Notices by Jon S. von Tetzchner (jon@social.vivaldi.net)

I hope you are having a great weekend!

I visited Grindavík yesterday. The town is mostly empty at this time with many houses damaged by the recent earthquakes and volcanic activity in the area. It was quiet for 800 years, but has been active on and off the last few years.

I am saddened to see the state of the town. I always feel a fondness for Grindavík. My grandmother lived there with her parents and siblings and she always talked about how much she loved living there. Same applies to a member of the Vivaldi team, who had to leave town with his family when the eruptions started.

What has been wonderful to see and impressive is how people have worked together to deal with these events. Massive walls have been erected to keep the lava from entering town and the neighboring power plant and Blue Lagoon. When lava has flowed across roads, new roads have been built. When the parking lot at the Blue Lagoon got flooded with lava, a new one was quickly created.

You cannot control these massive forces, but in Iceland they have learned to at least impact them to reduce the damage. Impressive.

#Iceland #Grindavik #volcano

This is the kind of thing that should be banned. It is time to realize that indiscriminate data collection and profiling is harming our society.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/

#Vivaldi #Browser #Spyware #surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #AI #Windows #Macos #Linux

I believe we are all vulnerable to misinformation. The first group was really people on Facebook and in particular men over 50.

I also do not think that Google is a reliable source for information and even less with more AI use. The most reliable source of information may depend on your country. In the Nordics, I would trust the government and government media, but I also understand that that can be an unreliable source in many countries.

Then you are left with the more mainstream media, again depending on your country.

What clearly does not work is algorithmic content selection. I think we should know that by now. This is one of the reason why we include an RSS reader in Vivaldi.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/04/23/gen-z-media-tiktok-misinformation-00287561

#Politics #AI #Misinformation

So why is Microsoft insisting on pushing out a feature it is very clear users just do not want? What is the point of it? It just does not make any sense. Recall makes no sense. It is one of rather many functions that Microsoft wants to force people into using.

Personally I also do not want Copilot on my computer and the idea that there can be a key on my keyboard that I can press that will enable by mistake it is not what I would think most people want.

I believe that there should be a very clear line between what is on your computer and what is in the cloud. Forcing people to log into a Microsoft online account to use their computer is crazy. Having people mistakenly enabling OneDrive is another disaster.

I guess this is all a great opportunity for Linux.

#Microsoft #Spyware #Recall #Windows #Linux #Computer

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3xjrj7v78o

In case you forgot about Microsoft Recall, it looks like it will reappear in your Copilot+ computer soon running Windows 11.

I am sure you are all thrilled with the idea of a screenshot being taken of your screen every 3 seconds, right?

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/04/microsoft-is-putting-privacy-endangering-recall-back-into-windows-11/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

#Microsoft #Copilot #Recall #Spyware #Computer #Technology #Privacy #Windows

31 years ago, Geir Ivarsøy and I started working on the Opera browser. A year later we founded Opera Software.

At Opera we wrote all our own code from scratch.

In 2011 I left Opera due to disagreement with investors about the direction Opera was heading.

Two years later, I co-founded Vivaldi to build a browser for you.

So I have been building browsers for 31 years. I think I know what it takes to build a browser.

Our Vivaldi team is for the most part in Norway and Iceland with a few people distributed around Europe and a couple of business people in the US.

Vivaldi is available for your computer and your phone, unless you have a very specific setup. Vivaldi might even be available for your car as well.

We go out of our way to provide you with a browser that matches your needs. I hope you like it.

#Vivaldi #Windows #Macos #Linux #Android #ios #Computer #Mobile

Vivaldi is right now the most popular mobile app in Norway as people seek alternatives to Big Tech. I hope you give us a try as well, if you have not already!

#Vivaldi #Apple #Android #ios #Browser @Vivaldi

I have been trying to make the point that when we give up our privacy, we give up our security for a long time. This is an article and short video from 2017. I could have made the same statements today.

I think many more are seeing the same. I know most of you here do.

#Vivaldi #Browser #Politics #internet #Web #Privacy

https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-at-oslo-freedom-forum/

Vivaldi now has Proton VPN built in our versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. Time to get away from Big Tech!

Enjoy!

https://vivaldi.com/press/releases/vivaldi-is-partnering-with-proton-vpn-to-help-people-break-free-from-big-tech/

#Windows #Macos #Linux #browser #Vivaldi #Privacy #BigTech #Vivaldi @Vivaldi

The damage that Big Tech has done to news sites and media should not be underestimated.

