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Comment by ta1243 | Hacker News Reader

It feels like the computing industry is made up of an alliance of those who never had any IE6 experience, combined with those who spent the 90s and 00s deeply into the Microsoft ecosystem

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Assuming that the widely touted "statistic"[1] that the global developer cohort doubles every 5 years or so, this would inevitable make it true that more than 75% of all devs have no idea how predatory MS is.

[1] I'm not sure where it comes from and have never seen any survey/study to back it, but most of the industry seems to think it true.

I try not to think too much about how I mostly can not and likely will not see 1080p and higher content from my Linux desktop due to (a lack of) Chrome and DRM

Won't it display properly in VLC?

And the offline watching works way better!

How would VLC connect to Netflix? Unless you're implying piracy.

netflix was never mentioned

If you're willing to run a blob for DRM support, you can get it running in any Chromium flavour. (I would rather prefer torrents, though.)

Related: The Quest for Netflix on Asahi Linux – https://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/blog/netflix-on-asahi.html

Chrome for Linux is still 720p at best and I'd expect that to drop over time, not go up.

Chrome isn't what's holding higher resolution Netflix back on Linux, it's the lack of a signed graphics driver by an authority that would revoke anything that didn't enforce the DRM and pushes the decryption to trusted hardware.

Regardless of past experiences, we all (i.e., the computer industry) know who and what Google is now / today / recently. There is zero doubt of that profile. And yet how many can't even switch browsers? Or make recommendations that avoid the wrath of Google-zilla? They complain with words but are 100% complacent and complicit in their actions. We can't blame Google for that level of laziness.

True story: A few months ago I applied for a job. The hiring manager sent a link asking me to fill out a form, a Google form. They had it set up to require you be signed in to Google to see the form. I replied to the manager saying I don't have a Google account, nor do I want one. He sent to form questions via email. But I'm convinced he had no clue as to why anyone would want to avoid Google. When I said there are plenty of less offensive alternatives to Google and I sensed he didn't care.

I think most people wouldn't care. They're there to make money and feed their families, not wage a software holy war.

I'm sure you're not the only one he's met who doesn't like Google. He just doesn't care. It's nice that he bothered to send you the questions separately... some might've seen that as a yellow flag, like "I bet this candidate's gonna be a pain. Wonder what else they won't want us to use."

All I'm saying is you do you, but don't expect others to follow. There are plenty of evil companies in the world, and it's not like there's a clear moral superiority between Google, Apple, and Microsoft. They're not offensive to most people. They're just more banally evil companies in an ocean of even eviler companies. Tis life under capitalism.

And that's exactly the mindset set Google preys upon...short term vision, greed and convenience. Yes, agreed, most people don't know and don't care. However, we're not talking about most people. We're talking about people who due to their profession actually know better. Yet, they put themselves, their families, their friends, their customers, etc. in harm's way? Google is laughing...all the way to the bank.

I would suggest reading "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism."

I just don't think most people, myself included (even though I don't work for such a company) share these values. It's not that we don't know, it's just that we don't care. It's a tradeoff we're willing to make. So Google tracks everything and shows ads. So what? It's not really the big deal that privacy warriors make it out to be.

My biggest worry about Google is just that they've stopped innovating and are in rapid decline, enshittifying everything while also facing regulatory actions. It might not be around in its current form much longer. That scares me only because it's a huge PITA to have to move everything off of Gmail and GDrive and Android and Chrome and have to find replacements for every minor service they offer. Ugh. The privacy angle just gets a big shrug, as it does for millions of other users.

For every person I know who goes out of their way to de-googify their life (there's a couple), dozens of others just don't care at all. It's not what we spend brain time on.

Guess what, every company we interact with on a daily basis is out to exploit us and doesn't have our best interests at heart. The car companies and fossil fuel companies are actively killing us, the food growers use dangerous chemicals, Target and Costco sell us mass produced crap... shrug. It's not just surveillance capitalism, it's everyday capitalism.

Surveillance Capitalism is a very different beast. "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" isn't just a great book, it might was well a dystopian novel. If you read it your "don't care" won't last long.

Would you like to summarize it, perhaps? I skimmed the wiki on it but it doesn't seem like anything particularly novel? Just the commercialization of personal data.

Maybe the full book has more substance, but it's not a subject I find all that interesting (hence the don't care).

> I think most people wouldn't care. They're there to make money and feed their families, not wage a software holy war.

Fortunately 30 years ago people didn't have that view, and that's why we have things like the web and Linux.

Alas nobody cares about freedom now.

> And yet how many can't even switch browsers?

This doesn't work. Appealing to people's emotions about monopolies or privacy does not work. This is a fact at this point; it has been tried repeatedly, and here we are.

Anyone who has been around for some time and tried hard to support multiple browsers in the past got burned out. Web developers want to develop; most don't want to be freedom fighters, and rightfully so.

The closer this is fixed at the source, the better chance it has to work. Unfortunately, the source seems to be outside the browser's engine internals and other interesting technical areas. I'd argue it's in the human/government sphere, where things are slow and require a lot of energy... who's willing to do that?

I'm a nerd. I like to work with technical things. I like to ignore humans and play with machines. None of that will fix the browser monopoly situation (or Firefox/Opera/Brave/etc wouldn't have single-digit market share [0]).

0 - https://kinsta.com/browser-market-share/

I use Firefox, have done for years. Maybe it doesn't work for you, but that's your choice to perpetrate a monopoly.

> Anyone who has been around for some time and tried hard to support multiple browsers in the past got burned out. Web developers want to develop; most don't want to be freedom fighters, and rightfully so.

Heard exactly the same thing from the Microsoft fanboys about IE6 15-20 years ago

Very possible they were a Google Workspace customer, this is a common problem with forms.

You literally suggested Google forms are “offensive” to a hiring manager that initially wanted to use it to get some answers from you? I have a feeling that interaction might have been shared with his coworkers with some amusement.

Not really. What was offensive was the expectation of requiring to be logged in to a Google account. That's a slip up (?) I expect from my mom or dad. It's not something a hiring manager for a tech position should do. If they found that funny - Google being evil - then their sense of humor is as questionable as their IQ.

I think this summarise everything that is wrong with discussions on the web/ twitter or HN. Without knowing their age and experience, a lot of these context are completely missing.

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