Sorry for being an idiot, but what is an agentic OS?

Agentic OS is a buzzword that’s meant to imply that the OS is (or has) an AI agent doing useful things for you in the background without you explicitly asking it to do those things (ie an agent working for you). For an agent to be useful, (they say) it has to know and learn everything it can about you, your life, your friends, activities, contacts, work, and so on.

The tradeoff is pretty extreme though. Everything you do on the PC is watched, analyzed, catalogued, and retained by MIcrosoft (and possibly whoever they choose to share the info with, which is likely every government that asks). The features that do this are generically called client-side scanning and Microsoft has a few specific variants you can read about called Copilot Recall, and Copilot Vision.

Looking just at location… Apple is actually better at location tracking precision than Google, and you can’t turn it off (even powering off your phone doesn’t shut it off). Disabling location services doesn’t prevent the data collection by Apple, it only blocks apps from using it.

Apple is probably better at not sharing your data with others than Goolge, but that’s a position of faith, not fact. If you trust Apple and are diligent about blocking location access to 3rd party apps, it’s better. But you should expect that if you’re giving location access to a free app (like Google maps, a weather app, a ride share app, a streaming app, etc.), you can bet they are selling your location data.

Is Google Play Services sampling your location so that it can send it in to Google HQ as part of a secret location tracking operation that runs without user consent or knowledge

Yes they track your phone’s location and movement constantly, but it’s not a secret.

For an example of the evidence you seek… Google SensorVault location data was how they identified and convicted the January 6 terrorists. You might argue that complying with warrants isn’t misuse of the data, but I’d argue that both the data itself, and the level of precision and detail, shouldn’t be captured and logged in the first place. And I’m fairly sure that most google customers have no idea how pervasive and extensive the tracking is.

You can’t get a decent non-smart TV, but you can just not connect a Smart TV to the internet.

Any TV you buy will have a range of “picture quality enhancement” settings. These all introduce some rendering latency. Game modes on TVs (for the most part) bypass the PQE functions. Rtings.com is a quality source for this kind of info. They do good work and publish their testing methodologies.

Source… worked a shitload of years in TV electronics, and was part of the industry from Smart TVs being godawful to just a few years ago.

Yeah. And even “loss of functionality” makes it sound passive; as if it just happened by accident. They Intentionally broke a working product.

I bought one a bunch of years ago. Maybe 10 years. It worked fine. Did it’s thing. Then for no reason google chooses to kill it. Fool me once.

Also there’s no legal obligation to answer your door.

The website is great:

“97% of people hate their job. But we’re putting an end to all this misery.”

I don’t know. Maybe not. Last I worked with them they were still Hughes, but the ATT acquisition had been announced.

Fun story… it once took a bit over an hour to get from their building on Imperial Hwy to the passenger terminal at LAX, and you can see LAX out the uber window on the other side of the street the entire ride. Lol.

These remaining DirecTV subscribers are gonna be pissed when AT&T swaps out the dial-tone on their landline for an ad stream.

They were already dangerous when Trump told them to stand back and standby. They became significantly more dangerous when he deputized them and instructed them to wear masks and avoid being identified while they rounded up opposition. They became even more dangerous when Doge gave them access to everything the government knows about citizens to improve the effectiveness of their harassment and intimidation. They need became more dangerous when they arrested blue-state politicians for asking questions and nothing came of it. And yeah… the better their tools get, the more dangerous they become.

But simplifying this to “experts say it’s dangerous” under sells reality so badly.

that’s how the codec game works.

That, and add some patent pools filled with dubious claims of essentiality, sales deals made under the threat of litigation, and ever-present claims of “twice as efficient it’s predecessor” with a big asterisk. Fun times.

It’s because nobody but Disney has that data, and they stopped sharing sub numbers because it fucks with stock price too much.

Talkin out their ass seems to be Newsweek’s brand identity these days.

If they follow the script, they’ll blame Antifa, Obama, and trans people.

I don’t use the phone part of my smartphone much, so thie idea of a dumbphone has no real appeal for me.