Darn, today I learned that Mr. Rogers was ready for war.

We need to get our politicians to do a lot more, a lot faster.

So we're still doomed, then? I'm sorry, I'm sure lots of this is meant to be incredibly uplifting, but it reads an awful lot like "green is cheaper, trust the market! Numbers go up, up, up!" when you consider that:

• Climate change is impacting countless people in horrible ways
• Climate change is still getting worse

The important thing to note here being that, even if a brighter future awaits beyond, the worst is yet to come. I'll get back to this in a moment.

Yes, that the science to save the human race exists is nice. Really nice. There was a period in which I genuinely wondered if there was any chance humans wouldn't extinct themselves. But that was years ago. I've since learned that "saving the human species" is a terrible, disgusting metric. The future of what I consider humanity remains grim.

Now, if the worst is yet to come, and we can't yet even accurately predict how much worse the worst really will be, take a moment to reflect on this: which part of humanity is better prepared to weather the incoming changes, and which part is more likely to be labeled "climate change refugees?"

Humanity isn't only the richest. It's not merely the wealthiest and most developed nations. Humanity is also a lot of people who will suffer, people who I'm unconvinced will receive the aid and support they need and deserve.

Because the root cause of these issues, the systems that govern our society, have led us here and are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Because these systems have shown incredible prowess at protecting select groups of people from certain issues, while failing at completely fixing them, despite not struggling due to a lack of resources and continuous technological advances. If the pattern holds...

Then humans will survive. Many will live well.

Humanity is still pretty screwed.

TL;DR:

"The tools are here, we'll be alright, just need political will!"

Who's we? And if getting politicians to do what's right was that simple, we wouldn't be in this mess.

P.S. I'm not advocating for doom here, I just wish more people understood that Americans buying cheap Chinese electric cars won't save the people living nearby the mine in Africa where the cobalt for those batteries was extracted.

We would be happy to connect with your technical team to help them make sure your paywalled content isn’t served to people using Poe.

What a joke, Quora needs to reevaluate whose responsibility that is.

Basic reasoning time: was it an accident?

• If not, then it was at least immoral.
• If so, then it was incompetence.

What a surprise, both possibilities seem to point towards the project being a pile of crap.

Unrelated, but I just found out there's a .youtube TLD. Not sure how to feel about this.

Some features of premium actually sound really interesting, but I find myself struggling to reconcile my interest in both those features and the general idea of an internet that isn't built upon ads with my strong dislike of Google and a sincere wish to give them as little money as possible.

Were the community rules copied straight out of Reddit or something? 3 and 9 are a bit funny.

"The elephant in the room – and the opportunity – is how to solve for the industry-created problem that people don’t like and don’t trust advertising," said Garcia. "Privacy-enhancing tech doesn’t make creepy and disruptive ads less creepy or disruptive in the eyes of the average user."

Emphasis mine.

Betting on your reputation that users will trust you to adequately handle an issue that really seems like it'd end up with a conflict of interest seems like a fancier manner of saying you're risking taking a dump on your reputation.

No way through but forwards now, eh. Not feeling particularly optimistic, but I'm cheering for them all the same. Their concerns and observations about the direction the industry is headed in are valid.

Am I missing something?

Firefox is Mozilla's most profitable product. Its millions of users enable Mozilla to make deals for sponsored content (e.g. shortcuts), integrations, and biggest of all: the default search option with Google.

media file downloaded from a dubious source with an extension you've never seen before

VLC: "Let me play it."

It just works.

What apps you install depends on your needs and preferences. It might help others if you include those in any future requests for suggestions.

I suggest not worrying too much about "removing your dependence on closed ecosystems" immediately. Just do as you did before, changing apps as you find better alternatives---only, this time, considering the advantages of FOSS. Simply by giving F-droid apps a chance before opening (I assume) the Play Store, you're already doing better than the vast majority of people.

Regarding discoverability and security, I believe participation in the community helps:

• The Venn diagram of "FOSS app users" and "software enthusiasts" is closer to a circle. People like talking about useful, good software they like. Word of mouth recommendations is how I got into this stuff.
• You'll be more likely to hear urgent actionable news (e.g. X app developer sold to bad company, here's the fork that will carry the torch onwards).

And so that this comment isn't completely useless... Mozilla are currently working on a mobile version of Thunderbird for Android, built on top of K9 mail. Been using the beta and liking it so far. If you want a FOSS e-mail app, keep an eye on that one.

P.S. I much prefer the dark side, and don't forget the cookies!

I try my best to keep calm and judge things fairly and rationally but, truth is, you get kinda tired of seeing so many iffy-maybe-alright news about Mozilla.

