Why? Well, it was Chrome. Yes, I know many of you spit at the very name. Get over it.

OK, boomer (yes, "surprise! surprise!", this harticle – for "hate driven article" – was written by a boomer, and one that writes for several online publications, too).

This article is not only a (staggering) failure from the aforementioned boomer to grasp what really is at play here, but it also shows a significant, shocking lack of quality assurance in the way "theregister" determines what gets published. This piece isn't an opinion as much as a flaming bag of shit, meant to stink everyone's shoes, and motivated only by the author's ineptitude-fuelled frustration in what seems a textbook example of the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Lemme first address my primary point, in relation to what I quoted at the top, I'll get to illustrating the various failures of the author after that.

No, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, we will not "get over it".

The first inaccuracy is in depicting Mozilla Firefox as "a browser". It isn't merely just another browser. Firefox is the last widespread multiplatform browser that isn't using the Blink engine (yes I know GNOME Web and Konqueror use WebKit, which is Blink's ancestor, BTW[^1] , but they are hardly widespread. And safari isn't multiplatform).

Why does that matter? Because the engine is essentially all that a browser is, once you strip away the cosmetics. So the actual contest here isn't between a dozen of browsers, but between two engines, and Firefox's (Gecko) is, indeed, in a dire position. But if we let it go further, it will, as Steven puts it, fall into irrelevance (the inaccuracy here is that the harticle depicts Firefox as already irrelevant).

And if we ever come to the point where only one engine prevails, where services necessary for administrations, citizenship, and life in general, can drop support for anything else than Blink, it is the end of the open web, and of open source web browsers in general[^2].

You will then have to input intimate personal information into a proprietary software, by law.

If you don't see this as a problem, you are part of the problem.

And this is why we can't "get over it".

The internet is much more than just the web. But 100% (rounded from 99.999+%) of users are unaware of that.

The web is much more than browsing. But 100% (rounded) of users are unaware of that.

We are getting our technology reduced to the lowest common denominator, and this denominator is set by people who fail to open PDFs.

Now, as to the other blunders I mentioned above, here are a bunch:

• "Mozilla's revenue dropped from $527,585,000 to $510,389,000".

  This is a 3% drop. Significant? Yes. But hardly a game ender.

• "So, where is all that money coming from? Google".

  I know it, you know it, we all have known that for a decade by now, and yes, it is a problem, yes, we need public FOSS funding, but that is neither news, nor relevant. Firefox, as the last major browser not directly controlled by Google, can find funding elsewhere. If I'm correct, and the stakes are so high, when Google pulls out, the public will step in (🤞), in the form of institutions, such as the EU.

• "[...] she wants to draw attention to our increasingly malicious online world [...] I don't know what that has to do with the Mozilla Foundation".

  That's on you, buddy. Understanding the matter at hand should be a prerequisite for publishing on theregister. But I digress. The maliciousness has a lot more to do with software than with users. And the root of said software aren't in "the algorithms", but really in actual, user facing software, that runs in our physical machines, where our microphones, cameras, GPS, and various other sensors are plugged...

• "Somehow, all this will be meant to help Mozilla in "restoring public trust in institutions, governments, and the fabric of the internet." That sounds good, but what does that have to do with Firefox?".

  Again, it's on you. Seriously, WTF. I get that you, the author, are American, and that decades of misinformation about "socialism", and "public ownership" will do that to a motherfucker, but Firefox does need funding aside from verdammt Google. You even highlighted that point yourself... How do you suppose they would get public funding if the government, or the public, doesn't trust Mozilla? Because replacing Google by another corporation only moves the problem, it hardly solves anything. While I'm at it, quick history lesson here: the "fabric of the internet" has been publicly funded. All of it. The internet was designed by DARPA funded researchers. Public money. Developed by universities. Public money. The web was invented at the CERN, by a researcher. Paid with public money. As a tech writer, how do you not know that?

