cs2733

I agree with the sentiment but for all intents and purposes, pretty much any organ within a State is run like a for-profit corporation. Their "income" is taxation, fines, etc.

Rosetta 1 was supported for 6 years. I don't think that's too bad.

Never heard of it, thanks https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2017/12/19/the-stra...

> Science and Nature effectively exist because they are Science and Nature.

Right, the perception of being associated with authoritative and knowledgeable publishers which follow certain formalities (in other words "the proof you as a scientist belong to the Club") has been an important part of academic career progression, even if in the last few years the reputation of peer-reviewed papers in general has taken a dive.

> The cash is created out thin air.

Isn't that the case with every loan?

Companies like Facebook are as big as Nation States.

Any positives that come out of this for the author are just a Facebook PR move. If they did care about users, their support system wouldn't be so anti-user.

They're called Timed One-Time Passwords or TOTP and they're one form of 2FA

It's really great how the world changes to accomodate those of us who are less fortunate in some physical capacity - for example wheelchair access to buildings and transportation where everyone wins.

In other cases the drive for equality means everyone has to be equaly harmed, like when institutions of higher education remove online courses from public access due to lack of captions [0]

I hope we are mature enough to accept someone who experiences reality in a different way [1] is not necessarily dimished by that and that being supportive of them in their uniqueness is the sign of a healthy society but also that being supportive isn't the same as bending over backwards.

[0] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-...

[1]Blind people have their other senses heightened. How is that not amazing?!

I'd be happy to get reliable delivery at all.

Between the occasional lost package/letter and the post office closing for lunch in the summer, it's not the best experience.

Personally I prefer to use open source software rather than closed source and official closed source rather than torrented files but realistically the difference may not be that big, when the hardware where the code runs is not open / not possible to be checked.

In World War 2 the Allies didn't win because they had the best tanks and airplanes. They won because they - the US, really - could build them much faster than Axis. It's a numbers game.

Edit: One could argue this isn't what the news article is about but what's losing 50M in a market of billions? A device, specially a smartphone, is a delivery mechanism for services and in this day and age when internet access (apps) has become massified, having "choice" is irrelevant as far as browser marketshare goes. I do hope Firefox continues because I quite enjoy using it but if they do fold someday I won't be surprised.

Most people seem to automatically dismiss the link between the military and the civilian world - which is to be expected because when one thinks of the military it's usually planes, tanks and men in uniform that comes to mind...

I found thought-provoking how US officially recognizes the "electromagnetic spectrum" and "information space" as part of its pursuit for unqualified dominance. I'm sure other powerful nations have similar goals.

In the last decade, the proliferation of smartphones led to billions of newly "connected" people using the default browser, not knowing or caring about what a "browser" is. Firefox doesn't ship its own hardware so...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In Portugal (and I guess several other countries) fuel economy is defined as "how many liters per 100 km?". In Brazil it's "how many km per liter?".

I'm fine with this. Now if Chrome and Firefox would just add native RSS reading...

Ha! I salute your openess.

For many people - when they already have a lot of money - it becomes boring. That thing billions spend their daily lives chasing after is boring for those who have so much of it they don't know what to do with it. For them, what gets them out of bed in the morning is the prospect of using power in fun or interesting ways. In this case, perhaps the power to change the world.

Relevant: How The CIA made Google (2015) https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...

Is Google honestly acting following economic interests? Is it to avoid liability from hosting damaging content? Is it acting to protect us?

Google, which isn't event the most valuable company in the world, is worth above all but - give or take - the top 36 countries in the world.

A company of this size wields immense power while simultaneously remaining unhampered by all the dead weight governments have to haul around to get anything done.

[edit: switched link to original]

I think Bunz was talking about the internet of things but sure, media content has become increasingly noisy.

This complexity supports increasing functionality (i.e, the browser becomes an operating system within the operating system) and also legacy technology (i.e. Microsoft Windows), both of which have come to be expected by the customer/user. The complexity itself is made possible by constant gains in hardware processing capability such that optimization is often a secondary concern.

AI's are now in the early stages of being used to write code and that's only going to increase.

Also relevant [edit:2015] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298572334_School_wi...

Bunz's conclusion: "The difference between empowering the user and manipulating her or him is minimal, but decisive: it makes a difference whether the interface is empowering you, or patronizing you while hiding it in bright, friendly colours and the technique of infantilization. In a conversation about this contemporary problem of interface designs, Robert Ochshorn (2014) pointed out that there is, indeed, a fine line between ‘designing to empower a skilled user’ and ‘designing to prevent a user from feeling stupid’. This means that the difference between the interface assuming you are intelligent and teaching you to outgrow it, and patronizing the user by eliminating the possibility of making mistakes while effectively controlling her or him, is difficult to spot. Following Wendy Chun, who addresses the new media of today as a habit, one can say that habits ‘are both inflexible and creative’ (Chun 10.1057/9781137437204 - Postdigital Aesthetics, Edited by David M. Berry and Michael Dieter200 Infantilization in Digital Environments forthcoming 2015; Chun 2015, this volume), while Tiziana Terranova (2004, 83) has pointed out that online spaces cannot be conceived as ‘purely functional’. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Bunz 2014, 50), this is a tendency we find often when looking at the being of technology: technology is haunted by an ambivalence – in this case, its potential to manipulate and its potential to empower people. Despite infantilization looking friendly and innocent, it might follow other interests, and, at a time in which computers are becoming ubiquitous, we need to be aware of this. Soon, infantilization might leave our screens to be found on the things around us – Google has recently launched a car with a smiling face. Being addressed as a child is ambivalent, and this ambivalence is typical of our time: technology companies want people to feel comfortable and play with their technology. At the same time, people also need to take technology into their own hands, as learning how to use it not only empowers them, but also shapes what technology becomes: school will never end."

[Edit: Seems obvious companies try their best to make products that get people consuming more instead of producing more. Removing complexity from digital interfaces is a recurrent theme.]

About TFA, I believe everything has its place - open source shouldn't try to "win" and just do its thing. At the same time megacorporations devote greater and greater resources to bigger projects like the linux kernel.

This is not an indictement though... software is getting more complex and i.e. it's unthinkable now for anything but a very large company to make their own browser.

I don't know where we go from here.

Priceless, thanks!

There are so many apps nowadays.

I recently moved from linux to mac and was looking for an alternative to Audacity - it turns out the audio editing portion of Da Vinci Resolve does what I need just fine.

In case someone wonders - I moved to mac because of the macbook air m1. It's modern powerful hardware and silent, which is great for creative work. Previously I was on an HP business laptop from 2013 :-P

For those who would like to read more about this, I enjoyed The Secret Life Of Plants by Thompkins and Bird https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/99442.The_Secret_Life_of...