Inline edit: not even a week later, Teixeira v. Moz. Why, Mozilla? Liking you shouldn't be this complicated.

My fear is that by the time "something happens" to Firefox, it'll be something that was entirely avoidable if only we had acted sooner. I'm always wondering if I'm at the point I should be acting.

• I'm still salty about their previous CEO, Mitchell Baker, I believe, getting bigger bonuses while Firefox market share fell (and layoffs happened, but we lack details to understand those properly).
• I'm unconvinced that, in a world where the percentage of people using an adblocker is rising, they'll find a way to change people's minds and look at ads, even if they are perfectly, technomagically privacy preserving.
• I'm unconvinced that owning Firefox, which puts uBlock as a front-and-center extension, and Anonym, an adtech company, will not create a conflict of interest—just like what happened to Google.

For the record, this is my first time commenting on this and I'm also deeply bothered by "reactionary nerds" (everyone switch to librewolf!!), but I understand the sentiment. Hope that added some perspective.

And it's also damming for private messaging on mastodon.

I once read vague complaints about it being a rushed implementation. While I won't trust those without evidence, I for sure wouldn't trust mastodon with my PMs. At least, not until how this was allowed to happen is figured out and fixed if necessary.

P.S. I'm still not sure I believe in PMs in the fediverse. If I need to share something and care about keeping it private, I'd rather move the conversation elsewhere.

I assume pirates will get the better service, again. The AAA game industry's evolution is a frustrating, pitiful joke. Really glad for the indie scene we have today.

Wrong Conway.

If you have a bit of time to spare, see this great article for a some history on Mozilla and version control.

There's quite a bit to unpack in this article, even if some of it is only mentioned.

It's a saddening read. There are issues with Fediverse culture and surrounding technical discussion at wide, but also with interactions between law and new technologies like ActivityPub—and that's on top of the law, on it's own, already doing a horrible job way too often, in my opinion. None of this is news, but it always hurts a little to be reminded so.

I've been thinking about trying to get into mastodon, to form my own opinion on several topics it intersects with. I'm a little uncomfortable with how popular it is compared to other fediverse software, considering how poorly they seem to integrate. I hoped some time on mastodon would dispell this feeling, or at least give me insights I could work with. To be honest, every day it gets a little harder to justify that idea.

But that's just a personal thing. Maybe I'm simply not fit for micro-blogging. Really, I don't care which software is the most popular, I literally just wish they'd integrate better. Despite my misgivings, I'm grateful for the positive impact mastodon has made in the social/tech circles, changing how many people see social media and their relationship with it.

The us-versus-them mentality is unreal. The only valid them, to me, is proprietary closed platforms. We should strive for more decentralized networks that shift control over user experience back to its users, because we need and deserve safer, healthier social networks. This is not it. I can only hope culture will improve, because I'm not sure how you'd tackle a problem on this scale.

And if mastodon can't fix itself? Screw it, and keep an eye on what comes next.

It's not a competition, we're in a team effort to build a part of the internet that can resist enshittification inevitable in closed platforms; so long as the platform is open, I'll keep my mind open as well. If my lemmy instance decides to migrate to Sublinks, that's fine. Worst case, I'll migrate elsewhere. Assuming Bluesky turns out OK as a company, even atproto taking the lead over ActivityPub might be fine. Hell, some of the original AP creators are still experimenting with new ideas.

I fully agree with the point that too many people act like the fediverse, or their specific brand of it, is more open-minded and kinder than what they're trying to replace. I hope it's possible to make that true, one day.

P.S. Sorry, brevity is the soul of wit, and I'm an idiot. This ended up as an outlet for issues that have been frustrating me for a while.

That might be overly optimistic? Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, here.

From my understanding, the main drive behind adding AP federation is to allow users of separate code forges to collaborate on each other's projects, much like how users of lemmy can interact with communities of other lemmy instances. This is big because it could break the "but everyone is on GitHub" problem.

Currently, it's difficult to justify completely leaving GH, since those that do leave behind countless users and developers who won't follow them and create yet-another-account on one-more-website. Federated code forges have the potential to bring easier decentralization to an ironically centralized land.

Keyword here being easier. Because even though Git is already decentralized by design and some think git-send-email is plenty for collaboration (e.g. many Linux maintainers, sourcehut users), it turns out way more people prefer doing their work in pretty web UIs.

But just like lemmy and mastodon aren't great at showing their users content from the other platform because it's not a priority, I don't see why forgejo would prioritize letting lemmy users interact with projects.

While I agree with you, I just want to mention that not necessarily all fediverse users have a formed opinion (at least at first) about open platforms, sharing content with other websites, and so on.

