ethmarks

> i wouldn't expect css gaussian blur of all things to cause slowdowns in some browsers

Gaussian blurs are extremely performance intensive. They need to be calculated for every individual pixel, and the per-pixel computation involves averaging the colors of dozens or hundreds of adjacent pixels. This site applies it to the entire <main>, which spans the entire screen's width and height on mobile, which means that it has several million pixels. That's fine if the browser only has to calculate it once, but when you're scrolling the browser has to perform those calculations for every single pixel on every single frame.

Apparently Chromium and Safari downscale the sampled texture which makes it less accurate but more performant, but Firefox doesn't do that because it prioritizes accuracy over performance, which explains why it only stutters on Firefox.

I'm pretty sure that's because the entire <main> of the site has an 8px Gaussian blur on it:

  .site-main[data-astro-cid-bpoqdqeq] { 
    backdrop-filter:blur(8px); 
  }

Why, exactly? The page looks visually identical when I disable that rule, but the performance skyrockets. I realize that it's probably vibecoded, but come on.

> they accept money and direct deposit still with no KYC. But to get the money out? Oh no! We need a picture of your face!

Unauthorized deposits aren't nearly as much of a concern as unauthorized withdrawals, right? I'd imagine that there are far fewer malicious actors that try to deposit money into random bank accounts than there are ones that try to withdraw money from random bank accounts.

> And there’s no option for going in person.

Won't an in-person bank also take pictures of you via security cameras? I don't really understand your objection here, could you elaborate?

> when they bought the successful ads company

Could you elaborate on this? What ad company did Google buy?

Does the pitch describe the distance between the edges of the pixels or between the centers?

I don't think that complaining about things necessitates believing that you're entitled to them. I agree that complaining about things you received for free is in rather poor taste, but I don't think that it's morally wrong in the way that you seem to think it is. If an article you read for free had a pop-up ad on it, you have not been wronged in any way and do not have grounds to sue them, but you should be permitted to voice your complaint, so long as it's of the form "I don't like this" and not "look what they subjected me to, those monsters".

Pardon my ignorance, but why does the "447 TB/cm^2" density value use square centimeters instead of a volume unit? Does the information capacity of this material really scale in proportion to area? How? Or is it just a typo?

The Copilot in Visual Studio (Code) is not the same as Microsoft's Copilot. The former is GitHub's AI product and the latter is Microsoft's AI product. You can tell them apart because GitHub Copilot's icon is a helmet with goggles and Microsoft Copilot's icon is a colourful swirl thing.

It's wildly confusing branding not only because they're identically-named things that both repackage OpenAI's LLMs, but also because they're both ultimately owned by the same company.

I can only assume that the conflicting naming convention was either due to sheer incompetence or because they decided that confusing users was advantageous to them.

There are other substances that can be used for reactor coolant. Molten salt reactors are actually substantially more efficient than water-cooled reactors because they have a higher operating temperature. You can also use liquid metal as coolant, such as lead or bismuth.

Could you elaborate? Why would being deep in the gravity well be a non-starter? I thought Mercury's proximity to Sol was a huge advantage because of the ample solar power which would make planet-side manufacturing easier.