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Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

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Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#171

Post by aleph_minus_one »

anomaly_ wrote: post #157
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don’t know anyone who uses an iPhone to browse the web? What you write as a joke is in my opinion not one: when I consider the department hallway in the office where I work at (not tech sector), you will, I think, only find 2 iPhone owners among about 25 people. One of these iPhone owners is the boss, and the other one is a programmer who vocal about not liking Android. So, depending on your surroundings, it is…

You’re in an emerging market I’d guess. iPhones make up 90%+ of the high value mobile user market.

> You’re in an emerging market I’d guess.

You are wrong.

Just today, a colleague boasted that he recently bought a new Samsung Android phone and paid about 1500 euro for it (I guess he bought a Samsung Galaxy S24); this is likely more expensive than an iPhone.

But what I rather wanted to tell with my comment above is depending on your surroundings, it can be a very common situation that iPhone fans/users are a small minority.

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#173

Post by egberts1 »

eva_cananim wrote: post #152
egberts1 wrote: post #116

First job of next Mozilla CEO is to fire the board and move the corporate headquarter to Germany. There, I've gone and said the quiet part.

I strongly disagree. The EU wants to force browser makers to have their browsers trust root certificates issued by EU governments. Mozilla should have already closed their offices in Europe and done everything they can to remove themselves from EU jurisdiction.

Drat, I just looked up Romania and they too joined E.U. ... in 2007.

And the dastardly EU regulation enacted last November 2023:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-b...

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#174

Post by alemanek »

pwb25 wrote: post #168
alemanek wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know anyone who uses an iPhone to browse the web? Pretty sure that is where that Safari market share comes from.

Except for my mother and sister, actually not no. But I meant on a computer

I know I was meaning that more as a joke but that 18% number is almost certainly PC + Mobile. There is no way desktop Safari has 18% market share. MacOS market share is likely less than 18%

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#175

Post by breather »

asadotzler wrote: post #147
breather wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A) I don't think that's the type of feature to which they are referring to, B) I wouldn't call that "AI" by the current sense of the word when it can be narrowly described with "automated translation", and C) we've had high-quality translation for well over a decade now with or without Firefox.

Firefox's translation is based on LLMs not far off from the AI chatbots in the core tech. It's also nicely local to your machine.

That's all very nice, but it doesn't change anything i said.

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#176

Post by mkipper »

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #163
krasin wrote: post #39

The new CEO, Laura Chambers, is an MBA and a former McKinsey consultant ([1]). I would not hold my breath about the future of Firefox. 1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chamberslaura/details/experience...

When I was in college, McKinsey was one of the name-brand, prestigious places students wanted to go and work after graduation. Now it seems to be the laughing stock. What happened?

Nothing has really changed. You just got older and wiser.

MBB consulting is still a prestigious job for most students. It's probably not _as_ sought after as it was a decade or two ago, but I think most students at most business schools would be incredibly happy to get a job at McKinsey after graduating.

And I can guarantee that when you were in school, there were plenty of people who looked at McKinsey exactly like you do now. But most people don't form that opinion until they get out into industry and get exposure to management consultants in the wild.

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#177

Post by Perceval »

sjwhevvvvvsj wrote: post #136
n2d4 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laura Chambers is only the interim CEO. In the original announcement post, it was stated that she would stay for the "remainder of this year", and Chambers later said that she would move to Australia in 2024 [1]. [1] https://fortune.com/2024/02/08/mozilla-firefox-ceo-laura-cha...

Usually somebody serving in an interim position doesn’t make big strategic changes.

Are these "big strategic changes" or are they changes that have been obviously needed for a while and made quickly in order to stop the bleeding?

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#178

Post by sjwhevvvvvsj »

breather wrote: post #142
sjwhevvvvvsj wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 is just a document classification task, you can do it with DistilBERT.

> #2 is just a document classification task, you can do it with DistilBERT. I'm assuming there's still an immense amount of effort into ensuring quality and then packaging and distributing it, especially if you're selling as for children, especially if you want it to work on a phone without sending the browsing data to a third party.

Yup, and that’s the thing with the LLM craze - it’s super energy intensive and for the most difficult problems you still need really good hand curated data anyway.

My point is more “we know how to do this already and it’s just a hard problem”.

Re: Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI

#179

Post by gregors »

AwaAwa wrote: post #77
krasin wrote: post #39

The new CEO, Laura Chambers, is an MBA and a former McKinsey consultant ([1]). I would not hold my breath about the future of Firefox. 1. https://www.linkedin.com/in/chamberslaura/details/experience...

How soon before she gives herself a raise? Sorry hackernews, I mean her friends on the board give her a raise? Because as far as Firefox can tell, that seems to be the job of the Mozilla CEO.

Wasn't she part of the board that ok'd the raise for the previous CEO????
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