What levers would they pull? Most are barely more then a set of wealthy oligarchs playing at a nation. Not really having a tonne of cards to play in this stupid conflict with the us/israel and not the spine to stand up against them.

YAY we made it to 4!

They designed the AI cloud to be super private.

HA! This is gold, I can not think of two words put together that implies less privacy. Well maybe “fucking stage”.

In this case I think it was done with spite, since the gas station I was at had the buzzer system bathrooms I believe. But I do get why its bull shit to be “open” but then not be open. Its odd since as I get older there seems to be less and less 24 hour things, something that I did not think would be my “yells at cloud” thing would be getting a hot meal at 3 am.

And an ecosystem of one engine is not healthy. Even if google was not google, this is a massive risk to take for the Easy™ way.

What an odd thing to say from the “land of the free”

Funny you mention that, the last time I was driving late (I think about 1am) I needed to fill up on the way home and noticed people pulling up at the McDonalds across the parking lot even though the drive trough was on the other side of the building. I watched people get out, try the doors, shrug and then put their asses to the window and do their business. The funny part to me is that there is staff in side and these people had to know it, but did it anyway.

So in a way they do have facilities after 11pm.

Eh the federal (in the us) min wage in 76 was $2 so by that logic yeah. But if we look at the average wage (less income disparity then, still there but not crazy yet) in 1970 being $8,510 then doing the math (assuming a 40 hour work week) that is more like $4 an hour so the average person would need to make $47 an hour in 2026.

And the average wage earned in the us of a in 2024 is… $63,293. Doing the same math gets us $30.43 an hour. And that is with massive shifts in the gap between wages that are now prevalent.

Everyone focuses on the min wage part (as they think that is the easiest way to address this issue) but not the over all issues of labor not being valued at an amount that makes an economy work long term. The underlying issue is that companies see cutting costs as the best way to increase profits and payroll is the largest line item on almost every balance sheet. So upping the min wage helps but ultimately these places will still cut where they can (less staff, more work per staff, replacing staff with LLMs, etc.) and the issue will continue. In times past the min wage was there as a safety net, but most could expect more for their work, now min wage is more commonly what people expect to earn. Mix in under employment, unemployment that lasts long enough people don’t count as unemployed anymore, and people having multiple part time jobs vs full time and you have a massive long term issue.

The question the companies that rely in any way on selling things to people should be asking is; “Who can buy their products?” not “we expect to sell more every quarter then last quarter at ever increasing prices, why are you all looking at us like that?”

Ha, this is funny since all of those companies have lost the plot lately on pricing/value. Some (like Kraft) have also made mistakes like moving production state side and then damaged their ability to operate world wide, others (like McDonald’s) have cut every corner on quality while upping their prices and spending like drunk sailors on app and ads. And they all have made choices (like Whirlpool) to make their products last less time thinking we are made of appliance every 3 years money.

This is the one silver lining on the economic collapse, there is a chance that these badly ran companies might just face consequences. Like there is still demand for product, but with wages being what they are no one is jumping on $20 big mac meals, $3 boxes of kraft dinner or $1800 fridges (that will break just after the warranty).

In a working economy these actors would find themselves out of business, instead they have lived off our credit for years selling things we can’t afford. It was always going to come crashing down, but we are finally at the point that they are not denying it and now working to move blame.

Chrome is death to a browser, there is little reason to exist if google gets to make the big calls.

I mean yeah? This is the only way to square the circle. Same as if you buy a thing from amazon, it does not matter what they try to pull in the back you went and bought a thing from a place. If you google a thing and google shows a wrong (and often plain dangerous) answer then yeah, that counts as google! Maybe if they did not also try and fake the result being true they could have an argument.

And there is already precedence for this as a few nation’s courts have found that a company is bound by promises made by their own AI agents that it empowers to answer customers. This is just the same idea but for search. I hope it goes though all the German courts and is picked up in other places.

If the other room is not federal maybe? They mean being barred from the federal courtroom the lawyers can’t practice law in federal court.

Ah an american, in their natural habitat of giving up before even trying. Nothing can ever change, no point, etc. etc.

News to me, Does google hold this site by the balls? They have a lot of power yes, but they are not some unsinkable boat.

The winning move is not to do business with them, don’t compete just exist and pretend they don’t exist. Microslop played the game and lost, but it is a stupid silly game.

Waterfox is just a fork of FF. We are pushing the same browser, more or less.

They don’t even try to pretend to fight it.

I have liked waterfox.

Yeap, just a matter of time.

Been in tech longer then that (if for some reason we are doing that now) and I will officially call bullshit on that claim.