Not a bad stance. But they are a major provider of media that regular users might use. They also tend to be the people that would rather not bother with FF if they see it as “not as capable” and never leave Chrome. Which further feeds the goals of Google to be the default just like MS did with IE (but much more cleaver by providing the base for endless forks).

MS fucked up by caring that IE was the “only” option and didn’t push creating such a good base to have forks to keep their versions of “standards.” Google did an amazing job at pouring money into getting Chrome past the early years of lack of mature features (and while they still had good will of helping to get people away from IE).

Not a coder, so my opinion is just opinion. The frustrations presented are valid especially with the open push that AI keeps making to remove all parts of the human element to basically everything. Even beyond his points, we have been seeing such massive levels of tech literacy (and even general literacy) even before the massive LLM bubble. AI isn’t “evil” or “bad” but the rush for profits over uses that actually help humanity (plenty of very real accessibility things that could be game changing if profits weren’t the real reason).

Stuff like Vibe Coding and the lack of understanding old systems and why they were done certain ways means we are beyond fucked if anything happens at different levels. The capitalist profits of companies (especially large and mega corps) come from exploitation of their workers and from the communities of OSS.

The following is personal ranting.

Even just working on PCs for regular people is maddening when my younger co-workers that interact with customers we get have basically zero clue as to things many customers are asking help with. Not like any of them or myself should know everything (especially at a retail PC repair level of pay and zero training outside of “make sales”), but even things from PCs a decade ago is over their heads. One easy example off the top of my head, is just knowing that the normal SATA to USB-A adapters don’t work with 3.5" HDDs due to power and they just assume the drive is dead. Hell even just knowing the general file structure of Windows has become a huge issue for both my younger peers and for the customers knowing where their shit is saved. Went from having some knowledge/understanding, to basically thinking shit is “magic” with zero concern for knowing the trick.

No one “easy tip they don’t want you to know” fixes the person in the post’s problems, or for regaining general tech literacy. But capitalism must go to remove the death spiral of making everything profits over people. And education can’t keep being de-funded which leads to students just being “passed” in order to keep the little bits of funding. The students that would be failing should also not be treated like losers, and not make repeating classes such a big deal (or a social shame). It is better to repeat something and learn, than it is to get into “the real world” and have it much much worse (shit was/is already bad enough with people getting promotions into leadership roles that literally don’t know what the shit is about/how things work).

I have heard about how much more aggressive Windows has became since 10 with how it likes to fuck with partitions for certain updates. If using a desktop (or laptop that has two drive bays/slots) it might be safer to just have a small drive (or large if it is games) for Windows and a large main drive for Linux. Then you can just pick which one to boot at startup via the motherboard’s hot-key. A VM makes more sense for most things, but if a dual boot is needed then two drives is safer.

My main browsers are FF or Zen (a fork of FF), but I think a lot of sites aren’t able to work with just a plug-in due to how deeply they are coded for Chromium. Some of them being Amazon sites like Luna, Amazon Music, and Audible (pretty sure their other media sites/services also refuse to work if any hint of non-Chromium browsers are detected. I have run into non-Amazon sites with media or similar tell me to “update your browser” or “use a supported browser” (which is at least more honest than telling me that my FF is “out of date”).

While there are likely elements in some sites that actually can work with FF (I have had really random moments where I got part of a song to play on Amazon Music but then gives the “browser is out of date” message). The Chromium focused coding is IE all over again. Just a self-fulfilling cycle of making it look like FF is not as capable. And I hate that in the instances where changing the User Agent to be Chrome works, that it just keeps stats looking like Chrome and forks are what people are using (and might lead to seeming like FF is used less than it actually is).

I am guessing that (aside from getting rights to oil) the plan originally was for right-wing leaders, groups, and citizens to rise up and overthrow “the oppressive dictatorship.” Then to “work with the new legitimate government” and send him back to Venezuela to be tried for “treason.” Which I am sure would be execution, or have a big show about the lead-up before finding him have “killed himself to escape justice.”

