>"and as much as 2.6 gigawatts of battery storage capacity"

Watts are not a singular unit for the storage of energy. There must be a time component. Why do so many articles seem to make this same ridiculous mistake. Are we talking about 2.6 gigawatt hours?

>"there is no blank page option in Firefox for Android 153.0"

Thankfully, 99.9% of my browsing is on desktops and laptops (using Linux and Firefox, of course). But you are right, Firefox on Android is different (as are most browsers). Probably shouldn't be, though.

I couldn't agree more with your posting.

Oh, and "+1 Informative" about "Zen", never even heard of it. Currently not interested in that, but it is nice to see it exists.

>"There may still be a chance to override the new tab page behaviour in about:config."

There is. You don't even need to use about:config. It is right there is settings:

Settings > Home > New tabs > Blank Page

And for new windows it is:

Settings > Home > New windows > Custom > about:blank

You can, of course, do this in about:config as well, if desired.

>"One of the reasons I'm still on XFCE is because I have been able to configure sane scrollbars there as well"

TELL ME ABOUT IT!!! I absolutely CAN NOT STAND hidden, thin, disappearing scroll bars! Or mucking with the correct behavior of clicking above/below the handle moving ONE PAGE. (Warping should be a separate function, traditionally middle click). Or when the handle doesn't represent the size of the viewable area. The "old way" was the "correct way" for so many usability reasons.

So yeah, you are not alone. By the way, you can do that in Firefox with most any DE with certain settings. But scrollbars always seem to be a fight with various DE's and apps.

When I went through school and college, exams and tests were all in-person and supervised, and without access to personal electronic devices. Perhaps the old ways are best.

It is sad to see what most students will do with no supervision or control, but can we really expect otherwise?

Yep. Even using "positive pay" isn't 100% helpful, if you enter a bad/scam account number. No matter what, some due diligence is needed on the part of accounts payable.

Usually when working with a new vendor, the vendor will send instructions for payment (often ACH). I suppose it should be possible to contact that bank (or maybe your own bank) and verify the owner of the account, making sure it matches the corporate name/address, before setting up the vendor in the AP system and sending money.

>"One shouldn't have to turn off yet another new, useless and unwanted setting or feature every couple of weeks."

It isn't every couple of weeks. More like couple of months. Of course, that is exactly why they also make Firefox ESR. Then you only deal with feature changes once a year. It is the version that most distros use.

>"that's the home page, which most uses almost never see.

Ah, that is a good point. You can make your home page whatever you like. But new tab can only be Firefox Home or blank. To change that will require using an extension like "Custom New Tab Page" or "New Tab Override." I never noticed because I always just use blank.

Thanks for the clarification!

>"I'm nearly done with you. Right now I'm at the end - you have constantly shoveled shit into a browser that was famous for being lean."

Firefox can't be all things to all people. But any of these things can easily be turned off or customized. And customization is one of the major advantages of Firefox. In addition, although I think this "amusement" they added is silly, it is just a link it goes to. Probably not even 1KB in the compiled code.

>"Now I think I'm going to move to Brave if this doesn't get reversed shortly."

And then you will lose the configurability advantage and hand over more control to Google in yet another Chromium. And Google having more mindshare is far more of a threat to open web standards and ultimately freedom, choice, and security.

You don't need an extension. You can put any local html file path in as your home page(s).

Settings> Home> Homepage> Choose a specific > /home/myloginname/mypage.html > Add address

done.

Oh, and you can even have more than one file. Or mix local files with web addresses. Or just click on "Bookmarks" button and then your bookmarks will fill your home page. Firefox is very configurable.

Thankfully, Firefox is extremely configurable, unlike most browsers. That which you can't do through settings, you can use about:config, policies, and UserChrome.css.

I don't mind them adding features that some users might want, as long as they can be turned off. And, so far, that has always been the case.

Settings > Home > New windows > Custom > about:blank
Settings > Home > New tabs > Blank Page

fixed

>"How many cars have you driven, that had elegant, well-crafted user interfaces in their software? Maybe Tesla?"

Tesla blows it by having no dashboard, few physical controls, and having the horrible "tablet on a stick" look. They admittedly have good software/interface, but then ruined it with the physical implementation. Had they stayed with the original model S concept- a nicely INTEGRATED center panel and with a real dashboard display and good physical controls, I would have considered them. As such, I went with something with a wonderful dashboard and controls (and much nicer looking exterior and interior), but lesser sophisticated software/UI. And I am glad I did.

>"So that's it for GM. BMW already went that way, VW, and Toyota is starting to sniff out the subscription markets too."

Nissan already does it. They all do it, at least on some services. And if there are any that don't, they will soon. Once you spend a TON on a new vehicle with fancy features, you are stuck. Especially with the driver assist stuff that actually does rely on continued map and other updates. I will grant those services probably should be paid services. However, you are a captive audience at that point, and it shouldn't cost owners several hundred dollars a year for something that really only costs the company a few dollars.

1) There can be no competition in that space. So there is zero market pressure to keep pricing reasonable.
2) Most consumers aren't going to know or shop those costs at vehicle purchase time, since they will be "free" for X years.
3) The pricing could and does change at any time. So even if you thought it might be $200/yr, that means nothing when 3 years later and it is then $400/yr.
4) You don't even have assurance the services will even be available X years into the future. At some point support is lost, regardless, and some of those fancy features will stop working.

And a final note about pricing. Once my Ariya ProPilot 2 included subscription runs out, I probably won't renew, which will revert me to ProPilot 1 functionality. Why? Because I only drive about 2,000 miles a year. The company charges the same rate to everyone, which means it has far, far, far less value for owners like me (because it costs far, far, far more per mile or per trip or per use). I image most of the companies do this flat-rate thing, and it will only seem "fair" to, at most, those driving/using the features the "average" amount or more.

>"Wait for it to buffer, scroll down halfway, wait to buffer."

It could be the download is slow? The site supplying it is slow? Some sites will send PDF in a way that can be rendered as it is downloading (you don't have to wait for it to finish to see or scroll, but if it isn't loaded yet, there will be delays).

I just opened a LOCAL 652 page PDF in Firefox/Linux. It loaded instantly and it renders as fast as I can drag the scrollbar.... all the way to the end.

Then I just went to here https://spytm.com/test-files/p... and clicked on a 100MB PDF and everything was nearly instant once downloaded which took about 4 seconds (that site doesn't support view while download, it depends on how it is presented).