So really, all modern browsers are either forks of KHTML / KJS or are based on the Mozilla codebase. But, at least right now, there are 3 separate engineering teams working on 3 independent codebases. Which hopefully will mitigate some of the issues you get when one company completely controls a software “ecosystem”.

Strange, because they say it’s a “custom version” of Firefox. That normally means it’s a custom build, not a true fork.

Mozilla was doomed from the start.

Netscape Inc. wanted to sell browsers eventually, which makes sense. It’s product which requires a massive amount of engineering effort. But, when Microsoft started tying IE to Windows and giving it away free, there was no way that Netscape could actually make any sales. The bigger reason their business was crushed was that Microsoft was also giving away their web server (IIS) away for free, while Netscape was charging for theirs.

Some kids today are too young to know that Microsoft was sued by the US government over this and lost the case (along with what was very likely Microsoft falsifying evidence). But, then Bush Jr. took office and the government basically took a case they had won and effectively threw out the win.

When it was clear that Netscape was going to fail as a business they open-sourced the browser either as an act of charity or spite. The problem is that it’s still a massive and expensive project to build a web browser. That’s especially true in a world where standards keep evolving and the browser has to keep having new features added.

Since making a browser was so expensive, they needed financial support, and eventually that came from Google. At first Google just wanted Firefox to exist as a hedge so that Microsoft wouldn’t dominate the browser market. But, once Google came out with Chrome it was both a way to keep directing traffic to Google search, and a way to pretend they don’t have a monopoly on browsers.

But, if 90% of the funding of your project comes from Google, there are some obvious lines you can’t cross. So, Mozilla has to keep doing this dance where they make a browser that competes with Chrome, but one that doesn’t cross certain lines that would make Google mad and result in them shutting off the funding.

Google would shut off the funding to Firefox in a heartbeat if they took ad blocking and privacy too seriously. But, Google doesn’t care too much if Mozilla messes around with AI or ads.

Doesn’t Safari use a different codebase? It’s not available on non-Apple platforms, but it’s good to know that there are still engineers working on a different codebase.

Is it a true fork, or is it a project that follows the Firefox tree and builds a customized browser from it?

The difference being, if it’s a true fork, they have to do all their own browser engineering starting at the time it was forked off. That sounds like a monumental effort.

I looked at their jobs list and counted 35 jobs. Of that I count 9 that are AI-related and 4 that are ads-related. The list also includes a few generic jobs like “Chief of Staff”, “Client Analytics Manager”, “Staff Test Engineer” or “Fixed-Term Social Media Trainee”.

Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they’re advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.

You can’t do this with any company. The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.

I don’t know, you’d have to ask the expert.

because you can’t call from this thing or communicate with it any other way because it’s receive only

Yes, it’s a pager. Pagers are still useful, that’s why they’re still being manufactured and sold. Someone in IT who’s on call can have a pager set up so that an automated process sends them a notification if a system breaks. They don’t need two-way communication for that. A doctor can use one to be notified if they’re needed at the hospital. It’s more reliable than a cell phone and in many cases the battery lasts a lot longer. They could even be useful for a parent to give to a kid, so that the parent can get in contact with the kid and have the kid call home if something happens. In rich countries that could happen because the parent doesn’t want the kid using the device all the time to scroll TikTok. In poorer countries it could happen because a pager is much, much cheaper than a phone.

The fact that thousands of these devices were exploded suggests that it was a pretty wide group of people who were using them, so the odds are pretty good that at least some of them were given away / sold.

You’d best recognize Leo Pellegrino

Also, how many pagers are still out there with explosives in them?

Option 1: Israel blew up all the pagers containing explosives, regardless of whether they’d been sold / passed on to family members, friends, or other people who had no connection with Hezbollah, so many of the thousands of injured were innocent bystanders.

Option 2: Israel got the pagers into the hands of tens of thousands of people, then only blew up the ones that were actually in Hezbollah possession, leaving thousands of pagers out there containing explosives.

Knowing Israel, it’s almost certainly option 1.

Lithium batteries burn, they don’t suddenly explode.

Many pagers, each with a small explosive inside? What’s hard to get?

Yeah, I’m an amateur musician and can tell the difference between different kinds of saxomophone, between cellos and violas, and so on. But, there are a lot of things I’d just call “drums” that have specialty names. I mean, how many names are there for “large upright drum that you play with your fingertips and thumbs while it sits between your legs”?

It’s got to be driving him absolutely nuts that the second shooter is also a presumably christian, straight, white, man. Anything else and he could work with it. White woman? Women are too emotional and shouldn’t be trusted to make important decisions. Black man? Go-go all out on the racism. Brown skinned? Anti immigration fear mongering. Trans or gay? Groomer nonsense. Anything other than Christian and he could fearmonger about their foreign religions.

Literally the only identity he can’t exploit is christian, straight, white men and they’re the ones who keep trying to kill him.

A bunch of paper tossed into a corner could get wet, mouldy, get munched on by rats, etc. But, I know what you mean. Spinning plates full of magnetized bits with a connector technology that only lasts a decade at most is hardly going to be reliable, even if stored under ideal conditions.

