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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#301

Post by rtsil »

dkural wrote: post #147
micromacrofoot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective Mozilla is doing a better job with their browser than Google and Apple are, that's why I use it (despite the market share, I prefer their implementation of most things compared to alternatives). Everything else is gravy. I'm not sure that the money Mozilla spends on other things would be better spent on the browser... would it realistically close any existing gaps between their competition? Arguab…

Genuinely asking: Why do you think Firefox is outperforming Chrome / Safari in your opinion?

Firefox mobile allows me to use uBlock Origin. That alone for me is worth more than any other browser features combined.

Now, if I can find how to make it stop opening a new tab every time I enter an URL in the address bar instead of reusing the current tab, the experience would be blissful.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#302

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

NavinF wrote: post #279
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then you represent a trivially small fraction of users. My desktop doesn't have wifi either, but most modern motherboards come with a wifi card built in. Not to mention the majority of visitors to mainstream sites are on mobile and a good chunk of the rest are on a laptop. Also Firefox has 3% market share so we're talking about a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction.

I run Qubes unless I'm doing something very performance-oriented like massively parallel workloads. So Firefox doesn't know about the builtin wifi card, which has no antenna connected, because I don't use it and it's just in the way anyway.

So yeah I have a wifi card, technically, but also technically don't from the point of view of firefox or any other program on my computer.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#304

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

PaulHoule wrote: post #203
blowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a reference to a Phillip K. Dick short story, see https://scatter.wordpress.com/2018/03/13/thoroughly-pizzled-... A group of people who are receiving manufactured products of an automatic factory that they don't want get a chance to fill out a feedback form and write "the product was thoroughly pizzled" as a deliberate neologism to confuse the computer. The factory sent a representative who asked what this meant…

Thanks for the reference, had missed that story. PKD notches up another one ...

A phrase in the story caught my attention: "all hell is bursting [instead of breaking] loose" - it's nearly a googlewhack, only two other unrelated hits.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#305

Post by mkl »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #216
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not GP, but Firefox runs on every OS I use, Safari does not. Chrome maybe does, but I doubt it.

What OS doesn't run chrome? BSD?

iOS. The browser apps named Chrome and Firefox there are skins over Safari.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#306

Post by nl »

scarface74 wrote: post #299
nl wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS buying Apple stock involved a pretty complicated deal that also involved settling a number of court disputes between the two companies, Apple agreeing to ship Internet Explorer for Mac (rather than Netscape) and MS agreeing to ship Office for at least 5 more years. At the time and subsequently it was absolutely seen as a lifeline. For example: > Providing the biggest sign of hope yet for ailing Apple Computer, Mic…

And “their new alliance” was to keep shipping Office for the Mac like they had done for the past decade…

Yes and/but there was real concern then that they'd stop supporting it which would have killed Mac use in corporate environments where specific version of office compatibility was a huge issue (As anyone who remembers the Office 2.0 vs Office 6 update on Windows will remember).

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#307

Post by pentagrama »

hospitalhusband wrote: post #196
franga2000 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

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

I can compare it in a way when Rage Against the Machine signed with a major label conscious that the tradeoff was worth it.

>"Evil Empire" entered the Billboard charts at No. 1, which reflects the broad audience the band has built. "I personally never thought that we'd ever sell a single record," Morello recalls, but it looks as if signing with Epic has worked. "True, we are a major-label band," he concedes. "But we're using the mechanism of the record label to spread revolutionary propaganda." [1]

[1] RAGE: CO-OPTING THE MACHINE (1996)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1996/08/16/...

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#308

Post by worrycue »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

Normally I'd say... "They'd better write it in the bylaws that Mozilla isn't allowed to buy any more companies" but a system for identifying fake content on the web might (unlike all the other Mozilla acquisitions such as the thoroughly pizzled Pocket) improve the web browsing experience.

On a separate note, there is a chance this could be futile.

The objective of AI like LLMs is to create output indistinguishable from human output, should it reach that stage - generated text have no telltale signs of being AI output - then it would be impossible to tell from human output.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#309

Post by capitainenemo »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #276
bleep_bloop wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what metrics you are using. Compatibility, APIs, Performance, Firefox is objectively worse than Chrome on all aspects. I like Mozilla as a company and I still use Firefox over Chrome knowing that it is objectively a worse browser and experience because I dislike Google and their business practices and i support businesses that I believe in. I am very much against the monopoly Google has over the web space…

Chrome's compatibility is 100%, because it's defined in terms of compatibility with Chrome. (Despite the fact took 21 years before Chromium got a limited subset of MathML, when Firefox had it from Mozilla 1.) > I am very much against the monopoly Google has over the web space and their positioning to dictate future web standards Then, to the extent you can, stop using Google-controlled browser engines. Google can onl…

In terms of compatibility, depends what is being tested. Firefox (and IE curiously) have had far better support for splitting content when printing - Chrome requiring odd hacks to avoid bits of elements overlapping the table header/footer when page split for a very long time (last time I retested the situation had somewhat improved. It still had issues with splitting but content no longer merged making hiding the tbody under the thead easier).

Chrome also deliberately broke CSS2 years after it was supposedly completely implemented to simplify their rendering, breaking existing websites. (this was showcased on their "html5 rocks" website at one point to quite a lot of protest from other browsers). Everyone ended having to follow Chrome's lead at that point, but for a while who was "fully compliant" would be up in the air. Amusingly it seems to me anchor positioning Chrome just added to CSS3 allows doing those things they considered un-performant, a decade later.

Google has also implemented rather dubious specs, like WebUSB where it is understandable no one else has implemented yet due to security concerns - but that would also drag down scores further.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#310

Post by bitdivision »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #291
franga2000 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mole against the all the biggest AI companies in the world. That's exactly what they're doing with the biggest ad trackers and browser vendors. A lot of Mozilla's "side-projects" are stupid and I also agree they should focus more on Firefox, but this one is pretty in line with their general mission of "we'll fight the big guys because, if we don't, nobody else will".

Didn't Rust originate as a Mozilla side project? Or maybe I'm misremembering and they were just one of the early adopters of it in Servo.

> Software developer Graydon Hoare created Rust as a personal project while working at Mozilla Research in 2006. Mozilla officially sponsored the project in 2009

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_(programming_language)

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