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We'll see Europe and other parts of the world slowly shed US tech piece by piece over years. Regardless of which party wins the next election, the damage is done. America has proved it's an unreliable ally and cannot be trusted.

> We'll see Europe and other parts of the world slowly shed US tech piece by piece over years

cough Linux (Foundation), Microsoft Windows and Azure, Google's Android and search, Apple's iOS cough

I'm still waiting for the EU's OS initiative.


I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.

Brave still allows you to install uBlock & some other extensions that should technically not be supported under MV3, but they still ship it with support for those.

Just heard about Helium browser, which is just dechromium + uBlock and it's still beta.


Helium still supports MV2, because the upstream hasn't removed related code. They basically turn on/off some macros to enable MV2 again. And this won't last long for sure.

> I'd be genuinely curious what you could switch to that still has MV2 because, AFAIK, Firefox is the last holdout.

My last hope is ladybird right now, I don't use Firefox or Chrome as my main browsers anymore, and use them only within temporary sandboxes. Without history, without cookies, without logins for the most part.


You use ladybird as your primary web browser? And it works?

For the most part, it doesn't. It's not a consumer ready browser, but a pretty nice little rendering engine. If you use ladybird as bindings, it's a bit unstable right now because they are refactoring a lot of parts in the codebase.

I built my own tools on top of it, mostly to use internet websites and selfhosted kiwix archives with my local agentic env.

I guess what I am saying is that I don't have a primary browser anymore. Not a browser where I just can trust it that it doesn't do shit with my data. Being able to selfhost kiwix is a superb internet experience if you build your own search dashboard for it, I can fully recommend it.

Have to merge my things upstream with ZIMdex when I have the time (probably around June).

[1] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/exocomp

[2] WIP https://github.com/cookiengineer/zimdex


It seems to me that --unless you really, strictly compartimentalize your browser usage--, using multiple browsers will only supply your data to more parties.

Ladybird supports MV2? I had no idea they have extensions.

Ladybird is many years away from being usable by a casual human. The hope is it turns out to be a great browser eventually.

[flagged]


> Good luck with the main developer being in the alt right.

Sources? I can't find anything on that via google/ddg (Germany)

edit: oof.

[1] https://drewdevault.com/blog/Cloudflare-and-fascists/


Oof indeed. Now I know that Kling is indeed open towards some alt right positions, but I really wouldn't call him a fascist for that. Conservative probably, but conflating conservative positions with fascism is probably not helpful in the fight against the real fascists.

But also oof to .. some other items there from the blog. Apparently rsync is now banned from the list of acceptable software, because they do not ban LLM's completely?

https://drewdevault.com/blog/rsync-without-rsync/

Sounds like you will never run out of problems, with a ideology like this.


Isn't this blog post more evidence that drewdevault became an extreme leftist?

I mean he's basically going off a checklist of leftist stereotypes here and trying to check as many of them as possible.

Meanwhile the other guy he's criticising is literally just a standard right-wing conservative, not far right, not alt right, just the regular kind. The far right I've seen is basically beyond the idea of being merely anti-immigration, they demand ICE style mass deportations immediately and in every country.

If both of them met in a bar through sheer coincidence, I'd expect drewdevault to start the fight.


Sorry, but painting these people as "standard right-wing" is just evidence for the shifting of the Overton window further to the right. White replacement theory and expressing support for an alt-right ideologue who manipulated people with bad faith, dishonest and downright monstrous arguments is not "standard right-wing".

Charlie Kirk was for mass deportation. He didn't even hide it. He said it openly. How do you come off saying that these people aren't far-right or alt-right when they are unabashedly so?


Well, the overtone window certainly changed, but ... I judge a bit different here.

"expressing support for an alt-right ideologue"

This is what Kling actually said:

"RIP Charlie Kirk

I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists."

I also support fighting with words, not fists. I do not support his ideology at all and would have loved to debate him openly, but the concept of murdering someone for having the wrong opinion is disturbing to me, so I agree with Kling here.

And about "white replacement"

"'White males are actively discriminated against in tech.

It’s an open secret of Silicon Valley.'

One of the last meetings I attended before leaving Apple (in 2017) was management asking us to “keep the corporate diversity targets in mind” when interviewing potential new hires.

The phrasing was careful, but the implication was pretty clear.

I knew in my heart this wasn’t wholesome, but I was too scared to rock the boat at the time."

He said whites were discriminated for being white. Not replaced. That is not really the same to me.


>White replacement theory and expressing support for an alt-right ideologue who manipulated people with bad faith, dishonest and downright monstrous arguments is not "standard right-wing".

