I mentioned this story to coworkers who hadn't heard of it at dinner last night and figured I'd post it again. (surely, it's been posted many times over the years)
The video doesn't really go into how speech synthesizers technically work, so the title is misleading, but it shows how a wide variety of vintage devices and games added some kind of voice system.
> My greatest achievement has been convincing Steve Klabnik to try out Jujutsu
I came across jj from a recent Bluesky post by Steve Klabnik who was talking about having to learn something with git. That seemed very odd to me. I then gathered that he (and many others in the comments) had been using jj exclusively for some time.
I haven't had time to give it a try, but I definitely will. Your achievement has ripple effects.
I just came across this concept on Reddit. Proprioception is the perception of where your own body is, how it moves, etc.
Extended proprioception is the extension of this concept to the tools you’re handling. (despite the absence of direct sensory receptors) A classic example is how you can develop a sense of where the car you’re driving is in space. You see that also with drones, surgical robots, excavators, cranes, etc.
Following the murder, I was thinking about how much non physical violence there is, that isn’t usually seen and judged as violence. Things like denying healthcare, shutting down companies and laying off people to benefit private equity investors, forcing people into bankruptcy, losing their homes, charging overdraft fees, etc.
The people behind that kind of violence can hide behind the layers of indirection.
"The people behind that kind of violence can hide behind the layers of indirection."
>[B]ureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear. *We cannot dismiss the possibility that, if Adolf Eichmann had been able to say that it was not he but a battery of computers that directed the Jews to the appropriate crematoria, he might never have been asked to answer for his actions.*
> Things like denying healthcare, shutting down companies and laying off people to benefit private equity investors, forcing people into bankruptcy, losing their homes, charging overdraft fees, etc.
These things are objectively not violence. Violence isn't a word for "things that harm people", it very specifically means direct, purposeful physical harm. Don't distort the meaning of words for rhetorical flair.
This is the same 'get out clause' that the antagonist in the Saw films uses: "I didn't harm those people directly, I only created the conditions under which they would be harmed."
The WHO defines four types of violence: a) physical, b) sexual, c) psychological, and d) deprivation. Denying healthcare feels incredibly close to d) and — semi-indirectly — involves a bit of c) and a) too.
Distorting the meaning of words is how these people justify their actions. Not giving them what they want? That’s violence now! Thus justifying retaliatory - or even pre-emptive - violence.
By your strict definition of violence (direct harm) Hitler would walk free because he didn't personally gass the jews. Luckily we had trials[2] to determine that we still hold indirect perpetrators responsible.
Any healthcare system must deny healthcare. No healthcare system existing anywhere on this planet provides infinite healthcare to everyone. Denying healthcare is not violence.
In any economic system, units of economic organizations must sometimes dissolve, and people must be laid off. This is unavoidable. Laying people off is not violence.
In any society, debts are expected to be paid off. If people could just stop paying their debts, nobody would make any loans anymore. Forcing people into bankruptcy is not violence.
Frankly, your comment strikes me as exceedingly naive. "I only want ever nice things to happen, and bad things happening to people are violence". I suggest thinking about why these things happen, what would be alternative, and so we put up with these.
> Any healthcare system must deny healthcare. No healthcare system existing anywhere on this planet provides infinite healthcare to everyone. Denying healthcare is not violence.
Nobody argues against that, but United Healthcare had a denial rate of more than 30%, which is the highest among the major health insurance companies in the US. Coupled with the fact that they make profits off of those denials, it's hard not to call this non physical violence with the aim to generate more capital for share holders and executives.
> In any economic system, units of economic organizations must sometimes dissolve, and people must be laid off. This is unavoidable. Laying people off is not violence.
Again, absolutely agree. But it can be argued that doing so without any regard for individuals, their history with the economic unit and personal circumstances, is non-physical violence. Look at e.g. European employment laws for how this can be mitigated (not without some drawbacks ofc).
> In any society, debts are expected to be paid off. If people could just stop paying their debts, nobody would make any loans anymore. Forcing people into bankruptcy is not violence.
In every just society, the debtor has a responsibility as well to not lend money to people who cannot afford it. Giving somebody a loan they cannot afford and then bankrupting them is definitely non-physical violence.
> I suggest thinking about why these things happen, what would be alternative, and so we put up with these.
You put up with these because the US is a violent society with little regards for individual lives. Great for entrepreneurs and people with access to capital, not so great for much of the rest.
The alternatives have of course their own share of problems, but don't act as if the system is the only reasonable one.
