Look, I have some sympathy for Mozilla because it’s Mozilla… but Mozilla’s dependence on Google is a real problem.

I didn’t need to read a printer recommendation article today, but I’m so glad I did. The rage about the world we live in is great.

I have been meaning for months to embrace Kagi, and this is pushing me further over that edge.

What reckless hubris. As I wrote earlier today, I’m in favor of more liberal IP law, but not so that businesses can swallow up content to profit from it.

It’s that time of year (again) for signing the acceptable use policy for kiddo’s school, and I’m again grumpy about a lot of the details in here. Some of these details are me being a nitpicky academic, like the use of the word “technology” to refer to digital technologies alone. Others strike me as more serious, though. Let’s take a look at this paragraph, listed under a “Roles and Responsibilities of Parents/Guardians” header:

This sucks so much—and encapsulates our world’s obsession with financial success over environmental health.

If AI is indeed going to help us reduce emissions, it seems to me that that will be the product of targeted, scientific and industrial use of AI, not shoving AI into a load of commercial products. Are these commercial companies using AI to figure out how to reduce emissions? If not (and maybe even if so), it seems disingenuous to express optimism that their increased energy use will be magically cancelled out by someone else.

Some good thoughts here by Masnick.

I don’t know if I’m using OneDrive wrong or if it is just that much worse than Google Drive for syncing local files.

Team Firefox foreverrrrrr

Lots to appreciate here.

Some good comments in here—especially on how AI enforces and normalizes certain kinds of writing instead of allowing us to determine what writing should look like.

I don’t like Paxton, and I can’t imagine this is much more than performative railing against a strawman version of Big Tech, but this is a real issue, so I’m interested to see where it goes.

Politicians need to better understand the internet. This is just as dumb (and perhaps more devious) than the nonsense the governor of Missouri was up to.

I knew my distrust of spellcheck would be validated one day! Seriously, though, this is bad news.

Ashamed to say I hadn’t ever thought about this possibility.

This is why the EFF and others have concerns about overreach of even clearly well intentioned content moderation. CSAM is clearly despicable, but automated content moderation can make mistakes, and consequences for those mistakes aren’t small.

Nooooo thank you. Don’t like this about Grammarly, don’t like this about Word, won’t like this about Google Docs. I am very skeptical of giving algorithms authority over style.

Speaking of the non-neutrality of platforms… Granted, Google has a difficult line to walk here, but this is still disappointing.

Another reason to be wary of automated ad exchanges.

Tech companies are often ad companies, and it behooves us to remember that.

This is maybe the best example I’ve seen of app stores being a problematic model. Is there an Android app that could be sideloaded? Definitely isn’t for Apple, and that’s shameful.

If dozens of CAPTCHAs are any indication, Google’s working hard on traffic lights, crosswalks, and fire hydrants today. So proud of all I’m contributing to AI without compensation because it’s the only way to access this site.

Special thanks to Google Drive for breaking the iframes I’ve been using to set up annotation-enabled readings in Canvas this semester… during the week that students are reviewing readings for their final papers. Really appreciate it.

Paying for my third year of Posteo tonight and not missing Gmail at all. (Still haven’t kicked the Drive/Docs habit, though).