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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#231

Post by tracker1 »

capitainenemo wrote: post #129
fafzv wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari only runs on Apple hardware and the world at large is poor. Like really, really poor. Safari has 34.6% share in the US: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/united-s...

I was surprised that was still 22.4% even after narrowing down to desktop US https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/unit... I didn't realise Macs were a quarter of the desktop market.

I'm not that surprised... They're not just trendy, but hardware wise pretty nice in terms of quality, appearance and battery life. I don't use it much, but my M1 Air that I got for personal use generally makes it through a week of use on road trips without needing to recharge. Hour or two of email/reading a day, about 60% brightness.

I think MacOS feels a bit old at this point, but the hardware is pretty nice for what's on offer in the mobile space. I may well go framework for my next laptop in a few years though.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#232

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

lights0123 wrote: post #186
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what geolocation was supposed to be within the context of of a desktop browser. If a website asks for this information, and I approve, what information is transmitted that couldn't be determined serverside via geoip?

BSSIDs of nearby WiFi networks that are compared to lists sent by mobile devices with real GPS

And if I don't even have a wifi card?

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#233

Post by BellsOnSunday »

Logans_Run wrote: post #87
blowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment, but I’m curious what “pizzled” means.

NSFW definition (depending on I.T. policies) [1] Pizzle is a Middle English word for penis, derived from Low German pesel or Flemish Dutch pezel, diminutive of pees, meaning 'sinew'. The word is used today to signify the penis of an animal, chiefly in Australia and New Zealand. [2] Interestingly, it is used in medical slang (Dictionary of medical slang -Jacob Edward) and it is defined as exhausted, or to its point: ~…

In the 19th C it was a word in the West Country dialect Thomas Hardy knew well, and appears in Jude the Obscure to describe the pig's member that is thrown at Jude. Apart from this description, it gets called "that part of the pig which is thrown away" and other euphemisms, so I suppose Hardy must have thought pizzle was already obscure enough not to get him into trouble.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#234

Post by godshatter »

mdaniel wrote: post #71
causi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still no way to change UserAgent on Firefox Mobile.

The irony doesn't escape me that if they'd just turn off the extension restriction there are like a thousand extensions that would do that and more for any audience where such a thing still matters I haven't tried to build Firefox for Android in a really long time but I wonder what the level of effort would be to just track the release tags with such a patch applied (i.e. the world's shallowest fork)

> if they'd just turn off the extension restriction

That's basically Fennec. Download it from F-Droid. It's basically a clone of Firefox with extensions turned back on.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#235

Post by stevenhuang »

majormajor wrote: post #139
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This feels like a good long term vision for Mozilla. >The browser wars are basically over and why is that? Oh because Mozilla hasn't put any energy into getting better or pulling back market share from the moment it started to bleed out to Chrome. Let's not just sit back and go "Oh well, they lost nothing they could do" shrug . They built their tech in such an obtuse and opinionated way it's impossible to integrate…

Firefox has certainly improved a lot since 2008. Google has and had major distribution advantages for Chrome; same with Apple/MS and their browsers. I've gone back and forth between FF and Chrome a few times and since the big FF perf improvements several years ago, I don't understand why Chrome is still seen as a wildly better product except for residual Google goodwill among the tech crowd. FF has had much much much…

Firefox has almost imperceptible jank, but it is there if you squint.

Since forever I have a test that firefox always fails at: on first load, or if you haven't right clicked in a while, the context menu takes a perceptible amount of time to show up fully, and within this very short amount of time, you can visually see the menu options cascade out as the CSS engine finishes laying out and rendering the context menu.

This kind of jank still happens on latest firefox. It's little things like this that make it feel unpolished.

I never observe this behaviour on Chrome.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#236

Post by 867-5309 »

progmetaldev wrote: post #214
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what geolocation was supposed to be within the context of of a desktop browser. If a website asks for this information, and I approve, what information is transmitted that couldn't be determined serverside via geoip?

Although I am unfamiliar with what is sent with geolocation, I do use a VPN, and allowing geolocation on a website does pull my correct location even when connected somewhere far away.

for implicit it is reverse-geocoded from your IP address

for explicit it is using device GPS and/or cell tower

either you are not actually connected to the VPN or the website is storing your consent to access GPS coordinates. I'm not sure which is scarier

to test the former go to a few different websites that tell you your IP address

for the latter, fully clear your browser's cookies and cache and retry. does it ask to access fine location?

another reason could be that you are logged in to e.g. google who already knows where you are based on historic searches, nearby wifi and bluetooth devices, etc.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#237

Post by krono »

Fully automated profiling, deciding, and then advertising to as many people as possible whether you are a scammer or if a review you left is genuine. And the only method through which you can discover that you are the victim of of a false accusation is to use this product to actively and manually monitor your own content.

Both freedom of expression and automated decision-making are already quite heavily regulated in the EU today with even more and tighter rules currently the way[1]. These new regulations also happen to extensively cover the combating of fake and illegal content by online platforms.

Additionally this seems contrary to Mozilla's claim[2] of commitment to human dignity, individual expression, accountability, and most of all: trust.

Strange thing to be investing in for any other reason than to make it disappear, which I don't think is the plan. Money would have been better spent elsewhere... or anywhere else, really.

[1]: A Europe fit for the digital age https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-...

[2]: Mozilla Manifesto https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#238

Post by tracker1 »

orra wrote: post #230
tracker1 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just feel that Mozilla has spent way too much on PR, marketing and ventures that make no sense in their space. They got big by being a leader in the browser tech stack, and making tools developers and tech guys wanted to use. That led to the influence over other areas, but advising friends and family to use it. Mozilla org has completely lost sight of their base. A good 70-80% of their budget should be on their cor…

> The fact that only recently have they discovered, hey, we had this pretty good email client that we let all but die off. ... You think Mozilla don't focus enough on Firefox, so you think they should spend more money on Thunderbird, which is an app in an almost-nonexistent market (desktop email)? Some folks are just never happy with Mozilla. Firefox has massively improved in recent years. WebExtensions being async p…

That's not quite my point... my point is they should definitely focus on Firefox. They should probably go back towards doing it in a way that using their rendering engine and JS engine in other products is easier in terms of embedding. And that adjacent products should lend themselves towards those resources being re-utilized or grown organically.

Two decades ago, Thunderbird was in the single best position to provide an alternative to Outlook. Now, not so much. If they'd had the foresight to do that two+ decades ago, they could be in a similar position to Google Docs or O365 today in terms of revenue generation.

They're a bit behind at this point on what people even like in a browser. They should focus on the core technology. I think dropping Servo and the Rust efforts was probably a misstep and burning cash on marketing and buying out unrelated companies altogether doesn't help.

edit: Also, Thunderbird doesn't HAVE to be just a desktop email client. If blackberry had developed email clients for iOS and Android early on, they would still be relevant today.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#239

Post by natch »

Ironically it’s humans that generate spam and choose to, and are incentivized to continue to choose to, monetize content.

I’ve asked ChatGPT for product recommendations and it’s a breath of fresh air to get suggestions that are not filtered for affiliate commission potential. Let’s hope this lasts but in the meantime I doubt I’m the only one noticing that this AI content is not steering you based on the potential for profit.

So, fakespot kind of had it backwards, in a way. What we need is Humanspot to warn us away from content, AI generated or not, that has been corrupted by a human profit motive.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#240

Post by kbd »

pfisch wrote: post #197
hospitalhusband wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is almost entirely funded by half a billion dollars a year from Google. They are a vassal.

So was apple once.

I wonder how things would be different if Microsoft never gave them that life-line when they needed it.
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