quickenparalysespunk

TL;DR

• if Chrome's buyer f***s up too badly and Normies (i.e. majority segment of browser users) flee, can Firefox keep up with the flood of users? Can they keep enough users to attract enough donations/investments to become more stable or grow (grow staff #s or activities) long term?

underlying assumptions:

• many privacy-minded users use Firefox forks on desktop and possibly mobile. Without Mozilla the organization, said forks may or may not be able to continue individually on their own. However, it seems hard to argue that they would fare better if a "main" Firefox continued, possibly under the umbrella of some pre-existing group like Canonical or Linux Foundation. Better yet if Mozilla were to reverse course from its user data cash-in moves and increase its long-term stability.

scenario conditions:

1. Google sells Chrome

• a:

• b: to a smaller company who can't maintain it well and/or adds too much ads/a.i./upsell/enshittification even for Normies, my educated guess is there will be some kind of exodus. This timeline is what I'm curious about.

2. At time of said exodus, Firefox has not yet descended to equal depths of enshittification, and thus becomes one of the refugee camps for fleeing Normies.

Question:

• hypothetically if, let's say, FF total user count goes up 2x in a week, 10x in a month, maybe even 100x in a day, can Firefox services (sync, user forums, extension store, bug tracking/fixing, or even just installer downloads) realistically scale up fast enough to avoid disappointing the majority of refugee users and losing the chance to gain long term users? Or would they stumble too hard and end up remaining a small share of the browser market while other new/existing browsers take the spoils?

i guess the most relevant professional to give the real-world answer might be a macro network infrastructure specialist, but i'm looking for everyone's opinion.

I've tried various versions of these:

FILENAME has spaces

touch -d "$(stat 'FILENAME' | grep -oP 'Birth:\s+\K\d{4}\-\d{2}\-\d{2}' | sed 's/^/"/;s/$/"/')" $(echo 'FILENAME' | sed 's/^/"/;s/$/"/')

FILENAME has no spaces

touch -d "$(stat 'FILENAME' | grep -oP 'Birth:\s+\K\d{4}\-\d{2}\-\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}' | sed 's/\-//g;s/://g;s/ //')" "FILENAME"

the former returns error about wrong time format.

the latter ended up setting the mtime date to May 10 2446 (at least the millennium is right....) i can't even figure out how the numbers would rearrange/misread to get that from desired Jan 6 2025. So i assume it was read as some kind of offset from 1970 but I don't know enough to use that info to my advantage.

when i echo the commands, the formatting and syntax seems to match examples in the web. so I'm lost.

and I can't seem to find specific docs about touch vis-à-vis what time format is accepted and details of syntax.

btw I'm ND, and can't mentally process manpages docs, at least not dynamically enough to use the info in original or niche situations without also having stackoverflow or other q&a pages with directly relevant examples. ND/OCD is also why i need to sort files by mtime specifically. "just sort it by ctime" is not an option.

anyone who replies, thank you very much.

previous related post

This could also help minimize effect of "Nicole the fediverse chick".

site for watching Japanese tv programs.

it aggregates streams offered by separate tv stations. some episodes are simulcast online with the tv broadcast. most are recorded.

the site is ad supported, i think. haven't watched without ad blocker. but being Japan, it is behind in technology so they have no ad block circumvention or anti-adblock features so far.

be aware: may need vpn to appear as Japan user.

SITE IS ALL IN JAPANESE

a friend recently asked me if the onomatopoeia for smacking/chomping fresh crispy veggies would also apply to the shaking of French fries (pommes frites) in a bag of powdered seasoning.

we were both frustrated at my answer...

fyi: for those still learning kana, the title is "shakishaki vs shakashaka"

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40428037

even using FreeTube, i have to change audio track and subtitle settings almost non-stop...

it's slightly less annoying to see wrong/unnecessary subtitles. but it's pretty confusing/tiring when the algorithm interprets sound effects or music (instrumental even) as Hindi or Uzbek or something and i have to turn off subs even if there is no talking.

audio on the other hand 🤬👿👹

even if I watch a video not in either of my 2 fluent languages, i don't ever want to hear any dubbed/ai-gen audio track.

any idea if this is in YouTube's issue tracker?

regardless, in the absence of fix from YouTube side, any clue if this can be improved on the client side?