If anything positive might come out of such a fucked-up level of open terrorism. I hope that it not only leads to the resolve of the people of Venezuelan people standing firm. And all of Central and South American nations to unite in mutual defense. Might not lead to a wave of jumping all-in on socialism/communism, but they all have suffered under the boot of the USA. Any nation that keeps placing USA interests above their own sovereignty only keeps things like this happening.

The right-wing news outlets are already pushing for Cuba to be next. Literally nations that their talking points about “suffering under communist dictatorships” only happen because the USA is allowed to control how other nations can/can’t trade with them. And any USA citizen and politician that can’t wake the fuck up continue to have the blood of all other nations on our hands. This isn’t just about Venezuela, it is also a massive push to further keep attention away from the active genocide that never stopped in Palestine.

Thanks for the link, I just voted for it! I am mostly on Windows for my main PC, but good to know for my Steam Deck and Pi.

“What happened to Maduro can happen to them,” he said.

I hope that he and all the other politicians in the USA understand that this now gives the “okay” for the same to happen to them too. The USA loves to start shit everywhere else and we are groomed into thinking everything only happens in other nations across the world. 9-11 and even Pearl Harbor have shown that such false feelings of “no one would possibly attack USA homeland” are hubris. NATO is a thing, but if a NATO nation is the aggressor, the that Article 5 shit doesn’t apply (to my limited understanding). And the other NATO states really need to stop placing themselves in the same agreements that lead to the first World War.

Even Reddit wasn’t “popular” on the levels that it has been for over a decade. It is more about time and people finding it like they did with early Reddit (and Digg before that). New people will come as long as they see active instances and as more helpful (or even funny) posts/comments show up in search results. Kind of like how a lot of questions in search engines will show basically the same questions being asked on Reddit. Also Lemmy is a little bit confusing to new people that aren’t used to how Fediverse/Lemmyverse sites work. Not very hard, but does feel a bit overwhelming since stuff they are used to are super centralized.

For now most instances kind of feel like BBS/forums back in the 90s/00s, but with a Reddit (or similar sites) kind of layout/interaction style. Which I like since I had a lot of great times on old forums. The subs are still small enough to actually see familiar users show up and have better vibes on them. Though it does mean that new/niche subs have the chance of not getting enough people to get going, and have more people join and post new things.

The extent that pigs will go to in order to put literally anyone away should cause everyone to want to revolt/hunt all the fucking pigs. Too many people are completely fine with giving up all privacy if it “stops even one guilty person.” No one is ever innocent 100% of the time. They just haven’t been caught for things (especially super low level shit) and only think about big level crimes as being what pigs/prosecutors/feds are going after. By their own logic, they better know every single law at every second of the day. They truly can’t conceive of being forced to confess just so a case can be closed to keep arrest stats looking good.

The recent-ish story about that one guy that was broken down so badly that he confessed to murdering his own father after so many hours of interrogation and threats made by the pigs to kill his fucking dog. AND they kept going towards that confession even though his father was found to be completely alive by the same pigs. That shit scared the shit out of me, and that is just ONE example out of the ones you mention and so fucking many others.

The fact that there are functioning mods that do bring back the feature shows how much MS is just making up excuses. Also kind of funny that MS knows it can be useful since they made a big deal about vertical tabs on Edge. Not like previous versions of Windows weren’t wonky about how things worked with the vertical position anyway. Sure far fewer folks bother moving it to the top or sides, but those folks tend to be really vocal about it. I am sure that if MS does “find a solution” and bring it back.

They will treat it like it is some “innovation” or otherwise “new” thing. At this point I think that 11 is never getting it, and that 12 (or whatever) will reintroduce it to make more people “want” to upgrade faster than they have with 11 so far. Though I am sure that it will be only able to be used if a MS account is used. Maybe even make it something that the ARM/Copilot+ devices get first to try and push those harder.

