According to the October 10 post from Google, which didn't appear to be linked from the TechCrunch article ( https://blog.google/technology... ), Google is "offering them as the default option" but not forcing them. Out of curiosity I just looked into setting up a Passkey from my iMac through Firefox and it says, "A passkey can’t be created on this device." So, they're going to hit a lot of roadblocks if they try to force this as the default option.

I think some of the problems with Siri are due to deliberate strategic business decisions.

Case in point: I subscribe to Apple Music, but I deactivated streaming on my iPhone while it's on a cellular connection. I only want to listen to albums I've pre-loaded onto the device while I'm in my car. However, if I ask Siri, "play [album name]", it responds with, "I'm sorry, I'm having trouble connecting to Apple Music" despite the album being right there on my iPhone. I have to say, "play [album name] from my library" every single time.

Surely it would be easy enough for the algorithm to realize I have streaming turned off and immediately search the library instead, but the fact it acts this way makes me think it's being done on purpose, to push the streaming service where they can better monetize usage with the publishers.

Reverse the trends to restrict customization and extension features. For example, the ability to put tabs below the address bar -- it can still be done with a custom CSS file, but not as easily as it could be done before. Likewise, bring back the ability for extensions to modify the behaviour of the browser. Many good add-ons (e.g. Chris Pederic's Web Developer toolbar) had important features crippled when Mozilla changed to a much more restricted extension API.

Not true. Chris Pederick's once-wonderful Web Developer toolbar has been severely crippled by changes to Firefox in recent years, among which are elements of the UI that can't be overridden or customized anymore.

https://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/help/

I still have a Tim Hortons reward card, which is what they offered prior to introducing the app. It has minimal rewards – after a certain number of purchases, I get a free coffee.

Ironically, a few days before this story came out, I used my card in one of their stores and it subsequently triggered an invitation by email to complete a Tims Rewards survey. Many of the questions were geared around the app and why I wasn't using the app, to which I cited privacy concerns – the kind of which were just revealed in the news story. So, at least this confirmed I wasn't just a paranoid whack-a-doo.

They thanked me for answering the survey by sending me a coupon that can only be redeemed on the Tims Rewards app.

Actually it's "Tim Hortons" without an apostrophe. More details at https://www.mashed.com/335439/the-real-reason-tim-hortons-doesnt-have-an-apostrophe/

British Columbia has some very successful recycling stewardship programs, including plastic recycling. For example, over 71% of plastic beverage containers were recovered and processed for recycling in 2020. (Source: https://ar.return-it.ca/ar2020/environmental-impact.php )

Try visiting the Lowe's Canada website. I visited their site just this week. I performed a search and got an almost completely white page in Firefox. All I saw was a "Feedback" tab on the right.

The same search worked in Chrome.

So, it does happen on occasion, hence why I keep alternative browsers on hand. For the most part, though, Firefox is a superior experience for me, and has been for many years.

Perhaps the biggest confusion would involve dates and the concept of "noon" (midday). For example, if folks in Honolulu start their work day at 19:00 UTC and end at 03:00 UTC. It makes it more challenging to plan things by a single date:

P1: "Let's have a meeting Wednesday morning."

P2: "Sorry, I can't make it in the morning. How about Thursday -- uh, afternoon -- instead? (Damn this is confusing!)"

If you're referring to the GDPR, then they could still apply depending on what Google stores. People keep mistaking the GDPR as a "cookie law" -- it's not. It's indifferent to the technology. It's about storing and using personally identifiable information. As long as Google does not track individuals by these Topics (e.g. "person X did this"), they won't run afoul of the GDPR. If they do, the GDPR will still apply.

Nope, not at all. If I was storing a session ID or some other ID that identifies them as a specific individual, that would be a problem. But it's not a violation under the GDPR to store a state value anonymously.

Therein is the problem. The GDPR is not concerned with cookies in general, only ones that can identify the individual. It is completely acceptable to set a cookie that simply stores "tracking_consent = NO".

Because of this, we really don't want people deleting cookies in their browser, otherwise they'll keep getting pestered for consent (which, on many sites, is a deliberate dark pattern). On my GDPR-compliant sites, once a person says "no", I honour that choice in a long-life cookie.

The GDPR states that it must be as easy to withdraw consent as it is to give it. So, if a site asks to set a tracking cookie, the site must also offer a similar control to delete the tracking cookie. I implement this in all of my GDPR-compliant consent options.

I've dealt with customers who deliberately want to make this difficult for visitors, so they instead provide instructions for deleting cookies within the browser, knowing that most people won't bother. But I, as the developer, don't want people doing that because some non-tracking cookies are needed for a good experience, not the least of which is remembering when people answered "No" to giving tracking consent.

Let's assume for a moment the project is sincere. If by "storage drives" they mean modern hard drives or SSD's, then such an archiving system intended to be read by future, post-apocalyptic generations is essentially useless. It makes broad assumptions that any remaining traces of our modern technology would even exist to be able to read the information from those drives, or that future people/creatures would even be capable of figuring out how any of it works.

It would have to be something directly human-readable or simple enough from a mechanical point of view that it could be easily reverse-engineered by intelligent-enough beings. Electronic memory is just far too abstracted from the natural world.

I was dreading this update, but fortunately my custom CSS file has kept the tabs looking nearly the same, and they've stayed below the address bar where I want them.

However, on another computer where I hadn't installed a custom CSS file, I can see the official updates in all their "glory" -- and I absolutely hate the look of the new tab "buttons." They're enormous! Who thought this was an improvement?