The Web is in the mess it now is because Microsoft (and, to a lesser extent, Netscape, back in the day) has gone through so many iterations of deliberately trying to create subtly incompatible variants of HTML. Creating a browser which is backwards compatible with that mess simply perpetuates the mess. The new browser should simply refuse to render non-conforming legacy pages at all - that would force web site owners to clean up their act in short order.

Decades ago, the great prophet Dave Mustaine predicted this: Next thing you know, they'll take my thoughts away.

Since this is related to personal health issues, could they possibly be in violation of HIPPA privacy requirements?

You sound short

Not actually true. Ultra-orthodox Jews do not (yet) have to serve in the army.

<sarcasm>After all, the ultra-orthodox never provoke any trouble with the Palestinians, so why should they contribute to defence?</sarcasm>

Speaking as someone who's been following this story as it developed, it seems to me that the data that has been 'lost' is data the high heid yins of Scotland's police were very eager to lose. They'd been acting beyond their remit - and probably beyond the law - and they knew it.

So I suspect someone with scrambled egg on their hat took that programmer into a quiet room and said 'you will make an unfortunate error this afternoon, or we'll be sending the boys round'. I'm pretty sure the government suspect the same.

Heads will, I suspect, roll - and I don't think they will be the heads of programmers.

Doesn't cure all the ways they try to track you, but definitely puts a major dent in their efforts:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

I can't say five good things about Windows, and I've worked on every version since Windows 2.0.

Dammit, I don't think I can say one good thing about Windows.

It was 1993 for me. And I moved to Linux from, guess what, BSD. I've never gone back and I don't plan to.

Yes, I really have been using Linux as my main operating system for more than twenty years, and I still haven't found anything better. And Linux, in 1993, was just a reimplementation of UNIX, which is forty years old. Software evolves so bloody slowly!

You are a true nimrod

You sound very closed minded. You confuse "not coding to your exact personal style" with "not a good coder". There's too much of that mentality lately, so I probably wouldn't choose to work for you anyway.

Perhaps we are entering another species failure mode that we will have to solve for. Computers and the internet are great gifts to humanity, but it seems lately to have taken a bad turn. Instead of uplifting the human race, it's starting to look more like a trap.

I've spent my whole life involved with computers and networking. Now at times I wonder if I will eventually regret my contributions to building this better mouse trap.

I personally find that the risk of a dark totalitarian period that lasts for hundreds or thousands of years to be more threatening than any terrorist threat these dark systems purport to protect us from.

Humanity needs to figure out how we want to use these new tools. All this surveillance mode machinery is not good. It just takes one evil dictator to get control of this to trap us in ten thousand years of darkness.

It's a sad fearful reality we are marching towards these days.

In other words, you are just an arrogant bastard with no good answer.

But why you all mad about it?