We need to get our politicians to do a lot more, a lot faster.

So we’re still doomed, then? I’m sorry, I’m sure lots of this is meant to be incredibly uplifting, but it reads an awful lot like “green is cheaper, trust the market! Numbers go up, up, up!” when you consider that:

• Climate change is impacting countless people in horrible ways
• Climate change is still getting worse

The important thing to note here being that, even if a brighter future awaits beyond, the worst is yet to come. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

Yes, that the science to save the human race exists is nice. Really nice. There was a period in which I genuinely wondered if there was any chance humans wouldn’t extinct themselves. But that was years ago. I’ve since learned that “saving the human species” is a terrible, disgusting metric. The future of what I consider humanity remains grim.

Now, if the worst is yet to come, and we can’t yet even accurately predict how much worse the worst really will be, take a moment to reflect on this: which part of humanity is better prepared to weather the incoming changes, and which part is more likely to be labeled “climate change refugees?”

Humanity isn’t only the richest. It’s not merely the wealthiest and most developed nations. Humanity is also a lot of people who will suffer, people who I’m unconvinced will receive the aid and support they need and deserve.

Because the root cause of these issues, the systems that govern our society, have lead us here and are unlikely to go away anytime soon. Because these systems have shown incredible prowess at protecting select groups of people from certain issues, while failing at completely fixing them, despite not struggling due to a lack of resources and continuous technological advances. If the pattern holds…

Then humans will survive. Many will live well.

Humanity is still pretty screwed.

TL;DR:

“The tools exist, we’ll be alright, just need political will!”

Who’s we? And if getting politicians to do what’s right was that simple, we wouldn’t be this mess.

“The elephant in the room – and the opportunity – is how to solve for the industry-created problem that people don’t like and don’t trust advertising,” said Garcia. “Privacy-enhancing tech doesn’t make creepy and disruptive ads less creepy or disruptive in the eyes of the average user.”

Emphasis mine.

Betting on your reputation that users will trust you to adequately handle an issue that really seems like it’d end up with a conflict of interest seems like a fancier manner of saying you’re risking taking a dump on your reputation.

No way through but forwards now, eh. Not feeling particularly optimistic, but I’m cheering for them all the same. Their concerns and observations about the direction the industry is headed in are valid.

The extremely friendly, companionship loving, and exasperatingly dumb kind. The fond type of exasperation, mind you.

As for the breed, he’s a Shih Tzu :^)

Am I missing something?

Firefox is Mozilla’s most profitable product. Its millions of users enable Mozilla to make deals for sponsored content (e.g. shortcuts), integrations, and biggest of all: the default search option with Google.

Responsibilities keep piling up, but I currently lack the necessary tools to do anything about most of them, which has me in a state of constant minor anxiety.

On the other hand, I just ate a tasty sandwich, so that was nice. Also, my doggo is snoring right around the corner and the sound is so funny, I love it.

You?

Not that it means much, coming from a stranger on the internet, but I hope you get well soon.

Didn’t think I had to say it explicitly. As far as influencing Mozilla’s course, I don’t believe those to be very helpful methods. A fork may be helpful, but it highly depends on the developer(s). I argue against the second one all the time. Third is laughably counterproductive.

Mozilla is capable of responding to (esp. proper) feedback. For example, regardless of what you think about the subject, the community sent a pretty clear message when they started accepting cryptocurrency donations, which I’m sure they’re still keeping in mind to this day.

Point being, engaging with them is one thing that helps and I can do just fine. No need for “endless doom screeching.”

Re: positive news. Yes, on paper it can. We’ll see how it turns out in reality. I’ve explained why I’m not immediately into it, though your comment seems to ignore that part of mine. I do want it to work out though, if for no other reason than because what’s done is done and ultimately, I just want Firefox to thrive.

Oh, we’re fully in agreement. I’m not arguing in favor of abandoning Firefox or Mozilla at all. I’m just saying frustration and anxiety are to be expected sometimes. Note that I’m not excusing rudeness or the like.

Re: the burden of developing a modern browser, I wonder what librewolf evangelists think would happen to the project, if Firefox development by Mozilla were to fall due to any reason. To my view, the forks only exist because Firefox still does. After all, if managing an entire browser was possible with their resources, they wouldn’t need to fork one.

I try my best to keep calm and judge things fairly and rationally but, truth is, you get kinda tired of seeing so many iffy-maybe-alright news about Mozilla.

Inline edit: not even a week later, Teixeira v. Moz. Why, Mozilla? Liking you shouldn’t be this complicated.

My fear is that by the time “something happens” to Firefox, it’ll be something that was entirely avoidable if only we had acted sooner. I’m always wondering if I’m at the point I should be acting.

