Apparently, the chargers will be updated to become dumb terminals that just charge automatically when plugged in, but for many end users, the main reason they went with Juicebox (which was bought by Enel) was that Enel would handle user accounts and billing. I work at an organization where we charge employees at a discounted rate, and the chargers are open to the public to use as well if they install the app and input their payment info. We’re going to have to close down public access if we can’t find a solution. A couple companies are saying they might be able to take over. Would have been nice to have more than a couple weeks to figure this out!

I think people need to start being educated about how their climate influences how they can use the electric car. Many people know if they live by the sea or where roads are salted that corrosion is an issue. But people might not be aware that with some EVs, they should leave it plugged in if they’re in an extreme climate, so the car can air condition or heat the battery. I caused some battery degradation to my Volt because I wasn’t able to leave it plugged in living in Tucson.

Gemini soon to be rebranded Allo Assistant All Access Chat

yes, I find Gemini actually not bad when it comes to my specific use case of showing generic examples for R programming, so I can figure out the syntax for my actual code. I don’t try to have it generate actual code for me because my topic of marine biogeochemistry is far too specific for it to have any idea how to work with it. Unlike ChatGPT, which often makes up nonsense functions or hallucinates whole packages, Gemini seems to do ok. I also found it pretty good for generating images of natural subjects. It did the best job of generating a pic of a giant clam of any image generator I’ve tried. I would never trust factual information from Gemini. So like Google+, it’s a pretty good product that in no way should be shunted into search results, Google Docs and other places where its output is not relevant, yet that is exactly the trap Google is falling into again.

If there were multiple sources of traffic, the pressure to optimize to one source would be lower, and the disruption caused by algorithm changes would be muted. Which would mean more interesting content less driven by a narrow set of metrics

It’s an example of why monopolies are harmful. They create distorted economies that don’t serve consumers. Like ecosystems overcome by a monoculture, monopolies are inherently less resilient, less functional and prone to sudden disruption.

They aren’t talking about an investment for a financial return. They’re talking about investing their time and energy in a platform that then gets enshittified

I do, from bandcamp (flac, not mp3)

CDs are already showing signs of a comeback! https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/gen-z-cds-buying-collection

I like to buy older albums that were mastered for vinyl, like Steely Dan, some prog rock like Yes or Pink Floyd. It gets a lot closer to listening to how the artists would have been hearing their product

Apparently CDs are trending up as a nostalgia format in some demographics! https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/gen-z-cds-buying-collection

I feel conflicted about the whole thing. Technically it’s a model. I don’t feel that people should be able to sue me as a scientist for making a model based on publicly available data. I myself am merely trying to use the model itself to explain stuff about the world. But OpenAI are also selling access to the outputs of the model, that can very closely approximate the intellectual property of people. Also, most of the training data was accessed via scraping and other gray market methods that were often explicitly violating the TOU of the various places they scraped from. So it all is very difficult to sort through ethically.

Yes, privacy and encryption are always the enemy of authoritarians. They enable dissent

Blocked for poor reading comprehension

That’s not what they said at all.

They keep you regular. Specifically your fps

Yeah, these services don’t have to add much friction to trap vulnerable folks like the elderly. Obscure the cancel button under a couple menu levels and dark patterns and they have people trapped for life. It can be very insidious

Sigh, I wish there was a better repost notification. Maybe the third party app I use is the issue

Apple Fitness has logged either one skydive or 2000 flights of stairs

Twilio is under a lot of pressure from shareholders eager for more profit (CEO was just pushed out), so I figure this is just the start of a long wave of enshittification. I switched to Authenticator Pro (Android), which is much better in every way. Can backup between devices, has WearOS support, and a proper dark mode. I’d use bitwarden, but I hesitate to keep my TOTP keys in same place as my passwords

Kind of wild how this guy feels entitled to have people pay him

The owner of the server I’m on wrote a nice post describing his reasoning https://about.scicomm.xyz/doku.php?id=blog:2023:0625_meta_on_the_fediverse_to_block_or_not_to_block

I wouldn’t say gas stations have the same frequency of problems honestly. 19 times out of 20, my gas is dispensed without issue. And I’m able to buy it without joining a program or going out of my way. Electric charging is not yet that convenient, and it should be.

When I bought my Volt 10 years ago, I knew more about the car than any of the dealer sales people. I doubt the situation has changed much. That being said, I would hesitate to recommend an EV to a non technically inclined person, because the charging situation is still rough even in CA. Stations are often broken, or the billing doesn’t work, or they are in inconvenient areas. Gas is still the idiot proof option. We will know we’re really in the future when you can go to most grocery stores or strip mall and charge with tap to pay (no stupid app to pre-configure). There has to be 95% reliability. Right now I’d say about 1/5 of stations I visit have something wrong with them in terms of no internet connection for billing, slow charging, illegible UV-damaged screen, or just outright broken hardware. https://heatmap.news/electric-vehicles/nema-14-50-mobile-charger-lucid-air

Yeah, I wouldn’t take him as a completely reliable narrator, but still an interesting inside perspective

Sorry this link has been paywalled for some people after I posted. Here’s an article that is unrestricted https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23948464/bored-ape-nft-event-eye-injury-sunburn-uv-exposure

I just tested and none of the pop-ups appear when searching “download Firefox”

I care about anticompetitive behavior from tech companies

For sure, totally agree. In other countries where I’ve lived, I’ve noticed less selfish blocking of local infrastructure. There are just a lot of selfish people in America, and more pain points they can exploit to throw up roadblocks (both politically and literally)

Yes, this is an underappreciated angle. Ridesharing bridges the gap for many people excluded by other forms of transit. My mom has limited mobility and ridesharing has really helped her.

It cost nearly $350 million to install a 2-mile-long rapid bus lane on Van Ness Maybe future expansions will be cheaper based on lessons learned, but it’s clear that any infrastructure in SF is tremendously complicated and expensive. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing!

Good point. It just means that only people who themselves are likely to be seeders can download from me. Which is better than nothing, but not ideal!

You need it for seeding

That is very depressing. The arms race between bad actors and repressive governments keeps whittling away at our right to privacy

Seems like some VPNs are pulling back from port forwarding. Was a bummer that Mullvad did, probably due to legal pressure

The old logo was a better portrayal of my tangled web of smart home stuff lol

Hehe I’m not the author, but I do have a game boy camera I’m now very tempted to play around with…