I recently put in a lot of hours for a software system to be able to handle webp just as well as every other image format it already accepted. I put in a lot of work as well. Hadn't heard about it for a while, but saw the feature release statement for the new version I knew my changes were in. It wasn't on there.
So I reached out to my contact and asked if there was an issue or did it get bumped to a later version or what? So she told me the marketing team that do the release statements decided not to include it. They stated for one, people already expect common formats to be handled. Saying you now handle a format looks bad, since people know you didn't handle it before and were behind the curve. The second (probably more important) reason was nobody knew what webp even was and it's only something technical people care about (they probably said nerds, but my contact translated). So no regular customer would be interested and it could only lead to confusion and questions.
I hope somebody is happy with the work I put in tho. Somebody is going to drag a webp into the system and have it be accepted. Someday.... I hope...
How is the size difference after gzip compression? Probably pretty much the same, but I wonder how large the difference is then. Since a lot of folk make sure the contents is gzipped when served to the user.
The issue is, if the request is too vague or obviously infeasible, it will simply get rejected.
I'm all for telling our politicians we need to move away from walled gardens and US based big tech. But I think recent events have already made that clear to them.
A strongly worded feeling might feel good to get supported. But if we want actual change, we need to request something that can be acted upon. Of course the time line would be long and it's up to the EU to implement it. But if we want the time line to be shorter, we need to provide something they can use.
If we can identify some low hanging fruit without a lot of strings attached, I'm sure we can put a proposal together. Then we would need to drum up support, which can be hard but is probably at least partially doable.
Philips is known for selling their brand to Chinese companies, where except for the name the product has nothing to do with Philips. The best known example is probably the TVs made by TP Vision, which are sold under the Philips brand.
However it seems like the Sonicare toothbrushes are still made by Philips themselves. Or at least still made by Sonicare which Philips acquired in 2000. They were traditionally made in Indonesia, but have been made in China for the most part these days.
Oral-B would be a better option for European toothbrushes, they are made in both China and Germany. Although the ones made in Germany still use pre-production parts from China. But that's just par for the course these days, almost everything is made in China.
I definitely like the sentiment, but how would this work exactly? Like what exactly are we trying to accomplish? I'm having trouble to see what it would mean in reality.
Let's say for example a small local government want to do a thing with software. Normally they put out a tender for local suppliers to get the thing done. These suppliers use a whole scale of software solutions. For some things they all use the same big brand solution because that's just what everyone uses, for other things everyone does their own thing. Some may include open source solutions, some may not.
Some may even have created their own solutions. Especially with government this is very common. Governments usually have to do very specific things in a very specific way. Some provider comes along with their own custom made to do that exact thing. And once a couple of local governments use it and work out the issues, a lot of them will use it. Especially if specific certifications apply.
So how would this work if this becomes a law?
If the government puts out a tender, would they be required to use a supplier that uses open source software in their stack? Or does it only given them "bonus points" (not sure how that would work?).
And does the provider need to use open source in all of their stack? Or how much is allowed? Say they provide a service that's fully open source, but the people in the office use Windows on their machines, would that disqualify them?
And one of the nightmares of the previous decade was GDPR. Specifically I mention it because one of the requirements is for any provider to have a personal data processing statement. But not just between the customer and the supplier, but also any suppliers the supplier uses and every supplier they use etc. etc. This is why you get those crazy "Do you want to share with our 3924 partners?" prompts. So if we circle back to our open source proposal, does the provider need to use open source or do all of their suppliers also need to use open source.
This is not even mentioning different open source licenses, like what is open "enough"? And how does this work when a commercial company gets a government grant to create something? I've seen governments that require the end-product to be open sourced at some point, but not in all cases.
And do we also care about how it's open sourced? Like does the EU need to setup their own Github alternative and require everything to be on there? Because releasing the sources on something controlled by Microsoft feels wrong.
I'm all in for this and if anyone want to put some serious time into this, I would definitely be available to help out. I have some practical experience in this space and I can warn you it gets complicated real fast.
These are all nerds who don't follow sportball most likely. They are quoting the TV show "The IT Crowd" where the main characters pretend to know about sports.
And as an even worse cherry on top, they did this just 2 weeks after they announced they would not honor requests by the Trump administration if they thought those requests weren't legal. They vowed to sue whenever such a thing happened.
Literally weeks later such a situation presents itself and they don't even give anyone a heads up or try to fight it. They just roll over like the traitors we always knew them to be.
Europe needs it's own cloud fast. Unfortunately we are lagging behind around 10 years in my opinion. But are working hard to make up ground in record time.
We might not be there today, but we will get there. And when we do, the US will never see any of our money ever again. Fuck the US and fuck Microsoft
The EU can do a lot more than fine them. With the whole USB-C port issue the EU threatened to straight up ban all Apple products from being sold in the EU. That's a hit Apple won't be willing to pay.
I used to have a cat with a very long tail. He would be laying around and his tail would wrap around and hit him in the face. He would get pissed off about it, so he starts waving his tail like cats do when they get annoyed. But that would just make it worse because he would hit himself in the face with his tail even more. So he would get really pissed off, grab his tail and bite into it. Only then he would realize it was his own tail and start cleaning it, pretending he was cleaning it the whole time and didn't just bite into his own tail like an idiot.
My brother used Google Home/Nest speakers with Google Assistant to automate his entire home. Everything from turning on lights, setting the heat/ac, turning on the TV, listening to music, controlling curtains and blinds etc. It was all based on voice commands. He also used it to make simple shopping lists.
Since it got turned into the LLM based one he's been complaining non stop. It's super slow and doesn't understand what to do half of the time. Very simple voice commands will not be understood. Or it would understand perfectly, but instead of executing the command it would search on Google or something dumb like that.
The latest update has made it much much worse it seems, with the thing becoming even slower and basically unusable. The dream of a Star Trek like setup where you can talk to the computer is dead at the moment.
I've looked into Revolt and it isn't there quite yet. But the road map is extremely promising. I'll keep my eye on it and as soon as they finish up a couple more features I'm going to use it.
I recently put in a lot of hours for a software system to be able to handle webp just as well as every other image format it already accepted. I put in a lot of work as well. Hadn't heard about it for a while, but saw the feature release statement for the new version I knew my changes were in. It wasn't on there. So I reached out to my contact and asked if there was an issue or did it get bumped to a later version or what? So she told me the marketing team that do the release statements decided not to include it. They stated for one, people already expect common formats to be handled. Saying you now handle a format looks bad, since people know you didn't handle it before and were behind the curve. The second (probably more important) reason was nobody knew what webp even was and it's only something technical people care about (they probably said nerds, but my contact translated). So no regular customer would be interested and it could only lead to confusion and questions.
I hope somebody is happy with the work I put in tho. Somebody is going to drag a webp into the system and have it be accepted. Someday.... I hope...