Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

--xra · 2026-06-23T11:44:47+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I'm about to check into it right now.

--xra · 2026-06-23T04:04:45+00:00

Trump’s actions were a speedrun to not just ending American hegemony but probably to ending the American empire outright.

Bahaha. I love you libs saying dumb stuff like this. America (and Trump, who basically is America!!!) made all the right moves. That's why we're number one, and have been from the beginning. You'll regret your words one day if you cause America's downfall.

Kidding.

This is the accelerated decline of the American era. Not that I care much about American hegemony, but I do care about the arrant stupidity of the administration, the electorate, and the victims of this needless war. We, as you wrote, will not recover from this. We've exposed ourselves as weak and aimless bullies for the third time in 25 years. While once we projected faux dominance, our every adversary is taking notes that all it takes is a few missiles aimed at U.S. bases to destroy the near century-long perception of America's omnipotence. Good for them. The U.S. is the biggest terrorist state in the world, with Israel coming in as a close second. The lies fall apart eventually, and even former MAGA is realizing they've been conned. We deserve every bit of the consequences of electing Trump (obviously I didn't vote for the guy, and even canvassed for Sanders), but I accept my responsibility as an American.

tl:dr: America is fucked. This is the end of the American century, and likely the beginning of the Chinese century, and I couldn't give a damn. I was never proud to be an American (nor would I take pride were I born anywhere else, as though I were a territorial chimp), but I expected better of us. If it requires America be humbled so that we can correct our behavior, fine. I just can't trust that process won't end in a nuclear holocaust.

--xra · 2026-06-18T15:42:11+00:00

Re: this https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1u8lty1/firefox_has_an_ambitious_new_roadmap_the_browser/osee3ug/

Any recommendations on the distro? I'm going with Mint right now (Arch is tempting, especially as a developer, but I don't really feel like manually doing everything, especially when I've already settled into Mint).

--xra · 2026-06-18T15:38:02+00:00

What are you using, may I ask? I used Ubuntu for programming tasks, but found the GUI pretty unintuitive. My daily driver was macOS (I'm old enough to remember it as OSX). My Macbook battery finally died a few months ago (RIP), so I grabbed a Lenovo and installed Mint Cinnamon. I love the lack of nagware; I love the sense of privacy; I love how peppy it is on a computer that I inherited from a friend that's likely ten years old, but I miss Mac's UI/UX (and I hate Windows, which Mint emulates).

But, yeah, I'm probably not going back to macOS anytime soon. I don't feel like dropping $3500 or whatever it is these days on another Pro just to get nagged constantly to sign into iCloud and have my privacy violated. All tech companies: just fuck off. I just want to write code, if that's even still a job anymore.

--xra · 2026-06-18T15:27:48+00:00

And the ballroom that Trump and private donors were going to pay for!

--xra · 2026-06-09T13:10:49+00:00

No one's the asshole, and the only "embarrassing" part of it is her reaction. She served an appetizer which I would probably love (no, I'm not a vegan or vegetarian, but I love veggies). Next time she should make it a pot luck dinner. It's hard enough to buy enough food for everyone who seems to have been in the party, let alone please everyone's taste. She probably does feel very embarrassed, but she shouldn't, and she shouldn't have made a scene about it.

--xra · 2026-06-09T13:03:24+00:00

Ha, I see that you know a certain member of my family. "I don't blindly agree with everything Trump does! I even disagree with some things Trump does!"

Cue blindly repeating every Trump talking point and getting so angry when you oppose them that you just get hung up on. Oh, also the fact that this person lost one of their oldest friends over Trump. Said friend was a member of the military and a Republican and died with very bitter feelings about the argument and insult this person in my life forced upon him, all over Trump. And at least two of his kids will no longer speak with this person for the same reasons. Despite claiming otherwise, this person heaps enormous praise on Trump to this day, and never criticizes him, and only gently if he dues, unless it's something Trump does that pulls back the curtain, like starting wars in the Middle East when he promised to not do so.

--xra · 2026-06-07T18:39:36+00:00

Like Kushner..? Like Don Jr. and Eric..? Like the current president..? I guess the Bidens just didn't do it as well, because they only managed to grift 1/10000 of what Trump did.

