The RCS Universal Profile is a publicly available standard, but there is no FOSS client stack that implements the standard. Google restricts RCS support on Android to the proprietary Google Messages instead of making it part of the Android Open Source Project. Apple Messages and iOS are also proprietary.
The EU should use the Digital Markets Act to force Google and Apple to allow competing RCS clients on Android and iOS.
That’s just the first thing that came to mind. Any product with consumable refills (razor blades, electric toothbrush heads, air/water filter replacements, etc.) would also work as an example.
Let’s say you want to buy a printer from a retailer. The retailer also sells replacement ink cartridges, and so does the printer manufacturer. The manufacturer prefers that you buy the ink cartridges directly from them, because their margins are higher when they don’t have to pay the retailer a cut.
To encourage customers to buy the cartridges directly from them, the manufacturer provides a link or QR code to their online ink cartridge store on the product box, printer manual, and another paper insert inside the box. The manufacturer might offer more competitive pricing than the retailer or some other enticement, like a coupon.
However, the retailer implements an anti-steering rule, preventing the printer manufacturer from providing a link or QR code to their online ink cartridge store on the product packaging, printer manual, or anything inside the box, as a requirement for the printer to appear on the retailer’s shelves. (As a result of corporate consolidation, there is only one other retailer in the entire country.) This is the equivalent of what Apple is doing to apps in their App Store: preventing developers from disclosing that users can purchase subscriptions or other app-related digital goods on the developer’s website.
Dell used to have pointing sticks (branded TrackStick or Dual Point) in some of their business laptops, but they removed them all in 2021. Lenovo is the last major laptop producer to use pointing sticks. Maybe System76 will come through?
PeerTube has a variety of third-party applications for Android, desktop, and a few other platforms.
The closest thing to Librewolf on Android is Mull. Keep in mind that some of the settings are different.
Here’s the feature request for a TrackPoint on a Framework. Hope they change their mind, because a pointing stick is the most obvious use case for Framework 16’s input modules.
This ThinkPad keyboard project for the Framework Laptop is worth keeping an eye on.
I still prefer Bitwarden because the server is source-available and most of the code is free and open source. There’s also the FOSS Vaultwarden server fork that I can switch to at any time.
Proton Pass also using end-to-end encryption with FOSS clients is nice, but the server code is completely closed source.
I don’t think that’s the case. The v0.19.0 release notes say:
Instance Blocks for Users
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
Avast should not be recommended.
In late 2019, Avast browser extensions were found to collect user data, including browsing behavior and history, and send it to a remote server. The discovery led to the extensions of the Avast and AVG brands being temporarily removed from the Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera extension stores, however, they returned a short time later as there was no concrete evidence that demonstrated a breach of private data of the users.
In January 2020, a joint investigation by Motherboard and PCMag found that the Avast Antivirus and AVG AntiVirus Free version were collecting user data, which was being resold to personalize advertising through a subsidiary, Jumpshot. The leaked documents showed that Jumpshot offered to provide its customers with “Every search. Every click. On every site.” from more than 100 million compromised devices. In response, Avast announced on January 30, 2020, that it would immediately shut down Jumpshot and cease all operations due to the backlash of its users’ data privacy.
On the basis of the information revealed, on 11 February 2020 the Czech Office for Personal Data Protection announced that it had initiated a preliminary investigation.
In February 2024, the Federal Trade Commission fined Avast $16.5 million for collecting user data and reselling that data. The collection was done under their program to ensure that such collection of user data was not happening.
According to Vivaldi’s blog post “Why isn’t Vivaldi’s browser open-source?”, all of Vivaldi’s UI is closed source and not source-available:
Note that, of the three layers above, only the UI layer is closed-source. Roughly 92% of the browser’s code is open source coming from Chromium, 3% is open source coming from us, which leaves only 5% for our UI closed-source code.
Keeping Vivaldi’s UI layer closed-source and obfuscated allows us to set these worries aside, so we can focus on the job at hand. It may not be a perfect solution, but as a business, we have to make decisions that minimize uncertainty, if only for our self respect as employees – and employee-owners.
The UI is the main thing that differentiates Vivaldi from Chromium, and Vivaldi chose to keep it closed source and obfuscated for business reasons. That’s a negative compared to Firefox and Ungoogled Chromium.
If Vivaldi were free and open source, it would make an interesting alternative to Ungoogled Chromium. But it’s not, so I’ll stick with extensions on Firefox (and Ungoogled Chromium as a backup).
No problems loading that page on Firefox for Android or desktop for me. Are you using Firefox or a fork of Firefox? Do you have any extensions or about:config changes that may be affecting the page rendering?
uBlock Origin works best on Firefox, according to the extension author. This is definitely a reason to use Firefox, and even more so when Chromium phases out Manifest V2 completely.
Your Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e has a PassMark score of 5488. I’ve been happy with the performance of Firefox on a Google Pixel 3a, which has a nearly identical PassMark score of 5483. Maybe your expectations or experiences are different, but I’m comfortable with saying that Firefox’s performance is fine for me on a range of Android devices, old and new.
WebRender has been enabled by default on Firefox for Android since version 92 (September 2021). Performance is fine for me, especially with uBlock Origin.
Only Google is claiming that the damages are less than $1 million. You’re taking Google’s self-interested claim as fact while overlooking Google’s financial motivation to pay less than what they owe, which a jury could find to be in the hundreds of millions. For obvious reasons, court judgments aren’t decided by the defendants.
Based on the statements Google previously made, Google most likely sent a check for a fraction of the damages that a jury could find them liable for.
It’s unclear just how big the check was. The court filing redacted key figures to protect Google’s trade secrets. But Google claimed that testimony from US experts “shrank” the damages estimate “considerably” from initial estimates between $100 million and $300 million, suggesting that the current damages estimate is “substantially less” than what the US has paid so far in expert fees to reach those estimates.
According to Reuters, Google has not disclosed “the size of its payment” but has said that “after months of discovery, the Justice Department could only point to estimated damages of less than $1 million.”
A fine of less than $1 million is absolutely not what anyone except Google is asking for.
Direct link to PDF of RCS Universal Profile specification
This PDF link can be found on a search engine. You can also fill out the form with fake information and a throwaway email to get the link, though you don’t have to.