Microsoft Edge is actually good lmao
d-RLY? @ dRLY @lemmy.ml Posts 1Comments 226Joined 4 yr. ago
d-RLY? @ dRLY @lemmy.ml
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I scrolled through so many comments to see if anyone was just going to let that one go un-asked! I started reading the chart from the bottom and got to chaotic good last and went from leaning back in my chair to fully forward when I read it. Was like car tire screech "What the fuck is the bottle hack?!?!?" lol
Slight modification to my point as I think I was meaning to say that they could have a separate system in the first sentence. Like maybe there isn't one right now (as you point to by stating that folks have fully disassembled current cars), but they could add one or more as they gain profits from either directly using the data or (more likely) from selling the data.
As for the later point you made about them not bothering for the <0.1% of people. How long is it worth just assuming that they won't do it as they try to find any and all ways to generate profits? They could start moving to the Apple repair tactics of requiring parts to be paired to the vehicle and require "calibration" using their tightly controlled systems in order to have very basic things work correctly. Which removing fuses to those data mining "features" could start shit like a constant system error check light or artificially disable unrelated things.
Honestly feel free to just stick to the top two paragraphs. I went down a rant rabbit hole beyond my initial point. But leaving it here as it still has some amount of value (not sure how much and to whom).
To use Apple again, if you replace a display with a third-party or even a real part but not one they sent you directly (and therefore isn't a valid repair listed for your phone). You all of a sudden get a list of "scary" sounding warning alerts all the time about how the parts can't be verified or calibrated. Which then leads to shit like auto-brightness, truetone colour, and even one or more cameras not working or pictures taken not saving/not being post processed with their software that makes the images look as good as they do. All that because the screen was replaced that they didn't approve of. Sure some things like bio-metrics might make some sense to be disabled due to the non-zero chance that someone could put a hacked part on that could maybe possibly steal your shit for gaining access to your device/account/money. But shit can't dim or do basic shit (even if the replacement is a real part).
Given how drastically so many companies of all kinds are finding it harder and harder to make numbers go up for the shareholders (which is a legal duty to do literally everything possible to do so). Especially as prices for everything are being artificially upped under the pretend guise of "inflation". But it is really more about how they have to charge more so that those shareholders and the top level people can keep making more (but not workers). The level of data mining for passive income is invading all of our shit at levels that really should be freaking more people out. More of these car companies that were bragging about having built-in CarPlay/Android Auto a couple of years ago are now removing them in order to artificially require using rebranded access to them. Locked behind yet another subscription that they can just stop allowing to work every few years. Got to install their apps on your devices. Going to get worse as they find more and more things to "require" having their app. Even if not using your car at the time, it can try to find out what you do and where.
We at the very least need to have all that shit controlled in the interest of users/buyers with very clear legal requirements that at least it be very easy to see a full list of what is, how it is, why it is, and where it is being collected from. And it needs to be legally required that these lists or whatever are written in ways that someone with an 8th grade level of education can read and understand. So no just having an insane amount of super micro tiny legalize TOS stuff like we see with everything currently and hidden away in some cases. Each model of every car with every trim/add-on package should have that list in both print manuals in each car, and have it permanently (and very very easily to locate) on that manufacturer's site.
But it is also likely that the car companies have a separate system in the car's computer that acts independently of the main infotainment system for sending data. Even if you aren't paying for any of the "extras/add-ons", it could still get information from your phone just being used with Bluetooth or ping your WiFi if it is on and your phone visible. Also given how much more actively these companies are all trying to get passive income from our data. I wouldn't be shocked if the other commenter's point about getting all kinds of "errors" popping up if disabled (especially if a fuse is pulled/modified). We already see that non-car companies like John Deere go to some big levels to remove your control over something you bought and DRM shit that has zero reason outside of forcing us to pay only them for repairs. We as people aren't allowed to control both our physical devices or our data, and big corps are just allowed to skim everything and sell it to any other parties that pay for it. Hell even our legal system and enforcement are allowed to bypass our rights that prevent search and seizure by just going to these companies instead of us.
