• 15 Posts
  • 154 Comments
Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2020

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  • I’ve never understood the argument. It seems to have kind of been collectively hallucinated into existence by waves of internet comment sections over the years. But these aren’t mutually exclusive, and nobody has made a case that the resources for these other features are compromising the ability to deliver core browser functionality.

    They also seem to assume that it’s development decisions, rather than Google leveraging its search dominance and financial muscle, that are tied to changes in market share. I actually think these value-adds can be good, can punch above their weight and can, if they are smart in picking their spots, do so without necessarily compromising their ability to advance the development of Firefox.

    And nobody ever stops, breathes in and out, collects the evidence and makes the actual case. It’s just kind of assumed, asserted, repeated, assumed again, repeated again ad nauseum. Because enough people have seen other people say it, so they say it too knowing it leads to upvotes.

    The ones closest to citing evidence, thankfully understanding at least how a real argument would actually work, are also the most unhinged, which probably isn’t a coincidence.



  • I see this as revisionist history. Mozilla has long been beloved for a whole host of FOSS reasons, that align with the same reasons FOSS enthusiasts like anything FOSS. I do think there are fanbases for things who think their object of adoration can do no wrong (e.g. Sneako fans probably). They are out there, but I don’t see that as being true of Mozilla.

    I’ve seen supporters of Mozilla make nuanced points about it being an imperfect but important diversification of options that prevents Google from dominating the browser space, often in thoughtful interactions with fans of (say) the Brave browser or Opera browser over the fact that they rely on Chromium which is sustained by Google.

    Those convos have more going on than uncritical adoration, and imo it’s important to let those nuances breath so that they, rather the oversimplifications, can be our primary takeaways.

    Interestingly, while talking in mournful past tense about Firefox’s having lost their way, in this same thread there are people a few comments above denying that criticism of Mozilla is prevalent here. You guys should scroll up (or down) and say hello to each other.







  • So I did read the article, and… I’m not understanding a word you are saying. The families are suing a video game company for a gun in their video game. Also the article is not at all making the emphasis that you are making between marketing a specific game and video games writ large (the article kind of speaks to both of those at the same time and isn’t making any such distinction), so I don’t know what you are talking about. As far as the article is concerned this has everything to do with the fact that the gun was in a video game, and even Activisions statement in response was to defend themselves from the idea that their video game is a thing that pushing people to violence. So even Activision understands the lawsuit as tying their video game to violence.

    I’m not saying I agree with the logic of the suit, but I literally have no idea what you think in the article separates out video games from the particular model of gun because that is just not a thing the article does at all.


  • I agree that the steam machine was too early.

    I don’t know how it could ever start from zero without having to go through a growing stage. I think it was just necessary to have modest expectations, and so far as I can tell, valve partnered with third party vendors and didn’t lose $$$ on it.

    Moreover, the downstream effect has been to set the foundation for the Steam Deck, which has been a smashing success. It just takes time to build up a mature ecosystem.




  • My Puxl was from eBay.

    To be honest, I don’t know much about how credit cards can be associated with phone hardware. I would think it could conceivably be tied to phone #s. In my case the phone is unlocked and it’s not an esim, which I understand we will all be moving too soon.

    I wonder if it might have something to do with Google Pay or Apple Pay that ties hardware information to payments? And as for Esim, it might make it so that you can’t distinguish phones based on their physical sim card so it perhaps introduces a possibility of reliance on hardware.

    But this is all speculation on my part. I just don’t know and I haven’t made whatever precautions would be needed.




  • Sorry, I was super unclear there. This was not Google.

    However, Google also sometimes has done their own April Fools bits, and historically Google has been big part of April Fools hijinks. So I did mention them as a company that does these, and I did post this which is impersonating Google as an april fools prank, but yeah, this particular one was not at all carried out by Google.


  • I almost forgot today was April Fools day. I feel like since Covid, the national mood ™ was such that Google and co stopped doing April Fools pranks, and/or if they did them, they were so safe they were groan inducing.

    Looking around at the roundup links for 2024, there aren’t many that happened this year, from the looks of it. So I wanted to post this one, because it’s the rarest of rare - one that I thought was really incredibly well done.