Kelvin506 (u/Kelvin506)

Kelvin506 commented on Mozilla reverses course on its terms of use lwn.net/Articles/1012788/... · Posted by u/thangqt

dismalaf · 6 months ago

Kind of, yeah. The DOJ IMO is pretty ignorant.

That being said, I also don't think the browser "duopoly" is as entrenched as market share suggests. As Chromium is open source, the cost to the consumer of switching browsers is minimal; Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera and un-googled Chromium all offer very similar browsing experiences and the main difference is small UI things. If Google does something anti-consumer, people can jump ship very easily. Other corporations can also fork Chromium very easily (as some have already done).

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

Are any of the Chromium-based browsers going to retain manifest v2, or are they all stuck with neutered extensions? A quick search says even Vivaldi is going to lose v2 support later this year. Brave and Edge are non-starters.

Kelvin506 commented on Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises to not sell their data theregister.com/2025/03/0... · Posted by u/tempodox

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

Mozilla seems to have forgotten that they survived Chrome by being overtly, explicitly privacy-focused. They've since stopped being that. Even if they are still tacitly privacy-focused, that's not good enough anymore.

We assume Mozilla is now just another ad-pandering jackwagon because that is the only safe assumption when presented with the facts: a major change in management, followed by removal of "we won't sell your data" across all of their marketing.

Their userbase is arguably mostly people who put up with browser disparity for the sake of peace of mind about their data. That type of user will abandon Firefox the same way we did Chrome.

Kelvin506 commented on Mozilla flamed by Firefox fans after reneging on promises to not sell their data theregister.com/2025/03/0... · Posted by u/tempodox

braiamp · 6 months ago

This is yet again a nothing burger. They had to change that definition because in California "selling" means "[...] releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring [...]" in exchange for “monetary” or *“other valuable consideration.”*. You can see user collected data publicly, and use said data to improve Firefox the browser, that would be argued that is a valuable consideration.

The user collected data are things like about:studies, the new tab page, Firefox Addons, and anything listed here https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#health-report

This is literally language that had to change to describe Mozilla's actions in line with California's law.

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

If so, their execution of that change is terrible. They could have explicitly clarified things, replacing "sell" with more expansive language that would maintain the explicit commitment to user privacy. But instead they changed their words to sound like Microsoft and Google, two notorious privacy violators, and have since only made it worse by only giving us circular explanations.

Kelvin506 commented on A DOGE staffer appears to be posting DOGE work on his public GitHub twitter.com/SollenbergerR... · Posted by u/amarcheschi

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

Anyone grab a copy of the repos before jomanw set their account to private?

Kelvin506 commented on Ask HN: Do US tech firms realize the backlash growing in Europe? · Posted by u/julianpye

Daril · 6 months ago

For what it counts, I deleted my Amazon account today (and lost all my Kindle books in the process), I'll never buy anything from them again. I'll close my S3 storage account with a US company in the coming months : I'll switch to a German service. In the coming weeks, I'll also delete my GMail account (my devices are already deGoogled since many years). There a lot of European alternatives that respect our privacy, our values and principles.

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

I'm in the U.S. and doing the same. While EU laws don't protect me as well as they would someone on the correct side of the pond, I do still benefit from better integrity and transparency.

Would you be up for making recommendations?

Kelvin506 commented on Treasury agrees to block DOGE's access to personal taxpayer data at IRS washingtonpost.com/busine... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute

cced · 6 months ago

Why does the ccp always come up in these discussions? You have Rogue billionaire taking an axe at the pillars of government and there’s still someone bringing up the ccp.

Why

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

A lot of people are so brainwashed by U.S. propaganda they cannot comprehend that American billionaires are independently evil. Add to that the fanboyism where his sycophants can't see how utterly rotten Musk is and always has been.

Their sense of world order requires there be a shadowy threat actor such as Russia or China, instead of the obvious truth that this is American capitalism operating as designed.

Kelvin506 commented on Texas banned abortion, then sepsis rates soared propublica.org/article/te... · Posted by u/mooreds

jermaustin1 · 6 months ago

The thing is the people who are for abortion bans think if a person gets an abortion and becomes sick from it, they get what they deserve.

So from a scientific perspective, they don't care, all they care about is a fetus being born, not well cared for, not born to a family that wants it, not born healthily, just born. Science has no place in their philosophy.

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

They can't grasp that miscarriages, which occur for many reasons even in healthy people, have exactly the same emergent medical care needs as abortions. Laws banning abortions usually also interfere with (if not outright block) access to necessary care.

It's a textbook example of how theocracy is wholly incapable of sound public governance.

Kelvin506 commented on Bosch's brake-by-wire system may be the next big leap in automotive tech newatlas.com/automotive/b... · Posted by u/zfg

karamanolev · 6 months ago

Overall system complexity might be higher (due to more electronics), but this type of complexity tends to have a more favorable profile for economies of scale. One, generally, writes software once, but has to route hydraulics, reservoirs and so on for every car produced.

Separately, hydraulic systems are an inspection item with a serviceable fluid. Electronic systems work without servicing until they don't, at which point a lamp on your dashboard lights up. More convenient for the manufacturer/dealer, less convenient for you, but that's typical for modern anti-consumer (pro-producer/corporation) design.

Then servicing a hydraulic system is more manual labor intensive (replacing hoses, bleeding the system, replacing the fluid), while electronic systems come with components that are replaced wholesale, where the consumer pays the price for the new component. I guess it's obvious which ones the manufacturer prefers.

Driving experience suffers, but not in a way that measurably affects consumer behavior. Most people tend to care about other characteristics more than the particular issue of latency. As another example, see the issue of rev hang - a type of latency on its own.

Kelvin506 · 6 months ago

My main concern is the same as with electronic gear levers/selectors, electric parking brakes, steer by wire, and throttle by wire:

What happens when the car has a failure that kills all the electrics?

That's a much more common failure scenario than people think. Batteries go flat. Wiring gets chewed and shorts with vibration. CAN buses need only a brief short to go out entirely and not reset. Even in a modest crash the car can lose its battery and alternator, or get a system short.

Tesla owners have learned this lesson repeatedly with getting locked out, locked in, stuck in park, unable to shift to neutral for a tow, etc. Other car owners have learned this with electric parking brakes getting stuck on.

If the electrics fail and the car is moving, I need steering, brakes, and the gear lever to all work to stop safely. If they're by-wire, I'm just a passenger.

Kelvin506 commented on List of DRM-Free Bookshops libreture.com/bookshops/... · Posted by u/nafnlj

southernplaces7 · 7 months ago

Casually worth noting the obvious: There are also services like Libgen and Anna's archive that are completely DRM free and have pretty much anything you can get on Amazon except, well, for free, aside from also being DRM-free.

Kelvin506 · 7 months ago

Also worth noting that such sites technically are piracy. I am not making any moral or ethical assertions about it, but people need to know that so they can make an informed decision before doing so. And no, it's not inherently obvious to everyone.

Libgen, Anna's Archive, et al do however provide a valuable service in maintaining access to works out of distribution or blocked by censorship.