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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • Indeed. USB-C is already a lot more feature-rich now than it was when initially designed, yet it hasn’t necessitated moving to a different port or broken protocol compatibility with older USB versions.

    I’m just pointing out that even if we decide to move beyond USB-C, the law already allows for that.

    I truly don’t understand why some are against the law pushing for a standard here. Would these people like it if different branded lightbulbs used different sockets? Or their TV, toaster, washing machine, playstation etc all used different plug sockets? Or only Volkswagen garages had fuel nozzles that fit into Volkswagen cars? Standards are a good thing.


  • Oh yes I’m almost as smart as the geniuses involved in EU tech laws that wanted to spy on all your encrypted conversations.

    Do you mean the one that was proposed and then was immediately shot down? Try reading beyond the scary headlines. Any representative can propose a law, doesn’t mean it’ll get voted through and enacted.

    Could is not the problem. Nearly all of today’s problems could be solved through effective legislation. The problem isn’t could they, it’s would they and who would push for the updated laws.

    Like I said, the law doesn’t need to be updated as it was forward-thinking in its design. It already allows for emerging standards. And why would they decide not to update it if they didn’t have that provision? Why would they do that?


  • Omg you are so SMART! How is it that ONLY YOU have thought of this?!! You should, like, rule the world or something, because you’re clearly so much SMARTER than everybody else!

    Ah wait no, the EU directive already has allowances for newly emerging standards and isn’t actually tied to USB-C specifically. I.e. if a USB-D came out, it could be used without changes to the law.

    This India one is likely the same, or can be easily amended if it isn’t.

    And new standards take time to propagate in the market. USB C was designed in 2012 and the first phone with it was in 2015, from some unknown Chinese brand. It took major brands until 2017! And other devices took even longer than phones. Do you really think they couldn’t update USB-C to D in the law in a timeframe like that? Of course they could.


  • I have really mixed feelings on this.

    On the one hand, I have to be pragmatic. The truth is that the internet kinda needs at least some ads to be viable. Hosting stuff and creating stuff isn’t free. It needs to be paid for somehow, and I doubt people are willing to pay a fee for each site they visit (not that the infrastructure exists for that anyway!)

    Accepting that undeniable truth, I guess we should push for ads to be as uninvasive and privacy respecting as possible. Which is what this project is.

    If this takes off, it would certainly be a net positive, and it could even pressure the likes of the EU to force Google/Meta/others to adopt the same kind of thing. It would also be good from the perspective of Mozilla lessening their reliance on Google.

    That said… I can’t help but feel Firefox is playing with fire here. A lot of their users hate ads (same, ublock origin ftw), and they might view getting involved with this very poorly, risking Firefox losing even more market share.

    And I know the ads will be private, but despite that I think any ad associations at all with Mozilla products risks undermining that reputation.

    They should be very cautious with this.



  • Not only that, but they had to create a company/infrastructure that they had little to no expertise in.

    I guarantee if you asked someone in 2015 “of all the companies out there, who do you think has the knowledge and expertise in civil engineering, US planning law, electricity infrastructure, and wireless communications required to build out a US-wide charging network?”, very few would have come back with “VW would be great at that!”

    I can definitely see the logic in it - it pressured VW to pivot to EV platforms, which I guess was the goal. But expecting them to be able to properly run a completely different business to what they have expertise in was always going to have problems.




  • Google wants you to handle all your storage needs through Drive and Google Photos, where they are in control, can scrape more data, train models on your photos, and push you onto paid storage plans.

    I can’t really see the benefit to Google in having an excellent local file manager with wide archive-file support. It doesn’t profit them in any way that I can think of.

    Thankfully the workaround isn’t too bad, just installing an alternative file manager.








  • People need to remember the vote happened immediately after the EU migration crisis. Anti-EU sentiment was at a high all across the union.

    I don’t know why people act like being anti-EU was a UK thing, not a shared issue across several members. People should remember that before they shit on the UK too much.

    Shit, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, and perhaps others had a similar or higher level of anti-EU sentiment at the time compared to the UK. It’s just that David Cameron was the only one stupid enough to gamble on having a referendum.