Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - KrispCall: Agentic Cloud Telephony - https://try.krispcall.com/tad - Invest Like the Pros with StockMVP - https://www.stock-mvp.com/?via=ron - Consensus: AI for Research. Get a free month - https://get.consensus.app/automated_daily Support The Automated Daily directly: Buy me a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/theautomateddaily Today's topics: Motorola partners with GrapheneOS - Motorola announces a GrapheneOS Foundation partnership at MWC 2026, aiming for hardened Android security, GrapheneOS compatibility, and ThinkShield-driven privacy features. De-Googled phones: /e/OS and Jolla - /e/OS and Jolla’s new Sailfish OS phone highlight “de-Googled” alternatives: open-source stacks, microG-style replacements, privacy ratings, parental controls, and EU-focused hardware. AI slop backlash hits Microsoft - A “MICROSLOP” manifesto criticizes Microsoft’s AI summaries and Copilot UI creep, while Microsoft reportedly blocks the term “Microslop” in its Copilot Discord—fueling moderation workarounds. Self-hosted workplace search with Omni - Omni is an Apache-licensed, self-hosted workplace AI search platform combining BM25 and pgvector semantic search across tools like Drive, Slack, Confluence, and Jira with strict permission inheritance. Indie games without big engines - Noel Berry explains why some indie developers avoid Unity/Unreal, favoring lightweight frameworks (SDL3, FNA, Love2D) and modern C# tooling for control, portability, and simpler pipelines. The Am386: lawsuits over silicon - The AMD Am386 story argues the “late clone” narrative misses the point: IBM leverage, Intel litigation tactics, and years of arbitration shaped timing more than engineering difficulty. Why we stopped talking to strangers - Viv Groskop warns that phones, remote work, and lost “third spaces” are eroding everyday conversation skills—small talk as social practice, not performance, and a remedy for a relational recession. - https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at-mwc-2026/ - https://e.foundation/e-os/ - http://microslop.com/ - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/feb/24/stranger-secret-how-to-talk-to-anyone-why-you-should - https://www.noelberry.ca/posts/making_games_in_2025/ - https://dfarq.homeip.net/amd-am386-released-march-2-1991/ - https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/03/02/microsoft-gets-tired-of-microslop-bans-the-word-on-its-discord-then-locks-the-server-after-backlash/ - https://github.com/getomnico/omni - https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-sept-26 Episode Transcript Motorola partners with GrapheneOS Let’s start with mobile security and privacy, because Mobile World Congress is already setting the tone for 2026. Motorola—under Lenovo—announced a long-term partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation. GrapheneOS has built a reputation in security circles for hardening the Android Open Source Project: tightening app isolation, reducing attack surface, and putting privacy controls front and center. The key point here is not “another Android skin.” This is an OEM saying it wants devices engineered with GrapheneOS compatibility in mind, and it wants joint work on research and new security features. Motorola frames it as combining GrapheneOS engineering with Motorola’s own security experience and Lenovo ThinkShield—so expect the conversation to include enterprise threat models, device integrity, and policy controls, not just consumer privacy slogans. Details are still thin, but the direction is clear: if this collaboration turns into real shipping devices with first-class support, it could lower the barrier for people who want hardened phones without a niche hardware scavenger hunt. De-Googled phones: /e/OS and Jolla In the same Motorola bundle, there’s also an enterprise angle that’s less flashy but potentially very practical: Moto Analytics. The pitch is real-time visibility into device fleets—things typical EMM dashboards often don’t make easy to see: app stability, battery health trends, and connectivity performance. If you run thousands of devices, the difference between “users complain” and “we can see the regression starting Tuesday after that app update” is enormous. Motorola is positioning this inside the ThinkShield ecosystem and as something that plugs into existing enterprise setups rather than replacing them. And for everyday privacy, Motorola is expanding its Moto Secure app with something called Private Image Data. The idea: when you take a photo, the phone can automatically strip sensitive metadata—like location and device details—while keeping the image itself unchanged. That’s a small feature with big implications for journalists, activists, enterprise field workers, or frankly anyone who forgets how much information rides along in EXIF. Motorola says it’ll roll out first to “motorola signature” devices over