8 ms·

> It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Heh. I was there when it was IE6, and people said the same.

by pmlnr 3y ago

mavrc 3y ago
I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude. Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser. Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.
- pmlnr 3y ago
  No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either. But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.
- ploum 3y ago
  Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion. – Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla… — Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web. Simple: install Firefox. Now. (oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)
  - pmlnr 3y ago
    > There are plenty of alternatives Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.
    - Buttons840 3y ago
      Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
      - saurik 3y ago
        The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
        Buttons840 3y ago
        Okay, so you're not saying that we're going to lose the ability to use another browser, just that the other browsers might not be good for much. I think the comment you originally replied to is trying to say "use the other browsers, even if they are not good for much".
    - caddy 3y ago
      For google analytics and the like there are a lot of alternatives to be fair, I've started using Simple Analytics on all my sites.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    >Simple: install Firefox. Now. No.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    > The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. No. Firefox, beyond being slower, also keeps constantly displaying ads… for itself. Want to open a new tab? “Big Browser cares about your privacy, read how!” I just want to open a new tab!!! I’m working! Restarting? “Discover what’s new with Firefox”, “Hohoho, we care about your privacy, LOOK HOW MUCH WE CARE! ALSO WE HAVE NO ADS!” Worse, they suggest to solve privacy that I use Mozilla VPN. VPNs don’t solve privacy. Also, it’s a paid ad for a paid product. Mozilla had also a staunch political slant, going as far as firing a CEO for a donation he made to the opposing group years ago. There is nothing neutral here, if you are not a leftist, it’s dangerous to use or even give your participation to that ecosystem. Mozilla has failed to become the no-ads, better-ethics, privacy-aware navigator (pun intended). They keep performing worse actions than Google all the time.
- smoppi 3y ago
  >I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. The problem is that the web standards have now grown so much that it is impossible to write a complete new web browser from scratch. Firefox is not coming back, because Mozilla seems to prioritize other things than code quality and the actual usability of their software. And yes, I know that the SerenityOS developers are trying to do it, but while some very advanced things work "good enough" in their browser so that Twitter and Discord's web client works to some extent, the more basic things are so broken that their browser cannot even render basic HTML 3.2 sites properly. Google's end goal is probably to "deprecate" HTTP 1.x and force everyone into using their own replacement for the protocol. Their protocol is going to be like the thing they call "HTTP2", an insanely complex protocol that is impossible to implement by a small developer team. In the end their own protocol becomes a "rolling release" protocol that only works with Google's own app, at which point they can completely stop releasing RFCs for it.
spystath 3y ago
I was there too, in the 1.0 days, and still am. But these days are gone, Firefox is not coming back. Back then Firefox was immensely better than IE. As long as the other alternatives are just as good, there is no reason for the mythical "average user" to change over. Why bother if you can do everything in Chrome? We may understand the differences, ideological or technical, but good luck explaining that out there. There's a massive disconnect between user and technology and as a result people will live in the perfectly curated technological bubble that's been served to them.
- ixfo 3y ago
  "You can use adblock" is a pretty chunky benefit over Chrome
  - lygaret 3y ago
    but "Netflix and my bank actually work in Chrome" is Google's endgame.
    - chii 3y ago
      the adblock "endgame" will be a self-hosted DNS system that blocks requests to ad-server urls (or return benign responses). Then the game will switch to encrypted proxied traffic that you cannot block. Then the adblocking software will switch to the GPU layer, and use machine learning and AI to wipe the region of memory in the GPU containing the ads (and replace it with something benign). Then the next logical step from likes of google is a fully trusted computing environment - aka, you as an end user no longer control your own machine. This is entirely predicted by Richard Stallman.
      - BananaaRepublik 3y ago
        Which follows that the final frontier of ad blocking are AR glasses that use machine learning and AI to block light from ads from reaching your eyes?
      - sigio 3y ago
JimDabell 3y ago
Internet Explorer 6 brought front-end web development to a standstill for more than five years. Let’s not do that again.

> It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Heh. I was there when it was IE6, and people said the same.

by pmlnr 3y ago

> It's irrelevant and we are an irrelevant minority. Heh. I was there when it was IE6, and people said the same.

