BananaTrifleViolin

All browser companies monetise you to some extent. Even Firefox does this a bit (Paid deals make Google is the default search, and Amazon search is also paid to be included as a link for example).

However the big difference is the private companies like Vivaldi, Brave etc monetise your data more and less transparently, plus the entire Chromium ecosystem is basically under Google’s control. Manifest 3 will not be restricted to Chrome, it is being built into the Chromium project and will end up in Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc. Chromium is a trojan horse project, used to push Google’s priorities and objectives across the web, not end users.

The only viable alternative is Firefox based browsers. I use Firefox itself (aware of it’s compromises and using a whole host of extensions), but there are also forks and projects that strip even Firefox’s compromises back - LibreWolf in particular. For all the flaws of the Mozilla foundation, it is transparent on what it does to keep the project going, and the independence of the project compared to chromium is hugely important. Note Firefox is also going to support Manifest V3 (so that extensions can continue to be cross-browser) BUT it is also keeping support for the key APIs that Google is removing (i.e. the ability for extensions to use the block webRequest API which is foundational to current Ad and privacy protection extensions).

Vivaldi is no different to other Chromium based broswers; it uses the exact same Google controlled code base, plus it is doing everything it can to monetise you. You are the product; all these companies are stealing and financially exploiting your data and we’re all just handing it to them on a platter for free and thanking them for fucking us over.

I deleted my account.

If you implement it from fresh then it is a new program. What matters is what your contract says about what you produce - some contracts pay claim to anything you make even outside of working hours.

Also if you rewrite it, while technically it is a fresh project if there are substantial similarities in how you implement it there could be an argument made that you have reused code that belongs to the company. Even if that is technical false it could be something you’d have to defend sometime in the future. As others have said, implementing the program in a different language and using a different methodology wherever possible should help protect against that.

I think the advice others have given that you should review your contract with a lawyer is sound even if this will be FOSS. It’s mainly about ensuring you don’t inadvertently open yourself to potential legal repercussions down the line, even if your employers at the moment seem benign. If you do work for a company that lays claim to everything you produce even in your off hours then I would strongly recommend you consider leaving or an exit plan, particularly if you are the sort of person who would be working on your own projects for fun or even your own business ventures.

Mozilla needs funding. By taking money from Google and DuckDuckGo specifically for search it allows Firefox to remain independent and the software it produces is underpins lots of other even more independent privacy respecting software.

The eco system around Firefox needs Firefox to survive. Unless a better funding source comes along Firefox would be in jeopardy. Having. Said that Thunderbird has been successfully turned around due to a well run community pursuing donations and volunteers.

It would also be good if countries stumped up some of the funding Mozilla and other crucial open source projects like Linux need, to maintain a strong software ecosystem. Similar to how many European countries fund national broadcasters to maintain media diversity.

They made a mistake in removing SMS support - that was a good way to become useful to people with the current paradigm and encourage them over to the new. Sometimes Signals decisions are self destructive.

I still have signal but I use it much less since it stopped SMS support; I just open it less and so when starting conversations default to WhatsApp. For a while signal was growing amongst my friends and colleagues but it appears to have stalled.

Google are now doing the same pushing their RCS in the default SMS app in Android.

Part of it comes down to trust. I just don’t trust Brave Inc long term - it may well be a private browser now but I don’t trust that in to the future. I don’t trust a company that Peter Thiel invests in. I don’t trust a company that has already been shady and caught redirecting traffic secretly for referrer codes. But I also don’t trust Google or Microsoft either.

I trust Firefox and Mozilla. I don’t like that they are dependent on Google revenue but I trust that they’re open and transparent about what they do, and not motivated or compromised by a desire to maximise profits for their venture capitalist investors.

So the other 55% of the time it’s a Lemmy user? I.e. the majority of the time!? There is so much irony in your post.

Except Steam scores a binary - like it or don’t - and the overall score is just what percentage is positive vs negative. You can’t rate one or other, just whether you liked each game.

But Gamespot have gone too soon with their reporting, picking a time when the scores are still in flux. Fallout 76 is 72% positive, while Starfield is 75%. And Fallout 76 certainly wasn;t 72% positive at launch. It’s not a fair comparison and is a nonsense story.

