One of the only reasons why Orion is neat, it’s the only one out of the lot in iOS that supports extensions, since on iOS, all the browsers are based on WebKit. It’s not particularly great otherwise, it’s just Safari with extensions support + a couple productivity things after all, and it’s closed-source (it doesn’t look like the iOS app will go FOSS any time soon)

On Android, we have a duopoly instead, which isn’t that much better, but at least one of the two (Firefox) allows extensions on mobile browsers.

And there’s no reason why you should use Orion on a desktop OS, since better options are plentiful (Firefox and forks, even Chromium ones like Helium or Ungoogled Cr)

I do hope that some of the tricks in Orion could be used in Linux browsers that are actually good, especially for mobile Linux! Firefox does work on it, but only with tweaks (and even then, it’s not fantastic compared to something like GNOME Web)

Note that Firefox does bake in some telemetry by default, which needs to be manually disabled, but if you don’t want to deal with that you have LibreWolf! (Zen is another good one if you like vertical tabs)

And still having Manifest V2 support and not supporting a monopoly is always good!

There are much bigger concerns for Chrome for most people I guess (removal of Manifest V2 support, Google spyware, excessive RAM usage, monopoly, etc.)

I thunk the main problem is how it’s forced on everyone, whether they like it or not. Rounded corners should be an option, some people like their boxier corners!

I personally like the Nova design, BUT I know lots of people hate it and prefer the old one, so it really sucks that it’s buried in about:config. I feel like boxy vs rounded should be a toggle, you know! If they eventually drop the about:config, maybe LibreWolf or other forks will continue to have the option for the old design (?)

COSMIC is kind of neat though, it’s not for everyone, but it’s always good to have another option! A lot of the customisation options are really nice, I’ll always be a KDE Plasma person, but I can see the appeal of it.

Perhaps in this case, you are Wesley.

It’s kind of neat that they are going for it as well as an SBC (easier for developers to work with) and a more affordable and accessible device (the Motorola Edge 30)

They are supporting devices deemed obsolete by manufacturers and are working towards making your phone last longer, I would say that’s pretty environmentally conscious. The “eco” TLD makes sense, I think, when you look at their goals.

Hey, that’s pretty neat! It looks like the name is based off a rock structure in Italy, representing stability :D

It’s also nice that it’s easier to pronounce for non-native English speakers (or as a matter of fact, non-English speakers!)

The new .eco URL is also interesting, from what I can tell it’s operated by a Canadian company called “Big Room”, and to register, you need to pledge that you will support positive change for the planet and you need to be transparent about your actions that could affect the environment.

We’ve already seem sites with the .org TLD get struck down by the U.S. government (e.g. Autistici/Inventati getting sanctioned as a “global terrorist organisation” for providing email and blog hosting services to “far-left antifascist terrorists”), so moving away from that is probably a good thing.

I mean, all band names are made up in the end of the day. A lot of them are based on various pop culture references (think characters in movies or TV shows), for instance, the French band Luke’s name comes from the American movie “Cool Hand Luke”, none of the members are actually called Luke.

Die Toten Hosen literally means “the dead trousers” in German, and it’s slang for “boring” (though their music is the opposite of that!), while Die Ärtze means “the doctors” in German.

Ska-P is short for “ska punk” which is a mix of ska and punk (and it’s an awesome genre to listen too!)

Kino is Russian for “cinema”, and there’s a variant of the “absolute cinema” meme that instead used a picture of Viktor Tsoi (the GOAT) with the words “absolute Kino”

If you didn’t know, CoMaps has a desktop Linux and macOS version! I believe GNOME Maps (also on Linux) recently got better offline maps support too

The 11th of November is Remembrance day (the whole minute of silence on the 11th minute, hour, day, and month thing was a big thing at my old school)

11/11 is also a big holiday in East Asia, Pocky Day in Japan, Peppero Day in Korea (both because of the resemblance to the tasty stick biscuits), and Singles Day in China (the 1s represent unmarried individuals), all three of which are huge shopping days for Asian malls (similar to Black Friday, but combined with the hyper consumerism of the Asian markets)

Definitely in favour of abandoning the celebration of some old monarch’s birthday.

Fair enough. Good luck then!

It’s not that “AI” is incorrect, more that it’s way too broad. It’s like how “leftism” is used to group social democracies, totalitarian dictatorships, and anarchism together, even though they are vastly different ideologies. For an example that is not based on politics, it’s like how you need more information than just “fiction” and “non-fiction” to pick a book to read.

Good point on the cost of running a local model, but more efficient models exist that can run on memory capacities more typical for regular people (think 8-16GB of RAM). It doesn’t help that all the memory has been bought out for the data centres…

To separate the weeds from the worms, I would avoid the term “AI” since it has devolved into a buzzword that’s stuck on everything.

I think that if somebody has made a useful open-source project using LLMs, they shouldn’t be criticised solely for that reason. If the code produced is ass and isn’t reviewed, is hard to contribute to, and there is negligence, that would be a valid criticism. I also despise the use of the privacy nightmare of commercial LLMs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, etc.). If are to use LLMs, please use a local model. For you, your project, and your wallet’s sake. That’s my position on LLMs.

I trust that you are doing your due diligence in keeping your code relatively clean, and hope that your project will succeed! I personally do not use LLMs for my projects, they do not fit my usecase, probably not for most people actually. But I can see the value of having an LLM do menial tasks, as long as the code is properly reviewed and checked.

Generative models belong in the deepest circle in hell. They steal the work of creatives, are awful in the trifecta of morality, ethics, and legality, and are mainly used by scam artists (see: deepfakes) and misinformation campaigns. Nobody should use these, even if it’s a local model.

Also, a bit off-topic, but you might have heard of all the “AI has solved (big problem in science)” or “AI proved (big maths thing)” headlines, but note that these are NOT your LLMs, and certainly not any kind of generative model. They use predictive models (sometimes the papers mention “deep learning” too) that are trained on a specific set of data to do a specific task, and most of the actual science and maths is done by humans. These models certainly won’t replace scientists or mathematicians, like the Big Tech companies want you to believe, but they are a valuable tool when it comes to doing menial tasks repeatedly. That’s what computers are best at, after all!

So I’m doubly wrong! That’s kind of neat

That’s actually pretty cool, I’ll be making an XMPP account then. Adding to my collection of chat apps!

Oh whoops, I didn’t know that! That’s kind of neat, didn’t know had encryption. I will amend my comment

Also, please don’t use LLMs for simple questions. Aside from the ethical, legal, and environmental concerns of LLMs, they also tend to be wrong more often than not, and when they are right, there is lots of word soup because the chatbot needs to act like it’s a smartass, to put it bluntly, because its job is to market itself and push you towards subscriptions. Try to avoid LLMs wherever you can, it’s almost always better to search it yourself. Don’t offload thinking to a chatbot, it’s not very good at it!

The only usecase where LLMs could have an application is translation. I have a friend who doesn’t understand English very well, so they use a chatbot to translate things into their native language, and it’s really helpful for that. Of course, it can get stuff wrong, but for non-critical stuff, it’s kind of neat! That avoids the question of the insane water and power usage involved in training these models, as well as the disregard of the rights of artists and creators by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. I believe my friend uses a local model, so there’s that.

I personally don’t use LLMs, they’re more trouble than anything in my opinion.