261–270 of 331 posts
Dear Mozilla, I hate IoT devices. I don't want them. They are security exploits incarnate. At least a phone is useful, why the hell do I really need a microwave with an IP address? I don't.
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Incidentally, I launched a pastebin ( https://ghostbin.com/ ) some time ago, used Persona for authentication, and absolutely loved it. Pastery looks awesome. It appears that you're using Pygments server-side?
Serious question for you and your parent: Why would a pastebin site need auth/login/userids ? All I can think of is editing pastes, but isn't it easier to just create a new (anonymous) paste instead of editing ?
I'd prefer not to have accounts, and Ghostbin tries to avoid keeping identifiable information around, but they do come in fairly handy for maintaining control of the things you've pasted and the right to revoke them.
Session cookies aren't quite up to the task, since they can't stick around forever and are difficult to bring with you between workspaces.
(edit to elaborate on "avoid keeping identifiable information": account names are hashed, the account never stores user identification, and a paste doesn't track which account created it. For most intents and many purposes, the creator of a paste is anonymous. We could get into drawing correlations between all the pastes owned by an account, but I'm not particularly interested in sitting around and doing that.)
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I'm pretty sure people do still care about privacy. It just might not be readily obvious how to profit from such people.
It's obvious: you sell them the tools that enhance their privacy with solid reviews and advertisements in right places. If people don't buy, they either didn't care enough about privacy or were poor. There's security companies selling hardened phone OS's, browsers, desktops... you name it. Most individuals or businesses, even with the money, just don't buy them or even research them much.
I think this differs highly per region. In some European countries, people are very privacy-aware. I know quite a number of people who refuse to use Google's services or Dropbox, because of privacy reasons.
As for security companies selling hardened phones, etc. They are typically very expensive and/or inconvenient.
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Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV. You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost. The lynchpin is user-experience and Microsoft is chasing it directly. Android is just trying to be everything for everyone. The docking stations were pimped by the OEMs without support from the ecosystem. I suspect Microsoft…
> Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV. And most people don't want to dock their computing device to their TV as a monitor; there are uses for TV-as-output device, and they're well-covered by things like Google Cast and similar technologies. > You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost. Only if I already…
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This is a perfect example of a changing market driving out incumbents that have been unable to adapt. The internet is probably better off without them.
There are plenty of websites which exist that have two options for revenue, either take ads, or make people pay to view your content. Some websites are purely driven by the users' content, and there isn't a real revenue model, so that's what your left with, either the users pay, or someone else does. Bills gotta be paid, but when push comes to shove, users don't pay the bills for a lot of this type of content, so ad'…
The ad industry had enough time to figure this out and went from bad to terrible - from popups to distribution of trojans (due to a lack of quality control). It's not surprising that people are fed up with advertisements. Any loss of income is the publisher's own fault, because they allowed ads to get completely out of hand.
Bills gotta be paid, but when push comes to shove, users don't pay the bills for a lot of this type of content, so ad's are the only option left. There is no middle ground.
I am surprised by the lack of imagination on a news site for startups ;). There are all kinds of possibilities that haven't really been explored. Music was considered to be a lost cause 5 or 10 years ago when CD had collapsed and everyone and their dog was using Bittorrent or other peer to peer networks. Now there is a quickly growing ecosystem of streaming music services.
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To be fair , the market niche for a phone that doesn't try to imprison you or ransom you to the highest bidder, hasn't yet been served. In the internet-landscape, Mozilla is the one that tries to intervene on the user's behalf against commercial interests. Maybe they thought they could do the same for the much more competitive mobile market. The bigger problem i think is that Mozilla didn't make a phone that appealed…
The stock Android on my Nexus 6 does a pretty good job actually. In a sense FirefoxOS is more limited than Android. You can't run an alternative browser on it for example. On Android you can install a custom launcher to get rid of that annoying Google Search bar, you can replace Google Search with DuckDuckGo's app, you can install Firefox for Android on it and completely replace Chrome, you can install apps from thir…
You could go with custom launcher/mod/rom/ route but that brings its own possible set of problems - performance, battery life, broken functionality (some banking apps wont run on rooted phones), more spyware(from launchers), etc. It is not an acceptable solution for the masses.
Amazon - well they are just another company trying to ransom/loot you. Cyanogen mod is promising if they can overcome challenges (how many apps work without google play services?).
Furthermore Google play services is deeply embedded into android, whose key purpose is to ransom you to the highest bidder. Android is fundamentally compromised by the conflicting business interests of its primary developer (Google).
edit: I wouldn't say that Ubuntu was doomed from the start, but they certainly missed the boat.
Most of you are probably not aware that Opera Software (where I spent a decade on Opera Mini/Mobile) went down the same rabbit hole around 2002-2006, spending many many man-years building a web-based (pre-smartphone) phone UI platform using web technologies. The product name was "Opera Platform". Here are some screenshots: http://imgur.com/on4gHdi It failed for the same, predictable reasons: Yes, there are many web d…
> And on top of this, Mozilla decided to shoot for (super) low-end devices as their main target - presumably because their bizdev people had spotted a theoretical opportunity, but failed to connect with engineering, or vice-versa. Having been there (ex mozillian, lots of time spent on FFOS), I wouldn't characterize it like this. The leaders of the project were two engineers, not a pointy hair on their heads (at least…
planning fallacy / overoptimism on the part of engineering leaders than anything else
So yes, Mozilla is simply a poorly ran organization.
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Once again, average user when first in touch with Plasma Phone will say "Oh, is this new Android?". All of them unique mobile OS's look the same at first glance. And first glance is most important. Windows Phone did amazing job in that, to bad they screwed almost everything else. Also it sounds like your comment is technical point of view. Users dont care of that. If mobile system cannot attract regular users, then i…
Its not really about attracting users though, its about getting phones in stores that users are buying. The market of users that shop for a device, looking for specs and features, is a tiny fraction of the market of phone users, the vast majority of which are regularly ripped off by carriers to buy underpowered overpriced iphones or Android handsets. If you don't get on Sprint / AT&T / Verizon / Tmobile store shelves…
Since we took the opposite approach, focused on product first and demonstrated user traction and sales the stores and carriers came to us to talk and it changed the whole power dynamic.
Every year brings several new mobile brands to the market. Most you will never hear of because they're not exciting or special. They don't focus on making users excited about their unique product, rather they focus on business deals that even if they go through end up in no sales.
Firefox appeared at a time when there was huge potential being stifled by a stagnant monopoly in the space, and people were desperate for something good. It filled a real need, and people loved it. FirefoxOS appeared at a time when there was huge potential being actively being pushed forward and innovated on by the two largest tech companies in the space, and people already had two great options to choose from. It fi…
To be fair , the market niche for a phone that doesn't try to imprison you or ransom you to the highest bidder, hasn't yet been served. In the internet-landscape, Mozilla is the one that tries to intervene on the user's behalf against commercial interests. Maybe they thought they could do the same for the much more competitive mobile market. The bigger problem i think is that Mozilla didn't make a phone that appealed…