thisislife2

June 20, 2026: Iran closes Strait of Hormuz over ceasefire violations - MEHR - https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-closes-strait...

Crowdsource it - do it on Wikipedia?

Looks like the world has come full circle - from China analysing how capitalism worked in the USA and adapting many of its processes, to the US now adapting Chinese practices of using government influence over businesses to guide them to preserve the strategic and technological lead of American businesses. (Or maybe it was always this way - American businesses have always been the "deep state" in the US, with a behind the scenes hand in governance, which the Chinese adopted and just do better today because they don't have to deal with democratic politics?).

Exactly. But clearly we - people who are cost conscious about getting their money's worth - aren't the target market for these "niche" devices. Which is sad, as there is a real market for a reasonably priced device like this that many would buy as a "second" phone (and maybe even make it their primary phone). Just look at all the Nokia / HMD kind-of "premium" "feature phones" (calling them "dumb phones" is silly) still sold for around $150 - $250. The only reason that they aren't as "popular" now is because the Symbian OS or KaiOS they use is lacking in many aspects. And HMD (and others) don't understanding the user needs (for example, selling such 4G phones that don't even have the ability to be a hotspot device).

Smartphones are also available for $100 today! And it doesn't even have a "premium" look - not even a metallic body.

Yeah, ffmpeg is a pretty successful open source project to now give credit to just one man. I remember the times when AviDemux had a much faster / better H.264 encoder implementation than ffmpeg. Open source being open source, ffmpeg incorporated AviDemux code into it and ultimately even AviDemux pragmatically opted to use ffmpeg as its backend instead of trying to compete with it. (Best example of embracing the open source spirit).

$500??

There is no "$300 billion fund" or "peace treaty" - these are all "carrots" being dangled to entice Iran. What we know for sure:

1. An MoU has been signed by both sides extending the ceasefire for another 60 days.

2. US Naval blockade will be lifted. The US expects the Strait to be toll-free, while Iranians claim it will not charge anything only during the 60 days ceasefire period. Iran claims it does plan to introduce some "maritime service fees", along with Oman, for the usage of the Strait, in the future.

3. Trump claims Iran will have no weapon grade nuclear material and will hand over all its enriched nuclear material. Iran claims it has only agreed to dilute the existing stockpile of 60% enriched uranium to "civilian grade" levels. It will not hand it over to anyone. And while it will also retain its existing enrichment facilities there will no "0% enrichment" policy as the US administration demands. Iran however will restrict itself from enriching uranium for military use as per the NPT.

4. The agreement also demands that Israel will have to end all military operations in Lebanon too, and withdraw from all the Lebanese territories occupied by it so far. Israel has however said it will not withdraw from the territories it has captured. Iran says it is up to Trump and the US to bring Israel to heel and enforce the agreement.

5. "Denuclearisation" and complete cessation of hostilities in Lebanon is supposed to be further negotiated within this 60 days period. During this process, US has offered to lift some sanctions if progress is made on the nuclear "deal".

- MoU reached. Peace? Not sure. - https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/527364/MoU-reached-Peace-No...

- Iran and US agree peace deal roadmap: What is and isn’t known - https://www.rt.com/news/641641-iran-us-peace-deal/

- Scoop: CIA director doubts Iran's intentions on deal, sources say - https://www.axios.com/2026/06/15/us-iran-deal-cia-director-r...

Personally, I wouldn't hold my breath for this ceasefire to last beyond 60 days. Netanyahu needs some war, some where to continue till elections in Israel are over. Peace in the Lebanon front upsets that. The US has made clear it wants the enriched nuclear pile removed. So Iran will have to deliberate on how much of all this nuclear negotiations can be trusted to not be an "intelligence gathering" exercise (to figure out where the stockpile is currently - dilution of the enriched pile will need on the ground inspection).

It is fair to say that the approach I have suggested wouldn't generate as much revenue as force-bundling something to every user of Firefox. But it would generate revenue. Diversification is really possible because if you offer some monetisation component that a user voluntarily opts into, you can experiment with a lot of such things that would otherwise be controversial. (For example, Firefox could tie-up with some ad company that uses some Mozilla tech like "privacy-preserving ad-measurement" that offers to share revenue with the user if they allow ads on the "partner" sites they visit - some % of users would be willing to try it out to make money and / or to support Firefox).

Of course, before they do all that, they should really divert some of the 100's of millions of dollars they have into making a Firefox actually better - faster and less resource consuming. Developers have long complained that despite the money, 20+ years of development, the codebase isn't modular and Gecko still isn't available as a stand-alone module that could be used in other application development or to even make other browsers.

Those working for Mozilla / Firefox need to understand that they have lost substantial trust with their users for some genuine reasons (and not just bad PR from their competitors), and that is one of the major reason why their user-base is dwindling. The way to fix that is to first repair that trust. Reinforce the values that Firefox marketed to its users.

Or you can just use PaleMoon browser ( https://www.palemoon.org/ ) and install the original Flash player plug-in in it.

