I didn’t “have to” but, a few reasons…

1. Swapping the drive created a pretty easy rollback path that was just “put original drive back”

2. The drive was ~10 years old, and was in the range of recommended replacement for an SSD with the amount of TBW and age it had.

3. Original drive was kinda small and a new larger drive was available for not very much money.

Microsoft literally wanted me to convert my desktop to e-waste as it lacks the magical TPM chip that Win11 demands.

I said “fuck that” and pulled the Boot SSD, kept the existing non-boot drives for data, and put in a brand new SSD, encrypted it and installed Pop OS in one shot.

Not only was it easy, I lost literally zero critical functionality vs. what I had with Win 10. There is a Linux app equivalent for everything I had before. I had a few driver issues but most were auto-discovered including obscure ancient printers and scanners on my network.

If I had to come up with a steelman argument for small “AI focused” systems like this, I’d say that the more development in this space, makes the cost of entry cheaper, and actually eventually starves out the big tech garbage like OpenAI/Google/Microsoft.

If everyone who wants to use AI can locally process queries to a locally hosted open-source model with “good enough” results, that cuts out the big tech douchebags, or at least gives an option to not participate in their data collection panopticon ecosystem.

Let’s hope so. This should be my last Pixel if it all plays out like that.

And they wonder why some of us are still using local installed and firewalled Office 2007.

Tostitos 'bout to enter the silicon production sector y’all

Almost more concerning is the way big tech has consolidated on standards that hurt anonymity, even though they aren’t legally required to.

For example, have you tried to make a burner email account lately so you can register at some stupid app or site that you only intend to use once? It is surprisingly difficult now because all the “legit” email providers are moving towards requiring phone-based (mobile SMS) 2FA which inherently deanonymizes you in the US due to KYC laws.

Also the throwaway email sites like GuerillaMail are being blocked more often by various sites. Their domains are now frequently blacklisted so you can’t use a burner account as easily to register anonymous social media or other website accounts.

The secret of the CS and IT job is that it has always been the Neuveaux Blue Collar job.

For every IT exec and formerly-technical middle-management douchebag making really good money, there are 2 to 10 actually technical resources making “okay” money relative to their skill and the insane hours and scenarios they are expected to work.

Oh and let’s not forget they’re constantly trying to outsource as much of that support and engineering talent as possible.

I dunno. Something about the content I think.

A few years back some of their content was fun and interesting. Now lately it’s all either “here’s a bunch of comparisons of hardware you can’t even afford” or “Linus puts some ridiculous tech in his own personal house - thanks for subsidizing his home improvement projects by the way”

I will still watch an occasional video but there are other tech related channels that I enjoy a lot more.

Worse - Sociology

Well it’s “here to stay” I agree. But there are some real economic indicators that it is also a bubble. First, the number of products and services that can be improved by hamfisting AI into them is perhaps reaching critical mass. We need to see what the “killer app” is for the subsequent generation of AI. More cool video segments and LLM chatbots isn’t going to cut it. Everyone is betting there will be a gen 2.0, but we don’t know what it is yet.

Second, the valuations are all out of whack. Remember Lycos, AskJeeves, Pets.com etc? During the dotcom bubble, the concept of the internet was “here to stay” but many of the original huge sites weren’t. They were massively overvalued based on general enthusiasm for the potential of the internet itself. It’s hard to argue that’s not where we are at with AI companies now. Many observers have commented the price to earnings ratios are skyhigh for the top AI-related companies. Meaning investors are parking a ton of investment capital in them, but they haven’t yet materialized long-term earnings.

Third, at least in the US, investment in general is lopsided towards tech companies and AI companies. Again look at the top growth companies and share price trends etc. This could be a “bubble” in itself as other sectors need to grow commensurate to the tech sector, otherwise that indicates its own economic problems. What if AI really does create a bunch of great new products and services, but no one can buy them because other areas of the economy stalled over the same time period?

Exactly my experience. I had just got a Pixel 7. Travelling with a friend who had the iPhone with Apple proprietary charging port. I got to be like “look what I can do”.

Cool but mostly unnecessary.

“It enabled us to shit out products in 4 days.”

Glad they incorporated such thorough testing in their process.

I think just going back to internet forums circa early 2000s is probably a better way to engage honestly. They’re still around, just not as “smartphone friendly” and doomscroll-enabled, due to the format.

I’m talking stuff like SomethingAwful, GaiaOnline, Fark, Newgrounds forum, GlockTalk, Slashdot, vBulletin etc.

These types of forums allowed you to discuss timely issues and news if you wanted. You could go a thousand miles deep on some bizarre subculture or stick to general discussion. They also had protomeme culture before that was a thing - aka “embedded image macros”.

My regular Pixel 7 (not 7a) has a swelled battery and I can see the screen starting to separate from the rest of the case.

The phone would be otherwise still fine despite being 2 years old. I’m sure even if it was covered, Google would find some way to not repair it under the program because it is a carrier unlocked model running GrapheneOS.

I would opt for third party repair but the place I used for this exact problem before (replacing swollen battery on a Samsung phone) was a little sketchy and when I got it back, there was evidence they tried to rifle through my device.

Aside from taking this to Rossman himself, I’m wondering if there are any other reputable 3rd party repair options.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, it appears Amazon is trying to “disrupt” the grocery market. Anecdotally they have been selling shit for crazy low prices and they’ll make like 30 separate trips to your house all on the same day with lined/insulated packing for the perishable items and frozen water bottles (no extra charge to the customer) in each bag to keep the food cool in transit.

It seems like there is no way they can be making money on this process, which tells me they are speedrunning Walmarts strategy of operating at a loss to force other grocers out of the market.

My understanding is that, in broad strokes…

1. Aurora acts like a proxy or mirror that doesn’t require you to sign in to get Google Play Store apps. It doesn’t provide any other software besides what you specifically download from it, and it doesn’t include any telemetry/tracking like normal Google Play Store would.

2. microG is a reimplementation of Google Play services (the suite of proprietary background services that Google runs on normal Android phones). MicroG doesn’t have the bloat and tracking and other closed source functionality, but rather acts as a stand-in that other apps can talk to (when they’d normally be talking to Google Play services). This has to be installed and configured and I would refer to the microG github or other documentation.

3. GrapheneOS has its own sandboxed Google Play Services which is basically unmodified Google Play Services, crammed into its own sandbox with no special permissions, and a compatibility layer that retains some functionality while keeping it from being able to access app data with high level permissions like it would normally do on a vanilla Android phone.

If you want you can install Pixel Camera (official Google camera) from Aurora Store, and deny it Network permissions and any other permissions you want. It still works pretty well for point and shoot but I can’t speak for every single feature. Also you can install simulated services that the Gcam requires to function, without having to run Play Services.

To be fair, this federal program was a cluster eff since they started it in about 2010. It passed a bunch of grant money through to the states, which all did different “things” with it. Most held semi-public meetings and planning sessions for 5-10 years or wrote detailed planning documents but never delivered any physical infrastructure (actual results to the residents).

Maybe if they allow API access for alternative frontends that eliminate ads and block telemetry. Otherwise, not interested.