Operating systems like iOS and Android are designed as media consumption devices (e.g.: for watching TikTok or Instagram). They are barely usable as a general purpose computer.
Several libre mobile operating systems aspire to imitate iOS and Android. With good intent: so that user familiar with these are familiar with the new libre OS.
The downside is that these new libre platforms are not well-designed mobile computer operating systems; they're mostly imitations of media consumption devices.
⟨ " Our economy is dominated by five aging tech giants – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. In the last twenty years, no company has commercialized a new technology in a way that threatens them. Why?
We argue that the tech giants have learned how to coopt disruption.
They identify potentially disruptive technologies, use their money to influence the startups developing them, strategically dole out access to the resources the startups need to grow, and seek regulation that makes it harder for the startups to compete. When a threat emerges, they buy it off. And after they acquire a startup, they redirect its people and assets to their own innovation needs.
These seemingly unrelated behaviors work together to enable the tech giants to maintain their dominance in the face of disruptive innovations. " ⟩
In addition to the tactics noted in the paper, the manner in which incumbents use standards development organizations and industry consortia to slow-roll anything that disrupts their existing product lines, and try to re-direct anything disruptive to something that they can (barely) incrementally implement is something that is not appreciated enough!
H/T to @pluralistic for his essay which provided the pointer to this paper. Link to essay @ https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/08/permanent-overlords/
Honestly I wish I had more use for my knowledge of the #chromium source code.
Anyone wanna pay me to get web extensions working on mobile chromium?
Google PR sure is taking its sweet time getting back to me about the finding that Chrome has a hidden extension that allows all *.google.com domains to monitor your CPU usage and other private system info. I'm sure they're working just as fast as they can.
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Jul/9/hangout_servicesthunkjs/
High on my todo list is HTTP over #veilid app messages with a local daemon that can act as a proxy.
- Register veilid service
- Run local daemon as a proxy (optionally tell it to make a safety route)
- Curl to a unix socket the daemon is listening on
- `Host` header set to the public key for the service
- Encode request as app message to the service
- Response gets sent as an HTTP response down the socket
Bad for large files, good for locally run services / automation.
Might fuck around and place more local services under unix domain sockets for a laugh. 🤪
https://github.com/node-fetch/node-fetch/issues/336#issuecomment-1260253215
Accessibility in XR: the XR fragments spec now promotes 2-button navigation as well.
Beef up your 3D models with http://xrfragments.org for an open, accessible, and interoperable XR internet ❤️
The good news is that I have finally remapped my button layout on my GPD WIN 4 to something more useful!
Now I just need to rebuild my muscle memory when using it :P
Truly I live in a hell of my own invention for not using an off the shelf desktop environment.
It seems logging into a tty and spawning a weird window manager (niri) means I can't run XR software which seems to require a command that only works from a session that got started by x11. 😵😵😵
How the heck do I set a monitor as "non desktop" in wayland?
We need at least one of “hide reply” or “limit who can reply.” It’s like anyone can come and shit on your living room floor. And while you can throw them out after the fact, you can’t mop up the turd.
how to browse the web in 2024
1. open site
2. close email subscription pop up
3. close push notifications
4. dismiss cookies pop up
5. dismiss the request for your location
6. close the "did you find what your were looking for?" dialog
7. apologize to those around you for the loud swearing
8. try to remember why you opened the site in the first place
i will say though it's more fun than outdoors these days since it's so hot and mosquito covered and everything costs money to do. 😅
Occult Enby that's making local-first software with peer to peer protocols, mesh networks, and the web.
Exploring what a local-first cyberspace might look like in my spare time.