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Firefox is fine. The people running it are not

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  • Yes, but I still don't know why they seem to think it's so important to write a new browser engine instead of improving Gecko or Servo. To me it just seems like people like it because they don't know other things aside from the Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browser engines exist and just chase something new and shiny.

    that’s fair, but i think there’s space for multiple to compete… servo and ladybird have different ethos from what i can tell.. ladybird is trying to build everything from scratch, as well as being completely independent (whilst servo was mozilla and is now the linux foundation)

    personally, i prefer servo just because its rust and i don't think that independence from the linux foundation is really that important

    but that’s not to say that what ladybird is trying to achieve, or their reasons are wrong

  • If that's true, shame on them. But it doesn't mean their browser isn't good.

    it’s not at all true… it was misunderstanding that people seemed to have blown way out of proportion without understanding context, and now they have A+ policies in place

  • I just moved back to ff in November, because of ubo. I have to move again? Where to?

    Librewolf

  • For clarity, Mozilla isn't one thing. There's Mozilla Corporation (profit) and the Mozilla Foundation (nonprofit). Firefox is a product of Mozilla Corporation. And yes, the need to make a profit is a bug not a feature.

    and it’s incredibly shit that you can’t donate to firefox… people donate to mozilla assuming they’re donating to firefox but none of the donations go towards firefox development

    i emailed them about this a while ago… i can’t remember exactly what i said, but basically that i didn’t want to donate to adtech and ai slop but wanted to support firefox development… this is their reply

    Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback with us. We genuinely value hearing from our supporters, as your insights help us understand what matters most to the Mozilla community.

    It’s important to note that the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation are two separate entities within the Mozilla umbrella - Mozilla Corporation is responsible for developing and maintaining Firefox and other software products, and they are continuously working on improving the user experience, including addressing compatibility issues and promoting the browser to a wider audience.

    The Mozilla Foundation, on the other hand, focuses on broader internet health and advocacy work. Our mission is to ensure the internet remains open and accessible for everyone, and this includes issues related to privacy, digital rights, and equity. To confirm, the survey that you had received was from the Mozilla Foundation.

    With that being said, Firefox is funded by revenue generated through the product rather than donations. At the moment, there is no way for supporters to make a donation that will be designated to the development of Firefox. Have no fear, things are looking good for Firefox's future and they plan to be around a long time, supporting folks with the most secure browser experience! Continuing to use Firefox, and recommending it to others, is the best way to support this project.

    We truly appreciate your concerns about Firefox and their top priorities - We on the Mozilla Foundation strongly believe that issues such as privacy, online safety, and data security are connected to the products and services we all use every day. The work we do in these areas complements Mozilla Corporation’s focus on building better, more secure software like Firefox, and w encourage you to participate in our survey!

    If you would like to input some of your thoughts and ideas into our Ideas discussion forum regarding Firefox and other Mozilla products, please visit: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/idb-p/ideas

    We thank you again for reaching out to our Mozilla Foundation Donor Care team, and please let us know if we can support your further!

    All the best,

    <redacted their name>
    Donor Care Team

    Mozilla Foundation https://foundation.mozilla.org/

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    So what do we do ? Go to Chromium & expand it's monopoly ?

    FF forks like LibreWolf, IronFox, WaterFox etc...
    have to become their own thing via Servo, at least until we get LadyBird.

    There's Seamonkey as well; which is an entire suite of apps bundled with a browser (Email, RSS, IRC etc..)

  • I just moved back to ff in November, because of ubo. I have to move again? Where to?

    Did you read the article? It says Firefox is the best choice you have, and all of the criticism is directed at the organization's leadership.

  • I can't keep browser hopping. I want to stay with firefox. Please don't get worse!

    The article says you should stick with Firefox. If you have time, I'd recommend reading the entire article!

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    Sadly I am running into more and more things that don't work on firefox. Stuff like medical record portals, financial websites for my companies retirement plan. Stuff I have little choice about. And most fail silently. They don't say it is the browser. I don't know how they are doing it, but google is winning the fight.

