Sad to see so much vacation time go unused.
Is it normal to give vacation time in hours? It's about 25 days.
Leaving Mozilla
271–280 of 346 posts
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
This attitude is exactly why Mozilla is failing. Total contempt and ignorance of the users that are the core of Firefox’s user base. If someone doesn’t want to use AI features, that’s not “living in a fantasy world”. And if Mozilla had any respect for its users, they would have realized the need to make this sort of thing a first class setting. Pretending that their core users are delusional freaks who only deserve “…
[dead]
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
People had to raise hell to get that, while being made fun of by their CMs on social media. Even the opt-out is full of silicon valley dark patterns. Whoever is calling shots about the product at Mozilla doesn't have your best interests at heart.
What are those dark patterns? It's an off button, it works, and it does not get back on. It's the polar opposite of the "maybe later, I'll ask again every week and reset the setting in your back" unfortunate norm that plagues a lot of major proprietary software/service.
"You can turn it off" is not in the same category of "would you like to turn this on?" or even "do you want this in the first place?"
Opt-out is not consent, nor is it respect.
Opt-out is a dark pattern, period. Opt-out is forcing something onto users and hoping they don't go out of their way to disable it. It is the same as "maybe later".
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#274Respect. This is what Firefox could have been. In the real world, in the same line as the article suggests, there was a brief time when the "puts you back in control" browser needed you to change the following about:config settings to disable the force-pushed ai: browser.ml.enable, browser.ml.chat.enabled, browser.ml.chat.sidebar, browser.ml.chat.menu, browser.ml.chat.page, extensions.ml.enabled, browser.ml.linkPrevi…
Look, I absolutely agree it sucks they didn't deliver the opt-out/in interface day one, it was obvious people would want it, and yes, it's not the first time they've blundered. At the same time, they did listen to the feedback and deliver. It now has a genuinely good interface for it where you don't have to opt out of everything, but can opt-in where you want it. It's not just a big off button, it's a general out-out…
People are mad because Mozilla refuses to listen to users until backlash becomes a threat to the company. They keep pushing users to the limit and only pull back slightly when the screaming gets too loud.
People are mad because Mozilla is clearly and unashamedly trying to boil the frog and doesn't seem to even be interested in hiding that fact.
People are mad because Mozilla is speed-running SV software-shittifying strategies without even doing us the dignity of pretending they aren't.
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look, I absolutely agree it sucks they didn't deliver the opt-out/in interface day one, it was obvious people would want it, and yes, it's not the first time they've blundered. At the same time, they did listen to the feedback and deliver. It now has a genuinely good interface for it where you don't have to opt out of everything, but can opt-in where you want it. It's not just a big off button, it's a general out-out…
That is true - Firefox is definitely held to a higher standard here and elsewhere. They marketed those values to us. So the criticisms, in my opinion, are definitely justified. And no, they aren't listening to their users. If they had listened to their users they would have delivered what every users wants - just a browser . Not some kind of "platform" stuffed with lot of unwanted crap that makes it bloated and intro…
No one marketed luddite anti-values to you. And it's a step too far to act like anything that contradicts those wants are actually immoral
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked in the industry for over a decade and unfortunately it is very exploitative :/ i’ve watched line producers pressure production assistants, the lowest of the low on set, into lying about their hours so they don’t have to pay them OT under the guise of “being team players.” Lots of nonsense like that, mostly on non-union gigs. The self-inflicted comment is a bit tongue in cheek because they do it to their own…
It’s pretty sad. I knew a lot of people in the union crafts (New England, which is way different from LA from what I hear) during the good times and they said it was all great, but as soon as things got tight, it was tribal as fuck. (The IATSE set building roster went from a few hundred dues-paying members to a couple dozen, and most of them were persistently out of work… it is in pretty bad shape, so there’s only so…
Dude vfx houses are awful. They pull insane hours, win awards, and then get shut down. It’s working as a video game dev by all accounts. My buddy worked Bladerunner 2049 and the third post house he’s worked at since just shut down.
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to be questioning the possibility of private schools existing when they obviously do. Moreover, you could have publicly funded education without having a state-operated school bureaucracy, or without that bureaucracy having a monopoly on the funding.
Perhaps I am confused about what you mean by bureaucracy. Can you define it?
A bureaucracy is an organization or subdivision with a multi-level hierarchical structure.
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#278Interesting to read, but ultimately it's very easy to blame "leaders" for everything and I'm not sure it has much merit. It's popular to pile on them and their decisions. But I don't think it's as obvious as people (often here on HN) make it out to be. If Mozilla didn't try out these avenues deemed wrong, if Mozilla spent all money on the browser only, if Mozilla made the best browser ever, would that really make a d…
Agreed
Firefox is a top notch browser we all are provided with for free. And it's been great and free for longer than any other browser. Ever.
Browsers are notoriously difficult to build and maintain. I think we owe all the engineers and people behind it a lot of appreciation.
Have they made a few missteps over the years trying out the new hot thing ? Yes. And it temporarily upset a niche of technical people. And last time I checked none of these things were very hard to avoid or turn off.
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI is not, and was not the reason why the average user moved away from Firefox. AI is however a potential avenue for raising money.
Oh, I agree - firefox was losing market share long before AI was a thing. I meant to use that as a recent example of the kind of decisions that Mozilla leadership repeatedly makes, that don't match up what their users want.
How do you know what their users want ? Firefox may not have a massive market share but it's a much larger group than just the vocal ones here on HN
Re: Leaving Mozilla
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> AI is however a potential avenue for raising money. How? By selling the position of preferred model? They can do that without implementing it in a way that means people who don't want it at all have to jump through hoops to opt-out. Being able to turn AI summaries and such off by default was the final reason I started paying for Kagi. I know they use ML in the background no matter what, but as long as I get links t…
You are not the target audience, that’s pretty much it. You can be very against AI, try to turn it off on Kagi, avoid Google AI summaries, discard ChatGPT/Claude, but billions of people still use them. At this point it has been argued so much that it’s kinda pointless. People seem to enjoy to be told stuff and don’t really care about sources if the said content is somewhat correct.
You don't really need to turn it off in Kagi - it only gives you an AI answer if you put a " ? " after your query.