It does seem to get weird backing up from my phone, as if it’s trying to backup items it’s backed up before.

That’s odd. I haven’t had that before, but I also don’t use the phone backup feature often. I’ve seen a lot of issues with it that seem to just be random occurrences that aren’t widespread, and sort of just pop out of nowhere only on a small set of devices, so I’m wondering if they just have to improve application stability a bit.

One thing that does drive me nuts though is timestamp shenanigans. Like I’ll have some photos taken on the same day at different times, and at a certain point it’ll just decide to label some of them in the timeline view as having occurred a day earlier or later than they actually did, even though when you view the image properties, it has the correct date.

Chrome is relatively limited in scope compared to, say, a user on an instance of degoogled chromium just using the same Google services along with all the other browsing they do. The extra data that’s gathered is generally going to be things like a little more DNS query information, (assuming your device isn’t already set to default to Google’s DNS server) links you visit that don’t already have Google’s trackers on them (very few) and some general information like when you’re turning on your computer and Chrome is opening up.

The real difference is in how Chrome doesn’t protect you like other browsers do, and it thus makes more of the collection that Google’s services do indirectly, possible.

Perplexity is still being pretty vague here, but if I had to guess, it would essentially just be taking all the stuff that Google would usually get from tracking pixels and ad cookies, and baking that directly in to the browser instead of it relying on individual sites using it.

And now:

Trump clarifies some of the tariffs were actually 245% for some unknown reason

Not to mention the fact that the stronger IP law is, the more it’s often used to exploit people.

Oh, did you as an artist get given stronger rights for your work? That platform you’re posting on demands that you give them a license for any possible use, in exchange for posting your art there to get eyeballs on your work.

Did your patents just get stronger enforcement? Too bad it’s conveniently very difficult to fund and develop any product at scale under that patent without needing outside investor funding into a new corporate entity that will own the patent, instead of you!

To loosely paraphrase from Cory Doctorow: If someone wants a stronger lock, but won’t give you the key, then it’s not for your benefit.

If corporations get to put locks on everything with keys they own, but also make it hard for you to get or enforce access to the keys to the locks on your stuff, then the simplest way to level the playing field is to simply eliminate the locks.

Lego did a large behavioural study on this because this was their assumption, they thought they were doing completely gender-neutral stuff, but even controlling for parents’s biases their stuff wasn’t gender-neutral when it came to actually be interesting to kids.

Interesting. I can’t seem to find anything on this study, but maybe that’s just my search engine not providing very relevant results.

What is a relevant result is the study from just a few years ago that Lego also commissioned, which they’re using to justify making their product lines more gender neutral, after finding that:

“girls today feel increasingly confident to engage in all types of play and creative activities, but remain held back by society’s ingrained gender stereotypes” and that “Girls […] are more open towards different types of creative play compared to what their parents and society typically encourage.”

And they found a significant effect from parents pushing their kids into certain interests and hobbies influencing the behaviors of children:

Our insights further indicate that girls are typically encouraged into activities that are more cognitive, artistic and related to performance compared to boys who are more likely to be pushed into physical and STEM-like activities (digital, science, building, tools). Parents from this study are almost five times as likely to encourage girls over boys to engage in dance (81% vs. 19%) and dress-up (83% vs. 17%) activities, and over three times as likely to do the same for cooking/baking (80% vs. 20%). Adversely, they are almost four times as likely to encourage boys over girls to engage in program games (80% vs. 20%) and sports (76% vs. 24%) and over twice as likely to do the same when it comes to coding toys (71% vs. 29%)

And they even showed that kids felt pressured not to engage in cross-gendered play, even when they wanted to:

71% of boys vs. 42% of girls say they worry about being made fun of if they play with a toy typically associated for the other gender.

Now, a quick note on your other point.

If you say “there is no difference at all between men and women” you’re bound to essentialise everyone towards your own gender.

I don’t believe there is no difference at all between men and women. I simply believe that a lot of the things we say are inherent differences are actually not as inherent as people tend to believe.

For example, I’ve seen no evidence that women are inherently more kind/caring/empathetic than men in any biological way, only that society socializes them to be so, and thus we see that trend perpetuated over time. Yet if you ask most people, they’ll assume there’s something biological that makes women more like that emotionally.

I’ve seen no evidence that these kinds of traits are inherently biological.

