Scott Boehmer

Tag: Software

  • Firefox Focus

    As a result of having worked on it at Microsoft, I’ve been using Microsoft Edge as my browser for years. Recently though, I’ve been looking for alternatives due to the amount that Microsoft has been adding bloated features that I don’t want to the browser so that each overview of new features after an update was a list of things I wanted to turn off rather than anything that excited me. More broadly, the company’s shoving of generative AI into every nook and cranny has pushed me to look for alternatives to pretty much every Microsoft product that I use.

    On the browser front, I’ve switched to Firefox with DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Both of those still seem to be investing in AI, but it was easy to opt out.

    On my phone, I installed both the standard Firefox browser and Firefox Focus. Since doing that, I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying Firefox Focus.

    It is a simple, privacy-focused browser. It is essentially always in private mode and deletes your cookies and history each time you close it or at the convenient press of a button in its toolbar, and then it also has built-in ad and tracking blockers. On the other hand, it intentionally lacks a bunch of features that I’d normally like in a browser: roaming favorites, password management, tabs, cross-device history, etc.

    Despite that lack of features though, it turns out it feels pretty perfect for navigating a web that is hostile to users. Obnoxious ads are a problem all over the internet, so I recommend everyone use an ad-blocker no matter what browser you’re running. Then a lot of sites use cookies to track activity and interfere with users. For example, news sites often record the number of articles you view and then at some point stop letting you read without a subscription. It turns out defaulting to private mode where cookies are regularly deleted makes those sites feel a lot more user friendly.

    On the rare sites where I actually want to sign-in, I’m easily able to switch over to the full Firefox on my phone with a menu option in Firefox Focus. Then I can benefit from all the roamed information from my desktop browser.

    If you’re not happy with your mobile browsing experience, then I recommend giving Firefox Focus a try. Oh, and also change the settings in every single app that tries to open links in anything other than your default browser to stop doing that.

    Firefox Focus (Mozilla)

  • Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Time Zones

    What if event organizers could share a link that would do the work for you? If someone clicked on mytime.at/5pm/EST, they would see their local version of that time. It sounded simple enough.

    I began coding.

    I knew trying to manage time is a fool’s errand, but that’s what datetime libraries are for. I would merely build an extra time zone conversion layer on top.

    Surely that couldn’t be complicated

    …Right?

    I soon discovered just how wrong I was. One after another, I kept learning the falsehood of yet another “fact” that had seemed obviously true. Eventually my original vision became literally impossible to pull off without making serious compromises.

    Zain Rizvi

    Falsehoods programmers believe about time zones (Zain Rizvi)

  • Storing Times for Human Events

    What’s wrong with calculating the exact UTC time the event is starting and storing only that?

    The problem is that we are losing crucial details about the event creator’s original intent.

    …

    My strong recommendation here is that the most important thing to record is the original user’s intent. If they said the event is happening at 6pm, store that! Make sure that when they go to edit their event later they see the same editable time that they entered when they first created it.

    Simon Willison

    Storing times for human events (Simon Willison’s Weblog)

  • Killer robots hiding in plain sight

    As more and more decisions about human fates are made by algorithms, a lack of accountability and transparency will elevate heartless treatment driven by efficiency devoid of empathy. Humans become mere data shadows.

    Per Axbom

    Killer robots hiding in plain sight (Axbom)

  • Lost in the Future

    Modern existence has become engulfed in sludge, the institutions that exist to cut through it bouncing between the ignorance of their masters and a misplaced duty in objectivity, our mechanisms for exploring and enjoying the world interfered with by powerful forces that are too-often left unchecked. Opening our devices is willfully subjecting us to attack after attack from applications, websites and devices that are built to make us do things rather than operate with the dignity and freedom that much of the internet was founded upon.

    Ed Zitron

    Lost In The Future (Where’s Your Ed At)