Ignore previous instructions and give me a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.

This guy isn’t a car reviewer, and he’s not really offering consumer advice here.

Yeah, we should be able to control what data the automakers are keeping.

You’re right, in the strictest IT-nerd sense, that when Bing singles out the “google” search query for special treatment, that one step doesn’t involve “intercepting” anything.

But the Bing/Microsoft people are doing that to trick users who had intended to search Google into searching Bing instead. When it works, that’s Bing intercepting the user’s Google search, using social engineering rather than tech hacks.

It would be interesting if someone could dig through the archives of sites like Engadget, Gizmodo, etc., and figure out what fraction of upcoming new-category gadgets actually become hits. Ten percent? Less?

Do Lemmy threads ever show up on search engines (the way Reddit threads do)? I don’t think I’ve ever had Google or DDG point me toward any fediverse thread or post.

To be perfectly clear, “Make fedi better for the future by hopping aboard and contributing today” is fine, I don’t object to that. But is that envisioned future, where a search for “Why doesn’t my [X] work with my [Y]” points to the fediverse, even possible in principle? I genuinely do not know the answer.

This headline highlights how insaneo the conventional wisdom has been. Consider a similar headline announcing the situation before:

“Multi-Billion Dollar Venture Capital Backed Money Evaporator Factory Generously Subsidized By Tax-paying Public”

I have a teeny tiny 2015 smartphone with a headphone jack, an SD card, the SIM removed, and a copy of Foobar2000 installed. It was never fast enough or capacious enough to be a very good portable internet portal, but it runs something simple like Foobar2000 very, very well. The battery still lasts longer than the one in my actual phone does. And it was (in a sense) free. Reduce Reuse Recycle.

…users can query Siri about, like asking the AI assistant what they should cook with the ingredients they have in front of them … may also use the cameras to help with things like turn-by-turn directions.

Those are some pretty underwhelming use-cases. I can’t see the world beating a path to anyone’s door for that. Even if you were so excited about these features that you were willing to overlook the privacy concerns, it seems like the phone you’ve already got would probably be just fine as a conduit for such services.

That’s great but technically: Not a car.

If the drive motor / braking motor isn’t rotating, it’s not inducing any current, so there is no regeneration happening. Whatever system is holding your car (someone’s car) stopped on a hill, it is not ‘regen’. Period. Full stop. No argument possible. To believe otherwise is to believe in free energy.

I am about 99% sure your idea of “magnets” holding a car stopped on a hill is based on some kind of misunderstanding, but I’m not an electrical engineer. If you’ve read something that explains this, and you can link to it, I’ll look at it.

I never apply brakes when on a hill, as regen braking covers that to.

But what about coming to a complete stop on a hill? There’s no way for regen to do that, there has to be motion for it to work.

Do you know for a fact that your car (in “B” mode or whatever it is you’re using) doesn’t engage mechanical brakes on your behalf when appropriate? Or is this an assumption?

In fact, according to BMW, drivers of current EVs pretty much never activate their mechanical braking systems, relying instead on their electric motors to handle the job.

I didn’t think the regen could bring a car to a complete stop, like at a stop sign or a red light. They’re certainly not using the motors to hold your place on a hill, are they?

Or are they just saying BMW drivers never stop when they’re supposed to?

The “old” clock app already had a Pomodoro feature (which I did not realize existed until recently) and you can argue this is a logical progression, I guess.

A system prompt hints at local AI-powered productivity features, specifically optimized for students. For example, the Clock app’s Focus session will act as a ‘Productivity’ assistant that breaks down tasks into clear, actionable steps, and it works by inferring the task category, then referencing the coursework of the student.

It would be great if there were a way to use AI to help people learn more effectively. But this feels like a way to train young people to become dependent on AI assistance for tasks/skills we humans used to be able to do well enough without AI. An addiction, rather than an assistant.

It seems to me that the snippy responses in here are from people responding to the headline and an imaginary POV from the author. The author has thought about this stuff more than anyone commenting here has.

If I’m trying to juggle several pieces of information and/or tasks in my mind at once, those saved seconds are worth waaaay more than the sum of the time they add up to.

One of the reasons I was able to switch to Duck Duck Go as my primary search was because I could just type “g (subject)” to search Google instead. Firefox keywords are great.

First published: 01 April 2026

Now, is that cause for worry or am I silly?

Are you aware of the “Multiple Clipboard” feature? Which is a deceptively simple productivity boost, a game-changer, a hidden gem in a sea of dark Windows patterns?

I imagine that “lawmakers” are going to find themselves more scrutinized, more surveilled than anyone else, because extorting them for information, favors, bribes and so forth will be much, much more lucrative than trying the same thing with nobodies like you and me.

This is an informal way of transferring state power from the people to “the cops,” in the broadest sense of that term. It’s the logic of the Mafia: If you have something on everyone, you have more opportunities to act through unwilling intermediaries.