Those downvoting you have no idea of what you are talking about. Flash was what truly brought multimedia to the internet. You could make complex vector animations so easily in it, and it would only take a few minutes to load on a dialup or ISDN because of its small size (10's or 100's of KB). At one point, it used to power the whole of Youtube (and many other video sites). "Web applications" in this era actually meant something built with Flash. And it did all this on ancient hardware. Flash used to run on 90+ % of internet connected PCs at one point if I remember right. And because of that, you could count on Flash player more than the browsers they ran in. Adobe 100% screwed it up.

Sold or outsourced?

Thank you for engaging politely and reasonably in discussing this. My complaint wasn't about AI ... it is about force-bundling whatever this-will-make-us-money-feature or we-think-its-a-great-feature idea into the browser without giving the user any real choice (or control) in the matter.

I am not against Firefox management exploring alternate revenue streams or even "innovative" feature ideas. In fact, mostly everyone here supports Firefox diversifying its revenue stream from Google, in an ethical manner. Personally, all my criticism (and increasing mistrust) stem from the way they have gone about and done it when there are better alternative ways to present these ideas to the user and respectfully persuade them to accept it without outraging them. (Especially the "power" users, because that's who are the most irritated by these shenanigans and are the loudest with their criticism). And in my previous comment, I've already outlined one way to do it - ensure the core browser (the actual product that you offer) is independent and separate. Everything that isn't a "core browser" feature or has a privacy implications or has a monetising component in it should only be offered as extensions or plugins that the user (not Mozilla or Firefox) fully controls (which means no more bundling these kind of features as "system" add-ons - https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/toolkit/mozapps/exte... ).

Do you agree with me that this approach is better, as it would not only increase trust in Firefox but also reduce complaints?

Yes, I should have added it is harder now because it now requires "constant vigilance" - receiving mail is easy and fine and dandy, it's the delivery part that has now become a real pain because of the BigTech gatekeepers. It's the same with social media communities too.

I was explaining why stopping the circulation of harmful substances, like Heroin, do require government intervention and that parents alone cannot fight it. Your conflation that such drugs are equivalent to addictive social media is something I don't agree with - they are addictive but it's a different type of addiction and the harm is different too (more psychological than physical). That said, I will concede that I mostly agree that "age verification" isn't perhaps the best approach to fight it.

Why was the full title cut - China’s universities cut 12,000 ‘obsolete’ degrees amid race to embrace AI era - even though it meets HN title character limits?

Oh ok. I agree with you from that perspective - phone are indeed a distraction and should be banned in school. I do find that whole debate strange though because in India, schools (not government) have never allowed phones in the first place and our society has been largely fine with that practice. Nobody has accused any school of "overreaching" or made such mandates a political issue. In fact, my mischievous nephew's phone was confiscated by his school Principal who told his parents that she wouldn't return it till the term ended because they shouldn't be giving a phone to him at his age!

Perhaps it may surprise you to know that's exactly how it works in some democratic countries - e.g. India and Japan - as the system does provide some leeway to the police on how they extract information from suspects. (India leans towards physical torture, while Japan to psychological torture). Moreover, Americans are often surprised to know that not answering police questions can in fact harm your defence in court in many countries, and police misconduct also does not necessarily exclude any evidence collected.

Do you really believe parents can realistically protect their wards from getting hooked to any harmful, addictive drugs? How will they ever know if their kids are experimenting with these drugs? The problem is that the drugs are addictive - all it it needs is for someone to try it a few times to get completely hooked to it. And you don't realise it until it is too late.

I too don't like all this "age-verification" approach, but how does banning phones in school prevent kids / teens from using social media?

> The internet I grew up on was all about freedom and resisting the police state.

I grew up on that internet too (the freedom part). Do you really believe it is the same internet now?

Gone are the days when one could run their own mail server now because Apple or Google or Microsoft can suddenly deem it as "untrustworthy" or "suspicious" (based on some algorithm) and all your email will end up in spam. IRC and newsgroups have been hijacked by centralised Messengers and Social Media firms run by BigTech. They can ban you on these platforms for no reasons, without much recourse, holding your digital life hostage. Last year, I learnt that the much vaunted "free speech" no longer exists online - I have to fight and waste time with everyone - from the moderators to the platform "community managers" - to publish any factual pro-palestine or anti-Israli-right posts because these are being heavily censored on all western platforms (and unfortunately all English language communities are western platforms). Election manipulations by foreign platforms are also another danger every sovereign nations now faces.

> How did people become so naive to believe that this will benefit them?

So I wouldn't say that people are being "naive". We don't want to live in an "echo chamber" controlled by western or Chinese BigTech corporates and their ideas of techno-fascism. Not to mention that we really cannot ignore any more the societal and political impact of some of these platforms - Facebook / Whatsapp are responsible for causing many social unrest around the world and even genocide (How Facebook contributed to genocide in Myanmar - https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho... ).