Yeah but those supposed companies that "needed those malicious practices to stay competitive" also could have done the thing Mozilla is now doing. Could even use direct knowledge and proof of those practices in a big ad campaign about how they actively don't want all your info. This "doing it because everyone is doing it" headspace is one of the many corpo versions of "just following orders." I understand the point you are making, but it isn't like any of these companies are too small to fight back. Allowing this kind of thing (beyond just this specific instance) just further gaslights us at a consumer level into continued abuse being normalized and okay. Which makes it even harder to do anything about it.
Just like with how we see that a major amount of voters literally just give up and see everything as pointless in doing anything (and that is assuming that they even know about any information at all). Or how we are trained to only see one or two day polite marches in protest of something as being the whole "fight" and just go home. But when people don't just go home or "stay out of normal people's ways" it is seen as those protesters being "unrealistic" or even "assholes in the way." The whole point of protests is to literally be as in the way of "normal life" as possible to push whatever change they are fighting for.
Which he is also pretty consistent about. Yet somehow these children's cartoon evil/greedy businessmen are just handed power and trusted by such a shocking amount of people. It is kind of impressive in a "we're fucked" kind of way.
Not being hyperbolic, but almost every single time I have to speak with or am spoken to by a manager/GM at work. HR at all large companies I have ever worked for as well.
That is because they are a publicly traded for-profit company. They are legally required to do anything and everything to always make the numbers go up. By any means necessary, which is where any semblance of "not being evil" goes to die. Especially after a product/company was able to get massive popularity for doing/supporting actually good things and/or being known for being "the" name that people think about as being ridiculously well made. So many CEOs and the top controlling shareholders start gutting everything to squeeze out any and all extra profits. Just a hollow shell where massive cuts in jobs and replacing anything that got them there with passive money generating replacements. And since basically all normies just go with whatever they were last really told was good. They don't notice how bad it has become, and don't question it at all (like how many people thought those IE toolbars were just part of IE from an update).
Feel free to skip the next bit as it is more rant about the importance of actually updating the information normies have gotten and just default to.
I on a daily basis have to explain to customers who's computers I work on, that AVG and Avast are beyond bad things to have installed these days. And that they (and really all the major paid for AV products) are the reason that their computer is dog slow. Along with pointing out that all the scary messages they are seeing are from the AV products trying to constantly up-sell them on getting every single one of their pointless products that they will never use/need. Especially bad when you pay for something and think that it will just do the damn thing you wanted without harassment. Just to then get more alerts and pop-up messages trying to scare you more into getting more "protection from X" than you got before giving them any money at all. They just keep using these things all because someone or a few "tech people" that they personally knew at work or before moving somewhere told them it was the best. Same goes for shit like Office and Outlook. So many older folks think they can't use email if it isn't through Outlook and freak the hell out if their drive or OS fucks up. They think they can't create/open documents if it isn't Office (same goes for Acrobat for PDFs). There are randomly people that do need those things, but they also tend to be more aware of stuff like creating backups of PST files.
Yeah for real! They were really really quick and light on RAM in the super early days. But that was due to not having much there compared to Firefox and Opera, or even IE and Safari. Even the original Edge browser was kind of quick due to it just not having everything. All of them lose that little advantage after being around long enough to have the code base be added to along with trying to copy features from popular extensions or trying to add random things to stand out. Even when Firefox got heavy with RAM, I still stuck with it due to extensions factually being able to do more that I wanted. But then they solved the RAM issues dramatically with that Quantum refresh, though it did mean many extensions got nurfed by virtue of not having as much access to the OS level stuff (which is probibly a good thing with regards to security and privacy). Even then they still have better access to being able to really block ads and other privacy related things. And that is because they aren't an ad company that wants to dictate how you are allowed to use the internet.
