Why this site has such abnormally slow scrolling in Safari, but is smooth in Chrome? There's nothing special about this site. It's like going back in time when the internet was optimized only for a single browser. It's kind of like "I'm a Chrome dev and I don't care about other browsers"?
It’s no longer funny to see how developers again and again are trying to fix problems of real world by creating digital hideouts because this is the only thing developers do the best - programming. Whenever we see a problem with banks, governments, corporations, we immediately try to fix the problem with “own digital alternative”. But hiding from the real problem in a new network doesn’t fix remaining initial problem for the rest of the world. Complex socio-economic problems shall be fixed with socio-economical instruments. No new network could solve problems of monopolies and profit-greedy corporations.
It's a technical solution to a technical problem, that problem being the client-server architecture which inherently centralizes control and disempowers users.
The Internet started out peer-to-peer, but client-server became dominant during the 90s when the Internet became mainstream - because at the time it was the only option for building services that scaled.
Freenet provides an alternative to the client-server architecture that doesn't require compromising on user experience or scalability.
> Complex socio-economic problems shall be fixed with socio-economical instruments.
Missing the forest for the trees.
The socio-economic problems are caused by the limitations & drawbacks of modern tech: It's too easy to centralize control over a platform, whilst keeping things decentralized requires an upfront desire to do so, along with the nightmare that is backwards compatibility.
> No new network could solve problems of monopolies and profit-greedy corporations.
It is a solvable problem. Monopolies & rent-seeking behaviors happen because the tech involved has chokepoints that favor centralized entities.
We know the business processes that should happen for running service X, based on our daily interactions with them and the idealized form of how they should work. Breaking the processes down into components & putting them onto a decentralized compute platform would significantly relax their control over common chokepoints. Dispute processes would be made as public as current government processes, ideally Estonian-like.
Society and governance are gradually getting transformed and integrated into a global communication network run by software and hardware. The Earth is becoming a giant computer within which we live.
It's too early to declare that complex socio-economic problems cannot be solved by a new network/infrastructure/etc. Software is one of the "socio-economical instruments" and we shouldn't dismiss its potential for social transformation beyond the control of banks, governments, corporations.
I was searching something for a web page preservation and also considered Safari web-archives, but decided this is a “no go” for me because of private format which is basically a vendor lock. Thus I ended up with a Chrome extension named SingleFile which does a pretty decent job by saving the whole page (or its part) as a single self sufficient html file viewable by any browser. Also html files are easily indexed by Spotlight or other search engines. The extension has no command line though but personally I don’t need that.
The author considered the proprietary nature of the webarchive format, and determined that it was readable without Apple software, and that it wouldn't be too difficult to create a tool to view or transform webarchive files if Safari were to disappear: https://alexwlchan.net/til/2024/whats-inside-safari-webarchi...
Of course, without a working implementation, there could be hidden obstacles.
I tend to use those VE, virtual environment to make distinguish between containers, VMs and lightweight full OS based containers, since the days of using OpenVZ - may be i'll like that naming too.
Ironically by killing Google you highly likely will put Mozilla into a surviving. I doubt they will figure out how to deliver any new “big” features without being able paying their talented devs without a such funding.
It doesn't "fund" it - it buys its position as the default search engine in Firefox, which makes up the bulk of Mozilla's income. In this theoretical world where Google actually goes away, presumably some other company would want to pay for that position.
> It’s also fast and efficient to type on the keyboard. Plus it feels very natural.
If you are solely an English writer then yes. Using md with some languages will quickly turn you into its hater. Certain formatting symbols aren’t easily accessible in some layouts, like backticks for code or ^ for superscript. Some symbols require extra keystrokes like ~ in german. Some layouts will require finger yoga exercises. Basically, any other text markups based on English (including LaTeX) are unfriendly to other languages. Thus an abnormal popularity of md across the apps makes them much less friendly for non-English users. Mobile typing pushes this pain to another level.