Regardless of the fact that we have significant evidence that these more “new” forms of masculinity that incorporate less domineering and aggressive mannerisms are beneficial to men, I simply haven’t seen any evidence that these traits are biological.

In the same way that when you don’t socialize a child to prefer certain clothes or toys, (or stigmatize against them) they generally just go with what they prefer in the moment along lines that don’t match the gender binary, from what I’ve seen, the same is generally true for behaviors. We’re heavily influenced by our cultures and by extension, our upbringing, to a degree that explains why these mannerisms are commonly expressed along gendered lines.

I tried replicating this myself, and got no similar results. It took enough coaxing just to get the model to not specify existing tariffs, then to make it talk about entire nations instead of tariffs on specific sectors, then after that it mostly just did 10, 12, and 25% for most of the answers.

I have no doubt this is possible, but until I see some actual amount of proof, this is entirely hearsay.

hotel

I think you mean “all-inclusive” resort (that isn’t all inclusive and actually charges a gazillion dollars in random fees) that makes them feel like they’re experiencing local culture while actually just experiencing the effects of the resort chain exploiting the local population for cheap labor while cheaply imitating the culture.

Don’t worry, we Americans are definitely capable of escaping our cultural bubble! /s

Fun fact, .png files are pronounced “ping.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG

Also, here’s this wonderful site that lays out practically every argument for GIF’s pronunciation as “jif,” just for fun.

It doesn’t guarantee them protection from liability, but it makes it easier to muddy the waters.

They never have to claim that autopilot or self driving was on during a crash in any comment to the press, or the courts. They never have to admit that it was directly the result of the crash, only that it “could have” led to the crash.

It just makes PR easier, and allows them to delay the resolution of court cases.

I’d say the same. Google dorks work much better than DDG’s filters for site-specific stuff, and generally for things like "search term" but for general searches DDG seems pretty similar.

The only things I’ve also had worse performance from DDG on compared to Google (in very minimal ways) has been:

• Highly specific searches (e.g. searching for a diagram of the dimensions of common connector types, DDG shows side-by-sides of connectors, Google does that but also with more diagrams that have dimensions in them)
• Context but not keyword based searches (e.g. “thing that has x y and z characteristics” returns more relevant results in Google than DDG, very marginally)

And of course, there’s always the !s bang to run a search through Startpage (which uses Google) if I’m not getting enough detail.

Is that article photo Johnny Harris??? 😭

It would have a similar effect to printing new USD and issuing it evenly to members of the population, since our gold reserve is largely a stockpile not expected to be sold on the market.

Gold gets released into circulation, the value of gold decreases, the value people individually receive is similar to the amount lost by those holding gold.

That effectively means it would likely be a transfer of value from gold hoarders, some of which are relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the population, to everyone else, rather than some magical new source of value to give to people. (not exactly, obviously, but this is generally what I’d expect based on how the currency dynamic works with our existing USD reserves/printing capabilities, and how the supply rush would be similar with gold compared to USD)

Should we do it? I don’t know, it could be beneficial, but I’d rather we simply issued new currency and taxed the billionaires more to compensate for any inflation caused, rather than the government having to spend all the money on manpower and negotiation for the sale of all the gold we have, so that individuals could receive actually functional currency in the form of USD.

Let’s look through your own Wikipedia link.

Nazism […] [has] disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system.

The union hating, multi-million dollar lobbying, vote-bribing billionaire totally supports actual democracy guys, trust me!

Its beliefs include support for dictatorship

He actively supports Trump’s unitary executive theory and related policy goals.

antisemitism

Elon supporting an antisemetic tweet

anti-communism

He blames communism for making his trans daughter mad at him

anti-slavism

He actively supports stopping aid to Ukrainians and ceding their land to Russia

scientific racism

white supremacy

Nordicism

Here’s him spreading scientific racism that claims people of European descent are superior

homophobia

Elon refuses to enforce Twitter’s policies against homophobia and transphobia

ableism, and the use of eugenics

Elon is a techno-eugenicist

ultranationalism

white supremacy

He regularly promotes white nationalists online

The only very few, specific categories I didn’t find any explicit mentions of him doing in my 10 minutes of searching around were anti-Romani sentiment and social darwinism, and you’d be hard pressed to prove that everyone you’d probably otherwise consider a Nazi throughout history believed every single possible bullet point in this Wikipedia page.