I have only ever had one project on there that has been an issue. But even then it happens with all the browsers I try. Do you use any other security/privacy extensions?
The rest is really just a rant about literally getting people to use alternatives instead of Chrome.
Also those nerds that like Chrome could just switch over to basically any other Chromium-based browser to show that they don't support Google's new attempts to make the internet only play by corpo rules. Edge and Brave work well for normies and for nerds (though Microsoft is really really trying to make it more frustrating as possible and adding their own data mining with every update). Just have to disable various things. Like the crypto stuff on Brave, and basically anything that Microsoft tries to tell you to use. Vivaldi is a really impressive option for power users. Their UI customization are wild af and can be a bit overwhelming from the sheer amount of options. Opera is okay too, but it seems to be confusing with how it presents its options and some features seem to overlap too much for my taste with how extensions can show up in multiple places. And of course there is Chromium, but the lack of auto updates and other things defaultly not present makes it not a good option for normies.
I personally have Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, LibreWolf, Mulvad, Palemoon, Tor, Vivaldi, and Waterfox installed on my main PC. So I can see how various projects are working and to be super ready to answer the question "have you tried loading the site with a different browser" if I need to contact support of a site. Though I tend to use Mulvad for searching torrent sites and Tor for onion sites. And LibreWolf, Palemoon, and Waterfox are kind of more out of an interest in seeing how different Firefox based browsers are coming along. Out of the Chromium browsers, I tend to use Vivaldi the most as it is fun to use as an RSS feed reader and can treat Mastodon/Misskey/Foundkey as kind of apps via slide-out sidebar. Can also do email similar to how a normal email app would (though not close to as many power features). Brave would be next go-to, especially now that they have the vertical tabs working as smoothly and pretty as Edge does. The vertical tabs was basically the only reason I used Edge for a bit. All the other vertical tabs from browsers like Vivaldi or extensions always feel/look bad, and the extension based ones don't remove the normal horizontal tabs. So it always breaks the overall UI consistency.
Should anyone that isn't me or a site designer/tester have more than maybe two or three browsers installed? Hell no, lol. But the main point is that folks that like Chrome but would like to show that they don't like how Google is trying to re-create the old days of Internet Explorer do have options. Get those daily installs and usage metrics of Chrome to drop after so many years of being the new replacement default. Most likely won't stop them from doing bad shit, but it would bring back some amount of competition and more importantly give more reasons for sites to respect universal standers and not just be coded to only work with one browser. We really don't need to see a return of those little icons on every site saying that it "Works best with IE". For profit propratary shit is how we will cease to be able to have an open internet that isn't just HR approved and all requiring us to be "allowed" to interact with any of it.
LG/HB are vanguard af and we doesn't afraid of anything! I have this account because I made it around the same time I made my LG account and like that Lemmy.ml is pretty good for normies (no hate) of various kinds. Joined HB long before it federated and after the CTH subreddit was quarantined. Both places are much more chill than folks think. HB is much more trollie and should be taken with more than a pinch of salt. LG is much more serious and strict, but you just need to be clear in phrasing things in good-faith if asking questions. Are there dicks on both? Yes, just like there are on here and any other instance. But I think they both benefit more from lurking for a while if not used to non-liberal leftist spaces. Feel free to downvote all you want if you disagree or whatever...or are right-wing of course. #PunchNazisIntoTheDirt
The landing part is the hard part, but it isn't like Russia is any less inept than any other nation with a space program. Until SpaceX and now NASA got their new launch systems up and running, it was Russia that was getting our people to and from the ISS. The US had a pretty long span of time having to rely on basically the same launch systems that were directly competing against them during the race to the Moon. Shit is just really hard no matter how long any nation/company has been doing it. We still get plenty of pretty epic explosions from SpaceX and will see many more (especially with the BFR project). And before them we lost Challenger without it making it to space, and Colombia while coming back to earth. They did at least get to the Moon and did leave a mark of sorts. I wish there were cameras with high resolution recording all the landings and crashes from all nations that could upload after the fact for us to see. I would love to see how big the dust plumes get from all of them (especially the crashes), and see how long it takes for shit to settle again.
