We live in a capitalist dystopia

[Ungnome]

I'll stick with opera.

Opera is also a reskinned Chrome. That's part of the problem.

 

[Pocket]

Reskinned Chrome and Chinese spyware, from what I hear. That's what puts it in the second category.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

We go through this every couple of months. "New browser" gets announced and inevitably it turns out it's just Chrome but they changed the color of the menu bar.

 

[Ungnome]

The Blink engine, is a good one, but we shouldn't be reliant on a single engine for most of the available browsers, especially considering who controls said engine. Of course oddly enough, Chrome wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Safari and Safari wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for KDE. Blink(Chrome) came from Webkit(Safari) which traces it's lineage to KHTML(which was part of older versions of KDE).

 

[Pale Rider]

I'll stick with opera.

 

[Anonymous X]

The Blink engine, is a good one, but we shouldn't be reliant on a single engine for most of the available browsers, especially considering who controls said engine. Of course oddly enough, Chrome wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for Safari and Safari wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for KDE. Blink(Chrome) came from Webkit(Safari) which traces it's lineage to KHTML(which was part of older versions of KDE).

That’s… interesting. Didn’t know that.

(I tried Linux back in 2002, can’t remember the type, and KDE was/is the desktop component, IIRC. Interesting it’s all connected like that.)

(I miss the pre-spyware version of the internet, even if you had to pay for your web browser.)

 

[Ungnome]

Blink IS technically open source. It would be possible to fork it and strip out all the telemetry. Problem is all the browsers that use it just turn around and add their own telemetry to their modified code.

 

[Pocket]

From what I understand, it doesn't need to be forked; Chromium is already Chrome minus the closed-source parts, which presumably means the stuff they use to spy on people.

Now, whether there's any actual reason to use it over the other nonprofit browsers out there, I couldn't say. I was unimpressed with it back when it first launched and was missing several key features Firefox already had, and I haven't had any real incentive to check back in on it since.

 

[Dekafox]

Ken Shirriff (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image I made a histogram of wealth distribution in the United States, using the Forbes 400 list that just came out. Almost the entire US population is in the red line at the left, one pixel wide. To fit Elon Musk on the graph, each pixel is $500 million wide. In other words, from...

oldbytes.space

 

[Dekafox]

Why You Might Soon Be Paid Like an Uber Driver—Even If You’re Not One

As gig workers’ pay gets slashed by algorithms, experts warn that A.I.-driven wage systems mean that no one’s paycheck is safe.

slate.com

 

[Dekafox]

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/g-s1-27676/tiktok-redacted-documents-in-teen-safety-lawsuit-revealed

tl;dr is that one of the state lawsuits didn't redact stuff properly, and there was a bunch of stuff from TikTok execs(suggesting they knew and abetted the stuff they were sued over) that could be unredacted before the court fully sealed the documents. Makes for interesting reading. One excerpt:

As TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users can attest, the platform’s hyper-personalized algorithm can be so engaging it becomes difficult to close the app. TikTok determined the precise amount of viewing it takes for someone to form a habit: 260 videos. After that, according to state investigators, a user “is likely to become addicted to the platform.”

In the previously redacted portion of the suit, Kentucky authorities say: “While this may seem substantial, TikTok videos can be as short as 8 seconds and are played for viewers in rapid-fire succession, automatically,” the investigators wrote. “Thus, in under 35 minutes, an average user is likely to become addicted to the platform.”

 

[Dekafox]

The public: "Bear and Bull market terminology is outdated. No one knows what it means anymore."
CNN: "Say no more."

 

[Pocket]

Hey look, CNN did something cool for once.

 

[Rhinox]

Points to CNN for that one. Lets hear it for accuracy in reporting.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

"You can't just tax Elon Musk's wealth!"
"Why not?"
"Don't you know anything about finance? It's all in company shares, not cash."
"So?"
"So, if you made him pay a lot of tax on it, he would have to sell shares!"
"And that's a bad thing because ...?"
"If he was forced to sell too many shares, he could lose control of his company!"
"Dude, I was already sold on the idea, you don't have to make me positively giddy about it."

Poor people worry about not being able to afford rent, food, and medicine.
Wealthy people worry about their vast mountains of wealth growing less quickly than they'd like.

If you're worried about "balancing" these two interests as if they're of equal value, there's something wrong with you.

 

[Dekafox]

Guess who’s suing the FTC to stop ‘click to cancel’

Who would have guessed?

www.theverge.com

Also I suppose this is the most fitting place for this?

Inside the U.S. Government-Bought Tool That Can Track Phones at Abortion Clinics

Privacy advocates gained access to a powerful tool bought by U.S. law enforcement agencies that can track smartphone locations around the world. Abortion clinics, places of worship, and individual people can all be monitored without a warrant.

www.404media.co

 

[KidTDragon]

Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports

The Washington Post said Friday that it will not endorse a candidate in the presidential election this year, breaking decades of tradition, and sparking immediate criticism of the decision.

The newspaper also Friday published an article by two staff reporters saying that editorial page staffers had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris over GOP nominee Donald Trump in the election.

"The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos," The Post reported, citing two sources briefed on the events.

In a 2019 lawsuit, Amazon claimed it had lost a $10 billion cloud computing contract with the Pentagon to Microsoft because Trump had used "improper pressure ... to harm his perceived political enemy" Bezos.

More evidence that I made the correct decision letting my WaPo subscription lapse.

 

[Anonymous X]

Jeff Bezos killed Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris, paper reports



More evidence that I made the correct decision letting my WaPo subscription lapse.

Stories like this are getting me very concerned that these media giants have their own private polling which indicates a near-certain Trump win.

 

[wonko the sane?]

If trump was winning, they wouldn't make a political move that makes them stand out. The internal polling probably shows trump losing.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I suppose that is a way to look at it.