They quite literally are not, at least not in the US; half the states have right-to-work laws that prohibit this explicitly, and there are likely some protections even in the states that don't have a blanket protection.
I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude.
Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago.
Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser.
Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.
Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium.
We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion.
– Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla…
— Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web.
Simple: install Firefox. Now.
(oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)
Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
> The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium.
No. Firefox, beyond being slower, also keeps constantly displaying ads… for itself. Want to open a new tab? “Big Browser cares about your privacy, read how!” I just want to open a new tab!!! I’m working! Restarting? “Discover what’s new with Firefox”, “Hohoho, we care about your privacy, LOOK HOW MUCH WE CARE! ALSO WE HAVE NO ADS!” Worse, they suggest to solve privacy that I use Mozilla VPN. VPNs don’t solve privacy. Also, it’s a paid ad for a paid product.
Mozilla had also a staunch political slant, going as far as firing a CEO for a donation he made to the opposing group years ago. There is nothing neutral here, if you are not a leftist, it’s dangerous to use or even give your participation to that ecosystem.
Mozilla has failed to become the no-ads, better-ethics, privacy-aware navigator (pun intended). They keep performing worse actions than Google all the time.
There isn't a moral dimension attached to loving the right kind of people and gay and straight people are equally moral in pursuing relationships with significant others. On the other hand there is a moral dimension to trying to take away our fellow citizens rights. The CEO as the face of the org became unsuitable to his role when he acted publicly and objectively immorally in support of those who would gut the rights of his fellows
He wasn't on the wrong side of a political issue he was on the wrong side of decency and morality. This ought not to be a leftist position nor should we fear that the tyranny of excessive concern for others may be imposed upon us. Should we decide to use Firefox for evil as it were the privacy both endorsed and adhered to by Mozilla precludes them discovering it let alone stopping us.
The position of user of Firefox and public face of Firefox are inherently different positions and come with different reasonable expectations but I think you knew that.
> it’s dangerous to use or even give your participation to that ecosystem.
Please describe precisely the threat model you fill most applicable
> keeps constantly displaying ads
For a definition of constantly redefined to mean rarely when a new major version comes out.
> They keep performing worse actions than Google all the time.
The context here is that google tracks everything you do and regularly shares it with the government including under terms that are obviously abusive of user privacy and including to repressive governments, are in the middle of attempting to destroy ad blocking by pushing locked down environments in the name of security. A move likely to have massive implications that will be impossible to manage or control in repressive dictatorships even if Google themselves do nothing to directly assist with mass surveillance in Orwellian states. Merely building general purpose tools virtually guarantees bad usage by repressive regimes. By contrast Mozilla has? Tried to pimp their VPN to you as part of their new version notification...
It really sounds like the Brenden Eich debacle has colored your perception of the situation and perhaps you need to step back and evaluate the situation objectively.
Brendan Eich getting fired was like watching the original internet get murdered by progressives. Everything since then has been about how I thought that would go.
A guy gave a $3100 dollars to a political cause of his choice that was on the ballot, and people with this ideology drove him out of the company he founded that fought very hard for internet freedoms.
Since then, Mozilla/Firefox has largely become irrelevant and absolutely no longer has the same privacy concerns and respects.
He donated money in opposition of a law he didn't want to pass. He didn't take anyone's rights away.
I surely do mean exactly that particular Waterfox. I've had my fair share of concerns back in the day when System1 acqui(hi)red Waterfox, but I haven't seen any suspicious behaviour whatsoever so I'm pretty confident it's fine for the time being.
Of course, if you know a better browser (that is not Chromium-based), I'll be happy to hear your suggestions!
>I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again.
The problem is that the web standards have now grown so much that it is impossible to write a complete new web browser from scratch. Firefox is not coming back, because Mozilla seems to prioritize other things than code quality and the actual usability of their software.
And yes, I know that the SerenityOS developers are trying to do it, but while some very advanced things work "good enough" in their browser so that Twitter and Discord's web client works to some extent, the more basic things are so broken that their browser cannot even render basic HTML 3.2 sites properly.
Google's end goal is probably to "deprecate" HTTP 1.x and force everyone into using their own replacement for the protocol. Their protocol is going to be like the thing they call "HTTP2", an insanely complex protocol that is impossible to implement by a small developer team. In the end their own protocol becomes a "rolling release" protocol that only works with Google's own app, at which point they can completely stop releasing RFCs for it.
She got cancelled for an essay that essentially says, “Trans women are fine, and I support them, but they are not the same as people who are born women”, which is a position that went from relatively uncontroversial to transphobic within the last five or so years.
Intention of the writer is not the point. The fact that she is saying something that would be accepted as "policy" in the overton window previously but is now grounds for a coordinated shunning is a good example of how the window shifts over time.
i'd like to be able to store a phone on the shelf with a properly conditioned battery, to be able to disable the radios during flight, or frankly anywhere else I don't want to be located.
Interesting how different people have different desires.
It added yet another thing I have to implement, test and maintain through whatever changes they decide to make.
Nothing like adding extra work for every enterprise IT team to make new friends.
There are also some massive security issues with making all https traffic blind that making only the data blind didn't create - like the ability to blackhole known unsafe domains as they appear.
I thought the parent was referring to the developers/business choice as being immoral, not the customers.