While I understand your headspace. Space isn't easy even with modern tech for any nation (or company in the case of the private launch sector). They didn't have the benefit of the Space Race injecting mad money and manpower like the US and the USSR did (shit is hard to justify spending money on while still being on the newer side of certain industrial development as a nation). They also had to make their own systems to get there. Even SpaceX still has failures to land their first stage boosters after getting it pretty well figured out. Just a crazy amount of variables means it will fail majorly if any random one is wrong. Even if they had failed to land, it would still be worth some respect for even getting on target. I think that once AI is much more mature (and not just a large language model that tends to just make shit up that sounds correct but isn't), then I think your stance would be more correct. As the ship itself would be able to deal with all of it with or without input from earth. Would also be better at making the tough calls to abort or proceed without any emotions/stress causing bad decisions.
Being fair, they did land some things on the Moon before while part of the USSR. Though it is nice to see a new nation get a first for something relating to the Moon.
A lot of homeless people do end up in prison both for all of the anti-homeless laws in various cities. For some folks it may end up being a better option than just outright dying in the streets from lack of food, medicine (love how the richest nation can't put our tax money into anything that actually helps all of us), and/or from the elements. So while your point of bringing up prison population is a valid one. It is still (in part) related to homeless population numbers, just not totally useful by itself.
That being said, I do think that China is actually putting much more effort into dealing with the problem. As bringing people out of poverty/homelessness is crucial to keeping support of the masses. When enough people are just tossed out and can't get help. It will lead to dramatic and very widespread revolts and even civil wars. That is true for any nation, no matter what system is in place. Socialist nations were birthed by such widespread poverty for the many while the few hoarded the wealth and resources. It is kind of one of the main points Marx and other anti-capitalist theorists base their shit on.
Soooooooo freaking happy to finally have the tablet setup that I just couldn't seem to find in any of the other Lemmy apps (so far)!!! I can now have three columns and see so many posts with their smaller but still good sized previews! Was curious how much would be different in moving to Lemmy, and so far everything seems to be much closer to one-to-one than I even thought. Very good work! And back on the Ultra sub as well!
Being fair to Chrome (which I hate doing but there is a point), they got in when more tech-people online saw them as pushing so many things forward. Was functionally faster than IE for sure, but also Firefox got stuck on their 4.0 limbo and being heavy in memory usage. Though I think the issue with memory usage also came from having almost a decade of so many extensions. Chrome was also slightly simpler than Firefox (imo even though my primary browser is and has been since before 1.5). Pair that with Google also then becoming the only (in market share) real competition to Apple's ecosystem on Smartphones.
The best way to start taking down Chrome's massive control over web standards is to do the same things as when IE was the default name people knew. Start using Firefox and get others to try it again or for the first time. Since so many people would trick their parents into using Chrome by changing the name and icon to IE. Most older folks kind of don't even notice, and just think and "update" changed the look a bit. But as long as it works, they will just use it. In fact this can apply to a lot of the general public in actually scary ways. Back in the day with IE and those stacks and stacks of toolbars that I saw on almost every PC I worked on for people. I would just start removing them while they told me about why they were in (which was often caused by but not seen as to them as the issue). They would see me just OCD getting rid of them and would be shocked, and I do truly mean shocked, that those things weren't just "part of the browser and never questioned them being there."
