Zagorath

The point is that with open source you can effectively leech off of Google for now, while still retaining the flexibility to nope out and do your own thing at any point you decide.

Considering just how severely behind they are already (as I mentioned in my other comment, they're often 3–5 years behind other browsers in implementing new web standards or operating system features), I see anything they can do to reduce how much they need to maintain independently as a good thing. In an ideal world where they had all the funding and development power they could want I might say sticking with the completely independent Firefox would be great. But that just isn't where they're at today.

Enlightened. Initially it was just because I looked around my immediate local area and everything was blue, so I figured there'd be more to do with Enlightened. Then I came to realise my city outside my neighbourhood was overwhelmingly green, but we had a really great friendly local Enlightened community. When they moved away from Hangouts and G+ into Telegram I mostly lost touch.

In retrospect, the not-so-subtle political allegory with Enlightened being progressive and Resistance conservative is not lost on me either lol. Not that the meta-plot was especially important anyway.

How about you?

Been a little over a year since I started actually playing it, and nearly 2 years since I first bought the CRB. It just feels so much better than 5e did, and I still haven't even been able to really take advantage of it, since I'm playing a published D&D campaign that I'm porting over to PF2, which limits how much I can take advantage of 2e's encounter and adventure design. Excited for the opportunity to eventually run 2e completely on its own merits.

They wouldn't be at the mercy of anything. That's...how open source works. If it changes in a way that breaks things for you, don't pull that change. At that point, if the change is drastic enough to require it, you can turn that soft fork into a hard fork and hope that Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc. join you; something that would significantly hamper Google's ability to maintain their dominance of the browser engine market. That's a choice that they simply don't have today when being based on Firefox and Gecko means using an inferior browser platform.

Honestly I've been saying for some time that Mozilla's resources would be much better spent making Firefox a soft fork of Chromium. Primarily: use the Blink browser engine and V8 JS engine, with only the changes to those that they deem absolutely necessary, and maintain a privacy-forward Chromium-based browser. Maybe try and enlist the help of Brave, Vivaldi, and other browsers that are currently Chromium but which prefer more privacy than Google offers.

It's not zero effort, and especially as Google continues to develop Chromium with assumptions like the removal of Manifest V2 it might take some effort to maintain, but it cannot possibly be as much effort as maintaining an entire browser.

I also have a bunch of hobbies. D&D (well, roleplaying in general, mainly Pathfinder 2e these days); video games, primarily the Age of Empires franchise and survival crafters like Raft, DST, and Factorio; triathlon, as well as running and cycling as separate sports; photography; and music (I play piano, clarinet, and saxophone).

But perhaps the most unusual/unorthodox of my hobbies is fencing. I did sport fencing back in high school, but these days it's HEMA. Historical fencing based on texts & treatises written during the historical periods. Using weapons that are more familiar historically accurate than the weapons you see in modern fencing. But with modern protective equipment for safety. I do mainly rapier in the Spanish and French styles, as well as some sabre.

Ooh I used to love Ingress. Back around 2013–2015 I played a heap of it. Jumped on briefly a few times in the time since. It was a much more well-crafted game than Pokémon Go.

Okay but they often don't give users what they want

You should see the state of Firefox on iPad OS. I started using it earlier this year after they finally rolled out support for multiple windows—a feature Safari added in 2019 and Chrome had only a few months later.

Nice that they finally have this feature, but the browser itself is nearly unusable. It stutters constantly and freezes, locks up, or force reloads with some regularity. In a way that Chrome and Edge (and I assume Safari, though I have never really used that) never do.

Or on desktop OSes, a website I frequented around 2016–2018 used the column-span CSS property, which Firefox didn't get around to implementing until December 2019.

It's been very clear for some time that, whether it's because they stretch themselves too thin or some other reason, Mozilla has been failing to continue to deliver an excellent product for their users.

I think I could have agreed with you on Howard except for two things. Children overboard was not just had in itself, but it basically set Australia on its now 20 year history of politicisation of refugees' lives. It was bad enough in its own right, but looking at the long term ramifications of his actions, I rate him as one of the worst we've ever had, even if he's not quite in contention for the #1 spot.

Turnbull I agree with you. In an alternate universe he could have been one of the best LNP leaders we've ever had. But the fact is that he had no spine and was more than willing to throw the country and his own personal beliefs aside for the sake of retaining power, and I cannot forgive him for that.

I would think that if something were established with legislation capping how much can be spent, it would (a) be very difficult to get past the Senate crossbench and (b) be very expensive in terms of political capital, if you didn't take it to an election as a core issue.

Oh yeah Fraser was definitely not good for the country. But compared to every Liberal who came after him?

Don't make the mistake of falling for Abbott's image. He was a very clever and calculating man who knew exactly what he was doing.