I have used Chrome and Firefox side-by-side, consistently since Chrome's original release. I have used Netscape and Internet Explorer since before both existed. I have performance gaming rigs of all generations, and I develop software. I have multiple generations of Apple machines as well. I run Windows and Linux.

Firefox doesn't suck, and matches Chrome. But there's no accounting for user behavior. I have seen user behavior that is mind-blowingly stupid, and subcultures of user activity and tendencies trace well with product loyalty trends.

Some user subcultures are retardedly dependent on browser extensions, never clear their cache, retain cookies for the lifetime of their laptop battery, and seemingly need hundreds of tabs open. And none of this shit makes sense to me.

These are likely the same people who carry around phones on the brink of overheating while locked, and in their pocket, because they have to have a thousand apps installed, in order to feel like they're getting the $1,000 phone they paid for, I guess. Their emails are constantly peppered with "sent from [app|device|service]" signatures, and they claim microphone permissions are why ads target them.

Honestly, if you've been blaming the browser, it's more likely that you're the one being your own worst enemy.

All the users I forced to use Firefox, decided that Chrome was faster, and they were more than 100s of them.

( And as a user I knew that too. I just wanted to support Firefox. )

So saying Firefox Doesn't suck may be partially right. As we will have to define "suck" first. But saying it is as fast as Chrome during Firefox 4 and early Chrome era is just the same as saying earth is flat.

So...what are you trying to say here? That if you don't feel comfortable with a browser, you are the issue? That if you have different use-cases and behavior, you are the issue? Each browser has different look and feel and is unique in its own way, even if some differences are tiny.

And, yeah, if Mozzila likes dropping numbers, nothing has to change.

Chrome handles PDF and printing (with the preview) better than Firefox in my opinion. I probably like Chrome a bit more for dev work as well but as a user they're pretty similar with the exception of the PDFs that I mentioned.

Well, a couple of things start to make sense about the kludginess, if you start with the single-cellular origin, and then pile up layers of specialized tissue, with some cells permanently buried within the organism, never to be exposed to an external environment.

The first part is that brains are just plain weird, and perhaps one of the weirdest aspected of any multicellular organism. More than half of all known life forms don’t have brains. So, brains usually aren’t a priority.

Second, the gut is often regarded as a brain-like organ in many vertebrates, and so, with arthropods and crustaceans, it’s interesting that the the two might be more tightly coupled. It probably cheapens the endocrine feedback loop.

Third, external digestion actually comes across as less freakish and uncivilized underwater. On land it has a messy, disgusting sensibility, but in the ocean it’s kind of on par with a smokey cooking fire at a camp site, especially when considered from a single celled animal’s perspective.

When you consider that crabs and lobsters are the ancestral relatives of insects and arachnids, the low prioritization of a brain, and externalized digestion start to look more and more normal.

Crabs and lobsters don't use external digestion but eat their food not terribly different from what we do. So it looks like spiders evolved their system later.

Yes, they're not close relatives. Closer than us and them, but not that close. So yes, external digestion is largely a spider thing. However, crabs and lobsters do "chew" very thoroughly before swallowing. As do some spiders without external digestion.

In all invertebrates, "brains" (to the extent that they're present) are ring ganglia, with the gut going through the center. So arguably they all face that tension between brain development and the ability to eat. Vertebrates, conversely, have ~parallel guts and central nervous systems, so there's no conflict.

The thing with octopuses is that their ring ganglia are mode widely spaced. Having no exoskeleton helps with that, I guess.

I’ve been holding to the opinion for a few years now, that ever since end of the 2nd term of George W. Bush, TV, print, movies and music have all suffered a nigh-catastrophic brain drain, and fewer and fewer nerds drift in the direction of such career paths.

Because of this, the candidate pool is smaller, filled with weaker options and the ones that do land in the field are mostly mediocre and surrounded by the mediocre examples of the old guard that can’t (or won’t) retire.

After that, the rest is deterministic. Bad decisions compound, nothing is good any more, and the shit that really sucks isn’t even laughable, it’s either confusing, tragic or repellant.

I made the mistake of watching cable in a hotel room, and it was like grazing my eyes with a red-hot shrimp fork, while running an angle grinder right next to my ears, and telling me my parents were killed in a horrible accident.

The things happening on that TV were decisions so awful, that I questioned whether those responsible even understood their own motivations for operating what doesn’t even seem to be a business anymore. Everything was a chum bucket. Everything was clickbait. Everything was dark patterns. To watch TV and feel that way, for every channel I tried, means that almost all of TV has been reduced to the lowest internet tabloid trash by default.

I remember what it used to feel like when nothing was on, but this seemed beyond nothing being on. I don’t know how the story ends though. The only thing I do know, is that TV is still a different enough game, such that no tech company really represents a credible DIRECT threat to TV at large, except Netflix, and only Netflix distinguishes itself from other tech companies by producing original shows that people actually talk about.

What is the cause for this brain drain?

The internet changing the world, and all of the technology companies offering jobs that attract the best technical resources with better compensation packages, and unicorn dreams.

Contrast this with what used to be the 20th century version of the tech industry’s unicorn narrative: becoming a super star on old media, appearing on TV, in movies, on the cover of magazines, or maybe making it big in music, or being a mogul thereof.

These things still happen, but it’s obvious that fluffy celebrity stardom, or becoming the star maker, is shakier ground than it used to be, and technology-oriented success is an alternate path to fame and wealth. Because of the new things that have emerged over the past 20 years, the brain drain began some time ago, when alternate paths to success became evident, and old media suffered for it.

The house uses its wealth to construct an environment that only houses games with negative expected values.

This is the best write-up of Dune that I’ve ever read. Some of gwern’s stuff is kind of overcooked to a fault, and with intense focus, misses the broader prevailing drift of the topic at hand, but gwern’s got me on this one. It’s a good read.

thought genetics and the BG religion is more a deus exmachine than the main plot.

the main plot is an alegory of all the wars USA entered so oil prices remained under control.

the oil must flow.