  • Under semantic versioning everything after vista has been in essence a new version of vista.

    okay but using that logic everything running linux kernel v5 is the same… fedora, ubuntu, rhel are in essence just a reskin of slackware

    an OS is not semantically versioned as a whole because an OS is more than just the kernel

    I mean they are all literally the same operating system yah! They all use the same kernel APIs.

    The logical conclusion is that from an operating system they are all basicly the same.

    The main difference is the user space. The package management and defaults.

    Look at Debian GNU/kFreeBSD it’s a whole different operating system with the Debian user space. It’s cool stuff and really highlights the difference between operating system and user space.

  • I mean they are all literally the same operating system yah! They all use the same kernel APIs.

    The logical conclusion is that from an operating system they are all basicly the same.

    The main difference is the user space. The package management and defaults.

    Look at Debian GNU/kFreeBSD it’s a whole different operating system with the Debian user space. It’s cool stuff and really highlights the difference between operating system and user space.

    an operating system is far more than just the kernel

    there are few people who would say that android is the same operating system as ubuntu

  • an operating system is far more than just the kernel

    there are few people who would say that android is the same operating system as ubuntu

    But it literally is the same. The only difference is the user space. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD shows this. Different operating system same user space.

    Take a look at Wikipedia for more info.

    An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
    Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, peripherals, and other resources.

  • Companies should be allowed to make a profit, you need that to cover bad years, invest in the future of the company, etc. A company without profit (unless it is a non-profit) will not survive.

    And what share of the profit should go right in executives pockets? How many employees should be laid off to increase this profit? Is 6 million $/yr enough for a CEO to feed their fucking family?

  • Sadly I am running into more and more things that don't work on firefox. Stuff like medical record portals, financial websites for my companies retirement plan. Stuff I have little choice about. And most fail silently. They don't say it is the browser. I don't know how they are doing it, but google is winning the fight.

    When I asked a couple of developers who work on websites/webapps with a lot of moving parts, they said it was easiest to just test for chrome, since that's what most people use.

    It's turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  • But it literally is the same. The only difference is the user space. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD shows this. Different operating system same user space.

    Take a look at Wikipedia for more info.

    An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common services for computer programs.
    Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also include accounting software for cost allocation of processor time, mass storage, peripherals, and other resources.

    an operating system is comprised of the kernel, as well as system libraries and system utilities… user space is irrelevant to the classification of what is and isn’t an operating system: the concept of user space doesn’t even exist in some operating systems

    the concept of a kernel isn’t even useful to define operating systems… look at things like ROS for example

  • So what do we do ? Go to Chromium & expand it's monopoly ?

    FF forks like LibreWolf, IronFox, WaterFox etc...
    have to become their own thing via Servo, at least until we get LadyBird.

    There's Seamonkey as well; which is an entire suite of apps bundled with a browser (Email, RSS, IRC etc..)

    I used basilisk for a short while. Very minimal browser, indeed.

    But it's chromium, so you do you. I personally favour anything that doesn't bloat me. Early on I used opera back on a j2me device, there was also a browser with a nice data saving feature, I had access to all cricket news and cricket sport teams because it was heaviliy featured there, there was a squirrel as a logo but it's all I remember.

    Edit it was ucbrowser

  • I don't understand how you can't.

    In a business setting, it's called "professionalism", and in a personal setting it's called being a nice person. Most of my family is against gay marriage and don't believe in gender fluidity, yet when my sister in law said her child is non-binary and would like to be referred to with they/then, they complied. Why? Believing those things doesn't mean you hate LGBT people, it just means you disagree about policy. They love my sister in law and her kids, so they'll do what they can to help them feel comfortable around them and want to participate in family gatherings.

    I personally believe strongly that marriage should be available to all consenting adults, but I also believe gay marriage goes against God's plan. Why? I believe everyone has the right to make their own choices and whether that's acceptable to God isn't my business. Maybe I'm misreading things, IDK, but my personal religious beliefs only guide my personal decisions and I believe I am supposed to love everyone regardless of their lifestyle. Whether someone else is sinning isn't really my business, nor should it impact my love for them. And maybe they're not sinning, again, IDK, it's not my business.

