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Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

fakespot.com

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Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wtf are y'all on about?? Do you really think we'd be better off with Chromium becoming the one and only web engine, with Google singlehandedly deciding what web features are implemented and how? Has Google ever mentioned anything about privacy? (privacy from hackers doesn't count, that's security) Do you think Apple, with the joke of a browser that is Safari and basically zero stake in the web, would be able to keep…

> Do you really think we'd be better off with Chromium becoming the one and only web engine, with Google singlehandedly deciding what web features are implemented and how? What makes you think they're not doing that now and Mozilla's existence even matters in this case? Funny enough, they're only keeping Mozilla alive to avoid any antitrust cases. > would be able to keep Google from turning the web into its own close…

> What makes you think they're not doing that now and Mozilla's existence even matters in this case? Funny enough, they're only keeping Mozilla alive to avoid any antitrust cases.

Firefox developers are still in the standards organisations and their position on new proposals does have some weight on the way they're written. Google is funding Mozilla for good PR, it's not like they're in any real danger from antitrust legislation. I say take the money if they're offering and do as much good for the web as you can until it runs out. It's not like you're sacrificing anything for it, it's basically free money.

> If Google all of a sudden stops funding Mozilla, do you think that they're going to continue development of the browser?

I don't know, but even if they immediately drop Firefox when that happens, we still have it until then. If Firefox disappears now, we're fucked. But who knows what might change until then - maybe someone figures out a business model for browsers, or some other tech or policy makes it easier to compete. When/if that happens, starting from a near-monopoly is way better than a complete monopoly.

> Literally Brave

What was that about ethics again? Also, it's just a closely following Chromium fork, so they don't really have a say in how Blink develops.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it felt to me too. Stretched too thin. Yet as a small company compared to MS or Google, I can imagine how hard it is to try to thrive or just survive and maintaining a stable path when you're fighting big pockets. I just wished they could rebalance their allocation and focus on simple daily usability things. Just a bit more. ps: for instance, the screenshot tool is brilliant

Stretched too thin? They fired Brendan Eich, who invented JS, led Netscape past IE, and then headed Mozilla. Who, when fired, started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch, in a world already dominated by Chrome, and Safari. I know, I know, Eich donated personal money to some cause that some people on the internet didn'…

> started Brave and turned it into a bigger system than FF (including the only relatively new free search engine with its own index), from scratch

Not from scratch. Brave is modified Chromium.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#353
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People wanted add-ons and customization, not the things you mentioned. Firefox was "the" customizable browser with great ad-block.

And it is still customizable

But to a far, far lesser degree. The importance of this to me is that I used to be able to customize away the terrible aspects of the FF UI. Now, I can't really do that anymore.

Not that it matters, because FF performance has become so terrible for me that it was no longer really usable anyway.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is fine on all platforms. Smooth even! But in terms of loading time and raw JS performance, Chrome wins hands down every time in my experience. Using https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/ this is quantified not only by some arbitrary number but also through the visibly slower update speed during the DOM tests. I use Firefox on every device, but Chrome is just faster. I can live with the impact on speed for…

In the discussion above I'm referring to folks saying that FF "bogs down" or becomes unresponsive in real world usage, something I've never experienced. But benchmarks are fun too... this is quantified not only by some arbitrary number but also through the visibly slower update speed during the DOM tests. I ran that and Chrome was 50% faster than FF on my 2018 MBP. Safari was even faster than Chrome by a few %. I wou…

I haven't had FF "bog down" (but I'm not really a tab user, either). But on every machine I've put the new FF on, the startup time for it ranges from 2-5 minutes, and the initial load time for web pages is achingly slow (sometimes up to a minute or so).

No other browser I've used performs this poorly. Even the old, pre-reworked, FF performs much better than that.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#355
post #64

Did they mean to say "Firefox [has] a lineage that dates back to the origins of the i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶ web"? Tim Berners Lee invented the Web, not the Internet.

