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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • It’s not about ‘Google’ vs ‘the other search engines’. It’s about transparency. You’ve probably read some news about how AI crawlers have been destroying infrastrucure and half the time does NOT declare themselves as crawlers in their UA.

    Can confirm that nealy 90% (read hundreds of thousands) of daily visits to several of my websites are made by crawlers from datacenters and I HATE not knowing whose who. Because when I don’t know, I block and report. Website owners already have enough between AI, Page Rankings, and Research Agencies who all exploit free infra for their own business.

    Do I make exceptions for Search Engine crawlers? Yeah, I do. I’ve seen Google, Bing, and Mojeek, but weirdly enough, never Brave. Now I know why. And frankly, if they can’t be bothered to be transparent about their crawlings, then I won’t be bothered to make exceptions for them. They’re freeloading just as much as the rest. If they act like shady chinese crawlers, then they have no right to go pikachu face when they’re treated like one.





  • I’m not sure. The courts intends for Google to sell Chrome, not Chromium. Even if they gave guarentees that Chromium will become independant, the coourt’s likely to tell them to sell Chrome anyway (as they could still apply monopolistic practices like service bundling without control over Chromium, not to mention they could ‘fork’ LF’s Chromium later to make their own).

    The way I see it, this is more Google being scared shitless about Chrome’s new owner being shitty, promote their own services instead of Google’s, and disrespect web standards (or depecreates the ‘standards’ Google implemented in Chromium without the approval of other browers, or standard bodies). That could cause MASSIVE issues for them, and the loss of business that could cause would be tremendous, in a way that’s far worse than giving up control on Chromium.

    To me, his seems more like the nuclear option of Google saying that if they can’t own Chromiulm, then nobody can as a way to cut their losses.


  • Stephen Shankland’s report from 2020 notes a number of people suggesting that Chromium as a whole could be moved out of Google entirely and into an independent foundation, such as the Linux Foundation. That’s not what is happening now, but it’s another step toward larger organization outside of the web’s dominant browser and advertising provider (though Google is still one of the supporters).

    One can only hope this is the first step toward a larger trend. LF stewardship of the Chromium project wouldn’t be perfect, but it’s still much better than the current situation of it being controlled by one company, be it Google or whoever they’ll forced to sell Chrome to.



  • A collar or other physical appariments wouldn’t stop you from abducting it either. Where I come from and (I assume) in many parts of the world, cats have an electronic chip in their neck with basic info about the owner and how to contact them, which would be discovered when you bring them to the vet.

    But I think that’s more of a cultural thing. Personally, I consider not letting your cat roam free in the neighbourhood (if you have the ability to let them) unjust and borderline animal abuse, close to how I would consider it if you kept your dog inside all the time.

    Finally, taking a cat home out of, what, pettiness(?) sounds like a terrible idea, because beyond any notion of ethics, dealing witha cat you keep away from their territory and the people they know would be both a psycological and financial perspective. If you want to be hurtful to someone, there are easier and cheaper ways to do it than to abduct their pets.

    So no, as a pet owner, abduction is really not anywhere near being a concern for me. Getting run over though? That IS a concern, particularly when cats panic. However, cats have far better hearring than we do and can hear cars from a mile away (esp when they’re familiar with them).