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Orbit by Mozilla

orbitbymozilla.com

361–370 of 417 posts

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#361
post #291

I'm reading a lot of criticism here, some I understand, but honestly, this sounds pretty good for a free LLM service: "Orbit doesn't require account creation or save your session data." Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service - for free. The other big privacy-first LLM provider is Apple, which requires users to have their devices/subscriptions to use, and definitely use…

>Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service It is just Mozilla have a tendency of chasing hype rather than focusing on what they are doing. During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS with Javascript ( Firefox OS ) that works on a $35 Smartphone. Now they are doing it again with AI. Although this time around Firefox is in fairly good…

> But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google

Like by trying other things? Such as a mobile OS, "read later" app, LLM service which they could embed in Firefox? People criticise Mozilla a lot for even trying, but in the same breath say they should figure out alternative income sources. What do you think they're doing? LLMs are part of the hype cycle, yes, but maybe there's still a market for them even after it's blown over?

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#362
post #310
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service It is just Mozilla have a tendency of chasing hype rather than focusing on what they are doing. During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS with Javascript ( Firefox OS ) that works on a $35 Smartphone. Now they are doing it again with AI. Although this time around Firefox is in fairly good…

I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric. It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primaril…

Firefox OS was around 600-700 people strong at the largest.

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#363
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric. It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primaril…

As a user I always wished Firefox OS had stuck around - I think it would absolutely be practical today with so many PWAs around these days, and KaiOS seems to have done surprisingly well on its Firefox OS base.

But that's the thing, KaiOS is exactly the best that Firefox OS could have hoped to achieve: installs on most feature phones. Sure, it's hard to find a phone with KaiOS in the West, but Firefox OS could have never hoped to be an alternative to Android.

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#364

Am I the only person who isn't hugely interested in summarizing emails? I don't want emails summarized because that bypasses a tell-tale sign that said email isn't worth reading in the first place.

I kinda want to run some of our CEOs emails through summarizing, because I feel that there's a very real chance that I'll just get a black page back. Other than that, I'm with you. The need for summarizing is a symptom of our increasingly poor communication and degrading writing skills. That, and SEO optimization which attempts to hit as many keywords as possible. We're heading in a direction where people will use LL…

> The need for summarizing is a > symptom of our increasingly > poor communication and degrading > writing skills.

Whilst I agree there is a societal decline, there has also always been a corporate tendency towards verbosity and opaqueness.

The old rule from the days of memos still seems to apply: ignore first paragraph, get positive / negative gist from second, learn about the impact in the third, ignore remainder.

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#365
post #310
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service It is just Mozilla have a tendency of chasing hype rather than focusing on what they are doing. During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS with Javascript ( Firefox OS ) that works on a $35 Smartphone. Now they are doing it again with AI. Although this time around Firefox is in fairly good…

I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric. It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primaril…

FxOS at its height was an absolutely huge resource and personnel commitment; I seem to recall it being half of MoCo, maybe more.

Mark Mayo, then SVP Firefox, was quoted in a 2017 interview with Walt Mossberg:

> Mayo says [FirefoxOS] took the focus off of Firefox. “It was close to a bet-the-farm effort”

Cite: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14376710/walt-mossberg-mo...

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#366
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric. It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primaril…

Firefox OS was around 600-700 people strong at the largest.

[deleted]

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#367

I'm reading a lot of criticism here, some I understand, but honestly, this sounds pretty good for a free LLM service: "Orbit doesn't require account creation or save your session data." Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service - for free. The other big privacy-first LLM provider is Apple, which requires users to have their devices/subscriptions to use, and definitely use…

All this costs money though and the eventual question is if you aren’t paying for it then who is?

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#369
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric. It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primaril…

FxOS at its height was an absolutely huge resource and personnel commitment; I seem to recall it being half of MoCo, maybe more. Mark Mayo, then SVP Firefox, was quoted in a 2017 interview with Walt Mossberg: > Mayo says [FirefoxOS] took the focus off of Firefox. “It was close to a bet-the-farm effort” Cite: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14376710/walt-mossberg-mo...

[deleted]

Re: Orbit by Mozilla

#370

Am I the only person who isn't hugely interested in summarizing emails? I don't want emails summarized because that bypasses a tell-tale sign that said email isn't worth reading in the first place.

I'm vehemently against the whole Apple Intelligence feature of summarizing personal communications, like the AI-generated break-up text summaries that were floating around. But I've found most other AI summarizing to be pretty useful. The problem is the lack of trust and reliability, so even when those summaries seem to save me time, if the topic is of any actual significance or value I'm forced to read the original materials anyway, which ultimately results in spending more time consuming the same information.
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