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Guess I am not using Siri anymore…

By the way, have any of you ever tried to delete and disabled Siri’s iCloud backup? You can’t do it.


Why not? Apple's ChatGPT integration has been pretty explicitly anonymizing requests and doesn't require an account. Maybe I'm missing something.

In the article they clearly mentioned that Gemini model will be used for the Foundation Model running on device or their own Server. They are not sending Siri request to Google servers.

You guys use Siri?

My exact reaction every time I hear people discuss Siri. I don’t think I used it once in my life and it’s one of the first thing I turn off every time I have a new device. So interesting to see how different people use the same devices in completely different ways.

Siri is extremely useful. That is, if your use cases are limited to:

- setting a timer

- dictating a title to search on Apple TV


Creating calendar events and reminders too!

A feature set that has remained unchanged since Siri’s launch…


You can use Siri to call custom Shortcuts which in turn can ask for more details if required. And now that Shortcuts can make use of the LLMs (Apple’s or ChatGPT), there are a lot more ways to make Siri smarter.

Makes sense then, considering timers I set them on my watch and I don’t watch tv.

I used it when it launched to figure out it was useless and haven't gone back.

For CarPlay, yes. I don't need a virtual assistant to do things I can do but worse; I need reliable voice controls to send messages, start phone calls, change the map destination and such with as little friction as possible.

Siri needs faster and more flexible handling of Spotify, Google Maps and third-party messaging apps, not a slop generator.


Only for opening/closing the garage door, setting timers, and sending texts. What else do people use the digital assistants for?

Hundreds of times a day for HomeKit, though rarely anything else. It’s _mostly_ fine, provided there are no HomePods around.

Only when I wake up in the middle of the night to ask it what is the current time of the dystopia. That and the calculator.

Unless Apple is lying:

On iPhone, Settings → iCloud → Storage → Siri → Disable and Delete

Edit: Tried it. It works for me. Takes a minute though.


I have a current case open with Apple with this issue. It does not work. And I don’t believe you. I’m sorry I just don’t believe you because Apple says there is a technical problem preventing this. That does not just affect me. Because I also tried it on three other phones of three other friends of mine and it does not work.

TRY IT!

I did. It works, as far as I can tell?

You’re able to disable Siri in iCloud? Not turn off Siri, disable Siri back up in iCloud. And when you go back to it after not turning it on, it’s still off?

Yes. But, I'm not surprised that you're having issues. In my experience managing a large enterprise, iCloud accounts seem to have all kinds of weird, account-specific issues.

You're using Siri? lmao

That's the Internet Explorer of chatbots.


That's where people get confused - it's not a chatbot or an LLM - it's a voice command interface. Adding something to the shopping list, setting a timer, turning up the heating in the back room, playing some music, skipping a track, sending a message - it works perfectly well for - and that's what I use it for virtually every day.

This work is to turn it it into something else, more like a chatbot, presumably


Siri is already transitioning from an intent-based NLU system to an LLM.

In iOS 18.1 (on iPhone 15+) Siri is part intent-based, part on-device "Apple Intelligence" small LLM, and in iOS 18.2 it also supports off-device ChatGPT.

This year Siri 2.0 is expected to ditch the legacy intent-based system and instead use just the small on-device Apple Intelligence LLM plus (opt-in) off-device Gemini (running in some private cloud).


Jeez, I only use it for the time and for the calculator, and to ask it to call someone. I am shocked anyone thinks I used it for anything more than that.

Also, I have never turned on Apple "Intelligence".


You’ve used Siri before?! /j

This whole stalink for military use (Starshield) was a scam Elon sold the military from the beginning. Just like his dumb ass tunnels and his self driving cars. He is putting the military at risk.

Is there any actual evidence that Starshield doesn't work substantially as promised?

If you do find some, I encourage you to investigate the source thoroughly and with suspicion.

[flagged]


> I don't know.