[^1]: WebKit is only partially different from Blink, since Blink is a fork of WebKit. So, as far as "interoperability through competing implementations" goes, WebKit is of rather limited relevance, unfortunately.
[^2]: Only chromium and brave are available as open source software, chromium is maintained by Google as a courtesy, they can pull the plug any time, it will probably only affect their revenue positively. Brave is 3 times less popular than Firefox.

Also, lots of users aren't gonna want the main system memory on the CPU die. Aside from the fact that it creates a clear path for vendors to artificially inflate prices through pretended scarcity via product segmentation and bundles, it also prevents the end users from upgrading the machines.

I'm pretty sure this even goes against the stated goals of the EU in terms of reduction of e-waste.

I have no doubt that a handful of vendors cooperating could restrict their offer and force the hand of end users, but I don't think this would be here to stay. Unless it provides such a drastic performance boost (like 2x or more) that it could be enough of an incentive to convince the masses.

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This doesn't pass the smell test.

• Instructs to pipe the output of curl in sh
• Assumes that sh is bash [^1]
• "Community" behind it is apparently originating in Berlin, and is now a "nonprofit foundation in Switzerland", but has no publicly disclosed legal structure anymore.
• "Community" behind it uses discord, but not revolt, matrix, simplex or others.
• "Community" behind it uses twitter, but not mastodon.
• Cryptobros.

[^1]: sh <(curl -sSf https://url.redacted/script)

(Personal annotations between parentheses. Edit: I know this is a long TL;DR, but it is an outrageously long article, especially considering its substance)

1. Person discovers VR at an arcade as a kid. Loves it.

2. Person stays tuned, life happens.

3. Person gets a Facebook Quest when it is out. Uses it daily. Loves it.

4. Person eventually stops using it. Can't say why exactly (Spoiler alert: lack of useful software, unpolished UX. Essentially, nothing beyond an awesome tech demo).

5. Failing to recognize the aforementioned conclusion (cue "spoiler"), person wonders if VR has a "fatal flaw".

6. Person states that Apple unveiling new tech is akin to major social and political landmarks (moon landing, JFK assassination, 9/11, ...).

7. Person depicts touch-centric (without proper buttons) interface as revolutionary (Looks to me as if this person never used proper, non budget peripherals[^1] ).

8. Person briefly strays to other cult-like tech firms and confuses scientific innovation (electric engines are hardly a revolution of this century) with (Tesla's) marketing.

9. Person states they were jaded by previous VR experiences, so the Apple Vision Pro (AVP) headset unveiling didn't wow them.

10. Person pre-orders one at 3.5k as soon as the pre-orders start anyway.

11. Cognitive dissonance due to the price, and Apple (religious) marketing kick in, and the person decides this is a life defining moment.

12. Person goes back home with their newly acquired liability, and informs their spouse that they will be intentionally failing their duties for a week, due to the previous point.

13. Person presents the product. At least, they don't hide the battery pack (as Apple did), nor some of the other flaws (FoV, avatars, etc).

14. Person also adds that the headset takes biometric information from you (iris scan, hard pass from me).

15. Person finally recognizes that UX is what was lacking all along.

16. Person also states that the screen and eye tracking is beyond compare (for 3x the price of the Kura Gallium, I sure hope so...)

17. Person also then recognizes that productivity apps were also missing all along, and that now, VR (magically) doesn't have any fatal flaw anymore.

18. Person makes predictions to justify their spending, stating that the number of apps will be multiplied by 1000, the technological improvement will also step up, and the price will (somehow!?) go down (original iPhone was USD 499 to 599, which is USD 750 to USD 900 in 2024 money, and that is lower than the price of the iPhone 15 models, which range from USD 800 to 1000 🙃)

[^1]: I personally hate touch centric interfaces with a passion. IMHO, no one in their right mind, who understands the prevalence of muscle memory/spatial memory, and the consequential importance of haptic feedback, of absolute coordinate systems, and of explicit information presentation, would ever even think touch-centric interfaces for sustained use are a good idea.

