partial_accumen

Netscape went bankrupt when Microsoft started giving out Internet Explorer for free. So, today, would you prefer to use a free Microsoft Edge or would you prefer to pay for Firefox that is telemetry and ad free?

Paying for privacy should not be necessary though, its a right

This is an incredibly myopic statement in this context. In the case of Firefox here, you have total power over your privacy. Don’t use the software.

The money to actually create and maintain the product has to come from somewhere. Expecting the software developers at Mozilla to work totally for free is greedy on your part. One way they can pay for the development of Firefox is through selling advertising to users. As long as these advertisements are able to be turned off, I don’t have a problem with that (historically they were). Its not my preference, but another way is to sell your activity in some capacity which is what the Telemetry since 2017 has been doing apparently. I don’t like that at all. Finally the last way is for the users to pay for it.

Pick one. I pick the one that maintains my privacy and my eyeballs, paying for the product myself. That is why I want that as an option.

Back when they were “Netscape” you could buy a box off a shelf with the current version for a flat fee. I’d be okay with a paid version with zero ad inserts, and zero leaky telemetry. I’d even be okay if it was $X for the base product and $Y for $Z years of security updates.

As long as they’ve got the Point of Sale going for the purchase, if they also want to include addons that I could select to donate to in the same transaction where they pass through those funds to the addon developer, I’d be good with that too.

One mention I didn’t see was any reference to Sodium Ion batteries. While these aren’t great for EV cars (even though you can buy at least one Chinese EV with one right now), as they are physically larger and less energy dense than any Lithium chemistries. However, they have the potential to be REALLY CHEAP because they use zero of the limited supply of Lithium and instead use the very abundant Sodium…as in table salt Sodium (NaCl).

If they are developed and end up being as cheap as though possible, the positive implications for grid storage are huge! You’ve heard of all that extra wasted solar power in places like California, Texas, and even western China? A very small amount of that energy is already being captured and used on the grid with today’s expensive Lithium batteries and its a game changer. Sodium batteries (if they deliver as hoped) could be an order of magnitude higher in value because of how cheap they could be were we don’t really care they are larger and heavier.

Instead we get an almost unusable internet where ads take up more and more real estate.

Its even worse than just hurting usability. Lots of ad networks are not policing their advertising customers and malicious payloads have been injected from ads. So allowing ads is a security risk because of the lack of security at the various ad networks.

I had already downloaded and installed Ironfox (FF Android fork) on my phone and have been using it for a week or so. It works identically to FF for android. Ublock Origin is working in Ironfox too.

It certainly opens up lost of “evil maid” attacks.

Initially makes me wonder how the employer could be so dumb as to give one employee so much access.

The amount of access he had doesn’t surprise me. He’d been there for 11 years already likely working on many things as he interacted with systems in the course of his legitimate work. While its possible to set up access and permissions in an organization utilizing the “least privilege principle”, its expensive, difficult to maintain, and adds lots of slowdowns in velocity to business operations. Its worth it to prevent this exact case from the article, but lots of companies don’t have the patience or can’t afford it.

A 55-year-old software developer

… and…

Lu had worked at Eaton Corp. for about 11 years when he apparently became disgruntled by a corporate “realignment” in 2018 that “reduced his responsibilities,” the DOJ said.

So he was 48 at the time he started this. Was he planning on retiring from all work at 48? I can’t imagine any other employer would want to touch him with a 10ft (3.048 meters) pole after he actively sabotaged his prior employer’s codebase causing global outages.

If anyone is confused by the title and conclusion of the article I think its because the author buried the real thesis. I think its this:

“It’s now a slow and clunky barrier to playing the games I own on my Mac computers—a far cry from the pro-consumer persona that Valve and Steam usually enjoy.”

The author is upset Valve isn’t supporting the author’s Mac gaming desires.

About 30% of the article is directly referencing Steam on Mac with another 30% indirectly. It feels like the author is looking at the small niche of Mac gaming overall, the decline of Valve’s interest in Mac, and projecting that decline to every other aspect of Valve. To the author’s credit, they point to some massive changes in the Mac ecosystem which invalidated lots of Valve’s efforts (Apple deprecating 32 bit support in the OS, full CPU change from Intel to ARM) but they seem to lay the blame at Valve’s feet for not pouring development effort into Steam for Mac despite the extremely small market share Mac gaming seems to have.

The author even cites Valve’s continued use of 32-bit executable on Windows and Linux as a failing of the company. The irony is that I’m guessing the continued use of the 32-bit code is what has enabled Steam’s large and deep compatibly across systems. This further underscores Valve’s choice to largely abandon Mac, as Apple removed the option to continue operating on the 32-bit client base.

To the author, your complaints should be directed at Apple, not Valve.