    I support same sex marriage (my church doesn't) because I believe in freedom of choice, and that policy merely increases options for others and doesn't decrease mine. Likewise for most LGBT policies, like bathroom use or gender change on IDs, you do you. We had an LGBT candidate at work (pretty obviously trans), and I was happily surprised that wasn't an issue for my very conservative coworker during the interview (they're an observant Muslim with conservative social views), and I went out of my way to make sure we both corrected for any subconscious bias we might have.

    I don't know Brendan Eich, maybe he's actually a terrible person, idk. What I do know is he had a long career at Mozilla (nearly 20 years), and there were no public complaints about him until he was chosen as CEO. From all accounts, people were only mad about his $1k donation to prop 8, not about his conduct at work or anything of that nature. The board even asked him to stay in another capacity, but he left because he loved Mozilla and obviously he wasn't able to be an effective leader if his presence encouraged people to recommend against using Firefox and other Mozilla products.

    To me, it's a crazy overreaction, he donated a pretty modest amount one time, six years prior, and had no complaints during his position as CTO. He absolutely got brigaded because someone decided to dig up donation records. If they didn't, he probably would've been a successful CEO and refocused on the tech, instead of whatever nonsense the follow-up CEOs have been doing.

    I disagree with Eich's political views, but also think he was the best person for the CEO role. He seemed like a competent professional, and he was certainly technically competent given his long technical career at Mozilla.

    I also believe gay marriage goes against God’s plan

    I support same sex marriage (my church doesn’t) because I believe in freedom of choice

    I applaud you for supporting same-sex marriage, but - apologies if this sounds like I'm picking on you, I'm really not - this is like someone who claims to be a young-earth creationist but agrees that radiocarbon dating is accurate. I don't understand how these mutually-exclusive thoughts can happily coexist in your mind. I wish we could discuss this over a drink because I'm very intrigued by whatever epistemic process led you there.

  • When I asked a couple of developers who work on websites/webapps with a lot of moving parts, they said it was easiest to just test for chrome, since that's what most people use.

    It's turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    It's so damn stupid. If your site works meaningfully differently in Firefox vs Chromium, you're already doing something very, very wrong.

  • an operating system is comprised of the kernel, as well as system libraries and system utilities… user space is irrelevant to the classification of what is and isn’t an operating system: the concept of user space doesn’t even exist in some operating systems

    the concept of a kernel isn’t even useful to define operating systems… look at things like ROS for example

    If you define it that way you are right. Yah. But the common understanding is a bit different than yours.

    Really great read.

    I urge you to take a look at https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ It’s the exact same utilities and everything but a completely different kernel. It really highlights the difference here. How would your definition account for this?

    Would Debian GNU/kFreeBSD be 50% Linux, 50% FreeBSD under your definition even though it has no Linux code? It has all the system libraries and system utilities that you associate with Linux.

  • If you define it that way you are right. Yah. But the common understanding is a bit different than yours.

    Really great read.

    I urge you to take a look at https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ It’s the exact same utilities and everything but a completely different kernel. It really highlights the difference here. How would your definition account for this?

    Would Debian GNU/kFreeBSD be 50% Linux, 50% FreeBSD under your definition even though it has no Linux code? It has all the system libraries and system utilities that you associate with Linux.

    But the common understanding is a bit different than yours.

    the common understanding is that android is a different operating system to ubuntu, and macos is a different operating system to openbsd

    Would Debian GNU/kFreeBSD be 50% Linux, 50% FreeBSD under your definition even though it has no Linux code?

    it is what it is: a completely different thing… BSD system tools with a linux kernel

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    Firefox still hasn't fixed Bug 1938998 despite me reporting it multiple times. There's a reason why Firefox is almost non existent on mobile. I've been using the internet for 26 years, and have used Mozilla based browsers since 2001, I want them to survive to the next era of the internet, but they are struggling to keep up. Opera and Edge already gave up their engines, Webkit and Blink are basically the same engine with different standards enabled, and Firefox is under 2% on some days on Statcounter. I feel that soon AI based browsers using their own AI-engine will probably take over the internet soon anyway.

