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Seriously. All things considered, browsers are extremely cheap to fund. The fact that no government has come forward to spearhead this movement is damning to th

Seriously. All things considered, browsers are extremely cheap to fund. The fact that no government has come forward to spearhead this movement is damning to the concept of the state. And no, I obviously don't want to fund Mozilla, a hilariously incompetent entity that hates its users.

apercu 10mo ago
The U.S. isn’t anti-socialism, it’s anti-public benefit. We’ll socialize losses for banks to pay bonuses, but funding shared infrastructure that serves citizens is a bridge too far.
cogman10 10mo ago
> is damning to the concept of the state. Not really. It's a web browser and from a non-tech politician they already have the internet. It's pretty hard to get a government to understand why the 1000 webkit browsers aren't actually competitive. They'd rather send money and regulations towards something they can better understand like healthcare or right to repair. Heck, even "AI".
- JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
  > from a non-tech politician I could count on one hand the jurisdictions in which a publicly-funded browser wouldn’t eventually cause a voter backlash. Unless it—and the rest of the government—are run perfectly, paying for something most people get for free sounds like corruption.
  - cogman10 10mo ago
    I don't think you could do it as a direct "fund browsers" law. You'd have to do it as a "technology research fund". Something we already somewhat have in the US with the National Laboratories. But those budgets are pretty limited. The NSA gets a whole lot more money to pay for it's research.
    - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
      > Something we already somewhat have in the US with the National Laboratories Our national labs fund aren’t typically replicating commercial findings. Nuclear fusion isn’t something you can download for free. Browsers are. It looks wasteful to everyone but the technically inclined, and even we would be undercut by those who never trust the government. Non-profit that competes for government grants and contracts seems the way to go.
  - MangoToupe 10mo ago
    Voters are extremely stupid, though. Perhaps an authoritarian country that actually cared about people could do an open source.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  You're demonstrating my point for me: the institutions tasked with governing our lives and protecting us from wrongdoers are increasingly divorced from reality. Albeit moroseo in america than anywhere.

apercu 10mo ago

The U.S. isn’t anti-socialism, it’s anti-public benefit. We’ll socialize losses for banks to pay bonuses, but funding shared infrastructure that serves citizens is a bridge too far.

cogman10 10mo ago

> is damning to the concept of the state. Not really. It's a web browser and from a non-tech politician they already have the internet. It's pretty hard to get a government to understand why the 1000 webkit browsers aren't actually competitive. They'd rather send money and regulations towards something they can better understand like healthcare or right to repair. Heck, even "AI".

JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
> from a non-tech politician I could count on one hand the jurisdictions in which a publicly-funded browser wouldn’t eventually cause a voter backlash. Unless it—and the rest of the government—are run perfectly, paying for something most people get for free sounds like corruption.
- cogman10 10mo ago
  I don't think you could do it as a direct "fund browsers" law. You'd have to do it as a "technology research fund". Something we already somewhat have in the US with the National Laboratories. But those budgets are pretty limited. The NSA gets a whole lot more money to pay for it's research.
  - JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
    > Something we already somewhat have in the US with the National Laboratories Our national labs fund aren’t typically replicating commercial findings. Nuclear fusion isn’t something you can download for free. Browsers are. It looks wasteful to everyone but the technically inclined, and even we would be undercut by those who never trust the government. Non-profit that competes for government grants and contracts seems the way to go.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  Voters are extremely stupid, though. Perhaps an authoritarian country that actually cared about people could do an open source.
MangoToupe 10mo ago
You're demonstrating my point for me: the institutions tasked with governing our lives and protecting us from wrongdoers are increasingly divorced from reality. Albeit moroseo in america than anywhere.