So why are you making claims predicated on having knowledge of the situation?


Google!

SpaceX Has Wildly Screwed Up Its Military Satellites, Researcher Finds

https://futurism.com/science-energy/spacex-starlink-nro-till...


This... Is a nothingburger?

This is what you were referring to?


I can't help to worry, in all seriousness, that these changes are aligned somehow to the current administrations more authoritarian temperament. Can anyone relieve me of my concerns here?

Oh how I miss DarkSky, and accuracy in weather apps in general. I have no idea if it is AI or just enshitification, but wow, local temps are just always way off with Apple Weather and most other apps. This is important to me because I live in my van and I am talking about these apps being off 5 to 10 degrees. The only one that comes close is Accuweather but their interface is horrific. And forget about the widgets...just show me the highs and lows for the week and quit changing the layout like you think i know what I want, because you do not.

Checkout forecast advisor. It ranks forecasting services for a location and gives you a summary forecast based on all the different services for that location.

Whenever I travel I find it pretty helpful. Certain services are just garbage in some areas.

For example, Foreca is like 84% accurate for my home location, but it's only 60% accurate for one of the cabins I frequent.


Unfortunately doesn’t include Apple Weather or AccuWeather so not as useful to me, but top at my location is only 81%.

If you are on iPhone and can afford it, Carrot Weather can show you Accuweather with Dark Sky’s interface.

Everything you said here is selfish, do you understand that?

"From my experience (60+ years now) the best times of my life have involved taking those "chances"."

You are not focused on giving, it is all about getting. And why is staying at home your whole life something looked down on? Just think of all the carbon it saves going into the atmosphere, if you can that is.


Oh....what's the frequency Kennith? I have a hard time tuning to frequencies though, due to my severe mood disorder, so can you offer me some help on getting my tuner repaired first?

Goodness of humanity? Possibility of it, yes, yes, but have you seen the homeless counts rise in the U.S., richest country in the world?


Would you have a positive view about me, a homeless older man with schizoacffective disorder? Not looking for an answer, I just wan that in your head.

This world today is so cruel, no one cares for their own life or the life of others. I am mentally ill and homeless. Why? Why do all of you let this happen? Why does Kevin Kelly let this happen? He is am optimist only because he has not seen reality.

Passages like the following are telling someone like me, the man with nothing, to help or else I will get no help? Just accept that no one has helped me for six years even though I do help others? And worse yet, to help rich people like him?

"Receiving help on the road is a spiritual event triggered by a traveler who surrenders his or her fate to the eternal Good. It’s a move away from whether we will be helped, to how: how will the miracle unfold today? In what novel manner will Good reveal itself? Who will the universe send today to carry away my gift of trust and helplessness?"

That is just the same "power of positivity" wrapped up in new writing. Because no one here will rent me an apartment for 1/3 of my disability income. I have surrendered to my fate more than one. Maybe I did not do it right? Can you tell me how to do it right Mr. Kelly?

"We are at the receiving end of a huge gift simply by being alive." That is easy to say when you are Kevin Kelly who seems to still have the silver spoon in his mouth. Hey Kevin, why don't you help by being more like the Christian you say you are, sell all of your belongings and help the mentally ill like Christ tells you to do?

Until I see him do this, all his words are meaningless.

I know I am privileged to be alive, but that privileged is abused by the rich boomers like KK (I am in my late 50's).


Destroy the satellites? I mean all that have to do is screw up the trajectory of some of the satellites to cause exponential collisions...

Iran does not have that capability. But that would also be an act of war.

No, it wouldn’t be an act of war, it would be “a military operation”.

Flinging spacejunk pollution into orbit is extremely simple if you have rockets.

Iran has lots of rockets.

Iran also has basically zero of their own satellites in orbit that they care about.

Spacejunk is a highly asymmetric tactic.


They don't have that many rockets that are capable of orbital flight let alone an ASAT capability.

Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car, except Both cars are invisible most of the time. They’re moving 17,000 mph. The dart has no steering wheel only tiny nudges. If you miss by a few feet, you miss by miles.

Countries that can do this reliably aren’t showing off missiles they’re showing off navigation, sensors, computing. The weapon is the least impressive part.


> Imagine trying to hit a specific speeding car by throwing a dart from another moving car

Um no. Imagine rendering a highway unusable by driving a semitruck full of tire spikes down it and dumping them out the back.

No precision required.


Um, no - if you do this on suborbital trajectory you totally obliterate a bunch of empty space for the <10 minutes until all your garbage falls back.

If you actually manage to make it into an orbit (with a much much bigger and much more expensive rocket) you will most likely do the same (eg. not hitting the intended satellite) with the added bonus of littering random orbits over time and hitting random satellites.

And if you want to say "they will deny orbit for everyone!" - well, good luck without far too many orbital class rockets for anyone of their size to have.

Not to mention Starlink orbits being (as alterady state so low they are self-cleaning), GPS orbits being far too high to even reach, let alone to saturate with garbage & same for GEO sats.


they do have satellites. I'm less sure about how much they care about them - but they are not cheap

That's my point. They have so few that sacrificing them would be irrelevant.

Ah yes, Kessler's space shredder, something to be feared by all satellites!

It appears that we are very close to an unstoppable runaway process of collisions in space. On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets after ruining this one. On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS, it would be chaos if that were to disappear...


Starlinks are in self cleaning orbits & are actually being moved even lower due to solar minimum & better capacity:

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/satellites/spacex-lo...

And any weaponized junk schrapnel a DiY iranian ASAP missile would deploy would be sub-orbital and would all come down in a couple minutes.


> On one hand, nice that we prevent rich guys from running away to other planets

Kessler syndrome has little to no effect on trajectories only briefly transiting any given orbital shell. The collision probability of anything going straight "up"/"out" is negligible.

> On the other hand, a lot of services require GPS

GPS is in MEO, Starlink is in LEO. There's absolutely no chance any material will be propelled up to MEO via a series of even very unlucky LEO collisions, as far as I know.


GPS is in geosynchronous orbit, insanely far from the Earth's surface.

You can't get chain-reaction collisions to happen at such an outrageously high orbit. That amount of mass you'd have to put into orbit is just insane. It's like trying to crash the moon.


Nitpick, GPS is about halfway to geosync. Your point stands.

If "Black rock isn't buying up all the housing" then how do you explain why Blackrock lost $17 billion in capital today?

https://xcancel.com/KobeissiLetter/status/200899449445747946...

It matters, you just dont want to know it matters.


I don't think a stock market reaction is a good way to measure their impact on the housing market. It's not that they aren't involved in the market, it's that their impact is questionable given the relative size of their participation.

The tweet says blackstone. Thats a separate firm from blackrock. And the tweets misleading in the first place, it's looking at the bottom of a candle which wasn't even the current price at the time of the photograph? And the stock closed at about 154.

Besides all this says is that it matters for blackstone...not for the housing market at large.


Ohhhh, sorry for my typo...

> Besides all this says is that it matters for blackstone...not for the housing market at large.

It means that blackstone cares about this, which means they like buying houses, which means it matters.

And the stock dropped 6% today. That is what matters.


A hit in the stock price doesn't prove or disprove their claims. What would disprove their claims is the number of properties Blackrock is buying and if it is affecting pricing at the margin.

Let's say Blackrock, with all their wealth behind them, buys a home in your neighborhood. What do you think they will charge for rent? Market average? Ha! No way. They jack up the rental prices because they can. That makes rental prices rise everywhere in the area.

If they charged far more than the market average in a given area then people wouldn't rent from them. Even if they bought up the entire area, people would presumably move to cheaper areas where they weren't jacking up the prices.

Now explain Tesla stock.

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