It is now. That's what the shifting of the Overton Window and normalization of right-wing ideology does. These aren't fringe beliefs anymore, they're commonly held, mainstream right-wing views. They're policy within the US government. Charlie Kirk was treated as a martyr and a hero by the administration. He was treated with more dignity and respect than war veterans. The DHS posts memes about mass deportation.

The "far right" and "alt-right" no longer exist. Those labels are no longer useful and no longer describe reality.


[flagged]


> Linking a pedo-leftist schizophrenic's blog post as "proof" does the complete opposite of supporting the claim.

Sources for those pretty serious claims?



Aren't fascists the ones that want you to correct your language?

I don't know if Edge supports MV2, but they do have uBlock available and it works just as well as on Firefox.

It may look like it works "just as well" but that's not true. There are numerous things that impact performance and effectiveness that are not possible with chromium-based browsers, or at least have to be done inefficiently, including

* pre-fetching

* html filtering

* use of WebAssembly

* data compression and private/incognito mode


Edge has its own extension API in addition to the Chromium one, it's possible that they've managed to mitigate or eliminate these problems.

Safari still supports MV2

> Firefox is the last holdout.

Nope, FF is being infiltrated by adtech for last year or two. Last holdout is Safari now :)


You cannot install uBlock Origin on Safari.

The Lite version, same as on Chrome, is actually available for Safari. Still not as good as the full one on Firefox though.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...


what's the diff between lite and full? i dont even remember what i use on safari, wipr or something. mostly use firefox but sometimes i casually just let things launch in safari


really appreciate you dropping links thank you!

Exactly.


>Last holdout is Safari now

Why do people say crap like this... Safari was the first browser to completely remove mv2. From all the major browsers Safari has the worse adblocking experience and support for adblocking extensions...


> Why do people say crap like this...

1. Third-party cookie blocking by default — 2003 (Safari 1.0); industry first.

2. Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), using on-device machine learning to identify and limit cross-site trackers — 2017; industry first.

3. Storage Access API prompts for embedded third-party content (e.g., social login widgets) — 2018 (ITP 2.0); industry first (co-developed by WebKit, later adopted as a web standard).

4. Full third-party cookie blocking (no exceptions) — 2020 (ITP in Safari 13.1); industry first for a major browser.


Apple only does things to progress their own business model. Apple failed at becoming an ad business so they pivoted to subscriptions and app revenue. Now they are building an ad business. Just look at their ad revenue.

That's what the marketing department says.

Ad/tracking blocking is one of the things that can only be trusted if it's open source, i.e. uBlock Origin.

By the way, does this Adblock Engine actually block trackers? Or it just stops the ads from displaying?


ITP is mostly part of WebKit and open source.

Everyone has made these Brave debloat tools that basically do the same thing as their ridiculous Origin offering.

To sell for $60 a web browser that technically has all the features removed is a pretty goofy move.


> a pretty goofy move

I'm doing a goofy thing and buying it, despite knowing I can debloat Brave, because I already do that. I didn't know this existed till I read this thread. I've been benefitting from Brave for many years now; it's great that they've provided a way to pay for this without dealing with the crypto stuff, and I'm extremely happy to do so, because they deserve some of my money.


I'll also pay and support their work to provide a really good browser (which needed a bit debloating).

That's such a weird reaction. There's constantly, for years, people here asking for Firefox to just start offering a paid version to get away from needing support from Google. And yet when someone actually does that apparently it's goofy and we should just be manually stripping that out without paying.

If you can't afford it or don't want to pay, fine. But why are you trying to influence other people to do that by labelling it "goofy"?

How would you strip those things out mobile, by the way?


Eh that’s a common business model. Pay to get the ads removed is basically the same thing.

Well, I'll link to this video review by Techlore.

Brave Just Released a Paid Browser: Here's What You Need to Know https://youtube.com/watch?v=3i5KH0l895o


Just watched it. Brave Origin seems like a superior product in every single way.

I don't trust Brave though and don't want to use chromium.


Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.

That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.

On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”

The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/business/infowars-alex-jo...


I can’t believe this.

I saw OP and went to infowars dot com to have a look. I scrolled a bit, clicked some links, looked at the store, had a good laugh at the comedy of this ironic site.

Now you’re telling me the site is not a joke from The Onion? Reality is stranger than fiction.


