“Privacy. That’s iPhone.” — and Other Things That Need an Asterisk
Apple isn’t lying about privacy. They’re just very careful about what they don’t say out loud. The Google deal. iCloud’s 5GB trap. The Meta silence. What “we keep your data safe” actually means.
None of it required a lie. That’s kind of the whole point.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/privacy-thats-iphone-and-other-things-that-need-an-asterisk
#apple #privacy #bigtech #userhostile #blog #icloud #security
Microsoft's Copilot ToS: "for entertainment purposes only."
Also Microsoft: $30/seat in your Excel, Teams, and Outlook. Training on your code April 24th. Same model, different price tag, quieter fine print.
Bonus Post! — the ToS was too good to sit on.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/for-entertainment-purposes-only-bonus-post
#ai #microsoft #copilot #bigtech #userhostile #anthropic #github #blog
Two leaks in five days. A system built to hide AI authorship in open source. Unreleased models running on your repos without telling anyone. And now the blueprints are public.
The cover is blown.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/do-not-blow-your-cover
#ai #anthropic #opensource #claudecode #bigtech #userhostile #privacy #blog
side note:
Coming Soon
-"Privacy. That's iPhone." — and Other Things That Need an Asterisk
-The Full Stack: Microsoft Is Watching All of It
-Apple's Other Tax: The One You Pay in Lock-In
Four fuses. One week. All burning.
OpenAI raised $122B and still won't turn a profit until 2030. Agents are deleting inboxes and want root access to your machine. Your RAM is three times what it was because hyperscalers bought the supply chain out from under you. And nobody in the industry can negotiate with an oil shock.
Oh and the fix for the inbox problem makes the RAM problem worse. Of course it is.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/theyre-racing-to-stay-ahead-of-the-fuse
#ai #openai #bubble #bigtech #userhostile #blog #privacy #github
Phase 1: Acquire developer trust. Phase 2: ???. Phase 3: Your code trains our AI by default. The GitHub story.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/phase-3-profit-the-github-story-97f4616f
#bigtech #blog #github #microsoft #privacy #selfhosting #userhostile #opensource #ai
Just finished disassembling a late-Intel-era Macbook Pro to remove the spicy pillows from it, and I gotta say, I am not impressed with Apple's hardware engineering on it.
I'm not talking about them gluing the cells of the battery to the case - that's been discussed to death, and was unnecessary. I'm talking about some other rather bad choices made during design.
Specifically: fasteners. In general, you want the fewest different types of threaded fasteners possible in your design. Fewer parts to keep in stock, fewer possible mistakes when assembling and disassembling units, etc. And Apple utterly failed this design rule.
It's like each separate part in this machine is held in with 3 different fasteners. Sometimes that's unavoidable in a design; you're using machine screw #1 for most things, but there's one that has to go into this particular place where it can't be as deep/long or there isn't room for the same head or something. But in this case, most of the fasteners are different for no very good reason. There's room for them to have used a common screw for many of the cases where they just ... didn't.
Paying the Apple tax for this kind of janky design (and user-hostile repairability) is just insulting.
"Designed badly in California, manufactured in China".
#Apple #AppleTax #Macbook #MacbookPro #glue #SpicyPillow #design #BadDesign #hardware #janky #UserHostile #CaptiveMarket #AppleMac
Netflix Got $2.8 Billion Last Month. Now It Wants More of Yours.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/netflix-got-2-8-billion-last-month-now-it-wants-more-of-yours
#blog #netflix #streaming #streamingwars #bigtech #userhostile #enshitification
Bitwarden Doubled Their Price. I'd Already Left. Here's What You Missed.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/bitwarden-doubled-their-price-id-already-left-heres-what-you-missed
So the last couple weeks have been nuts on keeping up with the news....but here's another that might have slipped under your radar and will effect basically everyone in the US. Your home router has basically been declared a security risk.
https://blog.ppb1701.com/all-this-has-happened-before
#blog #routers #fcc #networking #security #policy #geopolitics #selfhosting #isp #userhostile
When I started this series I figured I'd be documenting slow burns. The gradual squeeze. The quietly updated terms of service. The feature that disappears in a patch note nobody reads.
Nobody told Nvidia.
Hello Phobos.
Patrick
C.
