8 responses to “Nothing stops him.”

1. 

   X

   03/03/2025

   Give a man a fire, he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      03/03/2025

      I’ll bring marshmallows.

      Reply
2. 

   granville

   03/03/2025

   The long, slow slide of Mozilla into both irrelevance and being consumed, borg-like, by the shifty ethics of the Silicon Valley scum around them has been a sad sight to behold. I was hoping jwz would launch another screed but I think he just doesn’t expect anything but the worst behavior from them anymore. A case can still be made for using it as a political act but it’s increasingly flimsy (and probably always was, so long as they were dependent upon Google $ for support). And there’s no way to change the company. They have almost no user base left and it doesn’t seem to matter to them at all.

   One of the things I heard recently that probably originates from inside the company but is being argued by some of their partisans on the outside is that the Justice Dept should NOT force Google to break up, because removing Chrome from Google would mean the end of the $400 to $500 million subsidy they pay to Firefox. Imagine twisting your brain to the point where this seems like a debatable point.

   Reply
   1. 

      Doug Holland

      03/03/2025

      If they had a straight-ahead blog post, and explained that they need to start selling shards of user data to keep things afloat, I’d be less annoyed than by this shady-but-ordinary ‘terms of service’ rug-pull.

      You ever feel like it’s an adversarial relationship between ordinary people and basically every company we do business with, every site on the web, every elected official, every branch of government? I didn’t come here to make friends, like they say on all the reality shows, but I didn’t particularly come here to make enemies either.

      Yeah, the arrangement with Google is weird and worrisome and the only thing keeping Firefox alive. The whole Mozilla setup is weird — a non-profit that pays its executives ridiculous high salaries and runs a for-profit subsidiary. Opaque as the men’s room glass.

      For search, I’ve gone back to Kagi for as long as I can afford ten bucks per month. For a browser, I’m tilting toward Libre.Wolf, which is a fork from Firefox, where I’m hoping my 227 Firefox add-ons and ad-blockers will still work. It’ll be a hassle, so I’m hesitating.

      What do you use and/or recommend?

      Reply
      1. 

         granville

         03/03/2025

         For sure, it seems like everything is a hustle. I’m usually okay if I’m aware of the hustle in front, but it’s irritating and sometimes infuriating to find that every. single. thing. wants to snoop’n’sell every single thing I do. Why is everything such a scam?

         There’s really no good answer for a browser. That’s where we’re at. I’ve used Firefox, Brave and Waterfox. I haven’t used LibreWolf yet (downloaded but not done anything with it), but I generally give the benefit of the doubt to anything that is prioritized by Linux, as the userbase there is much more oriented around privacy and capable of finding out if they’re lying about it. (Moving a great deal of computer work to Linux is also something we should probably be considering.) On my Mac I used Safari, which had some benefits, but the chief drawback is they stop issuing updates with the operating system, and all of my computers are old so if you’re using an older one you’re fucked. That’s another benefit of Linux, the hardware it can run on is close to infinite. Machines that Windows and Apple have given up on can still run completely up-to-date versions of Linux.

         I’d seen some good things about Arc, a new browser that had a bit of buzz, but they’ve announced a “pivot” of some kind. Not total abandonment… but not active development either. Here’s their privacy statement for what it’s worth: https://arc.net/privacy

         It’s crazy that this is where we’re at.

         Reply
         1. 

            Doug Holland

            03/04/2025

            > Why is everything such a scam?

            Jackpot. That’s the question. No idea what the answer is, but it’s pissing me off.

            I am not even big on privacy, compared to genuine privacy freaks. I don’t give a dang about cookies. I know Google is tracking me, but still I use Gmail. It’s creepy as fuck when one website knows I was looking at pants on another website, but I don’t obsess over it. Just, frickin’ tell me, that’s all I ask.

            God I’m tired of stupid people. I’m one of them, and I know it, but cripes I’m not as stupid as the average American.

            I should be on Linux, never hear anything bad about it, but the switch looks like so much work, and the work I’m willing to do is zero.

            So I read the Arc privacy policy, and it’s fine. Installed Arc, monkeyed with it for ten minutes of frustration, and uninstalled it. It has two separate built-in Google buttons, one for Gmail and one for Workspace. How to make a bad first impression, ha.

            Reply
            1. 

               granville

               03/04/2025

               Yeah I’m the same. I’m stubborn as shit about a lot but your former employer keeps track of my purchases there via a phone number disconnected 10 years ago and my dog’s name on the account. In exchange I get a discount on paper towels and mixed nuts and sometimes shampoo. It is a generally accepted premise that most people have their price, that’s mine if you want to know whether I buy soft or 2-ply toilet paper.

               Sorry to hear about Arc! I haven’t used it at all. After writing that I read their pivot was… to AI (not in the browser but some other shiny thing they’ve discovered). So that’s that then. Everything Is A Scam remains undefeated.

               Reply
               1. 

                  Doug Holland

                  03/05/2025

                  My standards are low no nonexistent, Being old-fashioned and low-tech, what annoys me most about the ‘loyalty’ swap is the flyer of coupons that arrives in the mail. It’s a shared house, so there are 11 flyers every time there’s a flyer, and nobody looks at any of them but they fill the trash bin.

                  Arc definitely had an AI element, and so does Kagi Search, but Kagi has an intuitive way to turn it off.

                  Everything is a scam, nice and accurate philosophy. Might be my next t-shirt. Family loves being boggled by my t-shirts.

                  Reply

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