My favorite headlines:

"Video: ‘Homophobic’ 6-Week-Old Baby Cries After Gay Dad Tells Him ‘There Is No Mama’"

"UK Approves Bills To Remove Criminal Penalties For Women Who Commit Their Own Abortions"

"Nigerian Photographed Killing Cat And Trying To Cook It In Front Of Children’s Playground In Italy"


> 6-Week-Old Baby

I appreciate this story appears to be all about the rage-bate headlines, but I don't believe that either six-week old babies say "Mama" (with purpose) or that a baby that age would be capable of responding in the way described to an adult saying "there is no Mama". It doesn't work like that at that age.

[Source: have three kids]


Source: the video: https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/2045335697893269640

Edit: but it is likely the baby is older than 6 weeks in that video - this seems to be the source of confusion (read carefully - the 6-week-old video was a different, older video):

In December, when Texson was 6 weeks old, he shared a video with the text overlay “6 week old homophobic baby,” which was viewed more than 36 million times. In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads. In the most recent video McAnally has shared, Texson laughs and says the sound “ma ma ma,” when asked if he wants “dada or pop.” Later on, in the video, he cries and looks frustrated." - https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/shane-mcanally-video-...

Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong is throwing out the baby with the bathwater - the main thrust of the story is true.


> In that video, Texson smiles in response to being told he has a sister, a brother and puppies but frowns when McAnally says that he has two dads

[Apologies for being somewhat absolutist about this, but...] babies do not (typically) understand the literal meaning of words - or indeed understand language generally - at 6 weeks. They may understand tone, but not words.

Again, rage bait headlines and all that.

> Of course, getting stuck on if they got the age of the baby wrong

Was hoping to provide useful data for any readers who may be here to "gratify their intellectual curiosity"* that certain claims referenced in this thread are ... implausible ... and that's putting it mildly.

* this is HN ;)


"6-Week-Old" babies don't have the muscle strength to hold their heads horizontally like that (and IMHO it would be foolhardy to wave them around like that)...

Pronounced social smiling (as in the video) already by six weeks would also pretty unusual.


Hah yes, many years I got into a debate with someone here or was it Reddit about the "intuitiveness of iOS" and someone claiming "I've handed my iPad to my 3 month old and they are able to swipe and navigate"...

No, your baby typically needs to be propped up to sit at that age. They simply don't have that fine motor control and coordination, let alone the comprehension of whatever app you put in front of them.


My 7-month old likes to play with my android watch. It's locked so she just futzes with the lock screen. But she doesn't know how to swipe or navigate, she just likes that it's shiny and does something interesting when she touches is.

That said, for me, having only ever used android phones, I always find myself wondering "how do you go back" when I help my mom with her iPhone. No back button! So I guess I'm not as intuitive as a 3 month old on reddit :)


So a Mr. McAnally told his son he has two dads? Sounds beleivable.

I'm not sure what point you're making but there's nothing satirical about the second headline. The UK really did just legislate to decriminalise abortion up to the point of birth.

I don't see how that's a laughing matter.



TLDR: not legalised in the wider sense that any doctors or institutions involved with the abortion can perform the abortion until arbitrary late, but DOES remove liability from the pregnant women. So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not. If she is the sole actor, it seems abortion has been arbitrarily legalized according to kuerbels' link. This also makes it important that people like kuerbel disseminate such a correction: the platitude that all abortions are now legalized would send the wrong message / legal advice to any accomplices in the abortion, even if the mother can do this with impunity, if you aid or abet her in it you can be held liable!

> So in case her abortion is aided or abetted those people are still criminally liable, but if she does it on her own somehow, then it is in fact legalised by the recent change. So, it depends on the situation, and if the mother is the sole actor or not.

Wheter acting solo or with aid of others, the mother is no longer liable for criminal charges. Full Stop.

See, much better articles that address the actual ammended bill and passing into law rather than focussing on the confusion spread by various media sources.

eg: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/17/law-pardon-wom...

This is a change that would have impacted a total of 20 woman in the entire 100 years of the 19th Century and almost the same number of woman from the last two decades.


I agree! Not at all a laughing matter; rather, a critical landmark in the preservation of individual rights.

“Up to the date of birth”

This is not an issue I care about at all, but even I can recognize that a voluntary abortion the day before a healthy birth would occur is truly a radical extreme that most people would object to.


You can likely also realise that the UK expunging prosecution and conviction of women convicted of back street abortions isn't equivilant to legalising abortion the day before birth .. however much the hand wringing click bait press try and spin it.

How can you not care at all about the government forcing people to sacrifice their bodies in the most intimate way possible? To put one's sex organs to use against one's will? Disgusting.


Also:

> Trump Responds To Controversial Image Of Himself As Jesus, Says It Actually Depicted Him As A Doctor & Slams “Fake News” For The Misinterpretation

Had I not already heard this story via the mainstream media on this side of the Atlantic, this could easily be another satirical headline. With Trump as President, Poe’s law now covers reporting on facts – not just expressions of opinion.