> Nobody argues against that, but United Healthcare had a denial rate of more than 30%, which is the highest among the major health insurance companies in the US.
As it happens, there will always exist a health insurance company with highest denial rate among all companies. That's a simple mathematical fact: a finite set of numbers has a maximum number. You need to do more legwork to show any actual wrongdoing on anyone's part here.
> In every just society, the debtor has a responsibility as well to not lend money to people who cannot afford it. Giving somebody a loan they cannot afford and then bankrupting them is definitely non-physical violence.
This is absurd. When your debtors go bankrupt, you lose money. Nobody wants to lend money to people who cannot afford it.
> As it happens, there will always exist a health insurance company with highest denial rate among all companies. That's a simple mathematical fact: a finite set of numbers has a maximum number. You need to do more legwork to show any actual wrongdoing on anyone's part here.
This isn't correct. Mathematically (as you say), you can have all health companies have a denial rate of 0%.
Realistically it's impossible, but you did say mathematically.
Correct! I was more-so addressing the following statement, not necessarily the mathematical maximum one:
> As it happens, there will always exist a health insurance company with highest denial rate among all companies
If OP was going to start leaning onto "mathematical fact[s]" to support their argument, they should probably be accurate as well. Specifically there will be "multiple" health insurance companies with the highest denial rate (0), not "a" company.
> This is absurd. When your debtors go bankrupt, you lose money. Nobody wants to lend money to people who cannot afford it.
Weren't you just calling someone's comment "exceedingly naive"?
The poor and financially vulnerable (ie, most Americans) are at a systemic disadvantage when dealing with debt, bankruptcy laws, and the justice system. They are preyed upon by all sorts of people offering debt, at a higher rate than ever before, anywhere.
Not to mention government bailouts, which really changed the game with regard to balancing risk.
> This is absurd. When your debtors go bankrupt, you lose money. Nobody wants to lend money to people who cannot afford it.
That depends, amongst other things, on how much interest you charge in the interim. Payday lenders makes lots of money off of people who a) cannot afford their loans by any reasonable metric and b) default on those loans.
If you think payday lenders care one iota about debtors going bankrupt after collecting multiples of the original loan amount in interest, I cannot help you.
I get that you have an ideological position to defend and, based on your other comments in this thread have either an inability or an unwillingness to cede any ground. So while, yes, I do understand how loans work, I do not have any further interest in talking to you about payday lenders. Have a nice day.
I live in a European country with public free healthcare. Sure, you pay a portion of your income towards healthcare, so it's not really free etc. etc. If you don't have income, the state pays it for you.
There isn't any denial of healthcare. I never heard about anything like that. Sure, there are limits on availability of healthcare, particularly if it's some advanced or expensive procedure. For example, there is a place where they do radio surgery on the brain. There may only be one such place in the country (it's a small country). If you need that kind of procedure done, obviously there is a waiting list. And certainly some of those on a waiting list must have died.
But there is no denial of healthcare per se with someone making a decision to deny healthcare.
I live in a Nordic country and the state-owned insurance provider often denies healthcare, much like health insurance companies in the US.
Denying healthcare doesn't necessarily mean "leaving someone bleeding to death on the street" but rather refusing to provide certain treatments or medications. This issue isn't unique to the US. Granted, the healthcare system in the US is, in my opinion, significantly worse but claiming that healthcare denial doesn't happen elsewhere is simply incorrect.
In the US they deny treatment that is considered essential by their own doctors. I know you were saying the same thing, but your comment seems to minimize the difference.
I'm confused, you said that there isn't any denial of healthcare where you are, but then described very clearly and explicitly how some people are denied healthcare, and they sometimes die as a result. Maybe you understand the word "deny" differently?
the big point you are missing is the denial of paying for treatment after it has been applied.
in germany (and probably most other european countries) you can be denied treatment if it is deemed unimportant and it is known that insurance does not cover it. you will never be put in a situation where treatment is applied but then the insurance doesn't pay leaving you with the bill unless you were made aware that the treatment is optional or you specifically chose a treatment that you could not be sure would be paid. payment for any treatment that is not optional can not be denied. if there is uncertainty you can also ask your insurer in advance, and they must give you a binding response whether the proposed treatment will be paid or not.
most importantly the doctors must inform the patient in advance if the treatment is insured or not. if they don't tell them that something is not insured then they can't demand payment from the patient.
Because you mentioned Germany and surprise bills...