Yeah. My native language has some very awkward placements of certain symbols as well actually. But I chose to sacrifice the letters æ, ø, å years ago by switching to using US-based layouts on my computers. Sometimes I use Dvorak layouts (even have a custom one I made for my mechanical keyboard that I sometimes use). Most of the time I write on a computer in recent years has been using the keyboard on my MacBook Pro computers with just US QWERTY. I very rarely type anything in my native tongue on the computers. Mainly just on the phone. And I am 97% sure that the times I need æ ø å on my macOS laptops I can long-press or option click some of the related characters like a and o.
For a while, when I originally switched away from my native language QWERTY variant, I would sometimes need æ ø å on the computer and I would Google aelig oslash and aring respectively and find the symbols for those letters that way :p
> During the USSR era you were able to travel freely. Even more freeer than today - you didn't even needed any passport to travel to huge distances, to Moscow or from it. You need one now.
NO! This is a HUGE fallacy (if not a lie). A "kolkhoz people" (kolkhoz stands for "collective farm") had no passports at all till 1974 and they had NO right to leave their living territories without identity documents. Sort of a slavery. As of 1970 the "kolkhoz people" were ≈20% (or ≈50 millions) of the population.
> Most of my childhood friends were children of Moscow newcomers.
This explains. Moscow always was a sort of "another world" than the rest of USSR.
You did not needed a passport to travel anywhere. Really. You go to bus/train station, you buy yourself a ticket and then you can go.
The need for passport to travel was introduced well into 90-s because of speculants who bought out tickets of whole trains/planes of popular destinations. I travel by myself from 1988 or so, and did not need any passport until mid '90s.
And yes, let us first go after "applying to the study was restricted" lie, then we go after a "applying for a job was restricted" and then we go after that "without passport" condition.
A non-negligible percentage of corresponding members of Academy of Sciences of the USSR were born in rural areas [1] (look at these who were appointed at around 1970-1980, they most probably born in USSR).
You could travel for vacations, see family and such. But it wasn’t as simple as get up and move to a new city. You needed a job. The place you lived was often allocated based on your workplace.
> Almost 80% of the population enjoying freedom of movement, minus expenses, still seems reasonable.
That's not how a math working in a communist country: it doesn't mean that the rest 80% were able to do so freely.
If you think that you was able to move freely from one city to another "because I wish to try luck at a new place", then think about: how can you move to another city if you can't sell/buy apartments as they almost all owned by the state? You only can move if you got a job at a new place. Given that by the law you can't be unemployed (you could even face a criminal case if not), so you can't just go to "somewhere".
If you are usual worker that somehow managed out to get a new job in another city, then you highly likely (not always) will get an apartment from a factory/state for free, but… What was a chance for you to get a something good by being from another city? Provided apartments almost always were tiny, usually no amenities, and overall living conditions were terrible. Often people were getting just rooms in communes. To get a normal apartment you had to "get into a queue" and wait for 10-20 years. Thus in every city was a huge amount of people waiting for their apartment. When in the city a lot of people are waiting their apartments for years, why someone will give something decent to a newcomer? Yeah, highly skilled/experienced managers or scientists were a bit more privileged, so they could expect of getting something good without queueing.
Some people were trying to swap apartments with those who wanted to move into their city. Needless to say about chances of getting something in this way.
International tourism. It was available mainly to party management and leaders. From time to time a best "workers of socialistic labor" were able to visit other "friendly" (from socialistic block) countries as a "reward", but only after party's approval and only in groups. Never individually. Also such tourism had a strict rules for travelers (what you can bring back with you or what you can visit there). Thus more than 90% of people never were abroad.
The only 100% freedom to move was an inner tourism. You was able to visit almost 100% of territory inside the country as a tourist. You also can't travel across the country for a year like modern bloggers because (as I said above) you can't be unemployed.
Sorry, but plombir isn’t USSR’s achievement at all. The “plombir” in USSR first appeared in 1937 produced by using US equipment after Stalin has visited USA and tasted the ice cream there. No ice cream was there prior to that. Next, the plombir’s name and recipe were “borrowed” (as many things in USSR) from French dessert “glace plombières”.
