549
Japan tried to build an operating system for the entire world, then the US government intervened
(www.xda-developers.com)
Once again fuck America
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
549 points (99.3% liked)
Technology
87390 readers
3830 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Is it available on the internet archive or a computer museum site to try out the UI?
I'd encourage everyone to read the article. It paints a far more nuanced picture than the headline suggests.
Nuanced yes, but it largely being driven by a Japanese guy who wanted to sell US software and US companies who didn't want to compete by actually selling compatible hardware is no less damning.
Yeah. That guys "nuance" comment made me read the article, and I'm glad I did, but the end result was my expectation going in; the profit motive of capitalism killed a FOSS OS that could have nullified Americas tech dominance before it even started.
There's no way to know how it would've played out, but I could see Bill Gates' connected family greasing the wheels of geopolitics to scare the Japanese out of implementing it, or being the catalyst promoting exclusive US proprietary tech rights to Japanese capitalists, or the CIA/NSA arguing that a Japanese controlled FOSS OS would make it harder for them to influence tech standards. Basically, like most things I've learned about history, it's likely that morally and ethically bankrupt, sociopathic, criminals had their hands balls deep in the clusterfuck of a horror show, in many more ways than one.
According to the article it was royalty free and published open standards, but they do not make any claim to this being an FOSS system.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
It gives more details, but it doesn't particularly make the US not look like a bunch of dickholes whose definition of "free market" changes to shape whatever suits them from one moment to the next.
Japan: We are not a vassal state (no really they say this in an argument with the Japanese Communist Party).
Meanwhile Japan:
I know web design isn't really related to what the article is about, but if modern Japanese web design is anything to go by, good. Here's some random product (a phone case) I clicked on from the biggest Japanese online store (Rakuten), roughly the equivalent of amazon. Let me know if the product info seems well organized and easy to read, and tell me how long it takes to find the section that you can choose a different color and model (hint: it's not at the top or bottom of the page).
After dealing with MS’s shit UX all day, that looks pretty good. It seems pretty average for a shopping site.
It's almost like they have another culture than North American or European...
load more comments
(10 replies)
Japanese customers genuinely do like it like that. Rakuten do A/B testing up the wazoo just like every other big ecommerce company.
load more comments
(7 replies)
If you view it on mobile its right at the top under the price
Yeah on mobile I think it’s okay. Still a bit overloaded but a far cry from what Japanese web pages can be like on desktop browsers. Sometimes they’re like web design stopped in 1999 and since then all they did was add more blinky banners around the actual content.
load more comments
(2 replies)
And people laugh at Rockstar for not showing footage before the leak.
People are sharks. It's best not to ever preview what's going to happen. Then you can't lose.
Sad but true.
Hl3 when.
Next time don't tell anyone until it's out.
load more comments
(1 replies)