It used to be that you would buy tech ads on tech media outlets. That was the best way to reach that audience. Now Big Tech makes a profile on you, which notes that you visit tech media sites. That information is then used when selling ads based on your profile.

The only real solution is to ban user profiling and go back to context sensitive ads. I think that kind of ads, as long as they are not using popups and the like, would be more acceptable to the public as well. People just do not like being tracked. Who would have thought?

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/21/google-claims-news-is-worthless-to-its-ad-business-after-test-involving-1-of-search-results-in-eight-eu-markets/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=threads

#BigTech #Google #Microsoft #Regulation #surveillance #Technology

If you needed another reason why LLMs are problematic, read this.

The problem is that any popularity algorithm can be manipulated. This is something we have seen with search SEO, with social media algorithms and now with LLMs. People will try to manipulate these algorithms for marketing reasons and sadly for more nefarious reasons.

For me, the first step of any solution is to ban user profiling.

https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/a-well-funded-moscow-based-global

#AI #Politics #SocialMedia

Nice to see Vivaldi in the Mercedes-Benz CLA. All the cool cars get Vivaldi.

https://www.caranddriver.com/photos/g64124634/2026-mercedes-benz-cla-class-ev-interior-gallery/

#Vivaldi #browser #Mercedes #Cars #Technology @Vivaldi #automotive

To all of you that are joining us at @Vivaldi , I would like to welcome you.

We know that many are looking for options away from Big Tech and we are happy many of you are choosing us.

We have been building browsers for a long time now. Many of us were at Opera. I co-founded Opera in 1995.

As Opera drifted in a bad direction, I co-founded Vivaldi to provide a real alternative to Big Tech and I believe we can play a very important role moving forward. Thanks for your support!

#Vivaldi #BigTech #browser #Windows #Macos #Linux #Android #ioS

Last afternoon I was listening to Bloomberg radio and I heard the IBM CEO talk about the greatness of AI. As part of that he proudly proclaimed that they had replaced 600 HR workers with an AI bot.

Personally, I hate having to deal with bots. There is far too much of them. I do not know many that prefer to deal with bots either.

HR is to me an important function. A big part of the function, to me, is to care for employees. Replacing that function with bots is a sign to me that you just do not care.

#AI #IBM #Politics #LLM #Technology #Vivaldi

For context : What I wrote about Crypto currencies 3 years ago:

https://vivaldi.com/blog/why-vivaldi-will-never-create-thinkcoin/

Crypto was a scam and it still is.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0jgggd7r4o

#Crypto #Scam #Politics #Technology

@sorenladegaard @christianschwaegerl @Vivaldi

Opera used to have its own engine, but it got abandoned after I left them.

@sorenladegaard @christianschwaegerl @Vivaldi

We have the experience of having built our own engine at Opera. It was called Presto and it was great. Best engine out there, IMHO, but we ran into issues where we were being blocked from accessing content. Often by competitor sites, but also others.

I would have loved to build another engine, but there is a reason why Apple, Google, Microsoft and others decided not to do that and use an open source browser core. Thus we did the same. Building another engine from scratch is just not feasible for us.

Given our experience with Opera, it would also be important to go with what most are using, so going with Chromium made sense. Less compatibility issues.

The other option would have been Gecko, but at the time that we made our decision, Gecko was going through significant rewrites.

I have also understood, that Mozilla is not always thrilled with competitors using their code. They are a highly competitive company.

There are a lot of issues with using Chromium, but we still believe it was the right choice. We have made a lot of patches, 2000 files, and we have added a lot of our own code on top.

Vivaldi is unique. We have a lot of functionality you find nowhere else and plenty that we originated. I hope you enjoy it.

We at Vivaldi are the only browser company with a Mastodon server. We have chosen to support the Fediverse in every way we can. We will continue to do so as we need options away from Big Tech.

https://social.vivaldi.net/

#Vivaldi @Vivaldi #Mastodon #fediverse

One of the many features we have in @Vivaldi is the Calendar.

We had some important requirements when we made it:

1. Flexibility in display. So many calendars cut a lot of information. We want everything you want to be visible to be visible.

2. Inline editing option. Means you can see everything else while adding or editing an event.

3. Easy to use with the keyboard.

4. Both offline and online accounts. Means you can choose whether events are stored in the cloud or just locally on your computer.

If you have not tried it, give it a try. Available on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Bonus : Makes it easier to move away from Big Tech.

#Windows #macos #Linux #browser #Mail #Calendar #Vivaldi

https://vivaldi.com/features/calendar/