#featuredeath — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #featuredeath, aggregated by home.social.
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AFP: OpenAI shelves plans for erotic chatbot. “OpenAI has put plans for a sexually explicit chatbot on hold indefinitely, the company said Thursday, amid mounting concerns about the societal and reputational risks of releasing such a product.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/03/31/afp-openai-shelves-plans-for-erotic-chatbot/ -
Ars Technica: After complaints, Google will make it easier to disable gen AI search in Photos. “The rollout of the Gemini-powered Ask Photos search experience has not been smooth. According to Google Photos head Shimrit Ben-Yair, the company has heard the complaints. As a result, Google Photos will soon make it easy to go back to the traditional, non-Gemini search system.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/03/15/ars-technica-after-complaints-google-will-make-it-easier-to-disable-gen-ai-search-in-photos/ -
The Register: 2026 brings a bumper crop of Microsoft tech funerals. “Windows 11 Home and Pro 24H2 hit end of support on October 13, as does the veteran Microsoft Publisher, with no real replacement in sight for customers who need to dash off the odd certificate or two.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/16/the-register-2026-brings-a-bumper-crop-of-microsoft-tech-funerals/ -
The Register: 2026 brings a bumper crop of Microsoft tech funerals. “Windows 11 Home and Pro 24H2 hit end of support on October 13, as does the veteran Microsoft Publisher, with no real replacement in sight for customers who need to dash off the odd certificate or two.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/16/the-register-2026-brings-a-bumper-crop-of-microsoft-tech-funerals/ -
The Register: 2026 brings a bumper crop of Microsoft tech funerals. “Windows 11 Home and Pro 24H2 hit end of support on October 13, as does the veteran Microsoft Publisher, with no real replacement in sight for customers who need to dash off the odd certificate or two.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/16/the-register-2026-brings-a-bumper-crop-of-microsoft-tech-funerals/ -
The Register: 2026 brings a bumper crop of Microsoft tech funerals. “Windows 11 Home and Pro 24H2 hit end of support on October 13, as does the veteran Microsoft Publisher, with no real replacement in sight for customers who need to dash off the odd certificate or two.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/16/the-register-2026-brings-a-bumper-crop-of-microsoft-tech-funerals/ -
Tom’s Hardware: Windows Media Player’s ‘find album information’ functionality has been removed — you’ll have to find other software for playing and ripping CDs with relevant track information . “Microsoft has quietly removed ‘find album information’ and ‘update album info online’ tools from the Media Player apps supplied with Windows 11. We checked both Windows Media Player […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/13/toms-hardware-windows-media-players-find-album-information-functionality-has-been-removed-youll-have-to-find-other-software-for-playing-and-ripping-cds/ -
The Register: Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching. “Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3. The company hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to call attention to this – like actually telling anybody anything.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/11/the-register-gmail-preparing-to-drop-pop3-mail-fetching/ -
The Register: Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching. “Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3. The company hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to call attention to this – like actually telling anybody anything.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/11/the-register-gmail-preparing-to-drop-pop3-mail-fetching/ -
The Register: Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching. “Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3. The company hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to call attention to this – like actually telling anybody anything.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/11/the-register-gmail-preparing-to-drop-pop3-mail-fetching/ -
The Register: Gmail preparing to drop POP3 mail fetching. “Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3. The company hasn’t exactly gone out of its way to call attention to this – like actually telling anybody anything.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/11/the-register-gmail-preparing-to-drop-pop3-mail-fetching/ -
9to5 Linux: Firefox Will Ship with an “AI Kill Switch” to Completely Disable all AI Features. “After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into ‘a modern AI browser,’ the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/20/9to5-linux-firefox-will-ship-with-an-ai-kill-switch-to-completely-disable-all-ai-features/ -
Droid Life: Google Decides That Google Assistant Can Stick Around a Bit Longer, Pushes Gemini Switch to 2026. “You may have forgotten the timeline, but Google was pushing to force all off of Google Assistant and onto Gemini by the end of this year. Like with all things AI, the timing hasn’t quite worked out and they are instead ‘adjusting’ that previous timeline to a later date within 2026.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/20/droid-life-google-decides-that-google-assistant-can-stick-around-a-bit-longer-pushes-gemini-switch-to-2026/ -
Android Authority: An era of Android is ending: Google Assistant gets its sunset timeline. “Google has made it clear that Gemini is its new digital helper, replacing Assistant across multiple platforms, including Android phones, Android Auto, Wear OS, Google TV, and others. Now, Google has quietly confirmed when Google Assistant will take its final bow.”
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Search Engine Land: Google to remove more search features including practice problems, nutrition facts, nearby offers and more. “Google will be removing more search features in the coming months, but it has not disclosed the full list of which features. It appears that Google will do away with some of the currently supported structured data types used for rich results in Google Search, plus […]
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Engadget: Google has killed Privacy Sandbox. “Google’s Privacy Sandbox is officially dead. In an update on the project’s website, Google Vice President Anthony Chavez has announced that the company was sunsetting the remaining technologies developed for Sandbox due to their ‘low levels of adoption.'”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/10/19/engadget-google-has-killed-privacy-sandbox/
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Tom’s Hardware: AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after its debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day. “AOL, now a Yahoo! property, will end its dial-up internet service, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)-based internet connectivity service, on September 30, 2025. Its dial-up service has been publicly available […]
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Engadget: Dropbox is pulling the plug on its password manager. “Dropbox is saying goodbye to its password manager after five years of service. This leaves current customers in a lurch, as the company has also announced that users only have a few months to extract all of their data.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/04/engadget-dropbox-is-pulling-the-plug-on-its-password-manager/
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Android Authority: Google backpedals on plans to totally kill this legacy service. “Google has updated the blog post where it announced the shutdown of Google URL Shortener. In the update, the Mountain View-based firm states that it has reconsidered discontinuing support for all goo.gl URLs. Despite claiming earlier that 99% of these links had no activity in June, Google says it received […]
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Google for Developers: Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available. “Any developers using links built with the Google URL Shortener in the form https://goo.gl/* will be impacted, and these URLs will no longer return a response after August 25th, 2025. We recommend transitioning these links to another URL shortener provider. Note that goo.gl links generated via Google apps (such as […]
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PC Magazine: Google Maps Is Going to Be Less Social Starting in September. “For the last five years, you’ve been able to follow individual contributors on Google Maps to see their recommendations on where to go, helping you discover hidden gems from people you trust. Now, Google is killing the feature.”