PS - any responses telling me to just watch peertube instead will be downvoted and user will be blocked. fyi i don't reject watching peertube but my chosen antidote for the corporate streaming disease is 🏴‍☠️

even using FreeTube, i have to change audio track and subtitle settings almost non-stop...

it's slightly less annoying to see wrong/unnecessary subtitles. but it's pretty confusing/tiring when the algorithm interprets sound effects or music (instrumental even) as Hindi or Uzbek or something and i have to turn off subs even if there is no talking.

audio on the other hand 🤬👿👹

even if I watch a video not in either of my 2 fluent languages, i don't ever want to hear any dubbed/ai-gen audio track.

any idea if this is in YouTube's issue tracker?

regardless, in the absence of fix from YouTube side, any clue if this can be improved on the client side?

PS - any responses telling me to just watch peertube instead will be downvoted and user will be blocked. fyi i don't reject watching peertube but my chosen antidote for the corporate streaming disease is 🏴‍☠️

edit: forgot to mention the video title auto translation presenting any and all languages' videos as if they're in my language 👿👿👿

To what extent will these changes, and potential future changes along the same trajectory, affect the use of un-substitutable apps on Graphene OS?

Play Integrity API - 2024 Dec

The transition to the new verdicts will reduce the device signals that need to be collected and evaluated on Google servers by ~90% and our testing indicates verdict latency can improve by up to ~80%.

the huge ratio of reduction suggests to me that the attestation is being offloaded from Google servers to on-device AI, but maybe i assume wrong. my instinct tells me Google would always make this impossible for 3rd party OS to implement anyway.

Hypothetically, If implementing that AI in Graphene could allow most attestation-requiring apps to install and run normally, is that something the Graphene devs would do? i know it would have to be secure and private, so assuming there was a way...

I'm not pro AI, not the surveillance big data capitalism kind at least. just wondering about the scenarios and what prep or extra work i would have to do.

Synopsis

Starting April 1, 2026, the income tax department will have the authority to access social media, emails, and other digital spaces to curb tax evasion. This has been granted to them under the new income tax bill. This will also include search and seizure powers over your assets and documents, which have raised major privacy concerns. Experts warn of challenges to fundamental privacy rights without judicial oversight and procedural safeguards.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/38292767

for English i use heliboard. but i type in other languages also, and there are no practical choices in foss keyboards for those specific languages which also have the mainstream IME/key layout for my language (not qwerty).

fcitx provides some hope for the future but for now, it also doesn't have the IME/key layout for my language (only has qwerty). hopefully it can also have handwriting in the future somehow (if only via user-installed model/blob similar to heliboard glide typing).

anyway, I'm on Graphene OS. so i wondered if revoking network permission and setting gboard permanently to incognito (is permanent possible?) would suffice to cut off data collection?

for English i use heliboard. but i type in other languages also, and there are no practical choices in foss keyboards for those specific languages which also have the mainstream IME/key layout for my language (not qwerty).

fcitx provides some hope for the future but for now, it also doesn't have the IME/key layout for my language (only has qwerty). hopefully it can also have handwriting in the future somehow (if only via user-installed model/blob similar to heliboard glide typing).

anyway, I'm on Graphene OS. so i wondered if revoking network permission and setting gboard permanently to incognito (is permanent possible?) would suffice to cut off data collection?

edit: FYI the languages/key layouts i need are Japanese via 12-key flick and Cantonese via traditional Chinese handwriting input

In my understanding, the options need to be customized for each machine, as well as the fact that making packages for tons of distros can be a lot of work for solo or small team devs, and that's why some software is provided as .tar only.

but it seems like the install process on the user side could be automated to a single command or drag-drop, as long as the script would throw informative alerts for any errors and the user is prepared to take over manually.

does something like this exist in a standalone form that's not bundled like snaps or flatpaks?

if not, is there a broadly-applicable reason (security, damaging OS, etc) that makes it a terrible idea? or simply that no one has gotten to it?