Yeah, let's entirely outlaw pentesting while we're at it. What could possibly go wrong? 🙈

Musk allegedly had that imaged deleted from the Internet, while here is an article that highlights the current Lemmytations (pun intended, I know it's bad) wrt image deletion.

This was meant as a joke, since this image allegedly always ends up being deleted, maybe it can fix the issue. 😅

...

Actual link.

on their conscience

🤣

Thanks for the laugh, I needed that. 🙂

Obviously, cash shops should be banned in games immediately.

Upvoted specifically for that last part.

Yes.

Just smoke, it is much more efficient. It is so efficient it is carcinogenic for the people around you too! 👌

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Or the "rolling codes" have glaring implementation issues, but it is cheaper to ban the Flipper Zero than recall the cars, so the manufacturers made an executive decision... (⚠️ YouTube)

It turns out that "Women Who Code Closing - Women Who Code" actually isn't about Women that code a software called "Closing", and Women that code in general.

In fact, what they meant to write was:

The End of an Era: "Women Who Code" Closing – Women Who Code.

I know I'm gonna get downvoted for this, but punctuation matters, and sadly, it has to be said. So here I go.

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Finally, a Scottish layout.

Thank you very much for this post. I'm glad someone did the effort of getting some of those and presenting them from the PoV of a first time experience. I was curious.

However, I'm not sure what you meant with:

BUT when I shared it with others, people in body reported less effectiveness due to thickness of skin and under-dermal stuff, so it's better to test it if you aren't skinny as a skeleton.

At first it sounds like you say that overweight people have trouble using them (which is logical, the device needs to touch the bones), but then you go on saying that it doesn't work for underweight people? I'm confused. Could you please elaborate a little? Thanks 🙂

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That isn't real. It wouldn't pass peer review. Here is the actual code:

function GetCookieValue(x) {
  return JSON.stringify(x);
}

user.cookies.agreed = Boolean(GetCookieValue(true));

if(!DarkPatternPopup()) {
  // Make sure we respect the user choice
  user.cookies.agreed = Boolean(GetCookieValue(false));
}

if(user.cookies.agreed) CollectData(user);

Personally I have never considered that there would be a risk of the UBI recipients to spend the money unwisely.

People needing UBI have a very long standing experience of not getting what they need to minimise their losses on a daily basis, so of course they will invest in that first. They all probably have a ranked, itemised list of all that would help. And I'm willing to bet that said list, on average, would be at least 80% correct (the 20% being influenced by personal sensitivities and beliefs, like a vegan person spending more on plastic based clothing, that wears out faster).

People not needing UBI already have more money than they can find intelligent uses for, and so they already are spending money unwisely.

Nah, the part that concerns me is that as soon as we all get UBI, and I do mean the very next day, rents are gonna rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, the cost of food will rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, and the cost of all the rest combined will rise by 34% of the amount of the UBI. It will be back to square one, and all we will have achieved will be funnelling our taxes straight into the pockets of for profit, private megacorporations.

We need to "fix" that megacorporation problem first.

Better lzma performance with xz. 🤪

Also, and keep in mind I have never killed myself using this method, so I don't know first hand, but, nitrogen is lighter than carbon dioxide, so if the person had 100% pure nitrogen to breathe, and no carbon dioxide, and is maintained with their head near the top of the pod, they would have died fast and allegedly without feeling it.

However, I am absolutely convinced that the people responsible for this execution did research on how to make this method as painful as possible (done right, it is apparently euphoric, and there is NO WAY they would even remotely take the risk of this happening), so they probably went out of their way to have a nitrogen-oxygen mix (like our atmosphere), but with lower amounts of oxygen, and forced the person to stay in a position that would guarantee they would die from CO2 asphyxiation rather than nitrogen.