My partner suffered a medical episode while we were traveling in Germany. Bystanders called an ambulance which turned up and checked her out and asked her to be taken to hospital for more tests.
She/we elected to not go with them.
To our surprise, about 6 months later after we returned home (to Australia), we received a letter in the mail (in German) that said we owed something like $500 for the ambulance, I forget the exact number.
How does that line up with "you will never face a surprise bill" in Germany? Or is it because we are foreigners?
We never paid but I sometimes wonder if something would happen should we return to Germany.
it's most likely because you didn't have insurance at all. if you had travel insurance you should have forwarded that to them. (but see below about calling an ambulance that is not needed)
if you don't have insurance you have to pay for everything of course. the surprise in your case comes from the unusual situation that the people who called the ambulance didn't know that you had no insurance, or more likely and you weren't even aware of how your situation is going to be handled.
it's unlikely that anything will happen if you return since the ones issuing the bill would not be notified in any way that you entered the country.
it is also possible that you could have disputed the payment since you didn't call the ambulance yourself (and i assume didn't ask anyone to call them). on the other hand if you had insurance you should have gone to the hospital because apparently insurance doesn't pay if an ambulance is called but not used. so actually, you didn't receive a surprise medical bill, but a bill for calling a service that was not needed (and potentially inconveniencing someone else who might have needed the ambulance, but now had to wait).
however, if you didn't ask anyone to call the ambulance then the bill is inappropriate because the law here is that if you call an ambulance but you don't need it, you pay, but if someone else calls the ambulance without you asking them, and it turns out to be unnecessary, then nobody pays.
since i lived in china i also don't have insurance in europe, so when we were visiting and needed treatment for a burn we had to shop around different hospitals to find out which one charged the least. costs for an ER visit ranged from 80€ to 250€ if i remember, and later we found a special hospital that was funded by a charity for the uninsured were we could go for after care for free. that works because the number of people without insurance is extremely small. mostly foreigners who somehow fell through the gap.
indeed. while i was reading up on this i kept wondering if there is no way to call a doctor without calling an ambulance. i know there are private doctors that you can call (i recently saw a report about a doctor who said that he gets called specifically because his patients do not want to be taken to a hospital (and don't need to)), but when you call emergency services then an ambulance seems to be the only option.
Of course it does. The patients wanted care early enough to save their live. They denied them that care. Hypothetical care after death is worthless.
Whether they denied that care by not paying for it (which means people could have gotten that care if they would have had the means), or by limiting the amount of care in a period of time, doesn't really matters for the person who didn't get it.
Why do you think the healthcare resources (number of beds, hospitals etc) are limited? Why isn't there a second hospital?
By the way, would they have paid for an operation in a different country if space would be available there? No? So they denied that healthcare.
Except it just doesn't, denial of claim has a very specific meaning, there's no reason to go all philosophical.
I'm sure there's plenty of cases where United health approved the claim and the patient also didn't get treated in time, it doesn't count as a denied claim.
This sub-thread is about denying healthcare. Not about denying claims. In fact, denying a claim (i.e. payment for healthcare services) has the moral implications discussed here mainly if not only because denial of payment is tantamount to denial of healthcare.
Ah, so it's the system that's bad. Can't do anything about it, only shrug and follow orders. Somebody else would have switched the gas chamber on anyway.
> Ah, so by saying that denying insurance claims is not violence, because all insurance systems must deny some claims, I'm basically Hitler.
You're probably purposefully derailing the conversation, but for the sake of others let me bite: pointing out the resemblance of following orders of a killing system and excusing the individuals working in this system as "order followers", has nothing to do with calling anybody "literally Hitler".
> Do you think that Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung never denies claims? That it never denies care? Is it also violence when it does so?
IIUC, those are also private companies or at least to a degree. So probably similar to american healthcare, just more regulated.
Let's take a look at a 100% pure public healthcare instead, for example La Seguridad Social in Spain.
It denies some claims, care, and can cause some suffering and death. The institution is administered directly by some leadership individuals, and to some degree even by the elected government. Those individuals are not driven directly by the "financial obligation to make the maximum profit" out of healthcare. However they indirectly are, there are decisions to be made on spending, and budget is not magically infinite. These decisions are hard: you can't make everyone happy and healthy, whatever the result, some people suffer and die. See the trolley problem.
So if a public healthcare system works badly, and causes too much pain and suffering, then some of these individuals can also be held responsible. It's just that in practice, in general any public system works more towards the benefit of society than for some shareholders.
