Great read! I wonder what his perspective is now. That article was written in August 2024 and a lot has happened since then. For example, I cannot fathom the agreement to Sundar’s latest pay package. Another example of failing up the corporate ladder.

Also, it feels like competition with China was an overlooked wildcard in his argument. It would not surprise me if the bubble continues to grow just to try and beat China.

For real. Last year we finally got some competition against Spectrum and their customer service is actually worse than Spectrum. I didn’t imagine that was possible

Since Windows ME, a system update was always a risk. You never know when some BS like this might happen. It taught me at a young age to turn off automatic updates and only update when necessary and ready to do some troubleshooting.

I was frustrated by this also and decided not to put the effort into rooting the device to get rid of all that crap. Instead I decided to use Flauncher together with Button Mapper. Using that tool, I map the homepage button on the remote to point to Flauncher. It isn’t a perfect solution but it was done in a few minutes and I can now mostly avoid the bullshit ads

To expand on this, I have witnessed small, indie channels have their content copied, processed through AI so it is stripped of audio, watermarks and re-edited. Then it is posted as a new video. When it is reported as a fake, or pirated copy, or not original content, Google then puts the burden of proof on the small indie channel that originally created the content, often requiring them to lawyer up and file a legal complaint, before they will take any action to remove the AI slop. It is fucking absurd. It would only take a real person about 60 seconds to compare the content and dates to determine who is the theif.

That makes sense. Mine is a Kenwood aftermarket unit so maybe its a Kenwood thing

I’d like to hear more about this. When I went to setup Auto on my vehicle, it demanded that I copy all contact information to the head unit, or it would not proceed with pairing and setup. That’s when I just shrugged and disconnected my phone. Bluetooth works just fine for me

I totally agree with your take here. I’d also like to add that I went the Synology route and since it is restricted to my local network, it did not require the creation of an account. Seems like it’s possible to be an anonymous Synology user for now.