If I choose to offer predatory loans which I would never accept for my friends or family to a community that is not financially savvy, and someone calls me out on it, it doesn't fly to say "hey, what do you have against these people taking advantage of my easy to use service?".
What you're missing is that I'm talking about developers having a choice between providing the best possible product in a technical sense, or simply going the way of profit and greed. To me, when you knowingly produce a substandard product and seek non-savvy users, that's an immoral act. I believe the goal should be to constantly raise the floor, not lower the ceiling.
> Regardless of our views on encryption, we need to have a conversation about that shift.
Not trying to be snarky here: I don't understand what this conversation looks like. What does it look like? What purpose does it serve, what it's ultimate goal?
I'm also a huge FOSS nerd and it makes my personal AND professional life a lot easier, and I totally agree with you.
If the problem is that the ruthless winner-take-all nature of professional environments is destroying open source, then you need to fix both problems, not one of them. Trying to fix only one won't help.
CD Projekt Red and GOG is doing some great stuff, I think you'd find Epic is much closer to that than you might imagine.
Epic has stated it will put it's games on Steam if Valve drops their cut down to 12%. Epic probably is a little more pragmatic than GOG on ensuring they operate profitably, with willingness to offer compensation for exclusive launches, allowing DRM (although not offering any of their own), etc. but if you've followed Tim Sweeney or read things he's said going back for years, it's obvious he's one of the good guys. He's a CEO of a large business and has to make moves to actually be successful and profitable, but he is strongly opinionated about what's "right" and pushes Epic in that direction where possible.
Bear in mind, even if Epic wasn't offering incentives for exclusives, it would still be silly for game developers to release on both: Sales on Steam would hurt their sales on Epic, and they profit vastly more from Epic sales.
Steam allows you to sell your game and provide players with steam keys from your own website without taking any cut. So that 30% cut that steam takes gets diluted quite a bit.
Epic does not allow for that level of distribution. It also doesn’t seem like they will.
Your argument about walled gardens also falls apart as soon as you realize that Epic is pushing for exclusivity.
So while it's not 100% the same, it's progression far faster than Steam did when Valve pissed the gaming community off by forcing HL2 players to install Steam.
(Can't read the article from my current location) But will the games be downloadable directly from Humble Bundle, or am I just buying a key to redeem on the Epic Game Store (which is the way most HB game purchases work)? If it's the latter, then it is still exclusive.
> Bear in mind, even if Epic wasn't offering incentives for exclusives, it would still be silly for game developers to release on both: Sales on Steam would hurt their sales on Epic, and they profit vastly more from Epic sales.
That's clearly not the case yet, otherwise Epic wouldn't be investing so much effort into pulling exclusives, including games that already have started taking pre-orders on other platforms (to be fair, it seems like those are being honored)
Making their platform a bit less shit for users might help too. It's not like Steam is a pinnacle of good UX that's impossible to beat. Winning through quality and good support would certainly feel better than the impression of "We can burn money getting into this market, so let's buy stuff people want" they're leaving now.
They've released a public roadmap, obviously as more people are on the platform (due to the high profile launches), they're going to be putting increasing effort into improving the platform. Steam has had a long time to improve, and it's still plenty kludgey in certain areas.
I feel people often underestimate the difficulty of going against a monopoly that's been king for over a decade. Multiple avenues are the only way to succeed. I think Epic Store would be DOA without exclusives, regardless of the quality of their launcher.
> CD Projekt Red and GOG is doing some great stuff, I think you'd find Epic is much closer to that than you might imagine.
Absolutely absurd. Steam fundamentally is less of a walled garden than the EGS feature-wise. All you need to do is look at CD-key activation on the steam store. Both Steam and EGS come with the app-requirement constraint, but only one allows you to redeem games purchased offsite.
Besides "He's a good person and will do good things", what actions show this.
Regarding your last paragraph: Epic could put their games on Steam with a 30% price markup. I actually think it would be interesting to see which way users go...
I mean, Metro Exodus is $10 cheaper on Epic than it was on Steam and people are still mad about it. I'm willing to bet people would buy on Steam just because all their other games are on Steam.
I would definitely pay $10 more to have it under the same launcher I've used for a decade. In fact, there's a couple games out recently I've skipped since they decided to release as Epic Store exclusives.
I don't like monopolies, but I like even less having a dozen game launchers/store/accounts.
In that respect, Epic is just as evil as Steam, since they don't offer Federation nor the same as support of users of their service as a hosting platform for interaction.
In respect to which platforms are objectively less evil, comparing features and actual interaction with community and developers...
The ONLY way I see Epic as being better is paying developers a larger cut (and as a result some titles selling for slightly less).
Steam is doing more to support /my/ platform (a competitor to Windows), and has done more to further competition in other aspects.
I don't want Discord to be the federation method either, and XMPP ended up failing due to several mistakes and not requiring full Federation and transparent (un-modified, future / client side extension enabling) message passing between end users of different platforms.
We are talking about the same Epic Games? The ones that abused there position as tech support to get FortNite out the door? The ones that destroyed Silicon Knights? The ones that are 40% owned by TenCent?
Claiming that Epic Games is to blame for the shutdown of Silicon Knights is a reach. Silicon Knights initiated the fight against Epic Games and lost two court cases against them. They were responsible for their own demise.
They quite literally are not, at least not in the US; half the states have right-to-work laws that prohibit this explicitly, and there are likely some protections even in the states that don't have a blanket protection.