The negative psychological impact of social media addiction is so obvious even in adults. So imagine how much worse it is on kids / teens - it truly would be irresponsible to not regulate it.

> That the regulations are only going to impact kids who use the “bad sites” and not start reaching for your group chat rooms and your social news sites, too?

Oh, very true! That is something to be very wary of. And the answer to that is to also fight for stronger privacy regulations and prevent government overreach. Not trust the government or the corporates to behave.

Here, you will have to understand and accept that unlike in America, where mistrust of government is inherent in the political structure (the US Presidential system favoured a weak central government because the makers were distrustful of a powerful Federal government) is very much in contrast to other parts of the world. Europeans expect and have more trust in their governments to regulate some aspects of their society, while the rest of the world prefers a "strong" Central government (and thus it is expected that the government will regulate many aspects of society). That is something fundamentally different vis American politics vs the rest of the world, that perhaps befuddles Americans.

In a democracy though, I don't see anything wrong in "trusting" your government more than local or foreign corporates (or even a foreign country - for all the talk about how America stood for "free speech", my experience with American / western owned platforms censoring my political ideas and beliefs has made me increasingly cynical if they ever truly believe in democratic values; so yeah - I guess you could also say that all this is also perhaps a backlash to current western politics).

Russia Today has some details on the operations of these firms:

- Wired for War: Why is the EU ignoring the Israeli cyber threat? - https://www.rt.com/news/639159-israel-spies-eu-pegasus/

- Wired for war: The Israeli spy-tech machine strikes again - https://swentr.site/news/640352-israel-interference-france-b...

- EU state lifts arms embargo on Israel after spy scandal - https://www.rt.com/news/641456-slovenia-arms-ban-israel/

(The whole Wired for war series on RT is interesting - https://www.rt.com/trends/wired-for-war/ - as it also describes AI techs evolving role in politics and the military).

Not an American here, but I too never knew the skull and bones symbol is somehow associated with the Nazis. So I would disagree that it is "extremely well known".

So what? Russians are good programmers.

Don't entirely agree that a local Taxi service is necessarily costlier than Uber. In my indian city, Uber and Ola cannot compete (and have been nearly wiped out) because a local Taxi service (that now dominates the market) is very competitively priced and professionally run. They charge their drivers a fixed percentage (unlike Uber or Ola, and lower fees than them) and release their payments timely in a transparent manner. The price per km, and all extra charges (late night fees, overtime driver charges etc., permit fees in case of long distance travel, toll fees etc.) are transparently conveyed to the customer too. And there is no bullshit practice of price gauging through "surge pricing" or "convenience fees" or "platform fees" etc.

What's new is that this isn't "dbdiagram" - it's good to have alternatives and even competing products.

Older Firefox extension feature-sets were quite powerful before Google financially coerced / induced them to support the kind of crippled version that is today's "Web Extensions". Many developers were angry enough to fork Firefox just to retain that feature ( https://www.palemoon.org/ ).

Agreed. For some reasons, the powers to be (Google?) didn't want someone who was independent (not be "guided" by Google), understood the core product technically and from an actual user's perspective, who may have been able to innovate Firefox into a better product and possibly even decouple Firefox from Google with alternative revenue streams (who knows, maybe instead of Brave Search, we may have had Firefox search?).

That is true - Firefox is definitely held to a higher standard here and elsewhere. They marketed those values to us. So the criticisms, in my opinion, are definitely justified. And no, they aren't listening to their users.

If they had listened to their users they would have delivered what every users wants - just a browser. Not some kind of "platform" stuffed with lot of unwanted crap that makes it bloated and introduces possibly new unnecessary attack vectors in it (both malicious and / or privacy exploits). All those additional crap that every new management wants in Firefox should have been a browser extension or a plugin, instead of being bundled into the core browser. When a user installs / updates Firefox, they could be asked if they want to install any of these new feature available as an extension / plugin. That keeps the browser lean, transfers the choice completely to the user and is genuinely respectful of the user. The current way of force bundling everything into the browser, making it bloated, and then pretending that "users can opt-out" is not just arrogance but also misleading (to be polite) as it is common knowledge among software firms that most people often never change the default settings.

Think about it ... if every of these controversial features - Pocket, ads in address bar or home page, AI etc. etc. - had been made available as user opted extension or plugin, would there ever have been any controversies? The installation data itself would provide a feedback of how much the users actually care about these features, and provide unique insights to the management into the kind of user base that it has (which the article is spot-on about).

(Note that I know that some of these features are indeed implemented as an extension. But not as user controlled ones as they cannot be completely uninstalled. All the user can do is disable it (turn "off or on"). Why? It is stuff like this that makes it harder to trust claims of caring about user Privacy.)

Anyone can read your email if it passes through their servers - it's the biggest drawback of email as it is unencrypted. So switching email services (or rolling out your own mail servers) isn't enough. You also need to control how it is delivered (i.e. control the networks / servers it goes through). With the US also treating encryption as a munition with export restrictions, it is also safe to assume that they can already crack any existing encryptions available in the market right now.