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OP is probably referring to braceless syntax.


people will blame anyone for anything.

mozilla is a non-profit so doesn't need to respond to market signals.

it would do a lot more and a lot more sustainably if it focused on the core mission of its browser.

but these costly "big swings" justify outrageous compensation packages for its executives and so it lets its browser wither.


> mozilla is a non-profit so doesn't need to respond to market signals.

No? They, just like every other entity, will have to achieve it's investors goals using the least amount of costs possible.

It just happens to be the case that Mozilla's investor's goals aren't more money.

For example, if a non-profit wants to build a bridge to a small island to provide the children of that island access to the mainland's schools; that non-profit would still be very susceptible to market signals regarding the most cost-efficient materials for bridge-building.

It is precisely because of current market signals that this move is a bad move for Mozilla. If GPUs were a dime a dozen and an AI engineer cost a thousand times less to employ than a browser engineer, Mozilla offering an LLM service would be a lot less objectionable than in the current economy.


> No? They, just like every other entity, will have to achieve it's investors goals using the least amount of costs possible.

The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donors not investors. The fiduciary duties of non-profit directors do not have to include using the least amount of costs possible.

The Mozilla Foundation's stated goals are "to advance the vision of the future of the internet and technology".

You might reasonably argue that this means copy catting every other product by slapping AI on itself, but I would counter that this actually demonstrates a lack of vision.


> it would do a lot more and a lot more sustainably if it focused on the core mission of its browser.

Some numbers to put things in perspective: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/defaults-matter-dont-assume...

FF is still a solid choice, privacy-wise (with some manual tweaking), but just in the past few years 80-90% of their revenue came from adtech partnerships, so expect a series of rug pulls like the recent ones.


> so expect a series of rug pulls like the recent ones.

I think it's rather the other way around; i.e. it is you that should lower your expectations from a free tool provided by a non-profit company.


Unless I misunderstood your comment completely I think we’re saying the same thing:)


Orbit by Mozilla is a product of the non-non-profit Mozilla Corporation [1], not the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.

[1]: https://orbitbymozilla.com/terms


It's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. As far as I can tell this is (like most complicated things in life) purely a tax dodge.


Being a non-profit that does not have a share-price, I'm curious if you have evidence for validity of your assessment of "big swings resulting in compensation packages".


I can offer a rationale that I hope that will be interesting. Evidence is more effort than I'm willing to invest in a random internet conversation. I hope that's okay. I don't mean to cause offense, but neither do I like having an interesting discussion shutdown.

Executive leadership compensation tends to be based on, - the size/prospects/complexity of the company - the compensation received by executives in similar roles at other companies - the amount/type of oversight by the board

This incentivizes executives to increase the complexity of their role in order to justify greater remuneration. The classic example is turning a widget factory into a widget financial services provider. In this case, by behaving like Silicon Valley companies chasing the latest fad the executive leadership of Mozilla get to demand the same remuneration packages.


I don't think this is relevant here.

Mozilla's executive compensation is famously disconnected from any realities -- economic, industry fad, or otherwise.


get the project taken over by a foundation eg the Apache Foundation.


Those are false equivalencies. The EU bureaucracy is a mess of competing factions. It isn't a corporation or a political party. A better analogy would be a US Government department breaking a law.

Ideally there are are legal avenues for redress in your situation. If there are not, that is more likely to be the problem than a conspiracy of propaganda.


I agree with you, but this is what happens in reality. Laws and regulations get abused more than they get used, unless they are very well written. The minimum would be to require the EU itself to not use Microsoft 365 and other services that they have explicitly tried to counteract with their laws.

Change the word "propaganda" to "marketing", if it is offensive to you.


You get ads outside the UK, which is always weird for me when i get back from holiday and have a bunch of shows i downloaded while I was in another country and haven't listened to yet. Actually, I say bunch - but I've deleted everything except In Our Time. Australian Broadcast Company does more better podcasts than BBC these days.


The BBC is another bad actor in this space (although increasingly irrelevant). Their decision to "hide" most of their RSS feeds whilst still labeling their proprietary app subscribe links podcasts was unethical.

I see hope in the Patreon model. I don't mind paying a monthly subscription for a specific show if I get a locked down RSS link.


> I see hope in the Patreon model.

Though, podcasters on Patreon are getting high on their own supply, asking for way, waaaay too much. "Just" 5 bucks a month? For one show??? Completely out of touch. Come back when it's ad-free @ 50c, or less.


I dropped the two BBC podcasts i'd been interested in (News Cast and In Our Time) for this reason, it's such a weird tack to take in order to chase views.


I have IOT still in my Antennapod feeds, last episode from 25 January.


I support a few podcasts on patreon. They have regular open RSS feeds and then a locked down patreon feed, containing special episodes, extra material etc. One podcast only charges for each locked episode, so if they don't make any for a while I'm not charged. They are all pretty niche and I don't know how much they earn from it, but from a user perspective it's working fine.


The last time I checked, you can see publisher revenue on patreon.


Each publisher account can decide whether or not to show that.


I'm trying to understand what you mean by this. Their podcasts still show up in e.g. Apple Podcasts and Pocketcasts. If you look at the 'podcasts' page for e.g. '13 Minutes to the Moon'[1] (which I hadn't realized there was a third season of), there is a (small) link to the rss[2]

[1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2/episodes/downloads [2]: https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/w13xttx2.rss


i think the reason is fair, but unfortunately it is a dealbreaker for me. i would definitely have got one earlier this year if it had had one.


yes


It might even be correct. Occasionally.


You think even ten years from now, much less 1,000 years from now, whatever LLMs turn into won’t be at least as capable as the best human of following code paths?

We can spin up a million of them and run them at 10,000x speed.


Keepassxc is great and works well with keepass2android via file sharing.

I can imagine how the password sharing would be a problem tho.


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