Thanks I hate it

Most obvious monopoly since Ma Bell. Even worse than Microsoft which was also obviously a monopoly. Break them all up. Microsoft, ATT (for the… 4th time? Maybe just abolish them at this point…), Comcast, Verizon, Google, Apple, the list goes on. All those food corps that end up being 3 parent companies owning everything else. Break it all up. Force unionization also while going through the legal processes.

Your first point is made irrelevant by the law existing. It doesn’t matter what Apple says now, they must comply or face fines for violation. Maybe they’ll bring that up at a future court hearing to which I say: I hope the EU imprisons Tim Cook if they try. Why? Fuck em that’s why

They’ll very likely try some fucky shit. Good news is 1) simply the existence of proper alternatives, even if required to be sideloaded, is a MASSIVE step forward and 2) I assume the EU will pursue them if only to suck money from their coffers. Blocking it to a EU citizen who is outside the EU absolutely violates the spirit of the law and the EU should come down on Apple with all their power if/when that happens

I personally use Fennec and Bromium whenever using Android (I’m a sick fuck who hot swaps between an iPhone and a Google Pixel phone). Fennec for a lot of stuff is fine, but much like the default Firefox, it’s still slow- although better. Bromium and other Chromium based browsers on Android, especially on older shittier hardware, are really hard to beat. I find myself using Bromium a lot just because it’s simply faster. Firefox/Fennec with native support for actual ublock origin though… nothing beats that browsing experience as far as replicating real desktop browsing. Bromium can’t keep up and Google doesn’t want Chrome to. Brave can offer a similar blocking experience but at what cost? I fucking H A T E crypto and even their features that you can turn off, just seeing references to them and such pisses me off. Honestly wish someone would spitefully fork Brave anonymously and remove any crypto references. Last time a team did it openly Brave got pissy and tried to get the project taken down… Even though it’s open source. So, fuck them.

Do you have ublock origin installed? It eliminates all those popups in my experience.

This is pretty much what happened, yes. I’d offer an important expansion on “innovative features” though. Chrome was objectively faster at everything. Loading pages, starting up, all that stuff. If all you care(d) about was a super fast, modern-feeling browsing experience then Chrome was all there was.

I was one of those “fuck Bill Gates!” dudes circa 2008 or 09 or whenever Chrome came along. I had been using Firefox for years because, I dunno, nerd shit. All my nerdy buddies used it and said I should use it, so I did.

And then Chrome came along and like you say Google was the cool kid on the block. They were building out Google Fiber (remember that? Feels bad), “taking it to the man ™️!” in the form of ISPs. Oh God, how I wish they had won that fight… Even the might of Google proved incapable of breaking the collusion of government and corporations that empower the ISPs in the US…

Anyway, Google was, if I’m being fair here, doing an amazing job with PR.

They were building up and out Android OS, providing an actual competitor to Apple’s (basically) first to market iOS.

Mozilla simply couldn’t keep up. It was already pretty niche pre-Chrome, but post-Chrome it was just IE/Edge and Chrome basically. Firefox was left far behind by the general public, forgotten and, if remembered, remembered only as “the browser for nerds.”

I’m back on Firefox now after Google’s billionth threat to end adblockers in Chrome. That plus Google’s clearly unethical practices. I don’t agree with everything Mozilla does/has done and some of the stuff that comes prepackaged in Firefox is unnecessary in my view, BUT there’s little point in denying their superiority over the competition in many ways.

There’s absolutely no way they force the usage of apps. How would people without smartphones use their websites? From a laptop, on the website? And if they use a non-standard browser like a fork of some weird shit? I know financial places are run by 70 year old boomers but there’s no way they’d try this as it just goes down a rabbit hole of constant IT work. Certainly not every bank anyway. The entire concept of a place even thinking to do this is hurting my brain because it’s some incompetent. You either hire a million CS people and try to fix problems all day or lose all your customers instantly. A large portion anyway. If this is true for the UK then that little island is gone in more ways than I previously knew. Pure incompetence.

Anyway I wasn’t assuming you were dumb, just maybe hadn’t tried it for some reason. It’s like asking if your computer is plugged in and the switch is on first.

You can just use the websites for any bank or credit card, etc. instead of the app. It’s less convenient and usually a way shittier experience, but, that’s the price of not using Google (or Apple, Microsoft, etc.)

What extensions does chrome have which are useful that Firefox doesn’t?