If all this doesn’t make him a Nazi, then I don’t know what does.

Yes, tariffs increase prices in almost any case they’re implemented, which is the goal. Trudeau seems to be hoping that by adding these tariffs, it will become even easier to shift consumer behavior to buy non-American made goods, which could possibly either lead Trump to reduce/remove his tariffs, or at least make Americans feel more of the economic impact of those reductions in sales, which could then push more people to go against Trump politically.

I draw a distinction between how I try to conduct myself (and, by extension, how I think society should conduct itself), and how I think a government should conduct itself. Any common overlap, while it may theoretically draw from the same core personal beliefs, is more of a coincidence in practice, imo.

I do the same thing. I don’t apply every possible way I conduct myself to how I think the government should regulate people’s actions, but when it comes to Nazism, I specifically believe the government should intervene, not because I personally wouldn’t do what they’re doing, but because their actions are observably, categorically harmful to society.

Yes, I think that society should not socially tolerate any of these behaviors

I think that society should take an active position to socially oppose them

but I don’t believe that a government should take action

So you think society should oppose them, but when an institution to represent the will of society has the power to oppose them, you now no longer believe it’s justified to oppose them. You’re contradicting yourself.

unless the well-being of an individual is actively under threat.

Any furtherance of a Nazi agenda puts every individual in a free society under threat by its very nature. If you allow a Nazi to spread their rhetoric, you increase the likelihood of an actual fascist regime happening that harms millions, if not billions.

We fine people for speeding all the time even if they don’t kill someone in a car crash, because we know that if more people are speeding, the likelihood of a car crash will increase, and that is obviously undesirable if your goal is to preserve human life.

We should do everything we can to prevent Nazis from gaining any power, whether through political office or social relevance, because we know that when they are allowed to do so, the likelihood of a fascist regime existing that is harmful to the preservation of human life grows.

but all of your examples seem to simply a be a difference of opinion (no matter how abhorrent and unpalatable an opinion may be). I don’t believe that one should be legally punished for a difference of opinion.

My opinion is that we should nuke X country and kill all of its citizens. I will spread this message, attempt to gain support for it, and hopefully get to a point where a member of the movement can gain political power that allows them to launch those nukes. Should I be allowed to do so, or should I only be stopped once I’ve already gained the power to launch those nukes, and have my finger over the button? After all, it’s just a difference of opinion.

Opinions can be harmful, not just because they can cause legitimate mental harm to those in the immediate vicinity on the receiving end of that rhetoric, but also because they can lead to harmful outcomes, that would otherwise not exist had the opinion not been allowed to spread.

The only one that may have some legal ground, in my opinion, as I currently understand your examples, is

Supporting dictatorship, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism as a concept or goal

If you support censoring/imprisoning those who hold that belief, then you support doing so to Nazis. If you don’t support doing so to Nazis, then you don’t know what Nazis do, or stand for.

This is yet another example of you holding contradictory views, where in one case you’re okay with the thing being stopped, but the moment someone with the “Nazi” label does those same things, you begin to drop your support for actually doing anything meaningful to prevent the ideology from spreading.

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Apparently, Firefox has a “license” to all your data now. How much is that true?

They don’t. The wording was a little iffy, but they clarified it in the updated terms. (emphasis added)

It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.

This was effectively what the previous terms meant, but they were worded in such a way that a lot of people thought it meant “anything you put in Firefox is now Mozilla’s property to do what they wish with.”

As for the DEI stuff, that’s just the general anti-DEI sentiment being applied as a buzzword to anything people dislike. It’s just being used as a stupid catchall to explain “why” something is happening, even if it’s not responsible in any way.

Librewolf or whatever it’s called might be a better option. There’s also Zen browser.

I personally wouldn’t trust Zen browser as much as I would Librewolf. They’re both built on Firefox source code, but Librewolf has been around for much longer, and has a lot more longstanding community trust.

How are they getting our data?

By setting up small pieces of code that trigger when you use a given feature, and send a network request to Mozilla’s servers with either a single flag set to just show a feature was used, in general, or more additional data with context (e.g. how long the text is that users are putting into their new AI sidebar feature)

What is the nature of the data?

This section of their Privacy Notice explains what categories of telemetry data they collect.

Can we do anything in about:config?

None needed. The normal settings menu has you covered. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Firefox Data Collection and Use > Allow Firefox to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla