Mike Agg has moved @countingquoll@qoto.org

One cannot simultaneously value my privacy and share every detail of my visit to a website, down to the &#%* screen size, with 1505 partners.

"Their final objective (is)... using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

MathsJam is a monthly opportunity for like-minded self-confessed maths enthusiasts to get together in a pub and share stuff they like. Puzzles, games, problems, or just anything they think is cool or interesting. See how to join in at mathsjam.com!

Reminder: Fireworks are for pricks.

Hey, let’s have “Talk Like a Ninja Day” where everyone just shuts the hell up.

This December, if there’s one tech New Year’s resolution I’d encourage you to have, it’s switching to the only remaining ethical web browser, Firefox. According to recent posts on social media, Firefox’s market share is slipping. We should not let that happen. There are two main reasons why switching is important.

1. Privacy

Firefox is the only major browser not built by a company that makes money from advertising and/or selling your personal data. There’s been a lot of talk about websites tracking users using cookies, fingerprinting and other nefarious technologies that hurt your privacy. But owning the browser puts Google, Apple and Microsoft in a position where they don’t even need those tricks. We need to use browsers that are independent, and right now that means Firefox.

2. Browser engine monopoly

Wikipedia lists four browser engines as being “active”. Browser engines are the bits that take a web page’s code and display it on your screen. Ideally, they conform to the official W3C standards, and display all elements as it describes. If that’s the case, web developers can easily write sites that work on all browsers. No proprietary vendor lock-in nonsense, just glorious open standards at work.

It’s happened before

In the early 2000’s, Internet Explorer had a massive 95% market share. This meant that many sites were only developed for use with IE. They’d use experimental features that IE supported, in favor of things from the official HTML standard. This was a very bad situation, which hindered the development of the World Wide Web.

Currenty, Chrome, Safari and Edge all use variations of the closely related Webkit and Blink engines. If we want to avoid another browser engine monopoly, we need to support Firefox, and its “Gecko” engine.

Firefox is actually really good

If Firefox would be a bad browser, I would not recommend you to switch. It’s fast, has a nice user interface, and feels every bit as modern and elegant as its competition. I’ve been using it as my main browser for a couple of years now, on Linux, Windows, MacOS and Android. As a web developer, I usually have at least three browsers open, but when I go look something up on the web, I pick Firefox.

So please, help save the web by using the best browser out there. It’s an easy thing to do, and it makes a big difference.

https://roytanck.com/2023/12/23/in-2024-please-switch-to-firefox/

#Firefox #privacy

Doctor Who is, at its heart, for children, not adults who check in with every new Doctor in the hope of getting sucked in the way they did with some previous iteration. So yeah this is another one I’ll be passing on bc I find it unbearably cringey but I’m glad other ppl love it

You may recall Jacob Rees-Mogg’s unutterably stupid poll on whether or not to revert to the imperial measurement system with its very carefully scripted choices that offered “imperial only” and “imperial with metric” but forced you to go down the “other (write in)” option to say “metric only.”

HMG have used the Christmas break to slip out the conclusion of the poll. Jump to paragraph 18 to get the numbers. 81% were happy with the status quo and 17% wanted metric-only.

In the grand scheme of things, compared to the PPE Preferential Access scandal for example, this was only a small waste of money but, even so, it pisses me off.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/choice-on-units-of-measurement-markings-and-sales/outcome/choice-on-units-of-measurement-consultation-response

Happy “WTF Day Is It?” to all who celebrate!

"i use linux as my operating system," i state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. he swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision.
"actually," he says with a grin, "linux is just the kernel. you use GNU+linux."
i don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "i use alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. it's linux, but it's not GNU+linux."

the smile quickly drops from the man's face. his body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth as he drop to the floor with a sickly thud. as he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!"
coolly, i reply "if windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?" i interrupt his response with "and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. even if you were correct, you won't be for long."

with a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. he lies on the floor, cold and limp. i've womansplained him to death.

Quite the damning piece on Tesla and its recklessly (probably criminally) irresponsible application of the "move fast and break things" ethos.

tl;dr: the company has known for ages that its cars have the kind of chronic defects that would get a company like Chevy or Toyota sued into oblivion (way more than just autopilot stuff; basic mechanical stuff). And it's often gotten away with blaming its users for those issues.

https://defector.com/youre-supposed-to-be-glad-your-tesla-is-a-brittle-heap-of-junk

@RustyBertrand

Tech giant Palantir has hired Topham Guerin (PR firm) to pay influencers to attack the Good Law Project on social media – but the source of the money is to be kept ‘confidential’.

https://goodlawproject.org/pr-firm-topham-guerin-tories-and-palantir-offers-to-pay-influencers-attacks-twitter-x/

Nothing says Winter Solstice better than LebkuchenHenge #Lebkuchen #Stonehenge #WinterSolstice

Seven swans to rule them all
Six geese to find them
Five gold rings to bring them all
And in the pear tree bind them

Today’s poem is about how we all our establish our own traditions at Christmas.

It’s called ‘A Traditional Family Christmas’.