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Moonchild, the lead developer of the Pale Moon browser writes:
"Dear Web Developer(s),
While, as a software developer ourselves, we understand very well that new features are exciting to use and integrate into your work, we ask that you please consider not adopting Google WebComponents in your designs. This is especially important if you are a web developer creating frameworks for websites to use.
With Google WebComponents here we mean the use of CustomElements and Shadow DOM, especially when used in combination, and in dynamically created document structures (e.g. using module loading/unloading and/or slotted elements).Why is this important?
For several reasons, but primarily because it completely goes against the traditional structure of the web being an open and accessible place that isn't inherently locked down to opaque structures or a single client. WebComponents used "in full" (i.e. dynamically) inherently creates complex web page structures that cannot be saved, archived or even displayed outside of the designated targeted browsers (primarily Google Chrome).
One could even say that this is setting the web up for becoming fully content-controlled."
https://about.google/: "Our mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
Useful to... whom?
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:10PM (4 children)
ALL the old 8 bit PCs were largely proprietary in design. There weren't many existing standards that could be followed.
Old Apple, Woz and Jobs Apple, had a balance. A yin and a yang. A technical genius and an evil genius, together they made a healthy company.
Woz left a long time ago though, and the technical legacy was slowly spent to increase profits.
At this point they're just another brand being squeezed just as hard as possible to make rich people richer.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:42PM (2 children)
Apple does have some undeniable technical wins, like regularly having the industry's fastest ARM SoCs.
https://www.androidauthority.com/why-are-apples-chips-faster-than-qualcomms-gary-explains-802738/ [androidauthority.com]
They are making a swipe at x86 laptops with iPad Pro (i.e. the ARM performance can rival x86 chips). Time will tell if they adopt ARM in other product lines, like Mac Pro. We could see a future in which Apple licenses from or acquires the companies needed to make monolithic 3D ARM chips, and manages to make ARM chips that perform 10x better than whatever Threadripper/Epyc/Xeon chips are available at the time. They could also pick up the x86 emulation [theregister.co.uk] torch and run with it, fighting the lawsuits they would get hit with.
Still, the squeeze is real. Nice new $350 tablet keyboards. See also Louis Rossmann [wikipedia.org].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:59PM
They'd need to quit spending their money to subvert democracy as well though. Neither seems likely to happen, at all.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 23 2020, @04:17PM
Apple definitely has always had technical wins.
Back in my youth, I recognized that Apple hired very good people. In the early 1980s during development of Lisa / Mac, I had heard it said that Apple employed the top 150 computer science well known giants. Over time I slightly drank the kool aid and had a sense that it was because Apple was somehow magical and better than ignorant people working on IBM PC clones. But then Mac users did have a few things to actually be smug about in those days.
When Apple moved in a different direction, and I moved on to Linux, over time I recognized that there was nothing magical about Apple. They had lost the magic. Of course, everyone thought they got it back when they bought NeVR NeXT and brought back Steve Jobs the messiah from exile.
Microsoft hired lots of good people.
Then Google started hiring the best of the best. Microsoft experienced a brain drain of people going to the younger, hipper, cooler company.
It became clear that a company with management that had some vision could hire bright people and make amazing things happen.
But I observed that true Apple fanboys (a few of which personally known to me) did not believe this. Apple had some kind of magical engineering. Their software was somehow better. (Even when it because obvious that it was not.) Their hardware was "better", etc.
Don't put a mindless tool of corporations in the white house; vote ChatGPT for 2024!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday March 23 2020, @03:53PM
MSX [wikipedia.org] was a standardized Z80 microcomputer architecture maintained by ASCII and Microsoft. It used the same AY-3-8910 audio chip as Intellivision, ZX Spectrum 128, and Amstrad CPC (which is not a doorbell [youtube.com]) and the same TMS9918 video chip as TI-99/4A and ColecoVision. However, it was proprietary in the GNU sense because building an MSX computer required licensing Microsoft BASIC, which was not free software.