You know, it's interesting, I've been now around long -- you know, I think of myself as a young guy, but I'm not so young anymore. And I've been around for a long time. And it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans ... We've had some pretty bad disasters under the Republicans. -- DJT 21 March 2004
It's true that the TrueCrypt developers retired and said that commercial packages like BitLocker were finally good enough and available enough that they didn't feel compelled to maintain TrueCrypt. I remember that. I think it's plausible that Microsoft has (or has provided to someone) back-door access to BitLocker, but I don't remember any hint that the TrueCrypt developers had been coerced; have you got something you can link to?
Virginia Foxx out here explaining to literal children that wanton US spending is heading us toward a debt cliff that will destroy the nation, so the climate just has fend for itself, I guess.
Let us bear in mind what even the abstract points out, that less-healthy people were becoming noticeably more "conservative" even before COVID, even before the current president got elected the first time.
That is, people who felt they were getting the shaft were looking for something new and different, politically.
Which is part of how Fascism got its start in 20th century Europe, too.
I like that imagery better than keeping a foot on some fucking line. Plus using toe as a verb is dumb.
When I was a kid, the school gymnasiums had many different painted lines, delineating boundaries for basketball courts and other games. Gym teachers would often start activities by getting the students to line up on one of these lines, a position from which we could all see what the teacher wanted to demonstrate. We'd put our toes on the line. We would literally "toe the line." That's not a metaphor, not an imaginary image. I would guess common usage comes from the military more than from gym class.
You're right, in the strictest IT-nerd sense, that when Bing singles out the "google" search query for special treatment, that one step doesn't involve "intercepting" anything.
But the Bing/Microsoft people are doing that to trick users who had intended to search Google into searching Bing instead. When it works, that's Bing intercepting the user's Google search, using social engineering rather than tech hacks.
It would be interesting if someone could dig through the archives of sites like Engadget, Gizmodo, etc., and figure out what fraction of upcoming new-category gadgets actually become hits. Ten percent? Less?
Do Lemmy threads ever show up on search engines (the way Reddit threads do)? I don't think I've ever had Google or DDG point me toward any fediverse thread or post.
To be perfectly clear, "Make fedi better for the future by hopping aboard and contributing today" is fine, I don't object to that. But is that envisioned future, where a search for "Why doesn't my [X] work with my [Y]" points to the fediverse, even possible in principle? I genuinely do not know the answer.
I have a teeny tiny 2015 smartphone with a headphone jack, an SD card, the SIM removed, and a copy of Foobar2000 installed. It was never fast enough or capacious enough to be a very good portable internet portal, but it runs something simple like Foobar2000 very, very well. The battery still lasts longer than the one in my actual phone does. And it was (in a sense) free. Reduce Reuse Recycle.
...users can query Siri about, like asking the AI assistant what they should cook with the ingredients they have in front of them ... may also use the cameras to help with things like turn-by-turn directions.
Those are some pretty underwhelming use-cases. I can't see the world beating a path to anyone's door for that. Even if you were so excited about these features that you were willing to overlook the privacy concerns, it seems like the phone you've already got would probably be just fine as a conduit for such services.