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.

A gold or yellow wash should salvage them.

A mottled tan “filter” at the other end will also make them more cigarette-like.

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.

Penny Arcade did it best with the Magic Hate Ball.

https://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/215099323_Noxws-L-2.jpg

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/08/13/how-indeed

One thing (only good thing) about Vista was that it rationalised Printer (and Scanner) Drivers.

The UI was consistent between printer manufacturers and everything could be accessed through one interface.

Then the Printer manufacturers complained to MS because they couldn’t have infinite branding all over the interface and the feature was dumbed down in 7.

Meanwhile Apple used the same UI for all Printers (based on CUPS) and didn’t even let a company logo appear in the interface.

Not all the Apple CUPS drivers were available for Linux CUPS so unfortunately Linux (at the time) still had their device compatibility issues.

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.

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.

They are still in way too much. Every time I go into an Apple Store they try to ram their “Apple Intelligence” down my throat.

Won’t these religious nut bags just Rapture already.

We don’t want them on this planet.

The main reasons Microsoft and forcing Windows 11 on people are;

• Recoup sunk costs on CoPilot by training on User Data.
• Monetising users by data mining through onselling mined data.
• Forcing customer lock-in through forced use of CoPilot.

Will someone please pop this AI-bubble so CoPilot, Apple Intelligence and Gemini can just go away!? We don’t want any of it!

Just waiting for the “libertarian” government to use eminent domain to confiscate and gift the land to Musk…

The thing is that these reports (and training material and industry analysis) is Deloitte’s bread-and-butter.

If they have begun outsourcing their product to an LLM, and believe that the new is comparable to the product they previously provided, they are admitting that everything they have ever produced is garage and no one should be paying them anything.

Advanced Data Protection does require all iCloud Ecosystem devices to be current.

Not every person can afford the latest and greatest.

I’m gonna play devils advocate here (and probably be monstrously downvoted);

ICEBlock stored the location data of all its users on Apples iCloud Servers. This the perfect target for ICE; a complete database of locations of every person who doesn’t want ICE to know where they are.

One assumption is that that Apple realised how tempting this data is to the current demonstrative administration and purged it before ICE could get their civil-liberty-abusing mitts on it.

Our local Street Racing in the 1970s also included an entrant provided by the Local Police. They also provided road closures and crowd control and usually won, reinforcing the idea that if you took part in illegal street racing, you were likely to get caught.

There has been a huge crackdown on Street Racing in the last 50 years and we no longer locally manufacture Muscle Cars.

The former Street Racers have turned to 4WDing and have been tearing up 4WD tracks and Firebreaks since.

This makes it difficult for Hikers, Horseriders, Mountain Bikers, campers and recreational touring 4WDers, as well as park rangers and firefighters.

I remember that he (or someone pretending to be him) was in an and for Sensodyne toothpaste.

The problem is that the Grifter-in-Chief will continue playing all the different splinter-hate-groups off each other for profit and so a lot of damage to social cohesion in the process.