"Afghani Arrested On Suspicion Of Raping Goats In France"

"Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"

"Photos Of A Cucumber & Ron Paul Playing Baseball Massively Ratio Netanyahu & Mark Levin On X"


> "Trump Anticipates Chinese Leader “Will Give Me A Big, Fat Hug”"

To be fair, he did.


[flagged]


They are indeed cringe worthy. Even my four year old cries when his spoon is the wrong kind of spoon. This does not make him spoon-phobic. It means he is a kid who has no control of his emotions.

A baby has even less understanding.

Everyone who is debating the homophobia of the baby is projecting.


I believe they call it "humour".

Unfortunately many people are humourphobic.

>> Everyone who is debating the homophobia of the baby is projecting.

The gay men in the video were saying this about the baby. If its a joke? Then its a really sad one when people are filming their cringeworthy interactions with a newborn and then posting for the entire internet to view in order to get attention.

Welcome to the severe, rapid decline of Western Civilization.


I think it’s pretty obvious that the cringe-worthy part is the story-selection. To refer to anoyher headline, do they run a story every time some Englishman fucks a goat? No, of course not; it’s only newsworthy if it’s [minority you should hate].

That’s cringeworthy.


wait, hang on, someone did what to a goat...?

Why do Scotsmen wear kilts?

Now, what would you think of a website with such headlines?

Considering its all over the internet? It would seem the issue is not with the website per se then is it?

Do you think learning that 3/3 stories they thought were so ridiculous they were obviously fake, were in fact real, will cause them to reconsider their view of the world in any way?

I don’t see what’s so funny about them, especially the last one.


I’m surprised they’ve said it so confidently given how it completely collapsed last time…

I believe its because its a different structure.

Previously, they were trying to buy the assets outright. That got into the "one group of families is owned $1.4 billion and another is owned $50 million" and the "how do you maximize the returns from Alex Jones assets to satisfy those claims?"

This is using a different structure.

> On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’s Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.

They're not buying it - they're licensing it from the victims families instead.


Well, that's an example of exactly the type of media outlet they're trying to create!

Consider the fact this is a satirical news website; a fictional CEO; an imaginary corporation; and it literally proposes a vision of "Not just ads, but scams! Not just scams, but lies with no object [...] A digital platform where, every day, visitors sacrifice themselves at altars of delusion and misery"

I'm surprised you're surprised.


I think it's a good PR move. "Hey, look at how reasonable we've been in spite of the legal craziness. We've put money on the table and are moving forward with a plan that benefits everyone." Now anyone who blocks the plan will be seen as the problem.

> Nothing can stop us now that we’re in charge of a website.

Somehow I don't think the confidence is meant to be taken at exactly face value.


> Seems like it's still not theirs until a judge signs off on it.

Does that mean their use of the branding and claims of ownership could be illegal or would it be covered under the first ammendment?


Misinformation is funny now! This is all part of the joke- they were a funny fake news site that bought an unfunny fake news site, now their fake news doesn't need to be funny and that's what makes it funny.

Maybe you're not highbrow enough for this...


Even their status page is down. But, prior to that their two primary APIs were down. I believe those are the two main relays that operate the network, so Blacksky is down as well. I'm not sure about Eurosky.

https://status.bsky.app/

Looks like some network activity is coming back online.

>From: Bluesky Server Status ‪@status.bsky.app‬

Update: We are starting to see some early recovery, but many users and services are still impacted.

https://bsky.app/profile/status.bsky.app/post/3mjm3qxzxeo2x


It's running on ATProto from the Bluesky network

This is getting totally out of hand. Nobody can pay a subscription for every single news site.

If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites.

I've tried a dozen different paywall bypass services including bpc & archive.today and I can't get it to bypass this. I think the Google Rich Text trick might work but I'm on mobile atm.


> If they were smart they would do a Netflix of news where you subscribe to one service and it gives you access to a ton of different subscription news sites

Isn’t this exactly what Apple News[1] is?

[1] https://www.apple.com/apple-news/


It serves ads even if you pay, so for me, no.


The ads are less intrusive than paid subscriptions from the providers IMO. Not a fan of the double-dip either though.

…which makes it no different practically every other form of periodical news media that’s ever existed.

Apparently they can be blocked (mitigated?) with PiHole. But your point stands.

Isn’t this true for Netflix as well?

