The only thing that I fear more than big tech is a bunch of old people in congress trying to regulate technology who probably only know of AI from watching terminator.
Also, fun Scott Wiener fact. He was behind a big push to decriminalization knowingly spreading STDs even if you lied to your partner about having one.
As far as I know that's nothing to write home about, monocrystaline solar panels get like ~30 years dropping down to 80% and then slowly begin to fail from there. I'm far from an expert, but my understanding is this is the norm and that if we found out they weren't lasting this long then people would be getting worried about a messed up cost calculous.
The ego of an Australian regulator that thought they could tell an American company what they could or could not distribute to non-Australians must be huge. (To clarify, twitter had blocked the video for Australians)
I know the US has a reputation for thinking it's laws apply everywhere but this is on a whole new level
"option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children."
PSA:
Innertune
Vi Music
Spotiflier
Edit: Maybe check out Ri Music, Vi Music's Successor
It's built by Google, but it's open source, and is probably the best optical character recognition by far. It's one pip/pipx installation away and I find it pretty useful on occasion. Same as WhisperAI by by OpenAI. Fully open source and one pip/pipx command away, probably close to the best audio transcription there is as well.
Not sure either count as AI, at least not AI chatbot kind of AI more like more simple algorithms, but they're great in the sense it's just another program but a very useful tool. Not some baked in copilot kind of deal
Web engines are nearly OSs at this point. It's aready possible to flash a phone ROM in two clicks with a webpage. Most apps are also already rendered in browser engines anyway, that includes things like steam. The APIs might sound evil until your favorite FOSS project uses them to make your life better.
Unfortunately, if Mozilla refuses to implement stuff like PWAs or advanced APIs it's locked out of that side of innovation both good and bad.
Odd it's desktop Firefox/Librewolf for me that has all the issues instead of mobile Firefox/Fennec. But yeah. Unfortunately Firefox laid off a lot of their developers a few years back and it's starting to catch up to them now.
But I don't like the above post being down voted. Yes use gecko if you can, but but down voteing for somebody stating the objective fact that gecko is starting to lag behind isn't going to help it get better.
IPFS is not built on a blockchain
Yes, the SEC is important and it answers to the court. If an unelected SEC admin makes a bad call they can get shot down. Happens all the time. But you want an example? Oh boy, I gotta story for you.
The EPA has the power to regulate navigable waterways (rivers, lakes, etc.) given by Congress under the clean waters act. So they also said they could regulate swamps and estuaries. Fair enough, they're connected so something that effects those will effect the navigable waterways. Then they said they can regulate ditches and small disconnected streams. I mean all that stuff is sorta connected but it's really stretching it and not what congress intended with that law.
Then they said that if birds land in a puddle in your backyard it's a navigable waterway. Of course if a bird lands in a puddle then lands in a river those two things are the same and the EPA can regulate your backyard because it's now a navigable waterway. Doesn't matter that you're in the Arizona desert.
[The Wikipedia page if I sound like I'm quoting the onion] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migratory_bird_rule)
The court gave them a pretty big bitch slap, and we're probably going to lose Chevron doctrine over it. Regulatory bodies always seek to expand their power. With no oversight things get bad fast.
Besides, how do you know someone at Google/Facebook/Microsoft etc won't set "hey regulator, mind just bankrupting our competition or running them out of the UK?" All they need to do is convince one unelected official, no oversight needed.
Unfettered regulatory agency power that makes a random admin judge jury and executioner is a bad decision. I know the hate boner for big tech is strong here, but give it some time. I'm sure within the next 5/10 years the Lemmy crowd will be freaking out when some admin does something very bad and there's no recourse.
It's one thing to move fast and sell data to sketchy buyers. It's another thing to give an unelected agency admin the power to interpret, enforce, and adjudicate laws with no oversights. That sort of thing never ends well.
Even if you absolutely hate big tech, what happens if some agency admin who has no idea what the fediverse is sees something they don't like and say decides to hit the Mastodon nonprofit for 10% of their income per "violation". No recourse, it doesn't matter if it's on some random xyz Nazi instance unaffiliated with Mastodon development. Agency man said it's a violation so pay up.
I heard a quote once. Something along the lines of I cut down every law to get to the devil, but once I got there he turned and said now that you've cut down each law what will protect you?
You have to specifically permit it on a per site basis, it's not like a website has those permissions by default. If a banner ad or forum post could enable that permission then they'd be able to access your camera as well as a plethora of other permissions?
I don't see any difference between downloading code to run in a web browser vs downloading and running ADB. In fact, running software in a web browser is more sandboxed and with more fine tuned permissions.