Some good answers here. Also developers regularly add or update translations, support new features your phone doesn’t even have, compatibility with a different smartwatch, or regular bugfixes that only trigger in special circumstances and just for some users… All of that is difficult to notice for the regular user. Unless you buy the latest smartwatch an try to operate the app with it, or set your phone to Arabic.

And then there are maintenance tasks that don’t add any (visible) features. And apps are generally part of some more infrastructure at the respective company. Internal changes in their workflow or related software might change things. Or they decide to prepare something for the future or make it more efficient.

Sometimes they just update the year in the copyright notice. Or they re-build the app with the latest versions of the libraries that are supplied by different companies or open source projects. Those regularly change, fix bugs and generally you don’t want to depend on any old software library versions with known bugs and vulnerabilities. So there are a lot if reasons why software gets updated without visible changes.

If there’s enough alcohol in it, that will keep bacteria etc out, so it’s probably safe to drink. But ageing happens inside a wooden barrel or something like that. Inside of a opened bottle, it can lose or change flavor over time. But I’m not sure if that’s the case here. It’ll take some years. And there is a wide variety of tastes in whiskey, so maybe you tasted a different sort of whiskey? Or it really went bad… I’ve never had “Crown Royal”. Maybe let someone taste who knows how it’s supposed to taste.

You’re right. it’s uBlock or some other addition that removes the pre-roll ads. But googling for Sponsorblock is a good start to find such apps. I even got some patched youtube app for my TV… So it’s no ads for me and not even sponsored segments. Not on the computer, not on my phone and neither on the TV.

try sponsorblock or uBlock. Or some other third party apps. I’ve decided the inconvenience of watching youtube in a browser (with addons) outweighs the inconvenience of watching several long ads. At least for me.

If you google Ulephone and alarm clock, you’ll find some more people complaining. It’s likely something the manufacturer did to save battery. I’d say the preinstalled (native) alarm clock app is most likely to work, maybe they tested their own apps. Everything else is likely to be nuked on inactivity during the night.

Yeah, as I said it’s clickbait and not “proper” doxing. What I’ve been annoyed with are old newspaper articles. Sometimes you’ll find some articles with a picture and a full name citing some sports achievements from when you were 17 or did some public activity with the boy scouts or some other club. Usually including pictures, full name and location. Which isn’t great and you have less control over that than over a facebook or linkedin profile…

Sometimes an employer also has a “the team” page on their website with mugshots of everyone. That can be used to annoy people, stalk them or call the employer and so some nasty stuff.

I usually don’t tell people my last name. Or I write pseudonomously on the internet, to make doxing a bit more complicated. And I don’t post pictures of myself. That’s all I can do. And quite some years ago I tried contacting some reverse image search providers. But it was difficult to get them to get rid of the pictures.

It’s not necessarily just the information out there. Being able to connect it also makes people more vulnerable. I wouldn’t call it doxing, though. That term has a meaning. Usually it has to include at least an address or an employer or some private information that isn’t readily available.

they do some reverse image search on the internet and find your facebook profile or similar things.

Yeah, they mention that it’s unsuspicious glasses by the look. We’ll have to see what this comes to… When google introduced their Google glasses, people got yelled at on the streets, at least as far as I remember.

Clickbait warning. This has nothing to do with the Meta smart glasses. They’re just a means of taking pictures of people without them noticing. But you could do the same with any internet connected camera / phone etc.

I don’t think the app in the picture is driven by AI. Seems like a catalogue of questions. Probably to assess some situation by some standard procedure. I’d trust that. Regarding the AI apps mentioned below: I wouldn’t trust them at all. If my private parts start itching and I can’t make sense of it, I’d go to the doctor. At least if it’s serious. Or use Dr. Google if it’s not too bad.

wtf?

Certainly Ubuntu. But fortunately I have more options to choose from.

I don’t get that from the article. And I mean it’s not a “web” if it’s not interconnected, is it?

Things have shifted a bit in the last many years. Now almost no one reads blogs anymore. They want doom-scrolling and interaction. And even the old school nerds moved away from RSS, Mail and IRC. I also liked some Linux forums, but I feel it got more quiet there during the last years. Mostly to the benefit of proprietary platforms like Discord and such. But I don’t thing they’re very social, as in open and giving freedom to the people…

What’s a better protocol for a social web?

Sounds like standard practice. First embrace as long as something helps you grow and then wait for the right moment and extinguish.

I don’t think this will be received well in the western market. But that might not be their main criterion.

The processors and peripherals aren’t as uniform as they are on computers. Each SoC has a different set of components, which need drivers and custom set-up mechanics and they’re often only shared between the chip designer and phone manufacturers. A lot of complicated reverse engineering is needed. And that’s often not worth it as there are many different phones on the market and they’re short-lived devices. So we end up in the current situation where we don’t have the operating system foundation / drivers available to the community to build upon.

There is Linux on phones. A modified Linux kernel runs on every Android device. Just the userland is an entirely different one. And Linux isn’t there yet with the desktop and apps. A lot of features are missing, power saving, delivering messages while sleeping and doing background tasks while saving power in the pocket… It’s kind of a chicken and egg dilemma. We’d need some popular Linux phone so people are motivated to tackle the remaining software issues for a mobile ecosystem. And we won’t get one unless there is some good software so it can be marketed.

I still don’t get what you’re trying to do. So your users contribute some text, pictures or measurements they did on their own? You can make them license that stuff to you and everyone, yes. But they can’t upload some Harry potter books, pictures they downloaded from the internet, or whatever we call “copyrighted content”. Adding that to the database will make the whole thing non-shareable. And you can’t attach a license then. You’d have to write some terms of service and everyone needs to agree not to insert material into the database they didn’t create themselves or got a license to redistribute. And they’d need to grant you a license automatically in that terms if service.

You can’t license other people’s work. And you’re doing everyone a disservice if you attach some wrong license to copyrighted material. Someone might believe you, use it under those conditions and get sued. Please don’t do that. It’s not only copyright infringement, but also being disingenuous to the people downloading that content. The correct way to re-distribute copyrighted material is either ask for a license and attach what they gave you, verbatim. Or plainly say it’s not shared legally, or don’t attach any license. Don’t say it’s copyrighted and illegal to share, but also don’t say anything that isn’t correct, just put the files somewhere. (The latter 2 options aren’t legal to do. But at least you don’t claim anything that isn’t true.)

Wasn’t MediaTek abusing the GPL and bad for custom roms, meaning no aftermarket support possible for those devices?

We need uncensored models. Eric Hartford wrote a good blog article in May 2023 about the whole topic: https://erichartford.com/uncensored-models

I think that also applies to biology reasearch and a variety of topics. And also in the adult industry AI can contribute new “art” or take away and flood everything with low quality content. We also have fights about copyright everywhere. I don’t see the adult industry in a different position than other industries… We’re going to see how AI changes things. Having a say certainly helps. I don’t like things being forced on people.