I would love to get something like this that is about getting answers/information/media/etc without it being limited by services that only work well with specific apps. Like something that can be local hosted in home and stays home. Like controlling smart devices and all the stuff that Google/Apple/Samsung/Amazon assistants do, but with it being able to work with lesser known apps that will never be on the lists of “options” (like how I can pick YT Music/Spotify/Amazon Music/Pandora, but my much lesser known podcast app can’t be even manually added). And by “staying home” I mean that it isn’t needing to be online to work or not sending all my recordings/typed stuff to somewhere else. And couldn’t therefore be used by cops or marketers that go around your back or approval to build cases/profiles as easily as it currently is to just go secretly to some companies and force it over.
For now, it is awesome to see that there are some major projects like this getting in while the for-profit companies haven’t started making all the rules. And so far those companies have required the user to basically learn how to correctly speak with their assistants. Also doesn’t help that Google has made wording things frustrating with the names of their stuff. Calling all of their Android services “Play” often leads to it ignoring what I am trying to have it do. Context is going to be the real game changer.
I agree with your point about it being weird to auto-add search engines that aren’t Google/Bing/Yahoo/DDG. But I will say that (while it does randomly get frustrating) the lack of automatically adding search engines is a plus for non-tech users. I say this due to the absurd amount of client computers I work on. Obviously them somehow installing extensions that change the search and home pages will still happen (and does).
But Chrome is one of the worst (though Safari is apparently super susceptible to really nasty search hijackers/re-directors that get in deep af) about scamy/spamy search engines getting added and setup (many times even lists the name of the search in the selection list as being one of the big ones including Google). Also see massive lists of such engines ready to add as “discovered”. Where as it is super unlikely for FF to be hit by non-extension engines being set as defaults. It is of course impossible to fully protect everyone, and it is dumb to stop users that are vigilant of this stuff from being able to take off the training wheels.
I am just saying that from a dealing with this really specific situation I see everyday FF is doing well. Also being fair I find the DDG Bangs (and the same feature on Brave Search) to be better than just adding all the search engines. I just wish they (Mozilla) would make an extension that could do the same thing. No need to install really more than one default if you can just add a small variable at the beginning.
Np, I was glad to see that they didn’t mess it up by only allowing their instance (which we all agree would be dumb lol). Not gonna lie, Vivaldi has come a long way and I love how they seem to be trying to bring back the old Netscape Communicator style suite of things. Firefox is still gonna be my main, but Vivaldi might be my new favorite Chromium-based browser now. Having a sidebar of active Mastodon feeds is pretty dope, and the RSS reader looks better than Thunderbird. The gestures are also better than the add-ons on Firefox and the other Chromium browsers. I wish Mozilla would at least release some official add-ons to allow adding some of this while keeping it compatible with the flow of the main browser.
Sorry for the rant, I am just really impressed and needed to get it out. lol
Nice to see! I have added the crawler extension and the search to my Firefox. Also I use the DDG extension because of the “Bangs” feature that allows quickly using other search engines. Which I love and keeps it as my default. So I just submitted !MWMBL on the DDG Bang! page so that it might be added on there. No idea if it will be approved of course, but would maybe be helpful if it is.
I have only used it on Windows personally, but the GitHub does have info for Mac OS and Linux. It uses I2P but can run its own I2P connection without needing to also install the main I2P router. For the moment it seems to be not super populated due to lack of more people not knowing about it (IMO at least). The UI is fairly simple and “feels” like old-school P2P from the early 00’s. Setting up the folders you want to share might be a little less straightforward up front (at least to me). But it is pretty easy compared to stuff like DC++ while also having some chat options built-in. It also allows you to set the program for speed (no hops and not as anonymous) or for safety (more hops before arriving to or from).
But again, I have only used it on Windows at the moment.
And they will keep yelling about how leftists are all actually Nazis while literally burning books. The worst kind of fascists are all fascists, but the next in line are the ones that don’t seem to realize that they are. The combination of massive corp greed across all media has done the real work for indoctrinating so many. Doublespeak and gaslighting all the culture war stuff. The right is doing a terrifyingly good job at making people actually proud to be ignorant. It is “American” to be consumed with placing individualism above community. So convinced that any and all assistance programs are “evil” or that we can’t “encourage laziness”. Which is ironic given how folks that claim this shit are among the worst offenders for grifting or otherwise scamming people that do work hard. The “pro-law and order” folks are among the worst offenders of literally breaking laws and threatening people and property (which they won’t STFU about how "Antifa is being trucked into places in order to break shit). I wouldn’t lose sleep if I ever had to put down any of them, as they are only tripling down on their stances and open threats. Not willing to just take the L on shit they have been, or currently are, wrong about (which is admittedly a big step ego-wise). Which is why I do try to do what I can if I manage to get a good-faith conversation going, and I see them actually having their mind blown. But that requires a lot of factors lining up and time isn’t on our side atm.
Thanks for the info! I am using Windows, but I downloaded the extension and tor zip for advanced Windows on their site. Created a torrc file and set it to the localhost:9050 and created a “tor” container. And just tested it with the check.torproject.org site (both with a normal tab and a “tor” container tab) with success! Good to know random things that might be very worth knowing.
SMS is a fallback for iMessage. If two iPhone users send messages via iMessage, it is done through that service’s message type. But if they get or send messages to a non-iPhone user, it falls back on SMS. Which is why they have the blue (iMessage) and green (SMS) bubbles. So it is mostly about it just being a universal format if all you know is someone’s phone number. Which is why a lot of other message apps will also do both. Though I think we will see fewer SMS used as people are getting used to having their contacts auto-added to one or more of the chat apps (assuming they don’t opt-out of that feature). But I also think SMS is too universal to just completely go away all together. As it is the easiest way to send out an emergency alert or something else like that in a way that all carriers can 100% use.
I will admit that I am not fully aware of how the current system is setup. But from what I am getting out of the linked article and a few other sites, it seems that this is just replacing the current Ext4 system partitions that are already read-only. Which seems to have been a thing starting with devices that shipped with Android 10. I am not currently messing around with custom ROMs, so I am not up on the scene these days. So again, I am not coming at this from a great in-depth knowledge and could be misunderstanding things.
I agree with the guy about how Wayland might be able to catch up if X was already being sunset. Especially now that even Nvidia is being more supportive of their Linux drivers. While not a great example, Microsoft being super aggressive about making it clear about all versions of Windows lower than 10 being dead. And while I only deal with consumer level computer repairs. I have seen how much those alerts cause lots of people to come in with their Windows 7 and 8 PCs to have 10 installed. Same goes for Adobe finally releasing the final “update” for Flash (which was just an uninstaller) after so many years of pushing back the end of life due to companies not being ready. It took them finally doing it to really move people over to HTML5. Though X is worth keeping patched for both current systems and for being able to run reverse compatible programs on new hardware.