The difference is how you interact with the browser engine. Blink is very easy to embed into a new browser project. I've seen it done - if you're familiar with the tools, you can build a whole new browser built around the Blink engine in a few hours. You can write pretty much whatever you want around it and it doesn't really change how you interact with the engine, which also makes updates very simple to do.

With Firefox, it's practically impossible to build a new browser around Gecko. The "forks" that you see are mostly just reskins that change a few settings here and there. They still follow upstream Firefox very closely and cannot diverge too much from it because it would be a huge maintenance burden.

Pale Moon and Waterfox are closer to forks of Firefox than Librewolf for example, but they've had to maintain the engine themselves and keep up with standards and from what I've read, they're struggling pretty hard to do so. Not a problem that Blink-based browsers have to deal with because it's pretty easy and straightforward to update and embed the engine without having to rewrite your whole browser.

Unfortunately, since Google controls the engine, this means that they can control the extensions that are allowed to plug into it. If you don't have the hooks to properly support an extension (ie. ublock), then you can't really implement it... unless you want to take on the burden of maintaining that forked engine again.

That said, Webkit is still open source and developed actively (to the best of my knowledge - I could be completely wrong here). Why don't forks build around Webkit instead of Blink? Not really sure to be honest.

Don't worry everyone, I'm here to help:

Mail

Garbage

Outlook

Hot Garbage

Outlook (new)

Shit-tier garbage

Glad to be of service! Until next time....

Your Steam games will go to the grave with you

Great, then I'll finally have some time to play them....

The best part of all of this is that now Pichai is going to really feel the heat of all of his layoffs and other anti-worker policies. Google was once a respected company and place where people wanted to work. Now they're just some generic employer with no real lure to bring people in. It worked fine when all he had to do was increase the prices on all their current offerings and stuff more ads, but when it comes to actual product development, they are hopelessly adrift that it's pretty hilarious watching them flail.

You can really see that consulting background of his doing its work. It's actually kinda poetic because now he'll get a chance to see what actually happens to companies that do business with McKinsey.

Sounds to me like these tech workers could really use a good union to protect them.....

All your points are sound. The issue that I have with this is that remote disable functionality is not necessary to achieve any of these aims. Before they were connected to the internet, people were still able to rent/lease autos and the world managed to survive just fine. There were other ways for lenders to get remunerated for breaking lease terms - they could issue an additional charge, get a court order for repossession, etc. Remote disable was never needed or warranted.

So let's start by considering the due process here. Before, there was some sort of process involved in the repossession act. With remote disable however, the lender can act as judge, jury and executioner so to speak - that party can unilaterally disable the device with no oversight. And if the lender is in the wrong, there is likely no recourse. Another potential issue here is that the lender can change the terms at any time - it can arbitrarily decide that it doesn't like what you're doing with the device, decide you're in breach, and hit that remote kill switch. A lot of these things could technically happen before too, but the barriers have been dramatically lowered now.

On top of this, there are great privacy concerns as well. What kinds of additional information does the lender have? What right do they have to things like our location, our habits, when we use it, and all of the other personal details that they can infer from programs like this?

There are probably lots of other issues here, but another part of the problem is that we can't even start to imagine what kinds of nefarious behaviors they can execute with this new information and power. We are well into the age where our devices are becoming our enemies instead of our advocates. I shudder to think what the world would look like 20 years from now if this kind of behavior isn't stopped.

Despite that success, and the App Store’s role in making it possible, Spotify pays Apple nothing.

That's because Spotify doesn't owe you anything. If I release a piece of software for Apple, Android, Linux, Windows, etc., I don't owe these OSes anything for that. Apple makes plenty of money selling hardware, that's good enough for them.

These delusional bastards really need a few slaps around their heads to get this concept to sink in.

Oh goody. I've been wanting to use this since my slashdot days... today is my first chance!

Your post advocates a

[x] technical
[ ] legislative
[ ] market-based
[ ] vigilante

approach to fighting (ML-generated) spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why
it won't work. [One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea,
and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad
federal law was passed.]

[ ] Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
[ ] Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
[ ] No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
[ ] It is defenseless against brute force attacks
[ ] It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
[ ] Users of email will not put up with it
[x] Microsoft will not put up with it
[ ] The police will not put up with it
[x] Requires too much cooperation from spammers
[x] Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
[ ] Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
[ ] Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
[ ] Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

[ ] Laws expressly prohibiting it
[x] Lack of centrally controlling authority for email^W ML algorithms
[ ] Open relays in foreign countries
[ ] Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
[x] Asshats
[ ] Jurisdictional problems
[ ] Unpopularity of weird new taxes
[ ] Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
[ ] Huge existing software investment in SMTP
[ ] Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
[ ] Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
[ ] Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
[x] Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
[x] Extreme profitability of spam
[ ] Joe jobs and/or identity theft
[ ] Technically illiterate politicians
[ ] Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
[x] Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
[ ] Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
[x] Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

[x] Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
[ ] Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
[ ] SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
[ ] Blacklists suck
[ ] Whitelists suck
[ ] We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
[ ] Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
[ ] Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
[ ] Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
[ ] Sending email should be free
[x] Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
[ ] Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
[x] Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
[ ] Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
[ ] I don't want the government reading my email
[ ] Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

[x] Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
[ ] This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
[ ] Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!

when it means they will not sell my data and will allow me control over my algorithm to prevent it from playing to my vulerabilities

The problem is that this will never happen. That boat has sailed - companies will never give up on their existing revenue streams. They may say that paying today will exempt you from the ads, but it's only a matter of time before they ramp up the cost and start showing ads anyway. That's how cable television started, and it's how internet streaming will end as well. And as for the not selling data/controlling the algorithm, well you have no way of proving that they don't do that so they'll do it no matter what they say.

There's no reason for google to do this whatsoever. They have their business model - any new revenue streams will 100% definitely not reduce the other ones at all. It's just gonna be another giant dump into the pile of enshittification.

I work with Americans and this hits home hard. It's especially infuriating when they format their dates. "I had a meeting with so-and-so on 4/5" and nobody has any fucking clue what they mean.

The worst part is how hopelessly oblivious they are about it. It's not even like they don't care that nobody does things their stupid way - it's the fact that they're so insulated that they can't even fathom that nobody does things the same way they do. It just goes to show how clueless they are about the rest of the world and how little they get out of their neighborhoods.

It drives me mad. At this point, it's just offensive how ignorant they can be sometimes. If you have to work with other people, you should at least make an effort to be aware of the fact that others do things a different way and try to avoid situations like this, but they just refuse to do so.

Apologies... /rant

However bad they may make it, it can't possibly be worse than it is for non-adblock users.

But hey, if they want to torpedo their own services, have at it. It's not like they have a reputation for it or anything....

If the infrastructure can't handle it, then upgrade the fucking infrastructure! Politicians will fall at voters' feet to build new roads, highways, etc., but when it comes to the green energy transition, there's no problem too minuscule to be ignored!

I'll happily admit that there are going to be many issues in the green energy transition; we should acknowledge them, but we should also strive to address them, rather than throwing our hands up in the air and idly promulgating the status quo.