by Clayton » Tue Mar 04, 2025 12:14 pm
scruffynerf wrote: ↑Tue Mar 04, 2025 11:35 am
I used to agree with you, but I've sadly learned the hard way (repeatedly) that the 'beliefs' or agendas of a developer end up mattering in the long run, almost never for the good of the project.
No, I agree with you on that. The leftist's temptation to "Nudge" when that is the core of his beliefs about what power is to be used for, and when he has a giant Nudge-lever in his own control, is eventually irresistible. I fully expect to have to nomadically migrate on from LibreWolf sooner or later (hopefully later). We have been embroiled in a browser war for 20+ years that isn't really about this versus that browser, it's about
universally making all PC platforms connected to the Internet vulnerable to the intelligence agencies. The browser is always the biggest security hole and there are approximately an infinity of possible exploits buried in the Moon-sized twine-ball of code we call "a browser". All that complexity is
on purpose. The constantly updating versions, constantly rotating standards, constantly evolving "platform", constantly changing website "requirements" for what must be supported in order to "run the Internet" is the whole magician's trick, in itself. As long as we are operating in this hurricane of standards-less "standards", there is 0% chance of actual device security and secure access to the Internet. So, the intelligence agencies are always guaranteed to have a massive stockpile of ever-refreshing zero-day exploits that they can use to infiltrate, spy on and brick the large majority of online systems, one way or another. That's the POINT!
Given that, I see myself as a permanent nomad in respect to browsers. I used to just run Chrome because, why not, it's a great browser. But then Google couldn't resist pulling on that Nudge lever and started doing its usual shady crap. So, I jumped ship to FF. Now they're doing it too, but the difference is Chrome engine is not FOSS, whereas, FF engine is. The only moat they can build around the FF engine is to try to saturate all the FF forks with a woke brigade and just rainbow everything up so badly no conservatives will trust the alternatives. Well, too bad, we can make literally infinite forks and, while there are way too many woke-freaks, there aren't infinitely many of them!!! So, we win.
No, it's not an overpowering reason to avoid using a particular piece of software, but it is a reason to seek alternatives/forks/etc, and encourage competition.
The browser situation needs to get fixed. We need a GNU/FOSS equivalent to FF that supports a "minimal subset" of the Internet... just enough to allow people to engage with the Internet usefully and no more. ATP is running a browser like this, I forgot which one. But the problem is that the FF engine is infinitely more capable than any other FOSS engine out there, so what we need is the FF engine forked and all the telemetry crap hard switched off (I think LW Is doing this), and no other unnecessary crap added. LW is it for now. Hopefully a more reliable group of people will fork FF and build something similar, minus the wokeness, or maybe there's already a fork out there and I just haven't heard of it, there must be a million forks.
Librewolf seems fine today, but when that developer learns that 'bad people' are doing something he dislikes, because the code doesn't prevent it, and he can 'fix' that, do you really think he'll hesitate?
No, the left always pulls the "Nudge" lever, sooner or later. In fact, that's WHY Mozilla is doing this now, because they've allowed themselves to be invaded by the neoliberal $$$-Mafia who are really the force behind wokism... so they themselves opened the door to this takeover and monetization when they went woke. This day was inevitable.
Chrome is the midst of entirely neutering 'userscripts', extensions, and the like, because they allow people to do 'bad things'.
What I find hilarious is that they inevitably run into trying to solve the Halting Problem.... like, you do know that what you're trying to do is
mathematically impossible, right? But hey, when you have infinity-$$$, who's scared of a little
uncomputability?? Pfffft...
remove ads
^^^ THIS ^^^
The ad-servers are the digital fly-eyes of the intelligence agencies. Until this is understood by people, the true depth of our predicament is not being grasped. It's not really about the ad revenue... it's about tracking and aggregating all your activity back to a central server, where the intelligence agencies can tap it. This is way better than a backbone tap because the data has already been filtered, so they're already only looking at the high-value data. Feed it into LLMs, and you have 100% real-time SA over the entire Internet. I'm willing to bet serious money they've had LLMs for more than 15 years, and have been running the ad-server data through them for at least that long.
ublock adblocking
Ublock Origin is the Bitcoin of the ad-blocker wars. I don't know who is behind UO but there must be some segment of the Establishment which is not corrupted and understands the real stakes here, and is playing opposition, because the game that UO is playing can't be done by amateurs. You gotta really know what you're doing. The fly-eye system doesn't like ad-blockers, again, not really because of the money... it's because you're placing a piece of paper between them and the fly-swatter so they can't see the swatter moving towards them. That is why they will sooner burn the entire nation down than give up on these issues. If it were just about the money, as soon as the costs outweighed the benefits, they'd give up. But they don't give up, because it's not really about the money, it's a strategic NATSEC control-point.
I wouldn't trust LibreWolf to be that, if he's fine with censoring and is clearly ideologically minded (read 'brainwashed by the left')
I'm pitching my tent here for now. If the raiders show up on the ridge-line again, we'll take some pot-shots, pack up, and move along to another ravine...