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    I suspect people (not billionaires) are realising that they can get by with less. And that the planet needs that too. And that working 40+ hours a week isn’t giving people what they really want either. Tbh, I don't think that's the case. If you look at any of the relevant metrics (CO², energy consumption, plastic waste, ...) they only know one direction globally and that's up. I think the actual issues are Russian invasion of Ukraine and associated sanctions on one of the main energy providers of Europe Trump's "trade wars" which make global supply lines unreliable and costs incalculable (global supply chains love nothing more than uncertainty) Uncertainty in regards to China/Taiwan Boomers retiring in western countries, which for the first time since pretty much ever means that the work force is shrinking instead of growing. Economical growth was mostly driven by population growth for the last half century with per-capita productivity staying very close to inflation. Disrupting changes in key industries like cars and energy. The west has been sleeping on may of these developments (e.g. electric cars, batteries, solar) and now China is curbstomping the rest of the world in regards to market share. High key interest rates (which are applied to reduce high inflation due to some of the reason above) reduce demand on financial investments into companies. The low interest rates of the 2010s and also before lead to more investments into companies. With interest going back up, investments dry up. All these changes mean that companies, countries and people in the west have much less free cash available. There’s also the value of money has never been lower either. That's been the case since every. Inflation has always been a thing and with that the value of money is monotonically decreasing. But that doesn't really matter for the whole argument, since the absolute value of money doesn't matter, only the relative value. To put it differently: If you earn €100 and the thing you want to buy costs €10, that is equivalent to if you earn €1000 and the thing you want to buy costing €100. The value of money dropping is only relevant for savings, and if people are saving too much then the economy slows down and jobs are cut, thus some inflation is positive or even required. What is an actual issue is that wages are not increasing at the same rate as the cost of things, but that's not a "value of the money" issue.
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    It should be taught at schools that there is no such thing as human race, it's a fucking disgracing non-scientific term. Skin color is just that - a skin color.
  • OSTP Has a Choice to Make: Science or Politics?

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    Ye I expect so, I don't like the way this author just doesn't bother explaining her points. She just states that she disagrees and says they should be left to their own rules. Which is probably fine, but that's just lazy or she's not mentioning the difference for another reason
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    Did you, by any chance, ever wonder, why people deal with hunger instead of just eating cake?
  • Meta publishes V-Jepa 2 – an AI world model

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    Yay more hype. Just what we needed more of, it's hype, at last
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    that's because phone makers were pumping out garbage chargers with bare minimum performance for every single phone, isn't it?
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  • CrowdStrike Announces Layoffs Affecting 500 Employees

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    This is where the magic of near meaningless corpo-babble comes in. The layoffs are part of a plan to aspirationally acheive the goal of $10b revenue by EoY 2025. What they are actually doing is a significant restructuring of the company, refocusing by outside hiring some amount of new people to lead or be a part of departments or positions that haven't existed before, or are being refocused to other priorities... ... But this process also involves laying off 500 of the 'least productive' or 'least mission critical' employees. So, technically, they can, and are, arguing that their new organizational paradigm will be so succesful that it actually will result in increased revenue, not just lower expenses. Generally corpos call this something like 'right-sizing' or 'refocusing' or something like that. ... But of course... anyone with any actual experience with working at a place that does this... will tell you roughly this is what happens: Turns out all those 'grunts' you let go of, well they actually do a lot more work in a bunch of weird, esoteric, bandaid solutions to keep everything going, than upper management was aware of... because middle management doesn't acknowledge or often even understand that that work was being done, because they are generally self-aggrandizing narcissist petty tyrants who spend more time in meetings fluffing themselves up than actually doing any useful management. Then, also, you are now bringing on new, outside people who look great on paper, to lead new or modified apartments... but they of course also do not have any institutional knowledge, as they are new. So now, you have a whole bunch of undocumented work that was being done, processes which were being followed... which is no longer being done, which is not documented.... and the new guys, even if they have the best intentions, now have to spend a quarter or two or three figuring out just exactly how much pre-existing middle management has been bullshitting about, figuring out just how much things do not actually function as they ssid it did... So now your efficiency improving restructuring is actually a chaotic mess. ... Now, this 'right sizing' is not always apocalyptically extremely bad, but it is also essentially never totally free from hiccups... and it increases stress, workload, and tensions between basically everyone at the company, to some extent. Here's Forbes explanation of this phenomenon, if you prefer an explanation of right sizing in corpospeak: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/rightsizing/