Arnvidr

<p class="byline">An anonymous coward writes:</p><p>Firefox 29 marked the release of the UI overhaul codenamed "Australis" and the jury is back with a verdict: <a href="https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?date_start=2014-04-28&amp;date_end=2014-05-05">the vast majority of feedback on Firefox Input is negative</a> and <a href="http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/firefox-29-sucks.html">traffic to the Classic Theme Restorer add-on has aggressively spiked</a> since Firefox 29 came out on April 29. Considering this is a year and a half after the backlash against the new Windows 8 user interface, it seems that even though the "dumbing down" trends in UI design are infuriating users, they continue to happen. <a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/05/google-kills-urls-in-chrome-beta-channel/">Chrome will soon be hiding URLs,</a> OS X has hidden scroll bars by default, iOS 7 flattened everything, and <a href="http://softwaredesignblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/21/i-hate-windows-8-scrollbars-and-heres-why/">Windows 8 made scroll bars hard to see.</a> If most users hate these changes, why are they so ubiquitous?</p><p><a href="http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/05/12/133214&amp;from=rss">Read more of this story</a> at SoylentNews.</p>

The City by John Backderf for May 07, 2014

ruckawriter:

Dylan Moran.

I’ve done this several to many times in my life.

bonus panel

Today's comic is a response to this individual.

Here is a comic with everyone’s favorite giant monster.

Also, there’s a new “making of”-video for pledgers over at my Patreon page. Consider becoming a patron to support the comic!

Frozach Submitted

New exclusive comic at The Nib this week!

An anonymous reader writes "Lawrence Lessig has announced plans to kickstart a SuperPAC big enough to make it possible to win a Congress committed to fundamental reform by 2016. From the article: 'If you can’t beat them, join them. Then take them down from the inside. That’s the basic idea behind a super PAC launching Thursday that wants to destroy super PACs for good. The Mayday PAC, as it’s called, seeks to raise enough money to sway five House elections in 2014 and elect representatives who have committed to pressing for serious reform of the campaign finance system. If that endeavor—a sort of test case—is successful, the PAC will then try to raise an enormous amount of money for the 2016 cycle—enough, PAC organizers hope, to buy Congress."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla today officially launched Firefox 29 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. This is a massive release: Firefox Sync has been revamped and is now powered by Firefox Accounts, there's a new customization mode, and the company's major user interface overhaul Australis has finally arrived. 'The tabs are sleek and smooth to help you navigate the Web faster. It’s easy to see what tab you’re currently visiting and the other tabs fade into the background to be less of a distraction when you’re not using them. The Firefox menu has moved to the right corner of the toolbar and puts all your browser controls in one place. The menu includes a “Customize” tool that transforms Firefox into a powerful customization mode where you can add or move any feature, service or add-on.' Here are the full release notes and a demo video."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

_{Dylan Moran’s Wine Guide}

An important piece of American literary history, and one of the few missing selections in digital libraries, is finally becoming an e-book. On her 88th birthday, Harper Lee agreed to let her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird be released in electronic form. Lee notes that this is "'Mockingbird' for a new generation," and the title still sells a million copies a year thanks in large part to its popularity in classrooms across the US of A. Here's to hoping we'll get the e-book version of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye soon too.

Filed under: Internet

Comments

Via: The New York Times

Source: HarperCollins

Jen Kirkman (x)

New submitter electronic convict writes: "Hulu, apparently worried that too many non-U.S. residents are using cheap VPN services to watch its U.S. programming, has started blocking IP address ranges belonging to known VPN services. Hulu didn't announce the ban, but users of the affected VPNs are getting this message: 'Based on your IP-address, we noticed that you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you're in the U.S. you'll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu.' Hulu may make Hollywood happy by temporarily locking out foreign users — at least until they find new VPN providers. But in so doing it's now forcing its U.S. customers to sacrifice their privacy and even to risk insecure connections. Hulu hasn't even implemented SSL on its site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "The US government has entered its reply brief in the US vs. Wurie case and its argument in favor of warrantless searches of arrestees' cell phones contains some truly terrible suppositions. The government argues that impartial technological advancements somehow favor criminals. As it sees it, the path to the recovery of evidence should not be slowed by encryption or wiping or even the minimal effort needed to obtain a warrant. From the article: 'The government agrees that times are changing but counterintuitively argues that only law enforcement is being negatively affected by this. Every argument in favor of warrantless searches contains some sort of lamentation about how tech-savvy criminals will be able to cover up or destroy evidence contained on their phones before the police can crack open these new-fangled address books and copy everything down.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.