For what it's worth, I've been known to have 300+ tabs open all in separate windows (I just forget about them and they tend to accumulate), and for the most part it handled it just fine (it did use quite a lot of RAM, of course.) That was on an i7 7700k with 32GB of RAM.
If anything, it seems more poised to damage the usability of systems which actively rely on Aurora Store, like CalyxOS and the likes. Graphene actively discourages using Aurora.
> I frankly do not need the hyper paranoid security features like a hardened memory allocator
I get the part about disabled root - you're choosing to sacrifice freedom for security - though I don't understand why you wouldn't want a hardened memory allocator. It provides additional security over the stock OS for very little cost (slightly more resource consumption), in an era where we absolutely need as much security as we can get; what are you losing by gaining this?
Firefox is genuinely quite a good option. There are some Google-driven web proposals that they've refused to implement[0] (I'm sure I disagreed with some of them, though I forget which), but overall I've found that I've never really had to think about the browser: it's just a medium for the web.
They do offer some integrated services (which some would denote as bloat), though unlike Chrome, they do let you actually turn things off, which I'm very appreciative of -- they don't seem to be nearly as forceful as Google, who recently added a 4GB download to every Chrome install[0].
As I grow older, I find myself becoming more and more appreciative of platforms which don't try to redefine the problem scope, and instead just provide a platform for other things. GrapheneOS does this perfectly too.
From my perspective, with all of these different web APIs, I imagine Mozilla are walking a tightrope: if they refuse to implement all of them, there's a good chance that websites will ask the user to use Chrome, pushing it further into obscurity. Go too far, however, such as implementing Google-driven proposals like Topics, and you weaken the privacy advantages of the browser.
I'm glad that they take both a moral and technological stance here - someone needs to.
Reintroducing pen and paper to your note-taking repertoire might not be such a bad idea, anyway -- it's a much more creative medium than most digital, textual forms.
I suppose it's harder to cross-reference and find things, though I suspect you could utilize some sort of organizational system to mostly overcome that.
I really do think pen and paper will slowly regain prominence; I personally find that it can be much more liberating than digital media.
It's great to be able to use the page as a canvas, writing wherever you want, without having to meet the constraints of a text editor or the likes. Doodles help to visualize and understand problems, too.
Tangent for macOS is my current go-to for note-taking, and it works quite well: it's mostly just a Markdown editor, a tree structure of folders (which is really just a normal folder), and the ability to cross-reference and embed images.
I suppose the primary problem of note-taking apps is that they sort of have to be opinionated in some way to be useful (that's been my experience, anyway.) Markdown files are also guilty of this: they constrain you to a certain layout, which can either be a negative or a positive. Anything too complicated can be off-putting, whilst anything too simplistic can also be limiting.
It's a surprisingly complex field, and it could explain why there's so many different apps for it.
A similar life hack is the next time you have to give a presentation, you know, what is normally a brain numbing powerpoint slide deck sort of thing, rehearse and do the slides live on a chalkboard. The novelty of the spectacle means people will actually pay attention. Whiteboards are ok but really lack that visceral staccato punctuation that a chalkboard brings to the table.
I have just been reading an article about it from the EFF[0]. What a vitriolic, hateful enterprise.
> Take, for example, the case of the Tammy Lafky, a 41-year-old sugar mill worker and single mother in Minnesota. Because her teenage daughter downloaded some music last year—an activity both mother and daughter believed to be legal— Lafky now faces over $500,000 in penalties. The RIAA has offered to settle for $4000, but even that sum is well beyond Lafky’s means—she earns just $21,000 per year and receives no child support.
It gets worse:
> Among those sued was Brianna Lahara, a twelve-year-old girl living with her single mother in public housing in New York City. In order to settle the case, Brianna was forced to apologize publicly and pay $2,000.
How could one justify tearing cash from the hands of poor children? The irony is that they may have been downloading music because they couldn't afford it in the first place, yet wanted to keep up with their peers.
Whilst it pays for the service (and, in that respect, may be a necessary evil), it's morally questionable (at minimum) to charge for things that, by law, aren't yours in the first place.
Less morally questionable than claiming to users they are "buying" access to media that can be revoked at any point in the future with no recompense, of course referring to Sony and Amazon.
I do think the language around that needs to change, yes -- misleadingly labelling renting as buying is wrong and deliberately confusing. The previous physical ownership model was a lot more secure, though the implementation of DVDs does seem to be diminishing throughout the gaming sector.
PlayStation recently sent out emails regarding this, effectively reminding people that they did not, in fact, own what they purchased[0]. It's very confusing - someone here would have a much higher chance of knowing that it's not a direct purchase or right to ownership, though I'll bet most of the general public do not.
They are inherently charging for access to copyrighted content that they don't have the rights to distribute (even after being served with lawsuits), though. I'm not explicitly disavowing it, but I can see why it would raise questions and why it would give litigators a much stronger case - once you start accepting money, a lot of things change.
I will say, however, that they've gone up against some very scary people with very large teams of lawyers, and for that I salute them.
And it also adds costs in every step. Someone needs to move thousands of unwanted books from high end stores to lower and lower end stores. Someone needs to store them in the proper environment etc.
I do get the _idea_ of preserving books, but... people don't care. I just threw out well over a thousand books from my grandparents house this spring.
There were ~6-10 "valuable" books there. Two because I personally knew someone who wanted old war-time books and a few 100+ year old bibles. And maybe two dozen books worth saving, mostly because they were from big-name authors or had stuff that nobody would print anymore (I have detailed instructions how to make laughing gas and how to build an underground chemical lab - hobby books in the 50s were ... interesting :D )
I literally couldn't give away the rest. And I tried. It was all just "interesting, but..." - no way to justify using the shelf space for books that, realistically, nobody will actually ever read again.
[0]: https://energydashboard.co.uk
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