Some people just suffered from platforms like ex-Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. enshittifying, heard that other victims were trying to build something better, and (generously, might I add) decided to give it a chance.

That doesn't excuse any horrible behavior they might've engaged in. But remember that just because someone is surprised and reacts negatively at how their content is handled on the fediverse, that doesn't mean they were in the wrong to join.

Folks can jump into things without fully understanding them, and sometimes it's nice to, circumstances allowing, take that as an opportunity to inform, rather than question "Why are you even here?"

Yeah, that's funny.

I considered opening an issue, having assumed that this was a bug and in such cases the bot might as well not comment at all, but apparently part of its intended purpose is saving people from having to open articles.

Not sure how I feel about that, to be honest.

If you're serious, please elaborate on your points. I genuinely don't understand.

Going by Wikipedia here,

She was a huge part

Please define huge part. She was a "key architect" in the starting years of a project that fell short of its goals.

her entire work has to be viewed through that lens

Why? It was, relatively speaking, an almost small part of her career. She didn't stay until the end of the project. You even admit that her contributions to the field were many and meaningful.

is every explicit way connected to modern conflicts where military misuses AI to murder children

This feels like such a huge leap, that I don't even know where to begin tackling it. Is Tim Berners Lee in every explicit way connected to the modern privacy hellscape that is the modern internet?

Make no mistake, if she really did want to help develop artificial intelligence for the military's sake, fuck her. I can respect someone's achievements while also thinking they're trash as a person.

But I don't think that's the case here, and I'm lost as to what point, exactly, you're trying to make.

That's unnecessarily dismissive. Unfortunately, even the best extensions have their downsides. Some used a browser that suited their preferences better instead, which is a shame for both Firefox and the user, in my opinion.

Mozilla recognizes this and is finally taking action to integrate highly requested features into Firefox. Many "who really care" are glad for this, because it is a good thing.

Why do you hate vertical tabs so much, mate?

I won't know if any of the linked resources are any good until I have time to look them over, but if nothing else I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

Re: whitewashing, fair point. I'd already read about the issue, but maybe I still need to rethink how I look at computing history.

Just curious, what are your issues with the current available options?

You're right, regarding Mastodon. I won't edit my other comment, though, both to preserve the original chain of thought and because that brings up another discussion.

To quote the EFF:

We feel that the intended usage of the feature will not determine people’s expectation of privacy while using it.

Offering people a feature with preexisting expectations, similar to other things that fulfill those expectations, then telling people "We know it looks like a duck but don't expect it to quack!"

...It begs the question: was the feature really a good idea?

It seems less anti-theft and more "data protection in case of theft."

I'm not sure that's a fair assessment (after all, what should a proper anti-theft measure even look like, then?), but that's the best way I can describe it. From what I can tell, it's more tech that attempts to lock the screen when it believes your phone isn't safe.

More data protection is always nice, provided it works. Was AI the best way to do it? No idea. Don't know if it'll help with the actual theft any, since I believe the stolen phones are usually factory reset and then resold all over. User data was never the main appeal.

It's mildly funny that this will be tested in Brazil. Something that is a bit fitting, a bit sad, yet I can't help snorting at.

That's funny, same thing here. I'm very thankful to the stranger on a forum who suggested "blasting the motherboard with a blow-dryer." Now sometimes I joke that my PC is diesel-powered.

That's a weird way to look at the projects, in my opinion ("if only X had Y, it would kill Z...").

Helix and Neovim have different approaches to editing, configuration, etc. They don't need to be competing for users. Neovim can exist for the people who want an editor with Neovim's ideas, same for Helix, and that's just fine.

Honestly, that strategy feels like the most sensible one, since the real world often does not (or can not afford to) care to wait for v1.0.0 before using software. It's no wonder so many programming ecosystems have adopted it.

I find it a bit of a shame it's not part of the semver specification itself, which only states:

4. (paraphrased) do whatever you want haha

My point is, I don't think that's "your bad." It's just how it is, and the best there currently is. Unless you think there's something that could've been done better, in which case I'm curious as to what, if you're willing to share.

Oh, we're fully in agreement. I'm not arguing in favor of abandoning Firefox or Mozilla at all. I'm just saying frustration and anxiety are to be expected sometimes. Note that I'm not excusing rudeness or the like.

Re: the burden of developing a modern browser, I wonder what librewolf evangelists think would happen to the project, if Firefox development by Mozilla were to fall due to any reason. To my view, the forks only exist because Firefox still does. After all, if managing an entire browser was possible with their resources, they wouldn't need to fork one.

