finalarbiter

@finalarbiter@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI controls is coming to Firefox⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The thing is, those features are older than LLMs. I don’t need firefox to tell me how to group my tabs- I’ll group them in the way I want, when I want to do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Anthropic has a cloud service?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Material's Printed Batteries Put Power in Every Nook and Cranny⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s interesting, especially for compact or oddly-shaped devices, but I imagine these printed batteries are not great for repairability. The nice thing about cells is that they’re pretty standardized- it’s simple to identify, order, and install a replacement part from your vendor of choice. With these custom batteries, it might not even be possible to replace depending on how the OEM designs the parts, let alone find an alternative if the OEM doesn’t sell replacement parts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Wikipedia's Volunteer Model Facing a Generational Crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Historically, general encyclopedias were limited by the physical amount of space they took up. Wikipedia is not limited by the page and volume counts of physical media and we shouldn’t treat it as such.

  While I can agree that domain-specific encyclopedias should continue to limit the scope of their information to relevant topics, I see no reason that Wikipedia should follow suit. Who truly benefits from reducing and editorializing information, especially when the fundamental principle is the free and open flow of knowledge? Could Wikipedia stand to have writing on complex topics that is friendlier to the average joe? Sure, but that should never come at the expense of restricting the sum total of knowledge stored in its servers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's AI Kill Switch Lands in Firefox Nightly, Slated for Firefox 148⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Right, what trust? The trust they lost by putting dumbass MBAs in charge who don’t know shit and chase short term profits over sustaining a healthy community?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's AI Kill Switch Lands in Firefox Nightly, Slated for Firefox 148⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If i didn’t have to redo all my customizations on a fresh install, I might actually cry tears of joy (i like to try different os and write my laptop regularly, so this is a legitimate annoyance for me)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's AI Kill Switch Lands in Firefox Nightly, Slated for Firefox 148⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Off the top of my head:

  • better/more consistent sync
  • container windows
  • setting a default container for ctrl+t (and maybe shortcuts for other containers)
  • a more user-friendly version of about:config
  • more control for automatic data deletion aside from manual and when firefox closes (e.g. delete history+cookies older than 30 days)
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's AI Kill Switch Lands in Firefox Nightly, Slated for Firefox 148⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you misunderstood what I said, or perhaps I wasn’t clear. I’m saying the killswitch should have been in place from day one when they started implementing ai features.

  That said, Mozilla seems to fundamentally misunderstand their market. The type of people who use firefox are generally pretty tech-savvy, and care about things like privacy and control over their experience. Rather than hone in on features that their users want, they have hitched their wagon to the ai hype train in an attempt to favor curry with the masses.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox's AI Kill Switch Lands in Firefox Nightly, Slated for Firefox 148⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They should never have rolled out any of these AI features without this already implemented. I think it really speaks to their priorities that they rolled it out in this order.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric Flying Cars Now for Sale by California Company Pivotal⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s horrifying to think about. Most people seem to barely be able to handle 2 dimensions while driving a car.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Electric Flying Cars Now for Sale by California Company Pivotal⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Buyers don’t need a pilot’s license to operate the aircraft, though they must complete training and take an FAA knowledge test.

  That’s absolutely fucking insane. How did the FAA approve this? The only saving grace here is that the $200k price tag means few, if any, will be sold.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Video game giant Valve facing UK lawsuit over pricing, commissions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That makes sense, it would definitely be easier if you didn’t have to deal with DRM or launchers (like Steam and Epic, not the game launcher itself) getting in the way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Video game giant Valve facing UK lawsuit over pricing, commissions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh that’s fair, I was only thinking of digital storefronts. I didn’t really get into pc gaming before distribution was predominantly digital.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Video game giant Valve facing UK lawsuit over pricing, commissions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They say Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam if they’ve bought that game through the platform, effectively “locking in” users to make purchases on its platform.

  Is there a platform out there that allows dlc from other sources? It never occurred to me this was even a thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds | Google DeepMind⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s the over/under on this project’s lifetime? I’d place a bet at maybe 2 years before it goes to the graveyard

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla profit tanked 46% in 2025 | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The only EVs I’ve driven that actually felt like they took advantage of being an EV were from EV companies, no legacy automakers. Tesla, Polestar, Lucid, Rivian. Everyone else the vehicle felt like an afterthought

  Preach it! I test drove a wide variety of EVs (except tesla) last year while I was looking to replace my car. My experience was largely disappointing:

  • Ford and the other American brands felt like they were designed to be disliked. Overpriced and poorly designed.
  • Toyota bz4x and the Suburu on the same platform (sunterra? Idr) were nowhere to be found near me.
  • The VW ID.4 was… fine, I guess, but the infotainment was buggy and froze for most of the test drive. It’s also plagued with recalls, so I didn’t really trust in the longevity of the vehicle.

  There was a used Polestar 2 MY21 launch edition someone traded in near me. I took it for a test drive and fell in love! Even several months in, I’m still excited to get behind the wheel, even for something like a grocery run.

