That list would be incomplete. Americans at least don't tend to "helpfully" automatically proxy their whole site through Google Translate when they detect foreign IPs.
The most baffling thing is that we aren't talking about Hurrah-Americans here. We are talking about Google, which is full of Indians on all levels of the company. They, if anyone, should have understanding of multilingual people, and yet... such an incredible mess, which is still not fixed after many months.
Browsers already support JavaScript anyway, so why not add another Turing-complete language into the mix? (Not even accounting for CSS technically being Turing-complete, or WASM, or …)
As far as I know the Tex team has been working hard lately on supporting accessible "tagged pdfs". Hopefully one day Tex/Latex output will be accessible by default and conversion to HTML will not be needed.
That would (mostly if not always) work in the sense of reproducing the layout of the pages, but would defeat the purpose of preserving the semantic information present in the TeX file (what is a heading, a reference and to what, a specific math environment, etc.) which is AFAIK already mostly dropped on conversion to PDF by the latex compiler.
> This is how it worked a decade+ ago, when there was still alpha to be had on providing better streaming service. […] Now […] there is no benefit in trying to compete on making a better platform / service. The only thing left is competing on content.
A large profit margin is not something that a business is owed.
Open source, as in corporate outsourcing software maintenance to free labour? No. Free software, as in four freedoms? Yes, because you could install your own firmware that doesn't show advertisements.
That's what the whole GPLv3 debacle was about after all.
Stallman may have not imagined this specific scenario, but he absolutely did conceive of owner-hostile software that could not be replaced.
You could, but would most people? Most people voluntarily subject themselves to garbage adware-ridden SmartTVs even though this is a problem you can solve with a £12 dongle and no software installation at all. If the humble HDMI cable defeats the average person’s technical ability, what difference would it make if they could technically install their own firmware?
Fine, but I don't care about the average person. _I_ do not want this junk in my life. I don't deserve to be treated this way. If everyone else want to be manipulated by their fridge, thats one's on them, but count me out. It doesn't matter _if_ you install your own firmware, but _if you have the right to do so_. I don't own a gun, but I still believe that owning a firearm is a human right.
That might sound strange at first, but we've seen enough now to know that this will inevitably mean that a lot of manufacturers will follow this model.
I can imagine deals where you get a huge 'rebate' if you permanently enable the ad-feature (the on-screen wizard will blow one of those tiny fuses as its final step, locking the device to that setting). That effectively mandates that the price for the device is its selling price minus the huge rebate, and the whole market will adjust to that.
"Telly" [1] is a real 55" TV that is available for free. It is designed to always, constantly be running advertisements.
> To reserve a Telly, you must agree to use the device as the main TV in your home, constantly keep it connected to the internet, and regularly watch it. If the company finds that you violate these rules, Telly will ask you to return the TV (and charge a $1,000 fee if you don’t send it back).
Also because just because something is done "willingly" doesn't mean they fully understand that it may not be in their best interest, long-term. This is why drugs are illegal.
This is extremely ironic given that JavaScript was so named because people do give a damn about names so Netscape/Sun leveraged the Java success to push JS, hence they named it JAVAscript despite it having nothing to do with Java.
