I would guess the sudden influx of massive amounts of traffic would force them to charge for the service, and they don’t want to do that. Requiring a phone number, while invasive to some, does cut down on a tremendous amount of automated/bot/spam traffic.
actively destroys our environment, makes every computiational device more expensive, literally makes it’s users dumber, and is built with very ethically questionable methods
you mean like the metals mined by children and forced labor that’s in every electronic device and battery on the planet? so you’re talking to us from a cup and string in the woods then, right?
Use of literally any electronic or battery-operated device on the planet uses metals sourced from child and/or forced labor somewhere in the world. Unless you’re prepared to move off the grid and live in the woods, these type of arguments at higher levels are endlessly pointless IMO.
The main reason I stick to it is that I target platforms that normally don’t have anything else. Also the rules are easier to understand.
7/27*
combine whisper speech-to-text with any one of the numerous local text-to-speech solutions like picotts, piper, kitten, pocket-tts, outetts etc.
Just because the baseline has shifted doesn’t mean the change never happened
There can and will be change, sure, but my point was that OP’s “smalls steps towards something much worse” typically never happens because of the shift.
I definitely stay far away from either freenet as they have a huge CSAM problem.
Wait until the cotton gin arrives, all the hand weavers will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the printing press arrives, all the scribe monks will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the computer arrives, people will become obsolete and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the steam engine, automobiles, planes, calculators, telephones, bla bla
“Slippery slope” arguments like these assume that once a technology introduces a specific risk, society lacks the agency to create counter-measures, new norms, or alternative uses for that technology.
History shows that when a “slope” appears, regulation steps in, technology evolves to solve the problem, or the culture shifts to reinterpret the tool.
In almost every case, the feared “bottom” of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.
What defines “mostly”? What defines “tolerated”?
The staff, arbitrarily at their discretion of course.
Via uses the built-in WebView renderer included on the Android platform.
And it’s proprietary!
imagine complaining of too much freedom
this would be useful for when I need to talk on the phone near others without disturbing them
surely gstreamer could’ve handled that easier?
Linux distros have the same kind of device ID mechanism (/etc/machine-id or /var/lib/dbus/machine-id)… the only difference is how applications use it.
It looks like a vibe-coded version of some quite old tools:
https://github.com/keith-turner/qrcv
https://github.com/RedaOps/qr-data-reconstruct