My only recurring issue with Firefox, which may have been fixed I dunno, is it for some reason it “isn’t officially supported” or whatever exact wording to use hardware security keys (like yubikey, which I use on every account that allows it). It’s only certain websites that don’t want to work though. Like google, Microsoft and many others were fine but I think paypal didn’t want to work properly but it does work on Edge, Chrome, probably Brave. Overall annoying as fuck at times but I deal with it to be out of Google’s-world

He managed to build a weird cult of preteens and divorced dads but soon it seems he’ll be thrown in a hole for at least a decade. I’m generally anti-prison, but this dude certainly deserves whatever is coming his way.

That 74 is kind of tricky and my vision is “normal”

This reminds me of a time I was taking one of these colorblind tests. The person administering it was flipping (way too fast) through the numbers and I was reading them fine. A trickier one came up which I could very clearly read, like this 71/74 one, and I said (because fucker was flipping way too fast) “71… no, 74 actually.” He marked it wrong. It felt like a real life Seinfeld incident after that where I kind of stopped the whole test and was saying basically, as nicely as I could, “hey. I said 74. Mark that correct.” MFer didn’t even vocalize a response. I can’t remember but I think he did like two more numbers, said I passed with whatever number of tests with one incorrect. I had to get my eyesight examined after that (this was for some pilot shit. Like a physical) and I told the doctor and he kind of shrugged it off too like “you passed it. It doesn’t matter.” IT MATTERS TO ME GODDAMNIT

Thanks for triggering this random traumatic event from over a decade ago.

Is this the landlord and city that Musk is currently having his asshole drilled into for illegally (without permit and using unlicensed workers for commercial work) modifying a bunch of shit? I remember he asked some dude to add a toilet near his office. Not like to hire a plumber or get estimates or ideas and shit. Just like, “hey. Put a toilet here.” That was my favorite story and where I really went like “oooook duuuuude” uncontrollably out loud. I’ve had a fuckton of “trade” jobs like HVAC, electrical work (mostly related to the HVAC), did some industrial scale backup power generator installs/maintenance, did some plumbing stuff. Kinda touched all over and all around in the world of building and adding on shit. So when I heard about him modifying electrical circuits without a permit… ok. I can see that if you get the right dude who knows what to do but isn’t legally certified. Of course you shouldn’t do that, especially with a business and a place you don’t own, but I get it. Adding a fucking bathroom though is absolutely bonkers to ask a regular dude (not even a guy who considers himself “handy”) to do. Like I think with all the shit I’ve done over 15 years or so, yeah, I could add a bathroom somewhere. But it would probably suck ass. And I’m not an engineer nor have I dabbled at all. And adding a giant, heavy object filled with water, ventilation to suck your shit smells out, a sink, lighting and all that stuff is gonna obviously require some demolition and then doing the whole thing. It’s an insane job to ask of someone who isn’t presenting themselves as a professional in that field. If it was replacing a toilet or sink, ok, again, not correct but I get that. Building a full whole new shitter is insane. It just shows his complete detachment from reality too because I don’t think most “normal” people would even think to ask anyone BUT contractors/plumbers whatever to do such a job. Definitely not a personal assistant.

Gonna be captain obvious here by saying “maybe because the world is spiraling into shit?”

And everything is, absolutely by definition, political. Everything. People who think they can escape politics are delusional and privileged. If you’re reading about some horrible new law banning encryption then yes that’s fucking political. Instead of head in sanding… I dunno. Do something?

I mean, that’s the way it goes sometimes. I know it’s like “duh just be like this!” Type statement but people really shouldn’t ever attach themselves to websites, brands, etc. Always be mentally ready to walk away. That doesn’t mean walk at the first shitty experience, but, you know. Gotta know when to ol’ yeller something and reddit passed that point a long time ago. Discord is my personal ol’ yeller project right now besides reddit. Trying to get people to move off since they’re just becoming greedier and greedier + it’s centralized as fuck and they’re starting to make moves, it seems, towards more censorship there despite that kind of being the opposite of what people came to expect.

It’s not a “dunk” you debate pervert. It’s informing the uninformed in a generalized fashion.

Reading is hard. School was hard. I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. Someone failed you along the way. I’m sorry that happened to you. If you keep reading and think really really hard, though, it might get better. I can’t promise anything 😔

You’re not a physician because no physician worth a grain of shit would be concerned about the fetus and not the insane overreach of government forcing the endangerment of the pregnant person’s life.

More right wingery.

