z3rOR0ne

Thank you for that breakdown. I’m a big fan of Firefox, but have been aware of there being issues with Mozilla for some time now (albeit from the periphery). I figured when these cases came against Google, that even though I generally supported the breakup of the monopoly, I knew that a story like this one would eventually land.

If Mozilla is indeed burning money instead of putting the majority of it towards Firefox and, to a lesser extent, Thunderbird, then yeah, they’re going to need to reassess their budget and where to allocate their assets as without big moneybags Google forking over the funds, it’d be within their best interests to really invest hard into making their browser better.

Thanks again.

Just out of curiosity, where does the 20% estimate come from?

I’ll push back a bit on this, though I generally agree with you. I’ve only worked for a small startup as my career in tech is still in its infancy, but in previous roles I’ve had in other industries, this cult like aspect of corporatism pervades to varying degrees.

That said, when I first started socializing and networking with those involved in the tech sector, I noticed that there definitely is a subsection of the tech industry predominated by those who, in my view, took the concept of "There’s God In The Machine” thing way too far.

This subsection seems to be mainly populated by those who have only a passing understanding of the tech itself and don’t actually write the code or architect the software. This subsection also seems to be populated by those who can code and do architect the software, but appear to me to have a selfish and shortsighted mindset reminiscent of stock traders and crypto bros, communities for which I personally have a particular disdain.

This obsession and claim that tech can do anything from save the world to destroy the planet is very dangerous as it is a perceived pseudo reality that many people, both with power and not, seem to be desperately trying to make real (mainly fueld by a fear of the future and a desire to have some semblence of control over it through power mongering and vacuuming up influence in the present).

And this problem of progress for its own sake with some ambiguous “tech will save us” mindset is only recently exacerbated by the claim that these chatbots are AI (IMHO making a mockery of the term, intelligence).

Additionally, among this subsection, there seems to be an almost ravenous push for AGI, which, whether a boon or blight on future generations of humanity, they tend to argue is an inevitable outcome because technological and economic progress can never be nor should be slowed or halted.

I have definitely encountered this sort of “progress at all cost” mindset in other industries, but never have I seen it so vehemently defended among a not insignificant subsection of an entire economic sector (tech). And I’d imagine it is particularly pronounced in the major FAANG companies.

If you follow Ed Zitron’s other work, his recent articles and podcast episodes highlight a sort of “Villain of The Week” format, and so I don’t think it’s lost on him that this problem is not solely the purview of Microsoft, but rather is an indicator of a larger societal problem.

Indeed the issue Zitron is highlighting here is simply the newest incarnation of the strange cultish mantle that the Tech Industry can and has taken on in recent memory. The topic of Tech Work as Religion/Cult is thoroughly explored in the 2022 book, Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, by Carolyn Chen.

I recently got fitgirl’s Cyberpunk 2077 repack working on Artix Linux with Lutris by following this guide:

It doesn’t take into account you also need to use GEProton as well (for Cyberpunk at least), but its easy enough to install GEProton via ProtonUp, and then just configuring the game to use GEProton in the settings via lutris.

I got mangohud working as well, that was relatively simple.

I also noticed that I needed to install and setup dxvk as an overlay for Vulkan.

Yeah, it was a lot of setup and you need plenty of hard drive space as both the repack and the installed game are huge (have double the space available listed on the repack site).

I have the game on Steam, but wanted to know how to do this, and it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

Alternative front end to medium, with no JS. Read the same article on scribe.

Truthfully, the way I cut out most of the noise everywhere is to search using duckduckgo lite on Librewolf/Mull browsers. That with ublock origin (and block cookie banners), noscript, and redirection extensions to nojs alternatives like libreddit, scribe, invidious, along with putting various bypass paywall scripts into ublock’s filter list. It all just adds up to an overall better experience with fast, to the point results.

If that’s the case, why not use searx? I could only see myself using a paid search engine if

1. It demonstrably returned results relevant to my search more accurately than their competitors

2. It was well documented that they respected my privacy and how

3. It showed me no advertisements

4. It doesn’t utilize SEO marketing tactics to adjust its search results

5. It supported !bangs for very fast searching of specific websites and/or other search engines

Throwing the lamest capitalist party at the end of the world. Wooo…AI…boo…planet earth?..

There are many legitimate reasons to not use ecosia, and yes, from the ecological perspective.

