This is the second major recall in two days!

To be precise - it's the meeting host that can configure this. A general participant in the meeting cannot opt out if the host has enabled it.

We just had a small brouhaha on our uni's tech support email list about this.

So... does that mean there's an egg on top of Schleswig?

Speaking of Google being proactive, they proactively started charging me MORE for Gemini use even though I have it disabled on my account.

I don't want to use this and I don't want to pay for it. Fuck you, Google.

I was wondering the same thing. For as long as I've been on Slashdot, at least, I've read sporadic stories about one large chunk of Germany or another leaving Microsoft and adopting an open-source alternative. At this point I wouldn't have thought there was a German worker using a Microsoft product... but apparently there's still at least one group over there beholden to Redmond.

Usability is completely no longer a concern to anyone. That's the issue. It must look "good" and by that I mean corporate modern.

The more options you only see when you mouse over, the better.

Expecting unpaid people to design it well or fix it for free. ;)

...what Google should really do is incentivize apps that are only 15MB in size. The entire app ecosystem was built on phones that had 200KByte/sec download speeds, at best; apps had to be optimized in order to be chosen.

Now, we've got ultra fast LTE/5G speeds...and 100MByte apps for restaurant menus and gas station points, that get updated weekly with full-size downloads, with patch notes that amount to "fixed typo in the Pig Latin translation". Instant Apps were only needed *because* apps have become so massive and bloated, with frameworks layered on redundant frameworks.

If Google offered preferential placement to smaller apps, there wouldn't be a need for Instant Apps. Now sure, this begets 'stub installers', where an 'app' is basically a frontend who's first job is to download the rest of the app, a problem in its own right. While I certainly wouldn't begrudge a game for downloading assets for one level at a time to minimize storage usage for the player, it would take roughly three seconds for apps to become tiny installer stubs that make users wait five minutes before the app is in a usable state...so, that's its own issue...but even so, rewarding optimization is a benefit for *everyone*.

One of the reasons Prime Video Ads hastened my departure from Amazon Prime is that I was having an issue with them ... finding my apartment. I live in a pre-WW2 building and for reasons I still cannot figure out they can get their packages here but not groceries. It is not fun scooping up a bunch of bags of groceries from in front of the wrong apartment and lugging them all the way up to mine. Unfortunately for Amazon a broken foot enflamed it into a big issue.

What's that have to do with ads on Prime? I'm generally okay with paying for ad-free service, and normally I would have with Prime. But imagine a scenario where I'm like "oh.. they made it a hassle to accept the grocery order, but I really love the Boyz, sigh I'll just put up with it..." In short if I were to go that route I'd just be giving them leverage to tolerate shittier service.

I think your prediction is correct, I just hope others will start noticing the problem this sort of thing can cause when bundling is introduced. It's difficult to do these days but I don't have one vendor providing multiple services* anymore in my house.

* Examples: I used to have Spectrum for TV and Internet, one got me a discount on the other. I used to have AT&T for mobile and DirecTV, owned by AT&T for TV. T-Mobile for cellular and they also provided a Netflix account, etc.

Perhaps you idiots should make yourselves aware of the dangers of the products which you buy before you whine about them doing things THEY DO BY RAW FUCKING NATURE.

Go back to school and learn about fucking lithium chemistry.

The thing is many a beloved Hollywood personality has caught a whiff of the Hollywood illness in the past.

I've been disappointed often enough.

My approach is wait and see if the Critical Drinker feels like vomitting after the movie or not.

Brooks was a spry young lad of 60 when he made Spaceballs 1...

I'm not sure he'll find a company to finance and distribute a parody of the current Zeitgeist.

A parody of bad writing itself won't be all that riveting, I fear.

...who is looking forward to this: Chapeau! I'd love to have your optimism!

The Meta AI App Is a Privacy Disaster

Seriously... was there anyone who wasn't already certain this would be the case?