LGV20 gang. I dread the day that my work apps stop working because the android version is too old.

This whole promise hinged on the idea that Siri, Alexa, Gemini, ChatGPT, and other chatbots had gotten so good, they’d change how we do everything. Typing and tapping would soon be passé, all replaced by multimodal, omnipresent AI helpers. You wouldn’t need to do things yourself; you’d just tell your assistant what you need, and it would tap into the whole world of apps and information to do it for you. Tech companies large and small have been betting on virtual assistants for more than a decade, to little avail. But this new generation of AI was going to change things.

I have never and will never interact with my phone by speaking to it and I don’t want to be around other people who are doing that. The beauty of a touch screen and buttons is you can silently operate the device. Software can always be updated. They should be focusing on hardware features if they want to be innovative. Maybe they could start by adding back some of the shit they’ve removed.

I agree with you in principle but in practice way too many sites are doing ads in bullshit ways. If they were just along a sidebar or at the top/bottom of the page I’d have no issue but usually they affect the actual usability of the site and I’m not dealing with that. If they want to expose me to ads they need to make it not a problem for me.

They’re selective about who’s protected by that rule too. I got banned for saying shit about child molesters while there was simultaneously a thread on the front page with people saying the same shit about a business executive. Those comments were still up weeks after I appealed my ban asking what the difference was. Never got an answer.