Planting trees has shown to be not as effective at curbing the effects of climate change as previously thought. Contrary to popular belief, the oceans have a much larger effect on our climate than our forests, and we aren’t doing nearly enough to clean those up because the task would require us to fundamentally change the way we farm, fish, and obtain oil (i.e. pretty much stop everything we’re currently doing).

This isn’t to say planting trees doesn’t have some benefit, but there are much better ways to curb your CO² emissions which you can see at the end of this rant/post.

Sneak peak though, if you eat meat, and actually give a fuck about the forests, perhaps you should stop consuming animals. Eating meat in particular is directly related to deforestation, as often deforestation is done to make room for massive CAFOs, which even if the deforestation didn’t occur, would still significantly contribute to climate change.

Ecosia’s funding comes from advertisements, which incentivizes consumption, which itself contributes to climate change innately. Every purchase you make, every meal you eat, every time you travel by automobile, airplane, or petroleum powered boat, contributes to the ever growing mass of CO2.

Advertisements and marketing exacerbate climate change by cultivating a never ending consumerist desire for products that are almost entirely produced using a petroleum derived process and/or packaged in petroleum derived plastic, resulting in the consumerist behavior being inherently responsible for climate change.

Ecosia is a moldy old band aid on a gushing neck wound that honestly is causing more harm than good by distracting people from the real source of the climate crisis, which is modern capitalism and the resulting consumerism.

Actually fighting climate change requires more of you than some passive empty gesture. Here’s a bullet point list of things you can do today to make a real difference:

• Stop eating and utilizing animal based products.
• Stop eating foods that were grown using petroleum derived fertilizers (i.e. eat Organic).
• Stop eating foods that had to be trucked in from over 100 miles away (i.e. eat local).
• Stop buying plastic packaged goods.
• Stop traveling by any means that require oil.
• Stop living in or working in places which utilize electricity from the standard fossil fueled grid.
• Abandon the fast fashion industry.
• Only buy local goods and services.
• Stop buying new electronic devices unless absolutely necessary.
• Stop buying things you don’t absolutely 100% need to survive.
• Don’t use AI as it utilizes an insane amount of fossil fuel generated electricity and consumes an exorbitant amount of water.
• Same goes for playing AAA video games on high end GPUs.
• Same goes for participating in Cryptocurrency mining/trading.
• Protest the continuation of the exploration of space until Earth’s climate has stabilized, as the utilization of resources required for space exploration greatly contribute to climate change and encourages a techno futurism that “solves” the climate crisis by abandoning Earth, rather than actually creating a future where humans are the stewards of the Earth, not its masters.
• Get politically involved to pressure your local governments to implement safer spaces for pedestrians and cyclists and generally improve public transportation infrastructure like railways and metros.
• Spend all your spare time fighting the fossil fuel, plastic, and privatized water industries, because all of the above only makes a difference if those industries are GONE FOR GOOD.
• Don’t have children (biggest contributor to climate change is more consumerist humans).
• Don’t leave this problem to the next generation to solve. The moment is now or never. You either care about the future of humanity and their place on Earth, or you don’t.

There is a reason climate scientists are increasingly becoming climate activists. This is not something you can buy, recycle, or search engine your way out of.

As I’ve pointed out, there simply are far more impactful ways you can make a difference today than using a search engine that gets in bed with marketers and advertisers all in order to make relatively empty gestures while playing nice with corporations that, I guarantee you, are far more interested in pursuing business as usual than preserving the planet for their own children, let alone you and me.

Meh. For all the YT I consume, I haven’t visited the site in years. yt-dlp, sponsor block, invidious, and newpipe keep me far away, while still having all my subs stored in a json file. Simple, easy, no algo suggestions, just organic heard about them from word of mouth sub on an alternative platform. No ads, no sponsor or patreon mentions, no like, no subscribe. Is bliss.

EDIT: Typo fix and slight rewording.

I just use btop, and even though they recently added GPU diagnostics, there’s also nvtop.

For GUI tools, there’s cpu-x and for Nvidia GPUs, there’s gwe, but I honestly barely use them in preference of btop and nvtop.

On Linux Desktop, I generally use Librewolf (although I also use Vanilla Firefox and Ungoogled Chromium depending on the use case). I do also modify Librewolf a bit further in about:config, and have styled it to be much more minimal using userChrome.css.

