willywanker

7 ms·

1.
by willywanker 6mo ago
This article is just the biggest justification for using an adblocker. Just imagine none of this nonsense affecting your system resources and user experience, just uninterrupted content. It's how I've been surfing since 1999. I ge
2.
by willywanker 8mo ago
What exactly is the threat model here of preventing Joe Nobody Famous or Important Poweruser from rooting the hardware they bought and paid for? If someone has physical access to your phone, you have a lot more to worry about than mere root
3.
by willywanker 10mo ago
People are overreacting to Clippy's intrusiveness - firstly you could replace Clippy with other characters like the red ball Dot, or a dog and cat (the latter would curl up and snooze on the screen). And being introduced in Office &#x2
4.
by willywanker 10mo ago
What passes for a desktop app these anyway is just some variation of Electron - bundle the website along with a Chrome instance and serve up the resulting 300-400 MB bundle as a 'desktop' app. Who gives a crap about keyboard and m
5.
by willywanker 1y ago
They always could be local. Thunderbird, MS Outlook and other email clients have supported it for years. Plus there's dedicated desktop feed readers like the Qt based QuiteRSS, which I use. On Android there's the open source Feede
6.
by willywanker 1y ago
>An OS should be mandated to come with a browser than supports some locked down functionality What for? Online banking worked perfectly fine on standard web browsers over HTTPS for years before smartphones became popular, why should that
7.
by willywanker 1y ago
They have a pre-emptive defense of Electron linked to, that others have refered to here. The criticism of Electron apps isn't merely RAM or sluggishness - it's the modern tendency to completely shit on mature, established, efficie
8.
by willywanker 1y ago
IBM in Nazi Germany was no different from other German owned companies in being conscripted to do what the Third Reich ordered them to; the headquarters in the US obviously had no control over them during WW2. Plus it's ridiculous to a
9.
by willywanker 1y ago
Only if you consider hosting the entire infrastructure for concurrent video streaming to millions of users as 'inserting themselves'. Before Youtube there was no way to distribute your home video to a large audience beyond sending
10.
by willywanker 1y ago
>We technically didn't need more than 640K either. That old chestnut again - this was true for MSDOS PCs in 1981 when the quote was said. It was still true 10 years later for whatever version of DOS was current then. People keep bri
11.
by willywanker 1y ago
Ah yes, brilliant reasoning. "You carry one device that can be tracked as long as you're carrying it so what's the problem with having tracking baked into your vehicle?"
12.
by willywanker 1y ago
>Now, whenever you download some giant 300-500mb Electron app There's the mistake right there. Electron is to be avoided like the plague; if all I want is the same dumb touchscreen focused web UI of the creator's website, there
13.
by willywanker 1y ago
I don't have to imagine it at least on the internet - I've been blocking all ads on all my devices very successfully since 1999. In fact now I can't stand having to look at or use anyone else's computer or smartphone (us
14.
by willywanker 1y ago
>I have little issue with what happened and have no concern about Mozilla and privacy. Others clearly do, so your dismissing also ironically adds nothing like the comments you referred to. Those who continue to ignore Mozilla's ensh
15.
by willywanker 2y ago
Wrong. Every company exists to be profitable; how ethically they go about it is a different topic. Companies aren't charities.
16.
by willywanker 2y ago
>Seem to tolerate high income inequality or even see it as a good thing. A free society will by definition be unequal; people have different priorities and abilities, and wealth acquisition isn't a zero sum game. If anything, instea
17.
by willywanker 2y ago
Gotta love the change in terminology. 'Unhoused' people instead of homeless, as though their being without a place to live is now someone else's (the American taxpayers') responsibility.
18.
by willywanker 2y ago
>With the Trumpenreich looming Weren't they useful the last time around, when 'literally Hitler' totally murdered freedom of speech until Biden the hero restored it?
19.
by willywanker 2y ago
It uses a hard fork of Firefox's Gecko engine called Goanna, and is independently developed other than a few security patches from upstream. It has considerably diverged from contemporary Firefox so is not comparable.
20.
by willywanker 2y ago
Bought a Pebble in 2018 and used it with Rebble. Loved the OS and interface - but the device was far from robust. The rubberized buttons eventually cracked and it became unusable because I could no longer press them. A new version needs to
21.
by willywanker 2y ago
>We have 5-6 small (~50k people) towns, all well connected. Everything happens on Facebook. Network effect is always the party pooper. If everyone's using Facebook it's unlikely they'll want to switch to anything else.
22.
by willywanker 2y ago
Mastodon is a Twitter clone, nowhere comparable to Facebook. An endless microblogging format may not be ideal for a local community, as compared to a regular forum (which is just one of the many features Facebook offers).
23.
by willywanker 2y ago
Just reloading won't help, you need to actively train the algorithm by telling it what videos you don't like and why. It also lets you stop showing recommendations from a given channel altogether. On Facebook I've trained the
24.
by willywanker 2y ago
Of course it's an Electron app that unzips to about half a gigabyte for the Linux version thanks to having to bundle a whole Chrome browser runtime. Totally insane for a streaming video application. If only there was a Qt version, that
25.
by willywanker 2y ago
What's wrong with 2005 where desktop user experience goes? Why is the new sexy only 'let us remove all user choice and customization, throw decades of stable desktop UI features like menu bars, tooltips, keyboard shortcuts and m
26.
by willywanker 2y ago
I was one of the very few voices against using Chrome when it debuted in 2008. How on earth did it make sense, even for the supposedly enlightened programmer/IT tech/gamer/nerd crowd to use a browser made by a company whose b
27.
by willywanker 2y ago
What a horrendously complicated mess. No wonder modern websites are so bloated with a fraction of the functionality and information density from before the 'let's design everything for mobile users only, fuck the desktop' era
28.
by willywanker 2y ago
Was that content warning really necessary, or do we also tend to use them for liberal websites (for whatever definition of liberal) ?
29.
by willywanker 2y ago
No relation to NewPipe. It's an Android TV exclusive and isn't available for Android mobile phones.
30.
by willywanker 2y ago
It would not - NewPipe and its derivatives don't support Youtube accounts unlike SmartTube. With SmartTube (and Revanced, on Android mobiles) you can sign into Youtube and use your playlists, likes, comments etc.

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