  The only thing about it that I am not a fan of is the range, which is ~200mi for MY21. That’s still more than enough me, I maybe need to charge 1-2x a month. Well, that and the slightly underpowered processor for the infotainment makes it a bit sluggish at times.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta’s Reality Labs cuts sparked fears of a ‘VR winter’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s largely a result of facebook buying up a bunch of vr dev companies and making them release quest exclusives. I’d be curious to see what titles released oer year looks like if you include all platforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Picked up a copy of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter for XB360⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, it’s weird for me to see the xbox360 considered a retro console. Never really thought about it, but it is 21 years old now (released 2005).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah that’s the thing, it’s especially hard to trust a newer service without any track record of longevity or a company with a proven track record of poor support. Even then, everything dies eventually. Companies will shut down servers due to funding/popularity issues (it doesn’t make sense to continue spending money and dev time on a game nobody is playing anymore) or to funnel players into a newer game. It would be great to see more live service or otherwise online games (e.g. MMOs) that are self-hostable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think Stadia’s problem was the technology, though. It actually worked pretty well if you had a decent internet connection.

  The issue, imo, was that nobody trusted in the longevity of the platform. Given Google’s track record, why would anyone want to buy in to something that would likely only last a few years? I know they ended up refunding people, but it’s not like they do that with every prodict they’ve cancelled.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Misleading post title based on an article that’s ~5 months old.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CES 2026: Meet Tiiny AI, a pocket-sized AI supercomputer⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh look, e-waste straight from the factory

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your technology mispredictions?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For sure. I feel like that’s been the case in the last several years though and it seems to be happening on pc too. At least on pc, we usually get a couple decent sales every year and lots of indie content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your technology mispredictions?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m generally against the rise of subscriptions in every service on the Internet, but I did actually benefit from game pass for a couple years. Access to the library meant I could try a lot of games I otherwise probably would not have played. I was only out the time I spent downloading and playing them if I didn’t like them- no need to deal with returns or resale, which is especially difficult/restrictive for digital purchases.

  I can’t find what the original price for game pass was, but I’ll do the break-even math for the current price: It looks like the highest tier game pass subscription today is ~$30/mo. Multiply by 12 months, that’s $360/yr. With games typically costing $60-70, $360/yr divided by $60 is 6 games/yr.

  One would need to play > 6 new games each year to save money with xbox game pass. I think that number is pretty achievable for the average gamer, but I’d be curious to see some statistics about average game consumption.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stack Overflow in freefall: 78 percent drop in number of questions⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hacker News, probably.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Distros Designed for Former Windows Users Are Picking Up Steam | Linux Journal⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair. I agree that it would be nice for them to properly release SteamOS for general hardware. I think valve probably doesn’t want to get roped in to providing tech support for hardware platforms they don’t control beyond what they do for steam.

  My impression is that their priority is building the hardware to show what’s possible in the form factor, then get third parties to buy in to the ecosystem so they can get back to doing software (which we’re seeing with steamos support for the Asus and Lenovo handhelds). The software has to be polished and well-received to get this buy-in, which is easier when they have control over the hardware.

  Their strategy with the original steam machines (circa 2015 I think?) skipped the first party hardware step and they didn’t do well with the software execution either- although iirc that’s where the big picture mode, steam controller, and generally better controller support came from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Distros Designed for Former Windows Users Are Picking Up Steam | Linux Journal⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  SteamOS is already an extant distro (based on Arch btw), it’s what they use for the steam deck/machine/frame. It’s also available to download but there is no official support. I’ve been meaning to try it on my desktop, as I primarily use it for gaming anyways

  SteamOS wikipedia page since the steam page keeps redirecting me to the app

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quick post about AI-free FireFox Based Browsers (Keep your Adds and avoid the Bloat)⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They keep saying their ai features will be opt-in, and yet everything they’ve rolled out so far is opt-out. I struggle to believe future ‘features’ will be any different. Maybe it’s opt-in in the sense that I don’t have to click whichever button activates it, like whatever they added to the context menu, but that’s not really what opt-in means and degrades my trust in Mozilla.

  I’m also frustrated by their seeming inability to focus on their core browser product and building a popular competitor to chromium browsers instead of going off on side quests.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quick post about AI-free FireFox Based Browsers (Keep your Adds and avoid the Bloat)⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You asked, and I gave my opinion. All this AI bullshit has done and continues to do significant damage to the global economy and ecology, god forbid I have a problem with that or any company contributing to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quick post about AI-free FireFox Based Browsers (Keep your Adds and avoid the Bloat)⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that they’re pushing it without any way for those of us who really don’t want that crap to strip it out of the browser. Sure, one can disable it, but I’ve already had some of it reenabled in updates. I don’t want it, and don’t plan on wanting it. At best, these functionalities should be opt-in and presented as addons that can be installed, rather than being a core part of the browser that cannot be removed.