This doesn’t make sense. It’s more likely we’ll pack more into a high end device then say goodbye to them in tasks like gaming.

Computing power has been constantly improving for decades and miniaturisation is part of that. I have desktop PCs at work in small form factors that are more powerful than the gaming PC I used to have 10 years ago. It’s impressive how far things have come.

However at the top end bleeding edge in CPUs,.GPUs and APUs high powered kit needs more space for very good reasons. One is cooling - if you want to push any chip to its limits then you’ll get heat, so you need space to cool it. The vast majority of the space in my desktop is for fans and airflow. Even the vast majority of the bulk of my graphics card is actually space for cooling.

The second is scale - in a small form factor device you cram as much as you can get in, and these days you can get a lot in a small space. But in my desktop gaming tower I’m not constrained such limits. So I have space for a high quality power supply unit, a spacious motherboard with a wealth of options for expansions, a large graphics card so I can have a cutting edge chip and keep it cool, space for multiple storage devices, and also lots and lots of fans, a cooling system for the CPU.

Yes, in 5 years a smaller device will be more capable for today’s games. But the cutting edge will also have moved on and you’ll still need a cutting edge large form factor device for the really bleeding edge stuff. Just as now - a gaming laptop or a games console is powerful but they have hard upper limits. A large form factor device is where you go for high end experiences such as the highest end graphics and now increasingly high fidelity VR.

The exceptions to that are certain computing tasks don’t need anything like high end any more (like office software, web browsing, 4k movies), other tasks largely don’t (like video editing) so big desktops are becoming more niche in the sense that high end gaming is their main use for many homes users. That’s been a long running trend, and not related to APUs.

The other exception is cloud streaming of gaming and offloading processing into the cloud. In my opinion that is what will really bring an end to needing large form factor devices. We’re not quite there but I suspec that will that really pushes form factors down, rather than APUs etc.

Not OP but I’m the same; I use Firefox to do stuff. All I need is a web browser and do it manually.

On my Android phone I’ve turned off assistant, and use Nova launcher’s search bar to open Firefox and search on DuckDuckGo.

Assistants really aren’t that great; you sacrifice privacy for a tool that can launch a search for you when you can just type it in yourself - whats the point? The only time I’ve ever found an assistant app vaguely useful was when I tried it while driving. But after a couple of days I decided to turn it off again because I didn’t want the phone listening all the time just so I could occasionally say “Ok Google, play the news”. I found it too poor to manage Google Maps. I might try it again for a longer trip, but day to day, don’t get the point.

I’d also feel self concious using it out and about, and lose privacy not just to Google but to every rando I walk past. And then I don’t get in the habit of using it in my own home. Add to that the general creepy feeling of devices always listening and it’s a hard pass. I suspect I’m not alone in that.

I’ve seen reports suggesting Amazon is struggling to justify Alexa, because apart from a novelty and basic voice control for playing music it just doesn’t make them money and people don’t use it that much. They were hoping people would use it go shopping but who wants to shop without seeing something? I’m not going to say “Alexa buy me a TV” and I’m also not going to say “Alexa order me some washing powder”. I’ve honestly never see anyone in real life saying “Ok Google” or “Siri”; the only times I’ve ever seen them used is chatting in a bar and someone is showing off something silly.

As far I can tell, Voice Assistants are just gimmicks on phones. Cortana was utterly useless on PCs and died a death. About the only useage I can see them being useful for is as fancy switches for smart homes. “Alexa, turn on the lights”. That doesn’t exactly require high end artificial intelligence. Maybe useful on PCs in the long term if they can actually do sophisticated tasks like analyse a spreadsheet or summarise a paper for you. But day to day now? Pretty pointless to me.

I prefer gestures but I don’t like them - it’s too easy to swipe out of an App when you’re actually trying to do something else like pull out a side menu or switch along a carousel, or interact with something (e.g. swiping mail away). I tried to reduce the sensitivity of the gestures and then they became too useless.

Unfortunately a lot of apps still aren’t designed with gestures in mind (mainly side swipes) and need optimising. Hopefully this will improve over time. I’m guessing carousels in particular are now no long practical in Android.