If you are concerned with the fetus here in any fashion, sorry to be the first to break the news, but you have a reactionary take on this topic. I’ve been incredibly generous even (which many purists would roast us both alive for) and given that YOU can hold whatever opinions you want on birth and abortion and whatever- but you cannot apply your perceived morality around a medical procedure to other humans. You can say that makes whoever “look bad” all you want, ok, you think I give a fuck about the opinions of reactionaries who support forcing women to birth babies on top of the wars they want to send that future-kid to so that kid can shoot some random poor person in some far off land to enrich aforementioned reactionaries? I’m supposed to bow down to their opinions and their thoughts on me? No. That’s not how any of this works. Now you’ve been informed of what you support and going forward will never have the excuse of ignorance again. I’d suggest you do a little reflection. And stop lying about being a doctor online. No one cares. I’m Jesus Christ btw.

It’s not your decision and should not be the government’s. Only the pregnant person and their doctor matter. Possible input from their parents and/or other potential-parent of the fetus.

You’re giving away your right wingery too easily. When you call a fetus a baby, red flag, but sometimes people just use that (if the fetus is an intended pregnancy and the parent(s) plan to actually have a child, usually). So, in the interest of debate-bro “good faith,” ok.

Referring to abortion as disgusting. Well, that pretty much just ruined anything else you had to say. I bet open heart surgery or getting your arm reset after breaking can be pretty disgusting to most of us who aren’t used to such things. They’re all still medical procedures and their disgustingness or not is completely irrelevant to outsiders to the procedure. And if you’re simply disgusted at the idea of the procedure being done, that meaning, well one choose better words and two, yeah, that’s just reactionary mindset creeping in and spewing out your little fingers. At the end of the day whatever little nuggets of shit were implanted into YOUR brain as a child (such as “abortions are only valid until X arbitrarily decided date”) are irrelevant to the world and to this completely other human being seeking a medical procedure. Long story short: it’s none of your fucking business. A fetus is NOT a baby or a child and you’re purposely wrongly using the word to conflate the two. Again… right wingery…

Prosecution is not warrant for a seeking to obtain medical procedures. This isn’t the year 1647. Please fucking stop.

If you were discussing a purely rhetorical topic on “the moral and ethics of abortions and when they’re done” maybe you’d have some valid points and perhaps, because my brain was also rotted by arbitrary religious deadlines growing up, I’d be inclined to agree with hypothetical “if it were MY gf/wife, I’d want…” whatever to happen. But at the end of the day this isn’t our partner, it wasn’t our body, we aren’t doctors involved in the decision, we aren’t the person’s parent(s), we aren’t fucking Jesus or whatever. It’s not our decision to make, it’s no one’s but the person with the fetus under the care of a qualified physician. Who, btw, very well might be, and I’d assume probably was, advising towards birth and then surrendering for adoption. But it’s not their decision either. Just one single person gets that right with some important advisors along the way. We are none of those people, so, we and the government should probably fuck off forever.

And Zuck can completely fuck himself. Not even going to rant on that because corporations bending over and spreading fully for the government at the slightest hint of a request for private data has been happening for decades. They’re morally bankrupt cowards. Even protected from personal legal liability (by their corporations, which do provide that, unfortunately in most cases) they won’t even attempt to stand up for privacy rights if nothing else. Gross.

Jesus Christ I completely forgot that many of the workers were/are H1B visas. Possibly here for many years with spouse and kids. Our immigration system is so fucking dogshit placing all the power over someone’s life in the hands of people like Zuck or Elon. Open borders is best obviously but within some neoliberal system the cruelty here and the privatization of said cruelity is really beyond the pale. Even the chuds should be pissed about this situation since those immigrant workers will be willing to work for dogshit wages and under dogshit conditions (not blaming them, it’s not their fault) and thus lower the working conditions for citizens. Those visas should be unconditionally granted indefinitely pending permanent resident status (green card) and completely untied to any employer. Maybe if I go super libby I’d say make it a requirement they work for a minimum of 6 months within the applied-for position or industry barring being fired (for any reason to avoid BS by employers) or the company going bankrupt. Then they can do whatever they want while waiting for permanent residence… The way it is now is just absolutely bonkers and clearly as fuck designed to torture people with the constant “stay in line, stfu, eat your crumbs or you and your wife will be on a boat next week.” Pretty gross. Shithole country.

Goddamn I fucking HATE Zuck the Cuck, but in this one specific case, gotta give the dude credit: That’s hilarious