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PC World: Mozilla scraps two more Firefox add-ons: Deep Fake Detector and Orbit. “We recently learned that the Deep Fake Detector and Orbit extensions are also heading to an early grave. Specifically, these two add-ons will be shut down on June 26th, 2025, per the notices on their respective pages.”
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Android Headlines: Android Instant Apps Join Google+ & Stadia: Another Google Idea Bites the Dust . “Now, in regard to Instant Apps, that was a really nice idea by Google. Unfortunately, however, they never became popular. Instant Apps basically allow users to launch part of apps without even installing them, just to experience them before pulling the trigger. It is actually a really good […]
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TechCrunch: Anthropic’s AI-generated blog dies an early death. “A week after TechCrunch profiled Anthropic’s experiment to task the company’s Claude AI models with writing blog posts, Anthropic wound down the blog and redirected the address to its homepage. Sometime over the weekend, the Claude Explains blog disappeared — along with its initial few posts.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/10/techcrunch-anthropics-ai-generated-blog-dies-an-early-death/
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TechCrunch: Anthropic’s AI-generated blog dies an early death. “A week after TechCrunch profiled Anthropic’s experiment to task the company’s Claude AI models with writing blog posts, Anthropic wound down the blog and redirected the address to its homepage. Sometime over the weekend, the Claude Explains blog disappeared — along with its initial few posts.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/10/techcrunch-anthropics-ai-generated-blog-dies-an-early-death/
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TechCrunch: Anthropic’s AI-generated blog dies an early death. “A week after TechCrunch profiled Anthropic’s experiment to task the company’s Claude AI models with writing blog posts, Anthropic wound down the blog and redirected the address to its homepage. Sometime over the weekend, the Claude Explains blog disappeared — along with its initial few posts.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/10/techcrunch-anthropics-ai-generated-blog-dies-an-early-death/
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TechCrunch: Anthropic’s AI-generated blog dies an early death. “A week after TechCrunch profiled Anthropic’s experiment to task the company’s Claude AI models with writing blog posts, Anthropic wound down the blog and redirected the address to its homepage. Sometime over the weekend, the Claude Explains blog disappeared — along with its initial few posts.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/10/techcrunch-anthropics-ai-generated-blog-dies-an-early-death/
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TechCrunch: Anthropic’s AI-generated blog dies an early death. “A week after TechCrunch profiled Anthropic’s experiment to task the company’s Claude AI models with writing blog posts, Anthropic wound down the blog and redirected the address to its homepage. Sometime over the weekend, the Claude Explains blog disappeared — along with its initial few posts.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/10/techcrunch-anthropics-ai-generated-blog-dies-an-early-death/
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Glitch Blog: Important Changes are Coming to Glitch. “On July 8, 2025 Glitch project hosting and user profiles will be shut down. Your Glitch dashboard will remain available as usual through the end of 2025, with access to download all of your code for your projects, as well as a new feature to set up redirects for your project subdomains so your URLs keep working.” When I first started on my […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/06/06/glitch-blog-important-changes-are-coming-to-glitch/
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The Verge: Microsoft shuts off Bing Search APIs and recommends switching to AI. “Microsoft is shutting off access to its Bing Search results for third-party developers. The software maker quietly announced the change earlier this week, noting that Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11th and that ‘any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely, and the […]
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Search Engine Journal: Google Quietly Ends COVID-Era Structured Data Support. “Google announced that it is dropping support for the 2020 COVID-era Special Announcements structured data type and completely phasing it out by July 31, 2025. The announcement was posted on the SpecialAnnouncement structured data documentation.”
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Engadget: Microsoft is phasing out its Remote Desktop app in May. “The Remote Desktop app for Windows is (almost) dead; long live the Windows app. Microsoft said on Monday that its legacy Remote Desktop client, which has already been replaced on other platforms, will no longer be supported on Windows after May 27, 2025. But you aren’t losing any functionality here.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/17/engadget-microsoft-is-phasing-out-its-remote-desktop-app-in-may/
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Library of Congress: Help Us Say Farewell to Newspaper Navigator! “The Library will retire the Newspaper Navigator application on April 21st, 2025. Created by Benjamin Charles Germain Lee while he was in service as a Library of Congress Innovator in Residence, the application has received over 174,000 visitors representing tens of thousands of research experiences. Ben’s project was the […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/28/library-of-congress-help-us-say-farewell-to-newspaper-navigator/
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PC World: Microsoft just killed the ability to look up words and phrases in Word. “Smart Lookup was long powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and it actually worked quite well. So why remove it? The only reasonable answer is that Microsoft wants to push users toward Copilot. If you want to look up stuff — not just definitions and synonyms but anything else — then you’ll have to […]