This is a crazy mess.

The subject of “worse reimplementations of native features” reminds me of trying to find an event for the (2012?) Olympics. They didn’t seem to have a search, but they did have an infinite scrolling schedule page so I held down End until the page had everything and used the native search. No results, even when I tried something that I knew was at the top of the page.

I noticed the scrollbar was acting weird and looked into it. Turns out that they were removing the parts of the page outside of the viewport and loading them back in when you scrolled.

I suspect it’s because they were finding their bloated page was slow on some devices so put in this terrible hack, but it broke basic browser features.

I have mixed feeling about this one. I’m on the newsletter as a Kagi + Linux user, but I’m not sure I’ll make this my daily driver once it’s ready.

I have diversified my tech, using self-hosted and/or open source where possible. Orion is closed-source, and from the same company I use for my search, translation, etc. I trust Kagi far more than I trust Google, but I still don’t want all my eggs in one basket.

It’s obviously good that we’re getting alternatives in the browser market, but I don’t know how much work they’ve done outside of the UI - is this effectively a reskin of Apple Safari in the same way we have the Chromium-based browsers that are dependent on Google’s developers?

I like that they have “native support for both Chrome and Firefox extensions”, which means I should be able to replicate my Firefox setup in Orion. I guess I’ll need to try it.

That’s really interesting, I guess I’d assumed it was a universal thing.

I know some people who are known by various versions of their names in their different circles, e.g. Robert/Bob to their family, Rob to their school friends, Bobby to their uni mates and Robert at work.

That argument only works if you’re expecting Google to move youtube.com to youtube.google, which I can’t see happening. If a brand’s a household name and can be found at brand.com, then it stands to reason that they’d leave it like that.

For Google/Microsoft budgets, domain name registration is irrelevant as a cost. Besides, even if they did move the domains, they’d still keep the old ones alive for forwarding and to stop anyone else taking them. For example, Google still has googleplus.com, despite that that was never the official address (they used a subdomain: plus.google.com).

The UK had a history of rhyming nicknames for shortened versions, like William -> Will -> Bill, and most of those are still common in English speaking countries. Richard -> Dick, Robert -> Bob (also Hob, Dob and Nob but these didn’t survive).

These shortened versions can then get extended: Edward -> Ed -> Ted -> Teddy, Margaret -> Meg -> Peg -> Peggy, Anne -> Nan -> Nancy

In the middle ages it was common to make a diminutive name by adding -kin, -in, or -cock, which gave us John -> Jankin/Jenkin -> Jakin -> Jack. Also, Robert -> Robin, Henry -> Hank

It’s very much not mesh networked, self-hosted*, or subscription-free, but there is the tin can phone which seems a really good solution for kids. To anyone looking for a project, please make an open version of this!

* the service couldn’t cope with demand over Christmas, for instance.

Equally, you can only allow *.google.com as easily as *.google, so I still don’t think that makes much sense.

You can block *.google.com as easily as *.google, so I don’t think that makes much sense.

The two most populous countries are moving in the right direction, which is good news. I really wish you guys wouldn’t insist on bringing your country into every single conversation - we know what’s happening, you don’t need to constantly remind us.

Same, and they can be some truly baffling typos.

It reminds me of the Wipeout aesthetic:

Looking great so far, good luck with the difficult actually finishing it phase.

Stop Forwarding Errors, Start Designing Them was a great read, and I’ll definitely be trying Exn.

What’s the point then?

I think it’s a joke about (or rather, a dig at) night mode. I’d seen the blog and that “dark mode” on a previous post about syntax highlighting where he’d mentioned he preferred light mode.

I only wrote code for [email protected] which is so different to my usual tasks that it feels like a break.

I don’t understand why venison isn’t on the menu more often in the UK. When I do see it, it’s often on the special board, or in less mainstream restaurants. It’s tasty, healthy and sustainable so what’s that problem?

I hope it wasn’t a long drive, thank you for putting us ahead of your own plans.

It would be the best merch anyone ever offered.

I just looked and found this, is it you or a freeloader? https://www.redbubble.com/shop/unix_surrealism

That’s my assumption, it would be interesting to hear the exact details, and if Mozilla has been approached regarding this already.

Why would blocking ad blockers in Firefox bring in another $150 million? From where?