It is even more inhumane than just using CO2 (as is done in meat "production"), because it prolongs the suffering quite a lot... The whole point of using CO2 on animals is to expedite the process... at the expense of their suffering.

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Without paywall. (Initially posted the same link, but then I noticed their comment. Leaving mine up since theirs doesn't explicitly say what the link is)

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We spent decades on educating people that "computers don't make mistakes" and now you want them to accept that they do?

We filled them with shit, that's what. We don't even know how that shit works, anymore.

Let's be honest here.

Notable flatulists: two Brits and a French. I dunno you, but they seem full of shit.

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Spez could learn a thing or two from russia. That is not how one uses kompromat...

AFAIU - but that is a veeeeeery "skimmed" take on the issue, so please check what I wrote before taking it at face value:

There were legitimate concerns about tiktok (hugely popular platform distributed as a "black box", with very concerning permissions and behaviours, and owned by a foreign actor - tiktok is "unavailable" domestically - that demonstrably uses technology in an extremely dystopian way on their own population), so there was quite a lot of public pressure to "do something about it", and of course politicians jumped on the opportunity to make a (very) broadly fitting legislation targeting it, coincidentally also having utterly damaging and immensely concerning side-effects for the end users privacy and sovereignty of all applications.

Following that, some of the people got (rightly) concerned about the legislation's effect on their rights and privacy, but the vast majority just saw that their digital crack cocaine was being attacked, and started whining with arguments of varying relevance. At the end of the day, though, a given platform is irrelevant. What is, is the abilities given to the users, and the possibilities that those create. But now, we have a deeply concerning platform, still being immensely popular and uncontrolled; a totally unfitting legislation with incredibly wild "side effects"; and a growing, misguided popular movement to "save tiktok" that will only make a legitimate attempt at mitigating it much harder. Yay.

Edit: after quite some digging, I found the bill here (PDF) - source.

Edit 2: to answer your question more directly:

Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?

The justification is "America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States".

Which is IMHO fair. It isn't like the CCP would let American corporations, let alone government controlled ones, run services in China, let alone psychiatrically alienate their citizens, instigate discord and radicalization, potentially manipulate the public opinion, have the capacity to covertly do psyops, and actively, aggressively collect any and all data.

The potential problem I see (and probably what concerns most of the privacy advocates out there) however, is that while the bill is aiming at tiktok in particular (fine), it also targets any "foreign adversary". Meaning that, AFAIU (but IANAL), all the US would have to do to completely and entirely nuke an app (or an entire federated platform!) in the US would be to declare any foreign entity (country, state, corporation, person, etc) their "adversary". Effectively giving them a single "button" to directly nuke any app and services they don't see fit. No matter how legitimate.

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3D printing.

AN UNCOMMITTED MOVEMENT WILL NOT BE CALLED FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION, REGARDLESS OF THE RESULT OF THE PRIMARY.

First off, it better not. If you think "Genocide Joe" is bad for palestine, try "Bloodbath drumpf"... I mean, maybe it is better to die violently and fast than slowly? But either way, whatever the pro-palestine movement is after, the democrats are their best choice, and by far. The alternative not only got stronger ties with the netanyahu government, but also a much lower overall IQ, zero consideration for legislation, international agreements, humanitarian matters, and democracy in general (which they have literally confused with the opposition party, for decades by now). You might not like biden, but from a humanitarian PoV, he is orders of magnitude better than anyone the GoP might select (and especially more so if it is drumpf).

Second off, I get that people are trying to "send a message", but if it changes nothing aside from vanity numbers, it will have absolutely zero impact. The impact was "voting for Bernie", and that is about 8 years too late now.

Umbrella corp. That has to be satire. Right? Right??

AFAIK, Google Maps, Firebase Cloud Messaging, Authentication and (since v5.24.15) Wallet/Payments. Might be more.

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No, the original depends on proprietary blobs. And so does molly, unless you use the FOSS version explicitly.

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