I remember using Pocket briefly and wondering what the purpose of it was when you could just save bookmarks in any stock web browser.
Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
651–660 of 782 posts
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#652Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live. Ugh. This sounds so horrible, but this is probably the truest statement on this entire page.
What's even more wild is that many users, even on HN, don't seem to pick up on the fact that the alternatives to Firefox are either Chrome or Chrome in different colored trenchcoats. Firefox is like the last bastion of user choice when it comes to deciding how we interact with the Internet, a choice that has been subtly but steadily stripped from us for years. My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not u…
> My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is?
I actually looked into this. Say you consider yourself as part of the FOSS community, and want to build a new browser, and you start to look for your options. The only things readily available as libraries are webkit (currently owned and open sourced by Apple) and webkit-gtk (based on the former). Apple is like Apple and doesn't really want you to use their open source lib, so even though webkit-gtk team made it happen anyway, good luck if you want to do it yourself. If you decide to just use webkit-gtk, you've made a decision similar to lots of other members of the FOSS community in this area (luakit, the Rust webview crate, etc.). Another option is Qt WebEngine. It's based on Chromium. It's part of the Qt ecosystem and though I think you can use it as a standalone library, carving it out still requires some engineering. So these are the options that are available as libraries. And where are the Firefox ones? Servo makes it clear at the beginning of The Servo Book that it isn't available as a library yet. And Gecko? Firefox source doesn't even include a directory named gecko. It's so tightly coupled with the other parts that you'll need a lot of engineering to carve it out. And this is in contrast to Blink, the engine of Chromium, which is nicely placed in its own directory, having its own webpage with some learning resources.
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#653So what did this do? The comments lead me to believe it was an extension or application for saving web pages in a more readable form for a personal archive type thing. However the obituary mentions curation and an editorial team. Did they select the info for you or it was your own choice?
It's not important what it is. Pocket was bought overpriced by Mozillas incompetent officers on a project to diversify their income by playing VC. They then decided to piss all over their Firefox browser users by forcefully integrating it with the browser. It was a terrible decision, a terrible business, and now way past its best by date its finally taken out to pasture. Sadly the incompetent officers continue their…
I know that, I want to determine the level of incompetence.
A page saving service is one thing, adding a curation/discovery team (paid by the subscriptions or by the sites who want to get on that curated list?) on top of that is another.
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#654I'm very sad about this. The one feature that I really like is that you could read articles offline. Any good alternatives? (saves this HN post to Pocket to come back to it later to see replies)
I've been using Instapaper for years and have always been very happy with it.
I’m so happy with Instapaper I have no idea what other apps have to offer.
See, save, read later - I’m sorted.
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#655I wish I could just buy out Mozilla outright so that they could you know, focus on building a browser. Alas, my wallets nowhere near big enough to do so. Leave all the business ventures to a completely different (named too) org. I grow tired of them starting something great and then stopping because they've wasted funds. Like oxidizing Firefox I was really excited for. Sadly they stopped while they had broken amazing…
It isn't just the business ventures. Mozilla has pissed away funds on feel good activities that have nothing to do with developing a browser. Let's not forget giving their CEO raises and bonuses while holding layoffs the same year. They are cooked.
Yeah I agree, I'm sure we're not even scratching the surface.
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#656To be honest I don't think fakespot can work anymore, only the most egregious uses of AI can be detected these days... a couple sentences in a prompt can make it undetectable, especially considering they're a third party with limited access to behavior heuristics of amazon users
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#657Hard to say if I cared a wit for pocket, but fakespot was useful.
I had no confidence in fakespot's ratings.
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#658Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#659I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for re…
I was a user for so long I used to call this app instapaper.
same here! we're dating ourselves... xD
Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot
#660Earlier quoted context omitted.
That makes me very angry. I am fat, wasteful, and directionless but Google pays me nothing.
As the guy from whose line said: You don't need a million dollars to do nothing. Look at my cousin. He’s broke and he doesn’t do shit.
I think you mixed up Ryan Stiles and Diedrich Bader, though now I wonder if Diedrich ever went on Whose Line when Drew Carey was hosting.