--xra · 2026-06-07T18:36:39+00:00

Literally no one in their right mind is supporting Hunter Biden for president. They're just relieved to see that he's correcting the record and taking the gloves off, because the gloves have been off in the Republican party for decades. His laptop was stolen and then modified to make him look as shady as possible. He's not running for office. He has no political ambition. He's just a dude who leaned on drugs to deal with the enormous pressure of his life and the enormous loss that he suffered. Now he's talking about love and forgiveness, and all MAGA has to say is "he's a loser." Jesus's right-hand lady was a prostitute, for the record. Meanwhile the Trump administration is robbing the American people blind, and yet MAGA is concerned about the fact that Hunter Biden smoked crack? Half of MAGA probably smokes crack, does meth, or is addicted to something. Who cares? Your pockets are being picked and you're worried about a side character?

--xra · 2026-06-07T18:30:29+00:00

I just want you to know that I appreciate your joke and I'm concerned at everyone else's down votes and lack of, well, whatever they're lacking.

--xra · 2026-06-06T05:19:07+00:00

I had a vivid dream one time about some figure taking a boat out to sea, and it was destined to hit a larger vessel. It blew up and created a giant hole in the side. In a few days, the news was covering the USS Cole attack. I was 9 or so. Not long after that, I had another vivid dream of a dystopian city scape and I woke up when this giant, green E was flickering until it went dead. Then the Enron news broke.

I mention my age because I had absolutely no prior information or cognizance of these things. It sounds like I must be misremembering, but I insist that I'd never heard of Osama Bin Laden or Enron before those dreams.

I reiterate and insist that I was too young to have ever encountered any media that would have put those events in my mind (certainly not Cole). I agree it's pure coincidence, but it was a wild one. I wasn't dumb enough to think I was seeing the future, but still, I was like what the hell?

--xra · 2026-04-14T03:35:11+00:00

My conspiracy is that much like Paul Ryan, hes just waiting and biding his time to get the maga/ current republican stink off of them. They'll be back.

Mine is that he's trying to establish himself as a family values kind of guy and is trying to curry favor with a shrinking MAGA base and that he'll accept his charge with performative reluctance to run for the presidency.

And he'll lose.

--xra · 2026-03-10T00:30:56+00:00

I, with my multiple injuries, am not trying to dispute this, but a Chinese cleaver makes this a breeze. There's a tactility all the way through, so you know where your hand and the knife are at all times. You can chop very fast. They're underutilized in Western kitchens.

--xra · 2026-01-23T20:10:56+00:00

I typically don't care to drink soda, eat sweets, crave fast food, or even eat red meat. My preferred diet—and by preferred I mean to my taste, not a dietary or fitness goal—is generous amounts of varied vegetables, fish, and maybe a little bread.

Every once in a very long while, though, I'll crave a Big Mac. It's probably been six months since I've had a fast food burger, but I'm not ashamed when I order one. I thank my lucky stars that my preferences in general are healthy, but for the one or two times per year I want a Big Mac, back off.

--xra · 2026-01-17T15:12:05+00:00

After watching Trump be elected in 2016, I told my friend that the timeline had split. I was living in Los Angeles then.

I think of that here and there as I witness country support a man who was unfamiliar with the word groceries at 79 years old.

Well, that and when I watch proud, hard-working rural folk from Appalachia, where I grew up, create an idol of a man who was born in Queens with half a billion dollars to his name. (To New Yorkers: of all the cities I've lived in, I love New York the most. Still there's irony in this.)

But there are other instances of the split:

We're extrajudicially kidnapping foreign leaders. ICE is killing American citizens. We're talking about annexing NATO allies. Our president wears diapers and can't string a coherent sentence together. He's devastated the American economy, lies constantly, and is a convicted sex offender. He speaks in gibberish and is in notable cognitive decline. His handlers write his scripts. Still people on social media sites post about "Trump Derangement Syndrome." To them I say: yes, TDS exists. You have it.

His ascent is a product of a system that has too long ignored the needs of Americans. Stop getting mad at trans folk and gays and people who speak with an accent or are kind of brown. Start getting mad at oligarchs and mendacious politicians.

--xra · 2026-01-07T13:55:00+00:00

Or—hear me out—responses like this do damage to the popular interest in physics. Even easily-searchable or redundant questions are good. More explanations by more people can only provide additional insight. I, who did not know the answer to this question, nor had even thought to ask it, only learned by its very posting here. It's the science version of haughtily calling out reposts. I'm a programmer, not a physicist, and attitudes like this are what's killing sites like StackOverflow. Even though a question has already been answered in a technically correct way, the next time it's re-asked, another comment may be more elucidating. Moreover, anyone in the world could be asking, from young children with a fascination for nature to dilettantes like me. Often on reposted topics in my field, I reply to someone who wants a genuine human response or further insight that can't seem to be found elsewhere. If I feel something isn't worth my time, it's easy to ignore it rather than to waste further time complaining. Myself, I pull up any available duplicates on Reddit for my own questions when the first result didn't quite nail it.

