the title contradicts what's in the actual article.
the proposal is to change the default beahvior, not getting rid of the ability outright. as long as they both retain the ability to change the behavior back to how was before, it doesn't seem like this is as dire as the author is trying to make it out.
I sympathize with the idea of having to add yet another setting change to what I'm sure is a long list of configs/settings updates that most of us have to perform everytime we boot up a new system but this is all that it looks like would be the case here if this proposal goes through
Not unlike Firefox, Gnome has a lot of hidden options which aren't exposed in the regular settings UI. There has been an option to control 'primary paste' for 9 years, and it's exposed in Gnome tweaks. There's no obvious reason that changing the default means the option will be removed entirely.
I was confused when starting to use Linux Mint. Sometimes when scrolling fast, some text would appear, but not always, and I also couldn't predict which text. I suspected the middle mouse button, but purposefully pressing it didn't work so I ruled it out at first
It took a while to realise it is the combination of:
- having selected something
- hovering over an editable field
- pressing the middle mouse button
But now, a few years down the line, I cannot live without. It is so convenient to, for example, copy the password and then double click the username and paste them both with the flick of the mouse and a ctrl+v. Nearly every time I touch my partner's Windows device for 5 minutes, I run into a situation where it would have been convenient and saved a second trip back and forth between two tabs or windows
Default off is where neat things go to die because the discovery factor is gone, it gets forgotten, falls out of use, and becomes only a burden to maintain
> It really should be the default though
The current setting is a net win imo. What desktop environments could do is explain what just happened when you use it for the first time, so that you don't accidentally paste data somewhere without realising it
The new Liquid Glass UI has a lot of detractors, both on iOS and on macOS, but it seems like the clamor is even louder on macOS. Beyond the looks, it's created a lot of usability issues for folks. Buttons and controls can overlap awkwardly, navigation can be more difficult when it's hard to identify different UI elements on the screen, all the eye candy like transparency and rounded corners can create accessibility problems for folks less than perfect vision. It's a bit of a mess.
This made me think of something I came across recently that’s almost the opposite problem of requiring PDFs to be searchable. A local government would publish PDFs where the text is clearly readable on screen, but the selectable text layer is intentionally scrambled, so copy/paste or search returns garbage. It's a very hostile thing to do, especially with public data!
I have encountered PDFs that would exhibit this behavior in one browser but not in another.
One fun thing I encountered from local government is releasing files with potato quality resolution and not considering the page size.
I had a FOI request that returned mainly Arch D sized drawings but they were in a 94 DPI PDF rendered as letter sized. It was a fun conversation trying to explain to an annoyed city employee that putting those large drawings in a 94 DPI letter size page effectively made it 30-ish DPI.
With the aggressive push of LLMs and Generative AI ..i am expecting a lot of OCR features to become "smarter" by default, namely go beyond mechanical OCR and start inserting hallucinations and sematically/contextually "more correct" information in OCR output
It's not hard to imagine some powerful LLMs being able to undo some light redactions that are deducible based on context
this is true a lot in the world of paintings. there are regularly auctions where you can buy items "attributed" to (meaning it's speculated but not confirmed) very famous Modern Art painters like Van Gogh, Monet, etc for under $5,000 which, if confirmed, would send the valuation many multiples higher
there was already an attempt to take it down back in 2020/2021 [0]. The DMCA claim's main argument was that ytdl was circumventing Techincal Protection Measures (TPMs) in order to access the content. Thanks to a letter from the EFF [1] which explains how ytdl accesses content in the same way that a browser does (i.e. it does circumvent anything such as DRM), github rejected the takedown.
this is also why ytdl has stood firm in saying they will never attempt to be compatible with anything protected by DRM.
Looking at Vizio's financial records[0], the numbers make it clear.
They seperate everything into 2 distinct businesses, Device and Platform+.
Device represents their hardware business of selling physical TVs and soundbars. Platform+ covers all of their other "software-related" business, mainly consisting of ad delivery and selling user data to third parties.
2019:
- Device Net Revenue = $1.7 billion
- Device Gross Profit = $125 million
- Platform+ Net Revenue = $63 million
- Platform+ Gross Profit = $40 million
2023:
- Device Net Revenue = $1.0 billion
- Device Gross Profit = -($8.6 million)
- Platform+ Net Revenue = $598 million
- Platform+ Gross Profit = $364 million
So over the course of just 4 years:
- hardware revenue is down 40% and is actually losing money (confirms they are indeed selling the TVs at a loss)
- Ad/user data revenue, however, is up almost ten-fold (+949%)
- total gross profits of the two combined are up over 54%
idk, even that seems too much to me, but maybe I'm just being too senstive.
but like, why is it a website's job to tell me what browser version to use? unless my outdated browser is lacking legitmate functionality which is required by your website, just serve the page and be done with it.
Back when the sun was setting on IE6, sites deployed banners that basically meant "We don't test on this, there's a good chance it's broken, but we don't know the specifics because we don't test with it"
What's the deal with ereaders and their seeming disdain for sane battery life measurements?
Amazon boasts "up to 8 weeks on a single charge" in all their selling points, then, in the fine print states "A single charge lasts up to eight (8) weeks, based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13".
So, it has 28 hours of actual use time, got it. Why not just say that?
Having a few eink readers/tablets, I can say that I almost never care about battery life. You end up charging them once a week or two anyway. I never look at battery stats for them because it almost never ends up important in practice. I don't even look at the battery stat when deciding which to buy or when I recommend one to a friend.
The problem is defining "use time". With eInk readers, the only time it needs to be actually awake is when refreshing the screen, and then it goes back to sleep immediately after. So depending on your reading speed, one hour of active reading time - which is what the users themselves would normally think as "use time" - can vary a lot in how much power actually gets used.
That said, I do think they should just give the number in terms of page refreshes and let the users figure it out from there.
> "A single charge lasts up to eight (8) weeks, based on a half hour of reading per day with wireless off and the light setting at 13".
> So, it has 28 hours of actual use time, got it.
Reminds me of when Quorn sold 3 sausage rolls but labelled them as 12, arguing that if you cut each one in 4 you get 12. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-42251481
TBF phones and computers also take "evocative" numbers on their marketing material.
The "Up to 33 hours of video playback" for the iPhone Pro Max[0] for instance is an absolutely insane use case (nobody's letting their phone passively play local videos for a day and a half), and gives little insight into how long it can stay in sheer standby, do video meetings or handle slack.
But also because it is not really 28 hours of battery life. If you just let it sit without touching it, the battery lasts for several weeks, if not longer.
It's a hard class of devices to give any sort of reasonable battery life length.
Regardless, the battery on these devices even back in 2012 was already good enough.
the proposal is to change the default beahvior, not getting rid of the ability outright. as long as they both retain the ability to change the behavior back to how was before, it doesn't seem like this is as dire as the author is trying to make it out.
I sympathize with the idea of having to add yet another setting change to what I'm sure is a long list of configs/settings updates that most of us have to perform everytime we boot up a new system but this is all that it looks like would be the case here if this proposal goes through