Now that Chrome and Chromium are the main browser and browser base. I see soooo many BS Chromium browsers just get installed via the same kinds of tactics as the old toolbars. Even set themselves to both launch at every reboot, set themselves to always be able to run in the background, AND set themselves as the system default browser. Sometimes there may be multiple all doing the same things, but also have been made into desktop toolbars/docks of sorts. And that same shit is done by the super annoying ones skinned by the AV companies (AVG, Avast, CCleaner, and now even mainline Norton). And the person just thinks they are just part of Windows, but they only even came in because they "started having issues with wifi" or even a broken Windows update that wasn't related.
That shit should really really get more attention in general. With so many fake things just being ignored, it means that the mass public will just never know or care about Google turning the internet into whatever it wants. Just not even know that they had actual options before they are removed. If it wouldn't piss off the massive amount of companies that do ad business with Google. I wouldn't be shocked if they turned ad blocking into a "premium feature" to subscribe to monthly.
I personally install Firefox as the non-Edge option when setting up someone's new PC (so long as they didn't specify Chrome) so they might at least try it. I never set it as the default, and will remove it if they want it gone when picking up the PC. Also do try to let some of them that ask about Chrome know that Edge is 100% compatible for their sites that mention Chrome. Which they at least then tend to be like "oh, well then I guess don't worry about installing Chrome then." No real pressure is put on them, just information, though Microsoft is making it hard with all the wild "HEY TRY THIS FEATURE!" pop-ups and that damn pointless desktop search bar.
Getting more people to start using Firefox instead of Chrome would be the best way to "vote with our wallets" in this case. Though some of the Chromium forks do make easier sells, but they are much much more likely to just go with whatever Google does by using the same base. So if Google forces something into Chromium in order to keep being able to functioning and being compatible (in web standards, security updates, and the massive extension library). It will just force the use of whatever Google wants, and make Google the de facto boss of how we are "allowed" to use the internet.
Wouldn't need to take their money if donations were to get high enough (though it might be easier to have a collective org that all kinds of open internet groups could join and donate to). At the moment FF is the only browser that isn't relying on Google's Chromium while also being a real player that isn't OS specific like Safari is. All the FF alts may have their own very good points for making their forks, but they aren't building anything from the ground up. Which puts them in the same spot as all the Chromium based forks with regards to relying on base code needing to stay current. It is of course possible for the Chromium forks to join with FF (and any of its forks that can put their issues with Mozilla aside on this issue) to call for protections.
IE/Microsoft was pulling the same kinds of shit before Chrome, Firefox, and Safari were able to show what could be possible with both actual demands for standards to be followed and that the internet should be open. The open standards are what allowed so many devs of all classes/nationalities/ages/etc to create so many cool things when barriers like money and copyright are removed. Now Google is the Microsoft of the internet and they only respect the rights of corps and rich fucks that don't create anything. Just digital rights versions of landlords. We wouldn't have the options we have now if we waited for those copyrights holders to stop us from just doing shit with technology.
The Chromium Edge really started to win me over a bit with how well they have done vertical tabs (Brave only just recently got something even close). Was cool up until Microsoft really seems like they have gotten insecure about trying to be popular again. I fix people's computers so I see it more than a normal user would, so I will just say that now. But it feels like every time I open Edge it seems to just bukkake my eyes with "helpful" pop-ups trying sooo bad to trick me into turning on more and more data collection "features". It is already annoying that they try to cover up the area where the download starts if it detects that it is on the Chrome download page.
But they took what was looking to be a shockingly good alt to Chrome, and I have even gone out of my way from time to time to let customers know that they don't really need Chrome and Edge. Instead I try to at least offer Firefox as a second option. As I do find that if a site is messed up for Chromium based browsers FF might at least give them a usable site until Edge/Chrome starts working again.
That being said, I am really curious how the original Edge would work if they had kept at it. It sucked at first because all browsers suck for awhile when new. The extensions being through the app store seemed about as normal as what Apple does with Safari. But the Edge extensions didn't require first signing into the store in order to get free ones. So that was much less frustrating. Jumping to Chromium just further enabled Google to be on more fuck shit.