I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. In this case, the population scale alone has changed by over an order of magnitude. Just doing some quick searching - the first numbers that come up when you search for "how many people used the internet in the year 2000" are on the order of 350 million or so. Comparatively, now, in 2023, Reddit alone has some 450 million users. It would seem right now that Tiktok has about three times the number of active users than there were total Internet users 23 years ago. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of billions of dollars now resting on Chrome remaining the dominant browser. Short of government intervention (or absolutely monumental fuckup on Google's part somehow), Chrome is here to stay.

pmlnr 3y ago
No, I get it. I can't see a blackout day happening (the one stopped SOPA/PIPA) again either. But it still happened, against M$, who was the behemoth of the time, so things are never impossible.
ploum 3y ago
Yes. The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. We are the people with the most influence on the tech. We are prescriptors. We are legion. – Yes but Chrome is a tad faster and I have my bookmarks and my favorites extension and blablablabla… — Then you are the root cause of the problem. If you are not ready to sacrifice an ounce of comfort to save the web, then you are the one killing the web. Simple: install Firefox. Now. (oh, and, by the way, also removes google analytics and all google trackers from the websites under your control. That’s surprizingly easy to do and a huge blow in Google monopoly. There are plenty of alternatives)
- pmlnr 3y ago
  > There are plenty of alternatives Yeah, not for long. Go back and read the proposed changes.
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    Please explain what you mean. It sounds like you have an important point that can only be found if people sit and carefully read several pages. Important points deserve to be stated more plainly.
    - saurik 3y ago
      The entire point of this spec is that your alternative browser wouldn't be able to attest to its "integrity" unless it was exactly as locked down as the other ones. If you have some kind of rebuttal to the shared context we all otherwise have, maybe you should be the one forced to state it more plainly.
      - Buttons840 3y ago
        Okay, so you're not saying that we're going to lose the ability to use another browser, just that the other browsers might not be good for much. I think the comment you originally replied to is trying to say "use the other browsers, even if they are not good for much".
  - caddy 3y ago
    For google analytics and the like there are a lot of alternatives to be fair, I've started using Simple Analytics on all my sites.
- Dalewyn 3y ago
  >Simple: install Firefox. Now. No.
- eastbound 3y ago
  > The solution is very simple: uninstall Chrome and Chromium. No. Firefox, beyond being slower, also keeps constantly displaying ads… for itself. Want to open a new tab? “Big Browser cares about your privacy, read how!” I just want to open a new tab!!! I’m working! Restarting? “Discover what’s new with Firefox”, “Hohoho, we care about your privacy, LOOK HOW MUCH WE CARE! ALSO WE HAVE NO ADS!” Worse, they suggest to solve privacy that I use Mozilla VPN. VPNs don’t solve privacy. Also, it’s a paid ad for a paid product. Mozilla had also a staunch political slant, going as far as firing a CEO for a donation he made to the opposing group years ago. There is nothing neutral here, if you are not a leftist, it’s dangerous to use or even give your participation to that ecosystem. Mozilla has failed to become the no-ads, better-ethics, privacy-aware navigator (pun intended). They keep performing worse actions than Google all the time.
smoppi 3y ago
>I was there too. People always say this, but just because a thing changed once does not mean it will happen again. The problem is that the web standards have now grown so much that it is impossible to write a complete new web browser from scratch. Firefox is not coming back, because Mozilla seems to prioritize other things than code quality and the actual usability of their software. And yes, I know that the SerenityOS developers are trying to do it, but while some very advanced things work "good enough" in their browser so that Twitter and Discord's web client works to some extent, the more basic things are so broken that their browser cannot even render basic HTML 3.2 sites properly. Google's end goal is probably to "deprecate" HTTP 1.x and force everyone into using their own replacement for the protocol. Their protocol is going to be like the thing they call "HTTP2", an insanely complex protocol that is impossible to implement by a small developer team. In the end their own protocol becomes a "rolling release" protocol that only works with Google's own app, at which point they can completely stop releasing RFCs for it.

spystath 3y ago

I was there too, in the 1.0 days, and still am. But these days are gone, Firefox is not coming back. Back then Firefox was immensely better than IE. As long as the other alternatives are just as good, there is no reason for the mythical "average user" to change over. Why bother if you can do everything in Chrome? We may understand the differences, ideological or technical, but good luck explaining that out there. There's a massive disconnect between user and technology and as a result people will live in the perfectly curated technological bubble that's been served to them.

ixfo 3y ago
"You can use adblock" is a pretty chunky benefit over Chrome
- lygaret 3y ago
  but "Netflix and my bank actually work in Chrome" is Google's endgame.
  - chii 3y ago
    the adblock "endgame" will be a self-hosted DNS system that blocks requests to ad-server urls (or return benign responses). Then the game will switch to encrypted proxied traffic that you cannot block. Then the adblocking software will switch to the GPU layer, and use machine learning and AI to wipe the region of memory in the GPU containing the ads (and replace it with something benign). Then the next logical step from likes of google is a fully trusted computing environment - aka, you as an end user no longer control your own machine. This is entirely predicted by Richard Stallman.
    - BananaaRepublik 3y ago
      Which follows that the final frontier of ad blocking are AR glasses that use machine learning and AI to block light from ads from reaching your eyes?
    - sigio 3y ago

JimDabell 3y ago

Internet Explorer 6 brought front-end web development to a standstill for more than five years. Let’s not do that again.