• I’m still salty about their previous CEO, Mitchell Baker, I believe, getting bigger bonuses while Firefox market share fell (and layoffs happened, but we lack details to understand those properly).
• I’m unconvinced that, in a world where the percentage of people using an adblocker is rising, they’ll find a way to change people’s minds and look at ads, even if they are perfectly, technomagically privacy preserving.
• I’m unconvinced that owning Firefox, which puts uBlock as a front-and-center extension, and Anonym, an adtech company, will not create a conflict of interest—just like what happened to Google.

For the record, this is my first time commenting on this and I’m also deeply bothered by “reactionary nerds” (everyone switch to librewolf!!), but I understand the sentiment. Hope that added some perspective.

I stand corrected, I see your argument about the comparative difficulty and effect of banning a browser vs an extension. The discoverability of the extension alone is a big point.

Not sure I agree with how you seemingly downplay the damage banning the browser could cause and fail to consider consider other ways people could organize to distribute extensions (even as you mention various ways to get Firefox, I’m a bit confused on this one). Others have already talked about this in the thread, so I won’t repeat it here.

With all that said, it seems we were both fools. Mozilla has returned the extensions already. It was neither about protecting Firefox in Russia, nor a case of “Fuck Mozilla.”

Anyone know if Mozilla ever made a statement on the state of MS’s LLM training on Github data? I’m curious if they don’t care about having Firefox be part of the dataset or if they just think the benefits of the platform outweigh that.

If you have a bit of time to spare, see this great article for a some history on Mozilla and version control.

Would you be happier if they ignored the demands and possibly got Firefox banned in Russia? Because if so, it’s not that we disagree over our views of the Russian government. Probably neither do Mozilla.

We have different priorities. I want the average Russian to be easily able to install Firefox, even if it takes more work to load some extensions. You seem to want to cut off your nose to spite your face.

I’m genuinely curious why.

You’re right, regarding Mastodon. I won’t edit my other comment, though, both to preserve the original chain of thought and because that brings up another discussion.

To quote the EFF:

We feel that the intended usage of the feature will not determine people’s expectation of privacy while using it.

Offering people a feature with preexisting expectations, similar to other things that fulfill those expectations, then telling people “We know it looks like a duck but don’t expect it to quack!”

…It begs the question: was the feature really a good idea?

And it’s also damming for private messaging on mastodon.

I once read vague complaints about it being a rushed implementation. While I won’t trust those without evidence, I for sure wouldn’t trust mastodon with my PMs. At least, not until how this was allowed to happen is figured out and fixed if necessary.

P.S. I’m still not sure I believe in PMs in the fediverse. If I need to share something and care about keeping it private, I’d rather move the conversation elsewhere.

Wrong Conway.

I won’t know if any of the linked resources are any good until I have time to look them over, but if nothing else I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

Re: whitewashing, fair point. I’d already read about the issue, but maybe I still need to rethink how I look at computing history.

If you’re serious, please elaborate on your points. I genuinely don’t understand.

Going by Wikipedia here,

She was a huge part

Please define huge part. She was a “key architect” in the starting years of a project that fell short of its goals.

her entire work has to be viewed through that lens

Why? It was, relatively speaking, an almost small part of her career. She didn’t stay until the end of the project. You even admit that her contributions to the field were many and meaningful.

is every explicit way connected to modern conflicts where military misuses AI to murder children

This feels like such a huge leap, that I don’t even know where to begin tackling it. Is Tim Berners Lee in every explicit way connected to the modern privacy hellscape that is the modern internet?

Make no mistake, if she really did want to help develop artificial intelligence for the military’s sake, fuck her. I can respect someone’s achievements while also thinking they’re trash as a person.

But I don’t think that’s the case here, and I’m lost as to what point, exactly, you’re trying to make.

Honestly, that strategy feels like the most sensible one, since the real world often does not (or can not afford to) care to wait for v1.0.0 before using software. It’s no wonder so many programming ecosystems have adopted it.

I find it a bit of a shame it’s not part of the semver specification itself, which only states:

4. (paraphrased) do whatever you want haha

My point is, I don’t think that’s “your bad.” It’s just how it is, and the best there currently is. Unless you think there’s something that could’ve been done better, in which case I’m curious as to what, if you’re willing to share.

That’s a weird way to look at the projects, in my opinion (“if only X had Y, it would kill Z…”).

Helix and Neovim have different approaches to editing, configuration, etc. They don’t need to be competing for users. Neovim can exist for the people who want an editor with Neovim’s ideas, same for Helix, and that’s just fine.