I think they're just keeping up the banter. As in, humourously acting like they don't get your point just to keep the joke going ("So what if you're a girl? That's clearly you rn, just replace them with a short girl. Or are you saying girls cannot study the blade?"). Supporting that idea is the fact that "Study the blade" is a relatively well known internet meme at this point.

But I'm just an unrelated individual inserting myself into a random conversation with little reason, trying to interpret another person's comment on a shitposting community.

Generally, I agree, but there's some nuance.

Discussions are better when those who intend to participate read the content first. Realistically, though, we know many read the headline and jump straight into comments. I think that's a culture issue, and that's difficult to fix.

The bot can alleviate its impact by giving these people more context. Without changing culture, however, removing the bot from these discussions could ironically make them worse. At least, that's how I see it.

I don't really like it, but I believe it helps.

What actually confused me, though, is that if you lump in some privacy/accessibility/convenience concerns, I could kinda see the point of a "Saved 0%" tldr.

But, on a phoronix article? They're one of the few tech journalism websites I still trust and am grateful for, that I turn uBlock off for. It's like I'm missing some context, I need more info.

That's a shame, thank you for the input. I guess I could try Bluesky instead.

Not sure how up to date you are on Bluesky's situation, but it might interest you to know they've recently started doing early-access federation. It's... not ideal (opinion), but it's moving along (fact).

Php also graced us with Unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

Would you be happier if they ignored the demands and possibly got Firefox banned in Russia? Because if so, it's not that we disagree over our views of the Russian government. Probably neither do Mozilla.

We have different priorities. I want the average Russian to be easily able to use Firefox, even if it takes more work to load some extensions. From where I'm sitting, you seem to want to cut off your nose to spite your face.

I'm genuinely curious why.

My bad, I forgot you need to be careful using such metaphors when talking about software. It's as the other commenter said: a rebrand, but they might keep the old identity around for people who like it.

I used to enjoy fireship, but a particularly disappointing video soured the channel to me significantly.

It was about something bad Google was doing to the web/chrome (the list's so big at this point that I can't recall what) and it hit me how, despite the humorous nature of the content, that video was how many people were being seriously introduced to the issue... and it neglected to even mention Firefox. Imagine informing people of a looming threat, yet forgetting to mention one of the best tools against it. Genuinely baffling.

There's more to it, but it's been a while and my memory was never the best. All that remains now is a general feeling of "Oh darn, this guy's videos can be irresponsibly superficial, sometimes." Maybe that's just par for the course with such content creators, which race to be the first out the door with the news™, but mistakes, however small, had long been adding up over time and eroding my trust in the source. That video just happened to be the last straw.

I don't mean to criticize you or others who enjoy the videos, though. Just wanted to remind folks to be careful with where and how they get their info. Hopefully, this uncalled for rant will inspire passersby to be a bit more mindful of the content they consume.

P.S. obligatory screw nintendo :^(

My bad, I wasn't sure! Figured it'd be better to waste a little time typing than risk people misunderstanding the context behind the tech.

Don't feel too jelly though, the actual profile manager has been in need of some care for a while, now...

...and it's apparently getting it soon! No way they'll hide the button after they polish it up, right? Happy times to come for all, I hope :⁠^⁠)

One can hope :^)

I will attempt an oddly serious answer, unlike my previous comment, since I feel this deserves one.

Sort of, and technically correct. Both the suicidal and the oil baron have no reason to care what happens after they're dead. But I don't know if that's relevant here.

Powerful people ruining the world do so because of incentives and... because they can. The only thing that will stop them and those that come after is meaningful societal change. Convincing people to participate in bringing about this change is important too, make no mistake, but it's because of what they can achieve united. It's voting, protesting, and building a world where the powerful can't screw over the world and everyone in it.

Hoping a change in culture alone will save the world is useless, because the rich and powerful will not follow that new culture. There's no trickle-up morals, and telling suicidal people they should be mindful of how they die (if serious) is barking up the wrong tree. It won't stop the oil baron from continuing to pollute more than everyone in this thread combined, nor will it make a meaningful difference even should the person follow your advice, because it's a drop in the bucket---and maybe the last one they'll ever make.

Trying to put it shortly, my point is that mentality is only the start. The world is broken (e.g. climate change is a thing), not just because of mentality, but because those high above do all in their power to stay there and shape the world in ways that suit them. Changing people's mentality is good, but is "use hydrogen instead of helium" really the last thing a suicidal person should have to hear from you?

Of course, this is a meme community in the end, so apologies if this comment was unnecessary because no one is seriously saying that. But anyone who thinks so should also be able to read my previous comment in its intended humor as well.