• 19 Posts
  • 69 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I know it’s a big issue for many given the bad news and crap Google does, but Mozilla is actively taking away features from Gecko whereas Vivaldi, Microsoft, Google and Samsung are improving chromium. I find it hard to make Firefox behave how I want it to when browsers like Vivaldi or even Edge make it easy.

    I know a common sentiment I hear (at least on Reddit) is “Why didn’t so and so’s browser use Gecko?” but when a company or person does, a lot of /r/Firefox and /r/Linux users will get upset that they are forking Firefox instead of adding to Firefox/Gecko.





  • Apologies for the delayed response;

    1. Scanning documents: it uses apples built in ios scanning feature. This removes the need for office lens, readdle scanner pro, etc.

    2. “Amazon this”: will scan the barcode of any product and easily and quickly let me compare the prices of the item.

    3. Combine/Compress/Remove Subject shortcuts: three shortcuts that make an app like photoshop redundant.

    4. Compress PDF: does what it says; reduces dpi with little to no visible diffrence. (I have 126 shortcuts at the moment and these are just a few mentioned)








  • Brave is an advertising company first and foremost. It can say it’s privacy respecting compared to Google, but it is still an advertising company.


    The whole BAT/Ads/etc. is like what Microsoft is doing with Microsoft Rewards (though at least Microsoft Rewards provides actual value); that is, turning people into lab rats and modifying their behavior in a way to benefit the company. You may not like Bing, but it gives you gift cards or discounts; you may not like the Ads and notifications brave gives you, but you can convert BAT to USD after seeing thousands of ads.

    You then have the affiliate shit that went on, which isn’t surprising given they are an ad company, but they didn’t explicit say they did this until caught. Something I can think of that is similar is that Vivaldi’s ad blocker won’t block ads on partners, by default, but Vivaldi in its ad blocker settings shows a list that you “disable” to enable ad blocking on said sites.


  • Summary by Google Bard:

    The article “The Cloud Is a Prison. Can the Local-First Software Movement Set Us Free?” by Gregory Barber discusses the growing movement towards local-first computing.

    This movement advocates for a more privacy-focused and secure way of computing, where data is stored and processed locally on the user’s device instead of on remote servers. The author argues that the cloud is not as secure or private as we think it is, and that local-first computing offers a number of advantages, such as better performance, greater control over data, and reduced reliance on large corporations.


  • Reading the article, I believe this take isn’t the best view or one that fits what the average user thinks.

    The problem with Firefox for normal users is Mozilla changing things way too often, changing UI or forcing features/ads/marketing onto users.

    I used Firefox for the longest time as my primary browser but remember needing to do the following for family members:

    1. Disable Pocket
    2. Disable Firefox Hello
    3. Change Yahoo Search to Google
    4. XUL Add-ons removal and finding alternatives.
    5. Firefox sponsored content (new tab page, suggestions)
    6. Mr. Robot Scandal

    Another thing is Firefox is where it is now because of the late introduction to a Firefox version for iOS:

    Even if it’s just a skin over Safari, it allowed Chrome users on iOS to sync their browser data, everywhere they went. Firefox didn’t have a version until 2015 iirc on iOS.


    Mozilla’s issue is that they do not listen to users, and they don’t listen to their contributions. Mozilla (not the non-profit) as a company has no idea what to do, and when users suggest ways to improve the experience for avid users or normal people, they have an opinionated take that deflects what their users want.

    To add to the point above, this is why Thunderbird has gotten big updates recently, and even will get an iOS version soon. Between the UI updates, news and general contribution + the community and even the Thundercast podcast about said email client, they don’t have to deal with bull shit that Firefox does with Mozilla corp.

    (I say this as someone who even though I use Vivaldi and Edge now, Firefox and even Opera (presto version) will always have a place in my heart which makes both current versions of the browsers states sad.)