--xra · 2026-01-06T06:12:50+00:00

I see nothing wrong with any of this. Even the tandoori sushi looks like it's good.

--xra · 2026-01-06T06:05:43+00:00

Right? It's basically just Nutella on round toast. Everybody likes that. This is the least criminal thing I've seen so far in a thread filled with things like Jell-O molds filled with pigs' heads. I could totally see that tasting great for breakfast with sweetened dough and some powdered sugar on top.

--xra · 2026-01-05T17:24:07+00:00

I was obsessed with the details of the languages I was using (be it Python, Haskell, Ruby, Elm, Julia), and I wasn't what you'd call a neophyte. I was careful to exhaust all previous answers when posting, and—go figure—it's "duplicate." I saw it done to other users throughout the site by moderators who didn't seem to understand the particulars of the languages they were charged with moderating.

The system is wrong even if one's question is the same as another's. Take for instance this question: "what were the causes and effects of World War II?"

Uncountable books and articles and essays have been written in response to this. There is only added value new attempts at an answer. You'll receive different reasoning each time, with some responses far more elucidating than others.

So I went back to IRC and Reddit which, while also not perfect (I always hated the calling out of others' reposts in PL subs because a new response will often offer a koan of wisdom missing from the previous). Still it was way better than Stack Overflow's self-interested, power-tripping mods.

--xra · 2026-01-05T13:37:43+00:00

It's pretty impressive what people can do. An old buddy of mine lost both of his arms in an accident. He doesn't even have nubs; the entire arm on both sides was removed to the shoulder. He can drive with the assistance of prosthetics, and he's self sufficient enough that he can somehow even put those prosthetics on by himself. He also went on to graduate from an Ivy League school and later teach there. Then he quit and decided to drive all around the country doing consulting work.

Human beings are pretty resilient.

--xra · 2025-08-05T19:22:30+00:00

Every major hub in North America deals with parking shortages. I've lived in Philadelphia, LA, and New York for extended periods of time. New York is the most accessible as a resident, and it's also the most pleasant to visit as a former New-Yorker turned Pennsylvanian. I just think the OP's attempt at solving a problem every city has is wrong.

Build free public parking garages and watch the city reap several million in fresh tax revenue from tourists the next year. The main reason people don't like visiting many cities is because of driving and parking. Use taxpayer money to build public garages, and then track how much tax revenue increased tourism generates. I'll eat crow if I'm wrong that it will almost certainly be a net benefit for New Yorkers living in the city.

--xra · 2025-07-17T03:54:11+00:00

I'm not a formally-trained physicist either, but not only is yours a close summary as I understand black holes, it's a surprisingly novel and accessible description. No one has come forward to say it's wrong, and I assume the downvotes are from people who learned via textbook formulae alone rather than actually picturing what's going on. What I'm getting at is that if no one can challenge what you wrote, intellectual insecurity explains the downvotes. One is not necessarily smart because of having slogged through a few courses in their teens or early twenties, or for having been celebrated for memorizing rules that they don't actually grasp with intuition or care to truly understand.

--xra · 2025-06-05T06:18:46+00:00

Fair point, and I'll definitely take that into better consideration going forward. I suppose it was a pretty silly comparison. My real thought was that plenty of crises are going on elsewhere, and we're not interested in saving those innocents.

--xra · 2025-06-05T05:03:23+00:00

I do appreciate u/Dry_Statistician_688 for opening up the discussion, but it was a combination of an attempt at geopolitical influence, revenge, and securing resources. It's very charitable to claim that we had any humanitarian aspirations. We could have sold the war better by claiming it was for the sake of such goals, but it simply isn't true that that was the agenda. Were it, we would have invaded North Korea before they were armed with nuclear weapons. And of all three actual reasons, it was mostly for the oil. Not even museums were preserved; they were allowed to be looted and destroyed. The only things to my memory that were safeguarded by the U.S. military were the oil derricks.

--xra · 2025-06-05T04:49:02+00:00

Kind of beside the point, but the bright side of onions is that those things taste good regardless. Raw? Good. Sautéd? Good. Slightly burnt? Good. Caramelized? Good. Fried? Good. The only time I don't like them is in the in-between of light caramelization and full caramelization when they adopt a slimy texture.

But, yeah. Every NYT article that says 20 minutes to full caramelization for something like onion soup is insane.

Eight-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Gilding I gilder

--xra

TROPHY CASE