Some of my favorite Extensions include:

• Alter
• ByPass Paywalls
• Chameleon
• Classic mode for Wikipedia
• Dark Reader
• NoScript
• OneTab
• StackOverflow/Exchange Prettifier
• uBlock Origin
• Vimium

I have others, but these are the ones that have been game changers. I also browse using DuckDuckGo Lite which cuts back on the distractions and loads fast. The use of DuckDuckGo Bangs also allows for very fast browsing and getting the info I need quickly.

On my Android phone, I use the Mull, Vanadium, and Vanilla Chromium browsers for various use cases, with Mull being the go to. There are a more limited set of extensions on Mull, but have managed to get it very similar, using uBlock, NoScript, DarkReader, DDG Lite, and have used this filter list with ublock to get pretty much the same effect as ByPass Paywalls.

Obviously, I generally have a very different experience browsing the web than most, and generally am not bombarded by ads as I also use Invidious, NewPipe, SponsorBlock, and yt-dlp (which has a sponsorblock flag btw) to grab any vids/music I want. Hope these resources help someone out.

Oh Elon. You’re gonna need a whole lot more Ketamine to convince yourself you’re a good father.

At least the article did a good job of calling this ban the bullshit it is.

Yeah, based off your post history, I don’t value your opinion all that much. And I’m sure the feeling’s mutual.

But hey, you do you, troll.

Those are two very different issues. Steamboat Willie belongs in the public domain as it’s copyright has long been expired. Disney has done some shady shit to keep control over their copywritten material for far too long. It’s good they backed down over that bullshit.

US Copyright law says their work only goes into the public domain 70 years after the creator’s death. Carlin passed away in 2008.I’m bad at math, but uhh…it hasn’t been 70 years yet… right? Or did we all go through a time warp again?

This is just yet another example as to why AI companies need to pay for the data they collect. The artwork and written work displayed on the web still falls under copyright law and thusly the works can only be utilized with express consent from the creators. And yes, until it falls into the public domain.

Now, you could argue that 70 years is too long for copyright to expire. I am open to such an argument. But that simply isnt the case right now for Carlin’s work. Thusly, the creator of this ”work” should indeed be sued (rather brutally imo).

Lastly, even if all this was legal, it’s in incredibly poor taste to do this. It’s one thing for a comic to take inspiration from Carlin, but it would be in poor taste for that same comic to steal his work. This is in even poorer taste from what I see. What a fucking sack of shit this creator is. I hope he dies slowly from sepsis.

Fuck whoever did this. That podcaster… Wtf ever. I couldnt even finish reading the article. I am seething with rage at this so hard I’m shaking. I hope the creator of this abomination gets sued so badly, their great grandchildren curse their name because of the inherited debt.

Fucking asshole.

Generally I agree, but I seriously doubt the engineering capabilities of those in AI to automate jobs. Show me an AI robot with arms that can fold a wide variety of clothes, or an AI SUV that can safely navigate a wide variety of roads with a bunch of crawling babies and fallen elderly people on the streets and then I’ll be impressed.

But let’s assume I’m wrong, which I’m sure many do, and AI engineers manage to achieve this. I also doubt the plan is to get rid of capitalism. When food scarcity could have easily been solved back in the 70s, capitalists instead created food deserts. When the internet threatened nearly every social infrastructure by breaking down the barriers to information and discourse, capitalists created walled gardens in which only certain kinds of discourse could take place.

The argument amongst tech evangelists and capitalists is that more jobs will always be created out of these new technologies. And i would concur, a bunch of bullshit, non creative, easily automated away jobs will be created, and you WILL be constantly reminded how easily replaceable you are, how worthless you are, by capitalists.

No, there will be more wage slaves, and no middle class, in the future, and there will be no time for creative pursuits.

And you’ll like it too, you’ll embrace Toxic Positivity as the corporate mantra right up until the oceans acidify and the billionaires have long gone underground into their bunkers hoping to repopulate the Earth once the rest if us have all eaten each other.

The Age of Moloch is upon us. All hail our technocrat overlords.

Just checked out the New Yorker site to see if my setup works. No paywalls encountered.

Use Ublock Origin with the Bypass Paywalls Clean List put in as a custom filter. Having NoScript extension sometimes prevents paywalls from showing as well.

Works on Desktop and Android (for Android, use Firefox Developer Edition or Mull browser as you can install Ublock/NoScript).

*Laughs with RSS feeds, Invidious redirects, Newpipe and Sponsorblock.