That being said, I am kind of shocked we haven’t seen a new wave of third-party docks like we saw with XP/Vista. I remember Dell and HP going hard with adding their mods of Stardock back then.

There’s a stereotype of Chinese brands being “low quality”

That used to be how things marked “made in Japan” were stereotyped. Basically all the major industrialized nations carried that stereotype until they were able to develop. So China will eventually get to the point of the stereotype flipping at the rate they have been moving. They will still have plenty of truly cheap crap due to being so large in volume of factories and being super willing to make really really niche things. Always fun (and cool) to see the wild motherboards/PCs out of e-waste old parts.

The only thing I hope to see is a push to stop outright ripoff stuff like the “2TB USB drives” that are really 32GB (or lower) with firmware that deletes data that is larger than the flash storage. I am fine with knock-off stuff as long as it is able to do the core thing. A knockoff bag that is able to still hold the same amount of things is fine and allows folks that want the look to be close enough. Even if the flash storage on a knockoff USB drive is super slow, it should be the real capacity.

I have only really started getting into Freecell, but I do play it in the “Solitaire” app. Found that having Mullvad ad-blocking DNS or a VPN with similar actually causes the ads between games not load.

Solitaire and Minesweeper. Literally the best games for when I just want to play something that doesn’t require a lot of attention (no story lines, long load times, or remembering what I was doing the last time I played). Just enough to focus my attention while waiting around, but able to close out when whatever I was waiting on is ready. Just really calming for the most part.

I think it has already been a dystopia. The only things stopping it from being so super obvious was just down to technology needing to advance enough to do it at levels that are more openly seen. And for stuff like the Patriot Act (not mentioned in the article but a good example) to be created early enough before people relied on stuff like the internet/smart devices (even if the device in the article is not a consumer product).

It was easy to create the mass surveillance state while folks were still seeing using the internet/computers as just a fun thing, but not as important as utilities like power, water, etc. The amount of resources needed to do the data collecting was too great to really understand for the average person. Also the average person still (for some reason) believed that our government were the “good guys” and that our “freedoms” actually mean anything if said government really wants to bypass them.

I wonder if more people in testing have had issues with it like you did. Might explain why it is default false. Though it is good that you noticed that it happened after a big system update. Did you happen to notice if your Nvidia drivers also got updated along with the other system stuff? I am not a dev, coder, or anything that would give me special knowledge (just curious). Maybe the GPU or X11/Wayland might be the cause (also could just be with how FF was calling resources).

I hope that if others run into the same issue (or similar) will share here and on any other places where the settings have been shared. Not that I expect Mozilla to see them, but could be helpful for folks to know that they might need to change it back. As it is very easy to not have issues for a while and not remember even flipping a setting if something breaks. Would also be interesting to see if issues are any more common depending on the GPU and/or the windowing systems (or OS if Windows, Mac, and BSD users also run into issues).

Would be fine if the person is having to BYOD as the phone is already theirs (which is how I took it at least). Obviously flashing a custom ROM of any sort without approval on a device that you don’t own, and would have to give back to the company is a bad idea. The same would apply to installing a different OS on a work PC (which tend to have the BIOS locked to prevent changing things or being able to simply boot an install USB). But I think managed phones with the level of being able to wipe the device remotely would also already be blocking access to developer options. Along with other stuff needed to unlock the needed stuff for flashing other ROMs (though I haven’t flashed a ROM in a while and never had a work phone so I might be wrong).

But if the company tries to take “ownership” of your personal device that you pay/paid for without providing a company owned device. Then it would be best to try and find a different employer, and/or use an old phone you don’t use or get a low-end/cheap phone while working for them. But only go with that option if they provide a SIM/eSIM for service that they are paying for.