the coming months. AI slop backlash hits Microsoft Staying on the theme of “phones that don’t default to Big Tech,” two other stories are worth grouping together: /e/OS and Jolla. /e/OS is the e Foundation’s open-source, de-Googled Android-based ecosystem. It’s not just about removing Google apps; it’s about systematically swapping out the services that quietly phone home. That includes replacing Google-dependent components with alternatives like microG, changing default search to Murena Find, and avoiding Google servers for things like connectivity checks, time syncing, and DNS. Even location is rethought: it can use BeaconDB Location Services alongside GPS. What makes /e/OS interesting is how it tries to stay practical. It aims to remain compatible with mainstream Android apps, ships a curated set of everyday apps, and offers more through its App Lounge. It also adds “rated privacy” for apps—showing tracker counts, permissions, and an easy score—plus an Advanced Privacy widget that can manage tracking, and even options like hiding IP address or geolocation. There’s a Murena Workspace account at the center, offering cloud backup, email, and an end-to-end encrypted directory called Murena Vault—positioned as an Office365-style alternative, with self-hosting options for power users. It even builds in parental controls: filtering, app restrictions, screen-time limits, and a parent-friendly “find my device.” If you want to try it, you can buy a phone that ships with it, use a WebUSB installer in a compatible browser, or manually install builds from GitLab. The project leans hard on “auditable privacy” by being open source—and it points to academic work on Android data sharing as part of that argument. Self-hosted workplace search with Omni Then there’s Jolla, which is taking orders for a September 2026 batch of its new Jolla Phone—an independent European Linux smartphone built around community input. The structure is very “small company hardware reality”: a limited batch of 1,000 units, €99 refundable reservation, and a €649 final price with VAT in supported markets across the EU, UK, Norway, and Switzerland. Final payment is scheduled by the end of June 2026, with the ability to cancel anytime. On the device itself: Sailfish OS 5, with Jolla AppSupport for Android apps—plus explicit messaging that you can de-Google further by disabling Android support if you want. Hardware includes 5G dual nano-SIM, 256GB storage with microSD expansion up to 2TB, Wi‑Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, and notably a user-replaceable battery and back cover. There’s also a physical Privacy Switch that can be configured to disable things like the microphone, Bluetooth, or Android apps. Specs are modern midrange: a Dimensity 7100, a 6.36-inch FullHD AMOLED, Sony 50MP wide plus 13MP ultrawide cameras, a 32MP selfie camera, around a 5,500mAh battery, and a fingerprint reader in the power key. There’s even an optional 8GB-to-12GB RAM upgrade for €50—priced like a real bill-of-materials decision rather than a marketing tier. The bigger question, as always, is long-term software cadence and ecosystem fit—but as a European-focused, privacy-forward option, it’s one to watch. Indie games without big engines Now, let’s pivot from phone privacy to something messier: the backlash against AI-generated junk—what one manifesto calls “AI slop.” A webpage titled “MICROSLOP” goes straight at Microsoft, accusing the company of flooding the internet with low-quality, synthesized, unverified content. The core claim is that Bing’s AI-generated summaries can hallucinate facts and citations, effectively replacing trustworthy sources with confident nonsense—fake reviews, invented statistics, and references that don’t exist. It also criticizes Copilot’s presence across Microsoft products: AI buttons, suggestions, and overlays that allegedly bloat interfaces and steer users toward machine output. There’s a broader anxiety underneath: the feedback loop problem. If models train on internet text, then generate more low-grade text that gets indexed, then the next generation trains on that, you risk “model collapse”—a gradual erosion of quality where synthetic content crowds out original work. And in a very on-the-nose follow-up story: Microsoft reportedly began filtering the word “Microslop” inside its official Copilot Discord server. Messages containing the term get blocked with a moderation notice, and the cat-and-mouse started immediately—people testing variants like swapping in a zero. Reports say moderation expanded, some users lost privileges, and Microsoft restricted parts of the server, including hiding message history in some channels. You can read this two ways. One: it’s basic community management—don’t let a server turn into a drive-by insult wall. Two: it’s a demonstration of how brand protection and AI skepticism are colliding in public, with Microsoft trying to keep Copilot’s community spac