Except it doesn't work with links, which is usually how I find news stories. I have Apple One (which includes News), but If I click on a link to the WSJ, I get the paywall. To read the article, I have to copy the article title or headline (if I can find it!), and paste it into the News app to read it.


Use the share menu and select the News app and it’ll open the story in it. Not as easy as those app banners but still not too difficult.

Thanks. I never would have thought to do that - the News app wasn't even one of the default targets for me.

TIL, thanks for the tip!

Even netflix suffers from this, for a while they were great, pay them watch anything. but then the traditional publishing houses started cutting their works off from netflix in favor of running their own streaming. which had two results, a balkanization of streaming video (you can't just go to one place anymore) and netflix investing into making their own content so they have something to stream.


I'd rather have paywalls than the privacy shit storm ads on the internet brought us. Paying for content is totally fine.

You paid to read a book. You paid for the paper. You paid to see a movie. Yeah they had/have ads but not ones that retarget and manipulate you.

Think of how much more sane the world would be if you had to pay for Instagram and Facebook.

I say bring on the paywall.


I understood that ads paid for newspapers. The nominal fee they charged was probably for pulp and barrels of ink. (If the papers were completely free people would just grab armloads to line their bird cages.)

When the physical paper is gone and delivery is over the wire, free should in fact be doable.

Perhaps the local news fucked up by accepting Google ads. Had each regional, metropolitan area put together their own ad agency they could have served up local ads and likely kept something closer to their previous business model—likely reaped more dosh?


I would like paywalls, but only if they had been extremely different from the current paywalls.

First, I almost never find subscriptions acceptable, but I would happily pay for downloading anything that I am interested in, after seeing a preview that would convince me that the content is worth it.

Second, the procedure for paying would have to be very simple and more importantly, the prices would have to be very low, e.g in most cases not significantly bigger than $1.

I can easily read many hundreds of articles per month, or even per day. A price of e.g. $30 per article is not feasible, except in very rare occasions, for something unusually valuable. In most cases even $10 would be too much for a single article.

I actually subscribe to a few paywalled libraries, but I frequently prefer to take the content that I am paying for from some pirate sites, because those have much faster content searching and instant downloading, while if I go on the sites for which I pay dearly, I waste a lot of time with inferior searching and especially with various slow and annoying steps for authorization.


But you didn't pay for ten books just to check a couple of pages in each!

It forces you to decide what's important to you.

Every newspaper had a price. People were happy with this.


People demand access to everything.


We're talking about a news provider that is one of the 3 original broadcast systems licensed in the US (NBC, CBS, & ABC). They've been provided public journalism since the dawn of radio & TV. They've been offering access to all their articles on their news websites without a paywall since at least the 1990s.

It's just shocking when you see media company after media company go completely behind a paywall out of the blue when last week I was reading it with advertisements.


With a TV there was no easy way to block ads. Sure you could change the channel or get up and do something else but people didn't bother.

Now with news websites most people are running ad blockers. What are the news sites meant to do? Their employees are working, and they expect to be paid for that work. just like I expect to be paid for my job. Where is the money going to come from?


Advertising doesn't cover the bills anymore/ever.

And CBS might as well be state controlled media and ABC just bribed Trump and very much kowtows to the administration.

Advertisers are moving away from broadcast along with eyeballs.


You can copy/paste (or share to, if you set that up) what is visible before the paywall into Perplexity or similar service to see if the article is syndicated elsewhere paywall free, or find similar sources, e.g. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/apple-privately-threatened-...

If you have Apple news you can share to that in a similar way.


It's a shame the creator had to put this on a Russian github clone. But after getting DMCA'd off Gitlab, Mozilla Extensions & Github they didn't have much of a choice.


I see no shame in that except a thing: devs should own their infra, instead of relaying on third parties. A thing too many still fails to understand.


Can you block it as an element in Brave browser or prevent scripts from running or anything?


I used this when installing fresh copies of Windows 11 and was very satisfied with it. I never thought about it increasing RAM as the author says, I was just interested in disabling CoPilot, all telemetry options, changing the start menu and task bar to act more like Windows 10 and various other options.

Winutil is definitely a tool I wouldn't recommend for a beginner, as many of the options are things you wouldn't want to mess with, but it will create restore points for you to put things back. You can hold your mouseover the options to see what it's doing and click on the question mark icon to learn exactly what it s doing. Since it also lets you run O&O Shutup, it's getting rid of a lot of phone home garbage and tracking you want off too.

I use it and the WinAero tweak tool [1] just to keep Windows Update disabled until I can be sure the slop updates Microsoft puts out are actually working or not, since recently half the time they break something serious in the OS.

[1] https://winaerotweaker.com/


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