I am distressed by the number of people (many of who should know better) that think the web is the internet.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#356

You'd think that Mozilla has an excess of funding and has covered absolutely all needs in the browser space leading them to branch out like this... but the browser really needs a lot more hands and funding, I honestly can't make sense of this. And Fakespot: they present themselves as a company that focuses on detecting AI-generated content from human-generated content. It sounds like they've set out to play Whac-A-Mo…

It's so much easier to be a critic than a creator

I think that's an advantage that something like this has because basically you just have to function as a critic

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the discussion above I'm referring to folks saying that FF "bogs down" or becomes unresponsive in real world usage, something I've never experienced. But benchmarks are fun too... this is quantified not only by some arbitrary number but also through the visibly slower update speed during the DOM tests. I ran that and Chrome was 50% faster than FF on my 2018 MBP. Safari was even faster than Chrome by a few %. I wou…

I haven't had FF "bog down" (but I'm not really a tab user, either). But on every machine I've put the new FF on, the startup time for it ranges from 2-5 minutes, and the initial load time for web pages is achingly slow (sometimes up to a minute or so). No other browser I've used performs this poorly. Even the old, pre-reworked, FF performs much better than that.

    But on every machine I've put the new FF on, the 
    startup time for it ranges from 2-5 minutes
What? Is this a typo? Do you mean seconds?

I've never seen that on any machine and again, this is many dozens of computers over the years, including one company where FF was the standard browser for the company enterprise/intranet app so thousands of people were using it all day long.

    and the initial load time for web pages is 
    achingly slow (sometimes up to a minute or so).
This is absolute madness.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had FF "bog down" (but I'm not really a tab user, either). But on every machine I've put the new FF on, the startup time for it ranges from 2-5 minutes, and the initial load time for web pages is achingly slow (sometimes up to a minute or so). No other browser I've used performs this poorly. Even the old, pre-reworked, FF performs much better than that.

But on every machine I've put the new FF on, the startup time for it ranges from 2-5 minutes What? Is this a typo? Do you mean seconds? I've never seen that on any machine and again, this is many dozens of computers over the years, including one company where FF was the standard browser for the company enterprise/intranet app so thousands of people were using it all day long. and the initial load time for web pages i…

> Is this a typo? Do you mean seconds?

It's not a typo. It's also not a particular machine. It's all of my machines.

It's why I stopped using Firefox. It wasn't always like that -- pre-quantum, Firefox was reasonably performant. And post-quantum it was as well (although I never saw the performance gains others reported). I don't remember which release this started happening in, but it was a couple of years ago.

Just to forestall advice -- every time I've mentioned this, people have engaged with me to make sure it's not the usual issues (have I completely erased FF and installed it fresh, am I using extensions, etc.). And many think I'm lying.

But this is my actual experience with Firefox. I was willing to stick with using it on principle despite the fact that post-quantum firefox does a poor job if meeting my browser needs, but I couldn't. It's essentially unusable for me.

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on every machine I've put the new FF on, the startup time for it ranges from 2-5 minutes What? Is this a typo? Do you mean seconds? I've never seen that on any machine and again, this is many dozens of computers over the years, including one company where FF was the standard browser for the company enterprise/intranet app so thousands of people were using it all day long. and the initial load time for web pages i…

> Is this a typo? Do you mean seconds? It's not a typo. It's also not a particular machine. It's all of my machines. It's why I stopped using Firefox. It wasn't always like that -- pre-quantum, Firefox was reasonably performant. And post-quantum it was as well (although I never saw the performance gains others reported). I don't remember which release this started happening in, but it was a couple of years ago. Just…

I believe you.

Does the issue persist on other networks? I wonder if it's a DNS/proxy/something issue.

I don't know the particulars, but Firefox does some talking over the network at startup. It checks for browser updates, blocklist updates, captive portal detection, etc. I am not certain which if any of these happen at startup, and AFAIK none of these are blocking (but I admittedly have only the vaguest knowledge here)

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making...

Also just out of curiosity, what OS?

Re: Fakespot Is Acquired by Mozilla

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this a typo? Do you mean seconds? It's not a typo. It's also not a particular machine. It's all of my machines. It's why I stopped using Firefox. It wasn't always like that -- pre-quantum, Firefox was reasonably performant. And post-quantum it was as well (although I never saw the performance gains others reported). I don't remember which release this started happening in, but it was a couple of years ago. Just…

I believe you. Does the issue persist on other networks? I wonder if it's a DNS/proxy/something issue. I don't know the particulars, but Firefox does some talking over the network at startup. It checks for browser updates, blocklist updates, captive portal detection, etc. I am not certain which if any of these happen at startup, and AFAIK none of these are blocking (but I admittedly have only the vaguest knowledge he…

> Does the issue persist on other networks?

I've not tried with those machines on a different network. I assume it's related to networking in some way. My network is more complex than most. All of these machines are Linux (Debian). I haven't experienced this on Windows machines at work (although I also haven't noticed that Firefox had become any faster on them).

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