VW is not Stellantis. VW is VW AG (often humourously called VAG).
Does anybody expect them to say anything else? Web engine development is more costly than even OS development, we’re talking costs that often run into the hundreds of millions per year – it’s virtually impossible to fund unless you’re a giant like Google or being funded by someone with very deep pockets, like… er… Google.
Even MS bailed and ceded power to Google, because it simply didn’t make financial sense. Apple does it but they’re pretty meh in terms of implementing standards and such… there’s a reason 3rd party WebKit browsers are rare. They comparatively run it on a shoestring budget, and they’re Apple FFS - their wealth is practically limitless!
People aren’t going to start paying to use Firefox, and that money needs to come from somewhere. The community rejects giants paying Mozilla (understable sentiment), rejects paying for Firefox (also understandable), and rejects Mozilla selling data (definitely understandable). Some say donations, but be real, that won’t make hundreds of millions per year.
What is the solution here? I’m not trying to be contrarian I just don’t know what they can actually do. You’d hope that the Linux Foundation or something would chip in, but nope, they help Chromium instead. I worry for the future of web browsers.
That said, I’m also deeply uncomfortable with Google being able to pay to be default search on so many products. It gives them a huge advantage. I don’t want them to have that advantage. It’s anticompetitive and scummy as fuck.
Mozilla are definitely between a rock and a hard place here. I don’t like some of the decisions they make, but damn, I’m not sure I have the smarts to come up with better ones, given the position and market they’re in.
I don’t mean to be an apologist for dieselgate - I’m not, it was scummy and I’m glad VW execs ended up in prison - but all carmakers had illegally high diesel emissions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
VW weren’t even close to the worst for it, either. Fiat, Hyundai, and Renault-Nissan (they partner for engine designs a lot) were the worst, VW was bizarrely one of the least over the legal limit for most engine designs.
We just affiliate it with VW more because they were not only the first to be tested, but the VW executives admitted to using cheat devices, whereas most others denied it. VW took the fall for an entire shady industry.
Not really. The UK is very anti-Musk and very anti-Trump.
Ireland and the UK being the only ones to grow is likely due to the way Tesla delivers Right-Hand Drive cars - they deliver them as one large batch each quarter rather than constantly trickling them out like LHD cars.
If you look at UK and Irish sales figures across multiple months, they swing between being up and down, depending on when RHD shipments come. Overall Tesla is down (and the UK even before Musk’s recent actions bought far fewer Tesla cars than France or Germany)
Over time as 3D printers go from tinkerer’s toy to household staple, I’d expect them to become more locked down and anti-consumer.
And now Firefox is requiring you to hand over your data to them.
If you’re talking about the recent news, that’s not what the updated privacy notice says.
Mozilla will be adding opt in LLM functionality to Firefox. It can use third party LLM providers. The privacy has been updated to say “btw, any info you give to this LLM will be processed by the LLM by a third party.” I.e. the LLM provider has the data once you send it to them.
For anybody unaware, their new privacy notice essentially states that if you opt in to using a third party LLM within Firefox, the LLM provider will get the info that you give to the LLM.
I can’t find a gif of it, so I’d just like everyone to imagine that I posted that scene from the SpongeBob Movie where a worker sprays a can of hair onto King Neptune’s eyes.
I’m so fucking glad Valve isn’t beholden to shareholders.
The people who create these services will always be more clever and quick to implement workarounds than politicians. It’s a futile battle.
Want to avoid piracy? Make getting things easier and more convenient.
Back when Netflix was £5-10 depending on tier, had a load of content, and an account could be shared between a few trusted people, I practically gave up pirating. Now it’s £18 per month for 4K (and due to rise), and doesn’t have those other positives going for it, I’ve abandoned it in favour of Radarr+Sonarr+Plex, and am having a better experience.
For video games, I predominantly buy from Steam, because it’s a good service, and so far I have not seen any evidence that Valve are going to fuck me over. They’ve made gaming and all the things ancillary to it a lot more convenient. So I happily pay. If they embrace enshittification, guess what I’ll do?
The only games I do pirate are Nintendo/Sega games that haven’t been sold in decades. Why? Because there’s no feasible other way to buy them and keep them!
I don’t pirate music because Spotify. For all the issues I have with it (and boy do I have a few), it still has almost every song I search for, is fairly priced, and hasn’t clamped down on account sharing in the same way Netflix/Disney/etc have. I’m part of a family where we split the cost. All the music I could possibly want for £2.20 per month? Fine by me! If that goes away, I go away, yarr harr.
Aren’t they banned in China anyway?
I said OP knew exactly what kind of arguments this would spawn. And I believe that to be correct. It was inevitable.
What? I’m very well aware of the fears people, especially women, have at going out alone at night. It’s completely reasonable to feel fear in situations like that.
What’s your problem?
Almost like this is a submission specifically posted to elicit that exact response. OP posted this knowing it would be a heated topic.
You’re right, however I’d say that Nvidia has always been stingy with VRAM. The 3060 had 6GB while the RX 480 had 8GB, for example, the 970 had 3.5GB VRAM and the R9 390 had 8GB, and there are similar examples going back a long way.
It has got pretty bad recently. Worse than normal. AI is also very VRAM intensive (even moreso than gaming), so I imagine they’ve been diverting those chips to their AI/enterprise cards.
TL;DR:
Geothermal energy is currently only feasible in very few places where heat comes close to the surface. We are limited by how far we can dig.
The article doesn’t really go into detail on why that is, but basically it’s due to pressure and heat, drill bits last less time the deeper we go, eventually there’s just way too much pressure. It effectively becomes impossible to dig past a certain point due to the cost and materials science of drill bits.
But lasers don’t have this problem, enabling us to dig much much deeper, potentially making geothermal practical in many more locations.
Like I said, it’s difficult for many and impossible for others.
Sigh. Nvidia and Intel doing paper launches, while AMD has delayed to March.
Phones would be far less socially damaging if social media didn’t exist in the way it does now.