Among the seriousness of the situation, I just want to say that I find hilarious that after these things happen, nazis online always go "well those aren't real nazis because look how fit they are, they are all in good shape, and are marching! they must be feds because of all the walking and going outside! ~~we~~ real nazis could never!"

that would be great of course but you know who's very ready to double down and lose billions instead of saying 'uhmm you know what I think I was wrong and I need to correct course'?

yeah that guy

Well at least I'm gonna get to see it since now the vaccine will kill everyone who took it 'within 10 years' instead of 2 as it was originally predicted.

The tragedy of edge is that it is technically a fantastic browser for windows but made by Microsoft.

Just thinking about the engineers that built such great memory management and security features that no other browser has just to have the marketing guy come in and say 'yeah put these three layers of bloat on top oh and don't forget to add the new backdoor we need...' only to see that all their work is basically a tech meme...

I guess they must get home and cry while hugging their stock options and 300k/y contract the poor guys...

Let this be the regular reminder that any time that a gigantic for profit corporation seems to be doing the right thing it's a mere coincidence and they are following their bottom line. The moment those two depart, they will look after their bottom line right thing be damned. There are no moral corporations.

Maybe those good things they do while are convenient to them are moral and bring real benefits and can be followed and celebrated, but ultimately they are a convenient mask to trick customers. So don't ever be loyal to a brand, be loyal to principles.

1. How is this allowed?

2. Since it's allowed, why aren't Dems taking advantage of the old switcheroo and packing every race with temporary conservatives only for switching back once elected? That would be the funniest thing.

I mean if democracy is a joke may as well get some good out of playing it.

A few things:

Privacy-wise, no, neither one of those Microsoft services are good alternatives to Google. Microsoft is just another flavor of an enormous corporation milking your personal information for profit. If that's your number one concern and decision maker, then stop here and consider something else. I don't think there's anything as polished as Google drive, but some actually private services are pretty good. Proton Drive is usually the most recommended. I use filen.io, it is very cheap, encrypted and works pretty well. Skiff Drive is also very good, they don't have as many options for drive space but they have a suite with email, calendar, drive storage and documents (not like Office mind you, a more simple kind, like formatted notes), all encrypted. If you want something that allows collaboration and is well integrated skiff is probably the best option.

Now if you don't want the highest privacy but just something that isn't google, well I have used OneDrive and it has never worked well for me. The short period of time that I decided to use it on windows it broke constantly, I had to log out and in a few times because out of nowhere it stopped working. It didn't delete files or resynced files that I had deleted in some other device. Maybe those issues have been fixed since, I don't know. But even if we completely ignored the privacy aspect, I would not recommend OneDrive to anyone.

Maybe the biggest issue is the office suite. If you need the advanced features of Microsoft Office, there's simply nothing that can replace it. If you don't, then a local alternative may work for you, like LibreOffice or Onlyoffice. You can also use office online, it's simple but it is maybe the second best option after full desktop office. But again, you are relying on OneDrive even a little. What I do when I need it is I download the file I need to work from my filen drive, upload it to office online, work with it, download when I'm done and move it to my cloud. It's a bit cumbersome but I've never had any problems. But mostly I use Onlyoffice on my desktop.

None of the private alternatives are as easy and comfortable as Google or even Microsoft services, that's for sure, so whatever route you end up following make sure to try first so that you can see what to expect and what is the best for you.

In the road to privacy I've found that being an absolutist of the 'ditch everything right now and move to Foss' kind is not a sustainable way for most people and only leads to them going back to the old ways. Small careful steps one at the time is an option that almost anyone can get used to and work long term.

I recommend you to check privacyguides.org for more explanations and good alternatives.

Thanks for the long read and good luck.

surprised it took this long, surprised the shock on the charts isn't bigger around the world.

Less than one minute in reading and there's already one big misrepresentation and one outright lie.

He tries to 'clear' the misconception that Mozilla develops software by showing the areas of focus of the foundation, making a point about how it should be software development and instead are some vague ideological goals.

But the foundation should be ideological. The browser is ideological and lots of the users use it because of ideology. There would be absolutely no issue with that even if the fact that is the corporation and not the foundation the one that focuses on software development weren't true. Open the frontpage of any big open source project that works with a foundation (GNOME, Fedora, Linux) and you will see front and center the big focus on promotion of ideological values. And those are values focused on internet freedom, which are absolutely related to software.That's what a foundation does. That's the way things are. And yet open mozilla.org and the first thing you'll see is the software it makes. So what's really the accusation there?

Second point makes the previous accusation make even less sense. He proceeds to show financial balances about reduction in expenses that show that the biggest one is software development. So the reality shows that Mozilla is focused on software development. The accusation goes that precisely software development is the area with the biggest cuts. One could argue that doing more with less is a good thing, specially knowing how exactly the types like the author frequently use smaller projects like librefox or ungoogled chromium as an example of a smaller more focused project that firefox should be, but I won't do that. Instead I will point out how his accusation of the biggest cuts to software development are and outright lie easily visible to anyone with eyes and basic arithmetic knowledge. While software development saw 41 million in cuts, administration and management costs went down almost 60 million. One would think that's a good thing and exactly the kind of point he should be noticing given the accusation, but if the foundation is becoming leaner in the management side that would kind of render his whole text moot, so he ignores that.

I will keep reading and analyze each point on his own, but after this and knowing very well this kind of people I don't think anyone could trust this analysis. I'm sure I'll come across the author anonymously on 4chan attacking 'pozzilla' and their 'trannyware' (I'm sorry) or on twitter harassing women developers, and I'll let him know my opinions.

don't be so hard on yourself. over time, we all just stop paying so much attention to every single internet drama, it's tiring and we have better stuff to do.

and the point is that epic games has been really liberal with the freebies for their users ever since they set up shop as a competitor to steam. they give away a game every couple of weeks and even more on certain special seasons, including triple a games. someone following them since the begging must have a library well over a hundred games now, completely for free. despite that, they are finding very hard to find sympathy and market share among certain sectors of the gaming community, because their store is just not at the level of steam and some other questionable practices, even so far as to still be operating at a loss even now years later. you can see the giveaway games just below the current discounts at the home page or in the free games page almost at the top https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games and of you use telegram there's a channel that notify you every time there's something new for free https://t.me/epicfreegames

Did they already found a star witness that doesn't turn out to be a chinese or russian spy?

I remember a similar scare when Vista was coming out, and then nothing happened. Probably the tech wasn't ready then and now it is, that's why is so encouraging so see big progress in Linux gaming, just in case.

Edit: found a source for the Vista thing https://www.forbes.com/2007/02/10/microsoft-vista-drm-tech-security-cz_bs_0212vista.html?sh=38c0bc9e175e

And yes, we know the picture is fake, but the Pluton platform is real and the nefarious intentions can always be counted on.