It isn’t just Linux, the same is in the user AppData on Windows (would also guess Mac OS). Both a gift and a curse as I find that when I need to make a backup of peoples’ data before restoring/clean installing Windows/Mac OS or moving stuff to a new PC. Those folders are pretty important to get, as you can have all their bookmarks, history, settings, and passwords just show up (though you need to sometimes have to change the profile if a new one still gets created). Same is true for Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers, but they tend to not bring passwords over the majority of the time (need to manually export and import if the PC is actually able to boot into normal/safe modes of whatever OS used).

FF is easier in the cases where the OS is broken or pulling the drive to copy (though very few people use it to begin with). But it does mean it is a curse if the passwords aren’t also locked (would imagine having a master password might help but haven’t tried to see). While it would make part of my job harder with regards to FF data, it is odd that Mozilla doesn’t break them most of the time when Chromium browsers are able to. Though I haven’t had to help someone with Linux in the same way, so maybe it is just a Windows (and maybe Mac OS been a while since I needed to worry about FF so idk) thing for passwords.

Last bit below is a general rant of a PC repair tech’s daily struggle with customers that freak out when something bad happens before bringing stuff in for repair/setting up a new PC. Just had to get it out, but not specific to FF and just data in general (just kept typing). lol

Would make my job easier if people at least signed into their browsers beforehand and remember their log-ins to get browser stuff working (which would at least give them other accounts/passwords back). But the folks that tend to freak out about their stuff tend to also not make their own backups or sign into their browsers (let alone even remember their passwords for crucial stuff) before anything happens. Password vaults would be the same issue even if they had them, but maybe less if they had to enter their master password daily at least once.

For Windows (and even Mac OS in some cases) cloud stuff like OneDrive being turned on by default for the Documents, Desktop, and Pictures (or the defaults for other services) folders don’t even help them. Because they literally don’t even remember the email used when setting up Windows/services, or for whatever reason lost access to that account and somehow think that just using a different account with a different email will still give them their shit. Claiming that I or my co-workers “lost their data” when it isn’t there due to just the stubs of files that were only in the cloud.

I understand why the did what they did with Edge. It is just wild to see the company that did everything it could to make sure the old internet was coded around themselves. Just to then let Google take over and do the same thing (or at least very similar). Their huge banners for Chrome results and inserted overlay on the actual Chrome site shows how much the ghost of IE still haunts them. They are just so desperate to be liked/used, that it is beyond sad (in a pathetic way).

The funny thing is that I did make a point for a while to use Edge for things that required Chromium-based browsers. But they just can’t seem to stop themselves from making Chrome seem better all over again. All the in your face stuff to push their obvious data mining and bloat the shit out of it is cringe. The only thing that they have going for them, is that they do host their own extension store and (more importantly) still have the full uBO.

I think that Mozilla (for all their own faults/shortcomings) having such a dramatically smaller team does show that it is possible to have real options. They get my respect for how much they really showed that the rigged leader of IE could be attacked. But Google being the Microsoft of the internet focused age is a harder fight. I have been really happy to see major forks of FF gain momentum over the past few years. As they give more options for folks that like the core of FF, but have various issues with Mozilla and still want to avoid Chromium.

Ladybird has the hardest struggle being that aside from being something fully new, the dev team is currently still microscopic even compared to Mozilla. It is still extremely cool to see that any teams are trying to make a browser that isn’t a fork of anything. I haven’t tried it yet (my daily PC is still Windows), but I do like to see when they make progress worth people writing about or commenting information.

Also agree that shits a mess.

I will check it out, even if they push the subscription it still may be good to know about. Not like it comes up often, but some of my co-workers that are in school for CS might find it useful for extra practice.

Currently I have a Pi that I really only use for messing with Linux stuff and some of the purpose built alt-OSes (like media center stuff). So I have a safe environment that doesn’t matter if I brick the OS. Which might be a good option for lots of folks (even though it still lacks the guided tutorials that we have been talking about). Would be great if the Pi folks could create something on there for active learning Terminal.