[quote=scruffynerf post_id=142070 time=1741113306 user_id=249]
I used to agree with you, but I've sadly learned the hard way (repeatedly) that the 'beliefs' or agendas of a developer end up mattering in the long run, almost never for the good of the project.[/quote]
No, I agree with you on that. The leftist's temptation to "Nudge" when that is the core of his beliefs about what power is to be used for, and when he has a giant Nudge-lever in his own control, is eventually irresistible. I fully expect to have to nomadically migrate on from LibreWolf sooner or later (hopefully later). We have been embroiled in a browser war for 20+ years that isn't really about this versus that browser, it's about [i]universally making all PC platforms connected to the Internet vulnerable to the intelligence agencies[/i]. The browser is always the biggest security hole and there are approximately an infinity of possible exploits buried in the Moon-sized twine-ball of code we call "a browser". All that complexity is [i]on purpose[/i]. The constantly updating versions, constantly rotating standards, constantly evolving "platform", constantly changing website "requirements" for what must be supported in order to "run the Internet" is the whole magician's trick, in itself. As long as we are operating in this hurricane of standards-less "standards", there is 0% chance of actual device security and secure access to the Internet. So, the intelligence agencies are always guaranteed to have a massive stockpile of ever-refreshing zero-day exploits that they can use to infiltrate, spy on and brick the large majority of online systems, one way or another. That's the POINT!
Given that, I see myself as a permanent nomad in respect to browsers. I used to just run Chrome because, why not, it's a great browser. But then Google couldn't resist pulling on that Nudge lever and started doing its usual shady crap. So, I jumped ship to FF. Now they're doing it too, but the difference is Chrome engine is not FOSS, whereas, FF engine is. The only moat they can build around the FF engine is to try to saturate all the FF forks with a woke brigade and just rainbow everything up so badly no conservatives will trust the alternatives. Well, too bad, we can make literally infinite forks and, while there are way too many woke-freaks, there aren't infinitely many of them!!! So, we win.
[quote]No, it's not an overpowering reason to avoid using a particular piece of software, but it is a reason to seek alternatives/forks/etc, and encourage competition.[/quote]
The browser situation needs to get fixed. We need a GNU/FOSS equivalent to FF that supports a "minimal subset" of the Internet... just enough to allow people to engage with the Internet usefully and no more. ATP is running a browser like this, I forgot which one. But the problem is that the FF engine is infinitely more capable than any other FOSS engine out there, so what we need is the FF engine forked and all the telemetry crap hard switched off (I think LW Is doing this), and no other unnecessary crap added. LW is it for now. Hopefully a more reliable group of people will fork FF and build something similar, minus the wokeness, or maybe there's already a fork out there and I just haven't heard of it, there must be a million forks.
[quote]Librewolf seems fine today, but when that developer learns that 'bad people' are doing something he dislikes, because the code doesn't prevent it, and he can 'fix' that, do you really think he'll hesitate? [/quote]
No, the left always pulls the "Nudge" lever, sooner or later. In fact, that's WHY Mozilla is doing this now, because they've allowed themselves to be invaded by the neoliberal $$$-Mafia who are really the force behind wokism... so they themselves opened the door to this takeover and monetization when they went woke. This day was inevitable.
[quote]Chrome is the midst of entirely neutering 'userscripts', extensions, and the like, because they allow people to do 'bad things'.[/quote]
What I find hilarious is that they inevitably run into trying to solve the Halting Problem.... like, you do know that what you're trying to do is [i]mathematically[/i] impossible, right? But hey, when you have infinity-$$$, who's scared of a little [i]uncomputability[/i]?? Pfffft...
[quote]remove ads[/quote]
^^^ THIS ^^^
The ad-servers are the digital fly-eyes of the intelligence agencies. Until this is understood by people, the true depth of our predicament is not being grasped. It's not really about the ad revenue... it's about tracking and aggregating all your activity back to a central server, where the intelligence agencies can tap it. This is way better than a backbone tap because the data has already been filtered, so they're already only looking at the high-value data. Feed it into LLMs, and you have 100% real-time SA over the entire Internet. I'm willing to bet serious money they've had LLMs for more than 15 years, and have been running the ad-server data through them for at least that long.
[quote]ublock adblocking[/quote]
Ublock Origin is the Bitcoin of the ad-blocker wars. I don't know who is behind UO but there must be some segment of the Establishment which is not corrupted and understands the real stakes here, and is playing opposition, because the game that UO is playing can't be done by amateurs. You gotta really know what you're doing. The fly-eye system doesn't like ad-blockers, again, not really because of the money... it's because you're placing a piece of paper between them and the fly-swatter so they can't see the swatter moving towards them. That is why they will sooner burn the entire nation down than give up on these issues. If it were just about the money, as soon as the costs outweighed the benefits, they'd give up. But they don't give up, because it's not really about the money, it's a strategic NATSEC control-point.
[quote]I wouldn't trust LibreWolf to be that, if he's fine with censoring and is clearly ideologically minded (read 'brainwashed by the left')[/quote]
I'm pitching my tent here for now. If the raiders show up on the ridge-line again, we'll take some pot-shots, pack up, and move along to another ravine...
