Yes, this is true (although the name change happened years before the major version was no longer 10) and doesn’t contradict anything I wrote. But the first version of Mac OS X was an entirely new OS technologically unrelated to Mac OS 9; not the case for later version jumps.

True, that usually costs money though, while Tor is free.

In general no, at least according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS#macOS the name change happened several years before the architecture change. But I don’t know what the distinction is on that graph; it’s possible it just depends on how the OS is called in the user agent string?

The OS was renamed at some point; the first versions of the Unix/NEXTstep-based OS made by Apple were named Mac OS X, then at some point they switched to “OS X” (which hardly anyone ever actually said), then at some point to “macOS”. So it’s somewhat silly that they are separate lines and I don’t know what the difference is on that graph.

except that laws about social media usually target any online service regardless of technology

I don’t see Tor solving the problem of I.D. verification on social media, for example.

It does by disguising the location you’re accessing the website from, which may or may not have such laws.

I was wondering how much closer it can get than it is now… then I noticed the date.

In principle yes, because the government has the authority to legally punish people (with fines, imprisonment, even death), private companies do not…

But your specific example with Palantir is a bit weird because Palantir, as I understand it, is mainly in the business of data analysis for governments, so that is an example of government spying, not corporate spying…

Finding restaurants can be done with the same OpenStreetMap-based apps as navigation. I use OsmAnd all the time to find out where restaurants are.

But OpenStreetMap doesn’t have a review functionality, nor is it trivial to add one from an external site to one. Apparently there have been efforts in this direction, but I don’t know a lot about them: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Reviews

So I don’t have an answer for reviews. But the review databases that currently exist are a manipulation battleground which people should take with a grain of salt anyway.

Of course those would be good things. It still doesn’t sound like priority #1 when it comes to software freedom alone especially in a world where smartphones are mostly not open systems designed for installation of any new operating systems.

Are they planning to license it as free software?

Linux is already the most common kernel in phones in 2026. In this case we really have to distinguish between Linux (incl. Android) and GNU/Linux.

And given that AOSP is already FOSS, it doesn’t exactly sound like a priority to reinvent the wheel of a FOSS smartphone OS.

That is not new. They’ve been doing that since the 2000s.

The way I understand it is that there are at least two reasons, maybe more:

• Google (like all tech companies) uses a lot of open source software internally, so benefits from it being improved
• Google wants to train possible future employees

Not everything Google or other big tech companies do is necessarily bad; we should be taking advantage of the good parts of what they do.

Not a new idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc

They do pretty much the same thing. If there are nuances, I do not know about them.

Krita does, but that’s only suitable for tablets, it’s a ported desktop app.

If that is so, which I do not know, the only logical explanation is that people who are already unhappy, for unrelated reasons, are more likely to need to find at least some happiness in their lives by participating in online communities.

I would never have believed it possible that almost all politicians of ostensibly democratic countries almost simultaneously agree to prevent young people from having fun, being happy and finding meaning and fulfillment in their lives. How do these people think of themselves as the good guys?

You can do whatever you want; the thing is that if you’re not an EU citizen, you can’t vote in elections to the European Parliament, so MEPs don’t have an incentive to take your positions into consideration; you can’t vote them out after all.

I honestly do not get why “touch grass” became a common phrase/meme around a decade after many people got mobile Internet access (through smartphones).

Before that, it would have made sense because you’d usually only be posting on the Internet when you’re somewhere inside where there’s a computer; but now that we can literally be posting online while lying on grass?! How did this happen?