No, seriously. I think many would agree that the internet user experience peaked some time after Google entered the scene (yes, officer, right down this sub) but before YouTube left every serious competitor behind. There was a lot of “small web” content with no clear commercial intent (not blasting you with two affiliate links and one video ad per paragraph). Many of the big platforms were controlled by the techies who set them up and not yet by the venture capital who would eventually buy them out. Yet, venture capital already kept these firms afloat, so a lot of genuinely good services were genuinely free for the user and not paywalled or privacy-paywalled (just give us your email address and IP, bro, trust us bro, just one more captcha, bro, maybe one more 2FA using your phone number, bro, really, we might even let you visit our site then). Of course, someone had to pay up eventually: Enshittification ensued.

A second aspect: For the past decade at least, democratic-presenting governments have used all our web data fed into clandestine technology to win elections, either to stay in power or get into power and pull up the ladder behind them. I guess it’s like that old saying: A small time criminal robs a bank, a big time criminal owns a bank. Sure, we had all sorts of amateur criminals on the web in the predotcom and dotcom era and that might’ve cooled down a bit since. But now all the big players are adversarial, instead.

Edit: Typo in spoiler tag

True that. Even though that is also made more difficult by that same social environment often being fully googled and thus always busy with some slop.

Demokitten

Then they should’ve included a short TLDR even harder

TLDR: Open package repositories without some approval and oversight system, like AUR, will have even more problems in the future due to advanced coding AI and malicious foreign hackers.

Edit: Please normalize TLDR’s on bot posts with just a link.

Edit 2: I have been rightfully informed that this is not a bot post. I still think links should not be posted without a tiny abstract, one might say: a TLDR.

I have also been informed that the text does not spell out “foreign”. This is correct. The text does say

Not all of the packaging issues are as bad as the initial wave of trying to steal credentials, some are just adding ridiculous messages in Russian.

This implies but does not establish the nationality of attackers. While Arch has contributors from all over the world, it is commonly cited as being a Canadian distribution (example, see below). https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=arch

This would make for a pretty cool SCP: A place or a person whom you can’t get super close to, because space around them behaves in a fractal manner.

The answer is no, but the other way round: If your regular poop stays inside long enough, it produces diarrhea again. Google paradoxical diarrhea. And don’t try it at home.

So it begins

If Chromium becomes incompatible with privacy, the only real and broadly accepted alternative is FireFox. Which implementation, and as always in these kinds of discussions, that depends on your threat model: On desktop, I am very happy with LibreWolf. Mullvad Browser is also great, especially with Mullvad VPN, though it breaks pages a little more often than LibreWolf. On Android, I am quite happy with IronFox.

https://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/2175000/69-sex-positions/

Might be a new addition to the canon.

Second this and adding: Fiduciary responsibility and how US economic law places it above all else. Other jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, require companies to balance multiple responsibilities, such as towards their workforce, societal, ecological, and yes, fiduciary, too. It doesn’t solve all issues and can be vague AF, but at least well-meaning CEOs can fall back to these other corporate responsibilities in court while the same CEO would be sued into oblivion by US shareholders.

I’m not ideologically opposed to people earning money with their unique ideas and artistic execution. Creative work is work is work. But I don’t think that IP should be the gift that keeps on giving three generations after an authors death. IMHO, the public has a reasonable interest in works remaining available, that’s why the “maintenance / out of print” clause. Writing good code is authorship. It’s only natural the same rules apply, though I wouldn’t be principally opposed to applying different time lines, e.g., 5 years for unmaintained proprietary code vs 20 years for books, to reflect the uniquely fast pace of software development vs the more long-lasting beauty of traditional art and literature. Of course there would need to be some very careful wording to define maintenance (e.g., in respect to which platform? What about versions of the same software) and to prevent on-paper continued availability of books at an inappropriately increased price. However, I believe the law makers and the courts could handle this medium diff if there was political will.

Yeah, how about we shorten that to a cumulative 10 years out of support / maintenance / print or after the death of the author / artist, whatever earlier. For software, a five years out of support threshold would honestly be preferable but I’ll be generous.

Software that is not actively maintained for a certain time should become public property. The same goes for books or music that go out of print for so long. “you want to sell me your original product? That’s cool. You don’t wanna do that anymore? Alright, but no need to bury it in obscurity.”

Appreciate the recommendations. I will give IronFox a try.

I often feel a little ‘legislative paralysis’. On the one hand, I want as little government interference in the free web as possible. On the other hand we can see first hand that web anarchy collapses into web oligarchy. I guess the EU is demonstrating that targeted legislation, like one click unsubscribe or one click cookie denial, can improve the web experience and privacy even beyond their borders. Baby steps… When do we get one click delete all my data? And when does a single page start caring whether my browser sends a Do not track request or not? Until then, it’s back to private privacy measures… Even if that’s an uphill battle.