To be blunt: if the government individuals take decisions that degrade the public healthcare system, for their own benefit, whatever that is, then those individuals should maybe be shot in public too. This kind of violence, terrorism, works historically well, especially if it isn't targeted at random civilians. Democracy is not simply the rule of the majority.
It's not a matter of awareness, the public knows how perverse the incentives of private health insurance are, and how a public system can do much better. But the private system will never be replaced in the current american political landscape - without violence.
OK, I’m glad that we agree that any healthcare system will deny care to some people. That’s my point: this is necessarily the case, so it cannot be automatically “violence” when that happens. It is extremely naive to believe that whenever that happens, the cause must be necessarily nefarious.
> It's just that in practice, in general any public system works more towards the benefit of society than for some shareholders.
I think that this is simply empirically false. You cannot just assert something like this, you need to provide evidence for it.
> To be blunt: if the government individuals take decisions that degrade the public healthcare system, for their own benefit, whatever that is, then those individuals should maybe be shot in public too.
And here is the critical question: is there any evidence whatsoever that Bryan Thompson made any decision like that? As far as I can tell, there is absolutely zero. Many just decided he must be guilty of something, but nobody actually points to anything in particular.
> It's not a matter of awareness, the public knows how perverse the incentives of private health insurance are, and how a public system can do much better.
Again, you are asserting something that’s far from being universally agreed on. Public healthcare systems have their troubles too, and if you ask anyone with experience with both, you will not find people universally preferring their public experience. Ask Canadians or Brits how long it takes to get a visit at a specialist, for example.
> That’s my point: this is necessarily the case, so it cannot be automatically “violence” when that happens.
You're going in circles around an argument that you made up yourself. Do you want a pat on the back?
> I think that this is simply empirically false. You cannot just assert something like this, you need to provide evidence for it.
Now read that out back again loud.
> Again, you are asserting something that’s far from being universally agreed on.
I said: "It's not a matter of awareness, the public knows". That cannot be read as "universally agreed on" in good faith.
> Public healthcare systems have their troubles too, and if you ask anyone with experience with both, you will not find people universally preferring their public experience.
I never claimed public healthcare is perfect, on the contrary.
You will find rich people preferring private healthcare, which are a vocal minority.
> Ask Canadians or Brits how long it takes to get a visit at a specialist, for example.
I don't have to ask nobody because I live in a country with fully public healthcare. I am glad that poor people have the same access as rich people, and that triage by urgency, not money, works well (again not claiming that it's perfect, since you give everything your own meaning).
The USA on the other hand are infamous for the healthcare bankruptcy and literal horror stories. I think you don't realize how non-existant your safety net is. It only works well for you when you don't have a major health problem, and while you have a relatively very good paying job.
> Ah, so by saying that denying insurance claims is not violence, because all insurance systems must deny some claims
> Consider, for example, a public health insurance system like Germany. Do you think that Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung never denies claims? That it never denies care? Is it also violence when it does so?
Denying claims can be violence, it can also not be violence. There are other factors which you keep ignoring. Stop doing that.
I am ignoring that? This thread is literally full of people who take any insurance denial as automatically wrong. It is me who's asking people to think carefully about this!
If you say so. No one else is.
Did you miss the "gas chambers" part in the comment I replied to?
> This thread is literally full of people who take any insurance denial as automatically wrong.
Then go and reply to those people (if they are really in the room with us). In _this_ subthread nobody has said or implied that ANY insurance denials is automatically wrong.
"Literally hitler" wasn't directed at you personally, obviously, but you couldn't help but pick it up that way.
It’s impossible for all instances of these things to constitute violence. I do, however, find the idea that they are sometimes akin to violence very enticing. Can you argue that? Can the actions of a stereotypical slumlord, one behaving within local law and never physically touching one of his tenants, potentially constitute violence? If not, how are you defining it?
> Running a shitty business, even an exploitative one, isn’t violence.
You know, it just hit me: the issue here might just be a semantic one, where people feel the need to lump very unacceptable and wrong actions into the category of "violence," because of the consensus belief that violence is almost always wrong.
There are things that are as unacceptable and wrong as violence but are not violence.
People lump the inappropriate denial of necessary resources into "violence", as well as actions which happen because of the threat of physical harm.
For example, if a slumlord wants to evict me, even though I'm still paying the rent, the eviction is violence. It can either go two ways: either armed thugs will come to the building and physically grab me, rough me up and throw me on the street (at best) or in jail (at worst). Or I'll anticipate that happening, and lock myself out of the building in advance. In the latter case, is it still violence? Many people say yes, a shortcut around violence, coerced by the certainty that violence will happen otherwise, is still violence.
Or consider an abusive relationship: she knows he will beat her if she doesn't obey, so she obeys. No beating actually happens. A lot of people consider this violence too.
And consider a siege on a city (there's at least one happening right now). The people try to grow their own food in city parks, but whenever they do they, the parks are hit with big bombs dropped from planes. So they call on their allies to deliver food in. The first food trucks are also bombed. The second food trucks don't go in, they try to negotiate safe passage first. Is it violence against the people in the city (who have never been hit by a bomb)? Many people say yes.
In the narrow definition, violence is only when my fist hits your face, but in the broader definition, violence is whenever I use the laws of physics to force something to happen to you - whenever I take away your agency.
I really don’t think it’s that simple. The violence we’re talking about might be most easily defined as a particularly extreme form of coercion, one which causes deep trauma and/or physical harm. Doesn’t this capture the nature of a lot of violence? Isn’t it also evident that this wouldn’t always require physical contact by the aggressor, or even a single, tangible aggressor at all? I’d argue, for example, that whether or not hitler personally pulled the trigger on holocaust victims, he absolutely did violence against them. The level of indirection doesn’t preclude this.
We can define violence as “that guy hit that guy,” and leave it at that and you’d be right. I think this alternative view is a recognition that a lot of other behaviors look very similar in how they work, like when the slumlord chains the emergency fire exit and a family burns alive because of it (an extreme example, but I do recall reading about a case along those lines). I feel like calling that sort of thing violence perpetrated by the slumlord is accurate to everyone but the pedant. It captures the essence of the behavior to me, this bringing about of great personal harm through either malice or sociopathic apathy.
And a healthcare system enabled by UHC will deny healthcare at a rate 3 times that of the rest of the industry.
So is every other insurer "under-denying" healthcare?
Or is UHC choosing to deny healthcare more than it needs to?
> In any society, debts are expected to be paid off. If people could just stop paying their debts, nobody would make any loans anymore. Forcing people into bankruptcy is not violence.
Insurance is the reason that these debts are so exorbitant in the first place.
Do you really think the ER trip and a few tests cost the hospital eighty thousand dollars, and UHC, magician negotiators that they are, managed to talk the bill down to $4,000?
And yet the hospital will charge you, the uninsured, $80K. Yeah, you might be able to negotiate it down some, but not like that.
The US is the only country in the world where deathbed divorce is a thing, so families won't be burdened with medical bills[1].
But I feel like you'd find that immoral, too.
[1] Lack of legal obligation to the debt (even beyond this, to family members in general) won't stop the hospital calling your family and heavily beating on you to pay the bill of your recently departed, even if you had no financial responsibility, using everything from appealing to a sense of pride, to outright deception and claims that they can sue for the unpaid bill.
> Any healthcare system must deny healthcare. No healthcare system existing anywhere on this planet provides infinite healthcare to everyone. Denying healthcare is not violence.
It is when the care is necessary; when the denial is part of a strategy to goose profits.
There are similar issues with the other statements you made.
> Frankly, your comment strikes me as exceedingly naive.
Frankly, your comment strikes me as willfully blind.
So when the insurance denies coverage, and so the doctors don't work for free on the case, and the patient dies, are the doctors perpetrating violence too?
In your contrarian urge to defend some of the worst of the status quo, you forget the insurance company's whole role is to pay for medical care.
I suggest you read up on this. IIRC, it was UHG's practice to deny claims indiscriminately to increase the personal burden of accessing medical care. Because, you know, if people pay their premiums to the company but it doesn't pay out, it makes lots more money for the shareholders.
It's weird how you seem to consistently elide motivations even when extremely relevant.
An insurance company's "role" is to distribute risk, not to "pay for medical care" without question. The perversion of what constitutes "insurance" in the US medical industry is the fault of our legal system and tax code, and the insane cost of medical care (which is ultimately the root cause of most of these problems) is down to the medical cartel (also legally enforced).
There are systems that cannot deny life saving care, and where everyone is necessarily insured.
It’s facetious to compare those to a system where 30 million have zero coverage and the rest are systematically denied life saving care as a profit making mechanism.
And yeah letting someone die when you could help them live is violence. When it’s baked into the rules it’s called systemic violence.
