canopic jug writes:Former programmer, Jamie Zawinski, also a founder of Netscape and Mozilla, has observed that Netscape Navigator 2.0 was released 30 years ago. Netscape's full feature set existed identically on Macintosh, Windows, and nine flavors of Unix, something which was basically unheard of at the time.Netscape was finished off by a double hit. First, Microsoft illegally abused its desktop monopoly to enter and crush the browser market. Second, and probably even more detrimental, they got taken over from the inside through what should have been an acquisition of another, smaller company.The remnants are known as Mozilla. That is a separate story.Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
Tokolosh writes:Pix is a free instant payment system that the Brazilian Central Bank launched in 2020. It has obliterated expensive electronic funds transfers (EFTs) in Brazil, and is well on its way to replace payments that were traditionally made with credit cards issued by companies such as Visa, Mastercard and Amex.Everyone seems to rave about it, except Trump (and possibly his vocal Brazilian supporters, who bizarrely applaud Trump's sanctions and tariffs imposed on their own country). When on July 15 he announced his investigation of Brazil's "unfair trading practices" (which ultimately resulted in the 50% import duties on Brazilian exports to the US), one of the justifications for the investigation was stated as follows: "The investigation will seek to determine whether acts, policies and practices of the government of Brazil related to digital trade and electronic payment services ... are unreasonable or discriminatory and burden or restrict US commerce."Yet Brazil has not prohibited anyone from using American-branded credit cards. There are still some dinosaur businesses in Brazil that only accept credit cards, and all businesses that accept Pix payments still accept credit card payments.But credit card payments in Brazil are undoubtedly dwindling, as the convenience of Pix rapidly overtakes credit cards. That is not a policy aimed specifically at US credit card companies, but rather a reflection that outdated credit card payment systems have not kept up with the latest disruptive technology.For that America should rather ask why its own innovation has lagged behind that of countries such as Brazil that it traditionally regards as its backyard. Maybe it has something to do with the sizeable portion of the American population that believes humans and dinosaurs cohabited planet earth in the last 6,000 years.Read more at https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2025-09-19-emile-myburgh-brazils-payment-system-puts-credit-card-firms-to-the-test/Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
canopic jug writes:Famed developer Poul-Henning Kamp (phk) has posted an update on the status and future of the project currently known as Varnish Cache. And, after 20 years of being a go-to component in WWW infrastructure, it will change its name to The Vinyl Cache Project with version 8.0.0 being the last under the old name. The software project will be sheperded under the new name by a Danish association formed for that specific purpose.
quietus writes:ASML, Dutch multinational producer of EUV lithography machines, has announced an investment of 1.3bn in French AI startup Mistral, which positions itself as an European alternative to ChatGPT and similar.It is to become "a long-term collaboration agreement to explore the use of AI models across ASML's product portfolio as well as research, development and operations, to benefit ASML customers with faster time to market and higher performance holistic lithography systems ..." in a "first-of-its-kind partnership between a semiconductor equipment manufacturer and a leading AI company".The deal brings together Europe's top AI start-up and one of the continent's most valuable public companies, which supplies the equipment to make the advanced chips that are used to train and run AI models.Arthur Mensch, current CEO of Mistral, was quoted by the Financial Times as saying that "it's important for European companies not to have too much dependency on US technology", while his counterpart at ASML claimed that sovereignty was an additional benefit, but they didn't "pick Mistral because they were European", rather because AI will become "a strategic technology ... I think this will help the European ecosystem, but we do it because it's good for Mistral and it's good for ASML.".In the short term, he claimed, ASML would begin using Mistral's AI expertise to help develop new chipmaking tools, as well as offering customers new capabilities as they use its existing systems. "We started to look for a partner, because we thought that this is not something we should try to do ourselves ...the company's expertise is in chipmaking equipment and we are not AI experts".In case you're groaning now while reaching for that special bottle of whisky under your desk, labeled peak AI hype, there was an intriguing comment on the Interwebs about the true purpose of the deal.