AI is only good for capitalism and scammers. Gen AI is not good for workers, artists and social interaction. Plus it is very bad for the environment. We must resist these companies pushing it onto us.
Whisker Squadron: Survivor blends classic Star Fox gameplay with modern rogue-lite flourishes for a short yet stylish indie rail shooter. Here's our review: pcmag.com/reviews/whisker-squa…
Coal pollution chokes #Ulaanbataar – in pictures - theguardian.com/artanddesign/g… "In the depths of winter, the city’s daily average of PM 2.5 small particulate that can enter the lungs and bloodstream, can be 27 times higher than the level considered safe by the World Health Organization." #mongolia
The toxic smog that settles over the Mongolian capital every winter has been a suffocating problem for well over a decade that successive governments have failed to dispel
It's easy to blame the UK government for being incompetent nitwits for writing the horrendous Online Safety Act (theregister.com/2025/01/14/onl…) that strengthens monopolies with the resources to implement it and weakens small communities without those same resources.
But this is all according to plan for Meta/Facebook et al. It's regulatory capture in action. It's way cheaper to kill your competition with regulation than to buy it, especially when it's decentralized.
I hope Europe and Canada don't go down the same path as the UK here.
I also hope that "we" (as in, folks who build and care about small, independent online communities) can step up to the plate – both in terms of ensuring regulation supports _actually_ good outcomes AND in terms of building meaningful approaches to online safety.
In the 70' and 80' of the last century there were weekly printed series caled "Foto Roman" common. They were like comics with only real photos, mostly black and white, because easier to print. I wish i'd know the story behind this woman in Paris.
Edited: Oh just read again... she's your wife. I am so unpolite. I beg your Pardon.
i know this is an opportunity to pile on Apartheid techbro, but am not even exaggerating when i say that, as a historian and “culture critic”, #Boomers embrace of the OG #Nazi car ―the VW Beetle― is one of those research things that keeps me up at night.
hand-waving it away as a feat of marketing doesn’t explain how one of Adolf Hitler’s prized cars, for the tech developed with it, became a symbol of white American youth radicalism, aka #hippies
@mhoye I had not thought about that before. I don't think that hippies of the 1960's were consciously using the VW Beetle as a symbol of the Nazi government. They were driving a car not made by GM, Ford, or Chrysler that were key parts of the USA military-industrial complex profiting from the Vietnam War. I was not old enough to know what they were thinking then, so I could be wrong.
@futurebird my post isn’t about the image but about the VW in general. i did think the image looks doctored but it doesn’t matter. the image is only relevant for the presence of the nazi cars of yore and today, not the doctored crash.
been looking for the better part of the past 10-15 minutes
all i could find was some commentary that it looks AI-generated and apparently originated from a source known for posting (and *usually* correctly labelling) AI-generated content
and this: motorbiscuit.com/tesla-cybertr… "If you’ve read any headlines about the deaths in Cybertrucks, none of them were because of the impact of the crash, but instead, the occupant’s inability to escape once the vehicle crashed."
if a cybertruck could be this easily smashed up relative to another vehicle that should not have been a problem...
@scm This makes it more likely to be real, AND YET. I still don't know. I will choose to think of it as a drawing made to illustrate the ideas being discussed.
My fuzzy memory cells think that I heard on an episode of Tales From Aztlantis (a Mexican/Chicano history/archeology podcast) that one connection might be that there a proto-hippie back-to-the-land movement in pre-war Germany that was right-leaning and fed somewhat into the Nazi idea of lebensraum and later some of those German proto-hippies came to the US and brought volkswagens with them and that's partly how the bug car got cool.
Don't quote me on that though; my memory is fuzzy.
I don't know how this was experienced in the US, but in Europe, I think the boomers saw the grudge against Germany as something of their parents' generation. In a way it was a bit nationalistic to blame the current generation for the actions of the previous.
Also, Brandt's West Germany was very left-wing, and devoted to acknowledging the horrors of the war.
As such, I think they associated the Beetle much more with (then) modern West Germany than with the Nazis.
@pbloem Volkswagen was a peace project designed by the allies to help for peacetime reindustrialization after the Second World War. The car design was old but the modern VW is a west German peace project. At least growing up in NY the Mercedes was viewed as the most Nazi car (Adolph's personal vehicle)
@jessetmccann @pbloem Hold up. What?? Hitler commissioned and literally had a hand in designing the original vehicle, along with Ferdinand Porsche… that well known design of German military weapons platforms. I mean for Christ’s sake, the VW logo was a Swastika. Parts for these cars and weapons were made via slave labour from concentration camps.
It was *the* Nazi car.
It wasn’t until after the war that the British took over and turned it into a reindustrialisation piece after nobody would either buy nor be gifted the production capability, because the government had to take it over.
There was no ‘design’ of a peace project. Only by accident, after the designed atrocities.
Sean Thrailkill
in reply to Ars Technica • • •AlexanderMars
in reply to Ars Technica • • •yay!
I for one look forward to random internet people having yet another reason to hate and whinge about Google in comments.
Gustavo
in reply to Ars Technica • • •Gabe Pérez
in reply to Ars Technica • • •Luna chan
in reply to Ars Technica • • •Steve Yelvington
in reply to Ars Technica • • •I tried Google Gemini. Asked it to place a call to my wife. It responded with a mini-essay about women named Diane.
AI sucks.