There are no systems anywhere in the world which don’t deny life saving care. All systems make life and death decisions. British NHS, for example, will generally deny life saving care, if such procedure will cost more than 30,000 pounds per quality-adjusted year of life you’re expected to gain as a result of the procedure.
Again, my point is that denying healthcare is not automatically something wrong or evil. This is something that must necessarily happen, and so the details as to why some healthcare was denied are very important. You can’t just say that someone being denied care is basically murder, like some people here, or point to some percentage of denied claims and pretend that this is prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. No, you need to actually do some legwork, and the haters of murder victim are not interested in that, they just want some release by dunking on a literal scapegoat.
I mean it seems you’re dunking on a strawman yourself. Like if I said Denmark virtually denies no life saving claims, and when it happens it’s due to edge cases, you’ll insist just because it occurs it’s indistinguishable from a system where it happens systemically and regularly?
I believe that healthcare is deliberately limited by insane policy. Contrary to opinion insurance is not the problem. It’s doctors charging exorbitant fees.
We allow this because we let them scare us into voting for strict education.
But the reality is education could be fixed to cut the price by probably 80% - making the much smaller insurance amount negligible.
I hate to say it but pinning it on a ceo doesn’t seem right. His job was to ration a scarce resource. But why is it scare? Because the authorities thru the police force puts an end to unlicensed people regardless of their skills.
I was talking to a friend/acquaintance. Her dad was a doctor did all kinds of innovative surgeries on animals. But wasn’t licensed. She said he’d be called in by doctors to do surgeries all the time because he was the best.
But he wasn’t licensed. So California shut it all down.
The price of healthcare is 5x because we let people go to jail without a crime. If they went to jail for reckless I e untrained practice of medicine i understand. But seriously right now the problem is lack of supply that has to be rationed.
> Thank you for your comment, I thought that there's nobody left here who understands this.
Dude, plenty of people understand that. However, it's no good playing the circular pass-the-buck game, where the insurance apologists blame the doctors for everything, then the doctor-apologists blame the insurers for everything, everyone blaming someone else for everything, ad nauseam; with the end-result of the status-quo being defended by mentally exhausting everyone.
And why do doctors make 5x what normal people make? It's because they have to pay off a million dollars in school debt and risk ruining their entire lives if they fail.
I’ve used both for many years. I’ve stopped using qutebrowser because it has some limitations due to be a bit behind on the web engine, which leads to problems with some sites. I still think it’s brilliant.
I wouldn’t say they do the same thing exactly. Vimium is similar to a vim-mode in something like VS Code, while qutebrowser is more like Vim itself. The Vim “spirit” is built-in and is the expectation rather than a layer added on top. The qutebrowser UI, already minimalistic, is also very configurable and scriptable.
The flip side to me is that some of the experience will be nicer with Chrome, the same way VS Code can be nicer and easier to manage.
> I’ve stopped using qutebrowser because it has some limitations due to be a bit behind on the web engine, which leads to problems with some sites.
Assuming you're on Linux, that's usually more of a problem with Linux distributions being behind on QtWebEngine. Though yeah, sometimes things are tight with QtWebEngine only updating their Chromium baseline once every 6 months. I try to ship workarounds (in the form of polyfills) with qutebrowser when I know about breakage, but usually for me things run smoothly.
No, I’m on macOS. I think my main issue was with videos that didn’t always play correctly. Can’t remember exactly but I think either on Reddit or Twitter, it was just not reliable.
Ah, I see. That's not due to the Chromium version though, it's because the Chromium that comes with Qt releases (which is what's shipped in qutebrowser releases) is built without proprietary codec support.
Unfortunately, support for proprietary codecs like MP4 and such requires building Qt from sources, and would also require me to acquire licenses for them all (I believe they're free until a certain number of distributions, but also with all the indirect ways you can get qutebrowser, I can hardly even provide that information).
This isn't an issue on Linux, because those licenses have some sort of exception in the sense of "if shipped with an operating system or its packages".
Homebrew seems to build its Qt packages against system ffmpeg with proprietary codecs enabled, and there's an issue open which would at least allow you to build a custom build against that: https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/4127
Maybe I should look into whether I'd be allowed to redistribute such builds (or what kind of paperwork I'd need to do for it). Unfortunately there's a lot on my plate, and macOS/Windows are admittedly somewhat second-class citizens as I don't use those myself.
Configuring the qutebrowser UI is a major reason I used qutebrowser for some years. I love ricing my system and saving screen real estate with a minimal UI bloat is nice.
Always a fun read.