Garrett LeSage @garrett@mastodon.xyz

How much of the tech industry would you say is doing more harm than good (i.e. we'd be better off without it)? 🤔

Somehow only just realized that Firefox lets me override websites that disable right-clicking by holding Shift before I right-click.

This is not a defense of Kamala Harris.

BUT

If you are a white American user, you NEED to combat the racism going around.

There is once again a birther conspiracy going around about her. And you know that the only reason is because she is black. And if she is black, she can't actually be an American citizen who was born in the country.

It is entirely based in horrific racism.

And even if you think Kamala is complete dirt, you need to combat the racist ideas that are cropping up.

A simple, "nah, she was born in California" is enough.

or "nah, she's allowed to be in the White House, she was born a citizen and on US ground"

You can't ignore racism just because it's against someone you might not like.

Did you know? The characters in The Matrix are named after computer terminology, like mouse, switch, and Neopets

So many people saying they're switching from Firefox. Won't this only make the problem worse?

If you're switching to Brave or qutebrowser or UnGoogled Chromium or something, you're only strengthening Google's monopoly. If you're switching to a Webkit-based browser like Epiphany, you're shifting the monopoly towards Safari, whose parent company doesn't consider the Web a priority.

That Mozilla has bad management doesn't change the fact that Firefox is the most viable option for the open web.

AdTech won't go down without a fight! Now even Google will circumvent adblockers with Google Tag Manager server-side. It's going to get harder to prevent sites from sharing your personal data with third-parties for advertising purposes without your consent.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles

#mozilla has done a lot of good for the web, but the hybrid "for-profit owned by non-profit" model is and always has been a mistake.

You get the worst of both worlds -- a layer of nonprofit bureaucracy on top of for-profit business practices, compensation structures, and decision-making.

It reflects Mozilla's history, being born in the ideological swamp of hypercapitalist Silicon Valley, which frowns upon nonprofits, and which pursues profit, growth & "disruption" above all else.

It says a lot that the Ars article about Firefox cutting jobs actually uses a "fragment directive" link, which is only supported in Chrome: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firefox-maker-mozilla-lays-off-250-workers-says-covid-19-lowered-revenue/

(Look at the URL for "developer tools," it uses this feature only available in Chrome: https://web.dev/text-fragments/)

I keep thinking about the mozilla lay offs and wondering how detached from reality the management has to be to kill both MDN and the devtools teams. You could ask any engineer about either of them and the only thing they would say is how these tools were best in class and a reason to use Firefox.

No matter what happens to Mozilla, please everyone, don't start using Brave.

#Tusky 12 is out!
Thx so much to everybody who helped me with this, to all translators, to all bug reporters ❤️
I could never do this alone

Can't stop thinking about the Mozilla layoffs and what it means for the web. Andreas Gal's "Chrome won" post from 2017 comes to mind: https://andreasgal.com/2017/05/25/chrome-won/

When it comes down to it, browsers are about people using it, especially if you're trying to build your own rendering engine and maintain compatibility with websites. You can't build your own engine and have single-digit market share, or you wind up in a compatibility death spiral (see: Opera, Edge).

One week ago, we announced LibreOffice 7.0, our brand new major release – and already, it has over 420,000 downloads! Discover more stats here: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2020/08/12/libreoffice-7-0-a-week-in-stats/

as opposed to "designed by engineering"

so if I'm reading this correctly, Mozilla fired 250 people and then framed it as "combating a lethal virus and battling systemic racism"

as though laying off 250 people is gonna save us from plague?? or help.. anyone? I'm so confused.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/08/11/changing-world-changing-mozilla/

In terms of web standards, it remains to be seen what's going to happen, but it doesn't look good right now. Can't help but wonder what would happen if we were down to only two browser engines. Just a decade ago we had 5, and a couple years ago we had 4.

Serious feels about Mozilla laying off a bunch of staff. https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/11/21363424/mozilla-layoffs-quarter-staff-250-people-new-revenue-focus

250 of us have been laid off from Mozilla this morning.

If you have openings or can offer assistance, please use the #MozillaLifeboat tag!

What they should do:

* Cancel the telemetry stuff

* Make the corp non-profit, or transition to being a cooperative

* Tell Google to take a hike

* Drop Pocket and other similar cruft, which almost nobody uses anyway

* Have a Wikipedia style revenue model with an annual donations drive

* Keep the size of the workforce within what a donations model can support (1000 staff was always too much)

* Paid support and training courses for Rust. Companies want hand-holding.

* Build p2p domains and videoconferencing into the browser.

* Easy way to build a website within the browser on a p2p domain in 5 mins - like Beaker

Primarily just focus on making a good browser. Avoid diversifying into things people don't care about.