To me, this is just another story of the music industry’s technical incompetence.

Even in the 1990s, everyone would have known that hard drives were not a long-term archival storage solution. This is like crumpling up a piece of paper, tossing it in the corner, then being upset decades later when your “archival solution” had issues.

Thank you for proving that the left lives in a bubble just like the right.

It’s propaganda. But, it’s not just propaganda, it’s effective propaganda.

The fact that it’s so effective is somewhat new and very concerning. We have to understand why it’s effective if there’s any hope of eventually stopping it. And, it’s effective not just because the propaganda is well crafted, it’s effective because there’s a whole system that immerses the audience in it and never lets them see an alternative point of view.

In North Korea the only information you get is information specifically selected by the state. The US free market and first amendment was supposed to be a shield against that sort of propaganda. Unfortunately, while people have the right to find other forms of media, a lot of people want the comfort of living inside their own media bubble. Then the propaganda channel tells them that every other source of media is full of lies, and controlled by the jews, and who knows what else, and those people get even more locked in to their propaganda source. Then they’re told that scientists are getting rich (ha!) by selling out, so you can’t trust scientific papers. So, you can’t trust the government, the media, scientists, doctors, schools… you can only trust them.

Then they’re told that if they ever do try to do their own research, they’re not going to get results because of censorship. Some censorship exists. Sometimes it’s formal, sometimes it’s informal, like YouTube taking down videos that hurt their bottom line, or cause them headaches. But, the convenient thing about claiming that information is being censored is that it’s unprovable or “unfalsifiable”. You can’t prove that something that doesn’t exist was censored because you can’t prove it ever existed in the first place. And, of course, when an idiot is told that information on “turbo cancer” is being censored, they search for it and get no results, that just reinforces their belief that the news is being censored.

Add to that that the same group that wants to lock people into a pipeline of disinformation also wants to defund schools and universities. You can’t hope that someone can learn the truth from a teacher or a professor if the school no longer exists. You can’t hope that the next generation learns critical thinking in high school if the high school is defunded and shut down.

Big tech companies making their platforms extremely engaging is yet another element in this shitty soup. Most of these companies actually employ mostly liberal people, and the culture is at least somewhat left of center. But, they get their money by keeping people engaged, which means feeding them things that are shocking, angering, etc. That keeps people in their bubbles, and keeps them from engaging their critical thinking abilities.

The end result is you get people living in bubbles, listening to, watching and reading news that makes them feel good because it reinforces their existing biases. They cut off people in their lives who have dissenting views because either they’re angry about that person’s views, or it’s just too much of a headache to constantly fight with them. Social media keeps them in a bubble that keeps them engaged, and keeps them seeing the same point of view over and over. And so-on.

Because the whole situation is so complicated, it’s not going to be easy to reverse. It’s not just a matter of shutting down Fox News, or Newsmax or MSNBC or any other propaganda fountain. It’s also going to have to involve breaking up tech monopolies, or at least removing their Section 230 protection for their editorial decisions. It’s also going to require major educational system reforms, ensuring that all kids go to schools that teach critical thinking skills, and because this is the US that will involve major fights over property taxes and religious freedom. I honestly don’t know if it’s going to be possible.

gave the odds 65-35 or so, in Clinton’s favor

I don’t think people realize how close that means the race was. 50/50 is like a coin flip. 35% is like rolling a six-sided die and getting either a 1 or a 2. It’s not the most likely outcome, but it’s not a surprising result either.

Controlling contagious diseases is not left to private providers.

But, by the nature of the US, it still has to involve them. Because of the system, you can’t get shots into people’s arms without involving private hospitals, private insurance companies, etc. Which, during the pandemic resulted in some insurance companies still trying to charge co-pays for vaccinations, or billing people who received them. Maybe it was just paperwork mix-ups but it happened. And, since many people are used to the private system, they assumed that they would get charged or couldn’t get vaccinated because they lacked insurance, so they didn’t get vaccinated.

Imagine if a city had all kinds of private fire departments but it had a Center for Major Fires that could issue orders if a fire was declared to be “major”. Until that point, firefighters could refuse to put out a fire at a business that hadn’t subscribed to their firefighting services. So, they could sit there and watch a building burn down, only using their hoses on the stray embers that flew into houses nearby which had subscribed. Then, one day, there’s a fire at an abandoned warehouse (no fire coverage, naturally) and it starts spreading to nearby buildings, some of which are also abandoned. The Center for Major Fires examines the situation and declares that this is a Major Fire, and that all the fire companies need to help put it out, regardless of whether it affects their pre-paid customers. But, unfortunately communicating that with the various fire companies is hard because the fire has already started to spread. Some companies are willing to do what’s required, but first they want to ensure that their paid-up customers are safe, then they’ll get to the abandoned warehouses… Other fire companies are hard to contact because they’re already too busy fighting part of this Major Fire, so any hope of a coordinated response is slim.

There are just some jobs that should be done by government. Firefighting and healthcare are both in that category.