The ironic thing is that if he had just focused on cost cutting and hadn’t gotten involved in posting various Political Hot Takes, Twitter would probably be doing extremely well now. They could have had both labor cost savings and without hemorrhaging all their advertisers.
I like the idea of their products, but I just wish Unihertz wasn't so sketchy -- they refuse to release any kernel sources. (Which is in direct violation of the GPL!)
I generally remember that there's some problematic issue with Unihertz but often seem to manage to forget exactly which issue it is.
Non-compliance with the GPL is frustratingly common (over a huge range of company sizes too).
Not at helped by the fact that the community managed to (stupidly) burn bridges with the one person who seemed to be effecting actual change within Chinese companies with regard to GPL compliance.
Agreed largely, though IMO BART is holding the bay area back. Unlike Caltrain and Muni, BART management is completely incompetent and more focused on spending their money on random things than actually running their transit system.
Fun fact: BART police has a large fleet of SUVs, with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area (if only there were some other way for them to get around!)
Fun exercise: compare the cleanliness of a Muni Bus/LRV to a BART car (even a new one at the start of the day). There is a huge difference.
I think BART struggles with who it's meant to serve now, since it was clearly designed for ultra-peak weekday commute traffic. Recovery for weekend ridership is way better than weekday.
I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Bay Area?
All that being said, BART has done some good stuff too. The new cars really are way better, and they were not easy to procure since BART has its own weird, non-standard rail gauge. They have increased frequency and shortened trains on weekends to respond to the ridership changes.
Most of all, BART remains the only form of Bay Area transit genuinely faster than driving in real-world circumstances: it averages above 60mph in parts of the east bay, and goes from downtown Oakland to downtown SF in 11min, which is often 2-3x faster than driving. It's the primary transit system that can compete head-to-head with driving. For that reason, I do hope they keep increasing frequency (shortening trains if necessary).
It’s kind of sad that BART’s first mover advantage means it’ll forever be a second-class railway. They’ll never do the “correct” thing and shut it down long enough to replace everything with standard equipment and gauge.
It has been said the broader gauge was chosen at the time to make trains able to run safely over Golden Gate Bridge with strong side winds. My physics is not good enough to calculate whether that argument makes sense. And I have no idea how realistic that route ever was.
I don't think the gauge is a major problem. Train orders are always a custom project, few urban networks use exactly the same standards. Railroad manufacturers are used to different gauges.
In particular the track gauge is a long way from being the only consideration. Structure gauge and Loading gauge are also crucial. When I first moved here despite this being an important port city a Victorian arch bridge carrying road traffic over the railway meant every single freight train carrying containers from the port to the rest of the country needed to either go on a circuitous route or use special low wagons with reduced capacity, which hold a container below axle height so as to fit under that bridge.
In that case blocking the road and dropping in a new road bridge was affordable given the economic value but generally you put up with what you've got.
True, when it comes to loading gauge one can no longer even about a standard. Most countries have several different loading gauges even for the same track gauge.
In practice I am not convinced the BART is severely impacted by their "weird" gauge (whatever is meant by that, not sure what their loading gauge is, for passenger trains the distance to and height of the platforms would be most relevant).
Stadler KISS series used by Caltrain is built at least in 3 different widths.
Auckland, NZ had (not sure whether still in use) rolling stock from the UK, converted from 1435 mm to 1067 mm track gauge, the loading gauge obviously was close enough.
Finland has engines (Sr3, Dr20) and railcars (Dm12) designed for smaller central European loading gauges. They look a bit tiny compared to other stock, but they are fully usable.
It shouldn't be, though. There is way too much democracy in California localities.
There should be no elected school board, transit districts, utility boards, assessors, sheriff, and so much more. No one is properly informed about candidates for these positions.
For that matter, the Board of Supervisors should have no power other than oversight and impeachment. The Mayor should basically be a local dictator, with the power to do anything the State authorizes the municipality to do, at their sole discretion, with the oversight of an elected board.
Americans seem to have a view that if you get a part of an unengaged electorate to mark an x in a box every few years that’s democracy, and more is thus better.
Instead it removes accountability from public servants who can simply hide behind the “elected” excuse.
What terrifies me the most are elections for judges. I am not a legal scholar and I rely upon local bar associations for qualification ratings (and I’m not convinced I made the right call all the time); to my horror I’ve had educated colleagues tell me they just pick cool sounding names.
I love these kinds of true snippets of general security history:
It was estimated that "possibly 85 percent of the more than 7,000 BART train cushions damaged since August 1979" was the work of this company, the Examiner reported at the time.
All said and done, BART had paid the company $115,000 for the repairs, a total of about $339,128 in today's money.
Yep, BART is pretty reviled by all the other transit authorities, and for good reason, based on what my friends who work some of the other authorities have said.
Are you saying that they need vehicles to get to the crime locations faster? Are vehicles really faster than them being at the BART station on foot?
If anything that statistic you cited shows that their existing policies are not a deterrent. Perhaps because they are in their vehicles instead of on train cars where the crimes are happening.
> Are vehicles really faster than them being at the BART station on foot?
So you're sure you can create a deployment plan that will have the correct amount of officers on station at all times? What if they need backup? What if two incidents happen at once?
> their existing policies are not a deterrent.
I'm sure their vehicle strategy has little to do with deterrence. Or are you suggesting this is the _reason_ why there is more crime?
> instead of on train cars where the crimes are happening.
Crimes also happen on the platform, the turnstiles, and the curtilage. I get that people want to be "mad the vehicles exist" but this is not sensible.
Actually, train systems having its own assigned branches of police is common enough that there's a Wikipedia article[1]. Unique part is that the US doesn't have an umbrella national or state agency that such branches would be part of.
They're not actually "assigned branches" of the police, they're private police. The US/Canadian railway police are not government employees, they're employees of the Class I railways and deputized with general law enforcement powers. They're spiritual successors to the old timey Pinkertons.
Two of the biggest are Canadian National Police and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Police -- and those two are deputized, in both Canada and the US, with Federal, State and Provincial police powers. Despite being railway employees they can cite you for, e.g. speeding if they catch you doing so. Either on or off railway property.
BART exists in 5 counties (San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara) and multiple cities (SF, Oakland, San Jose, and multiple smaller ones).
Having people who have jurisdiction in any bart station is useful. And for example, consistent foot patrols are valuable to BART but not necessarily valuable to the city of Hayward, or whatever. As a concrete example, BART has more or less a goal to be able to put an officer on the car within a stop or two if you report on the app. That's logistically challenging for like a half dozen reasons if the bart police wasn't it's own org.
That's a good question, any I have no idea of the answer, but the port authority of NY and NJ has it's own police. I always figured it was because it spanned jurisdictions, but perhaps there are other reasons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police are actually a thing! It's not just transit either. Most of the big US railroads have their own private police forces. The officers are deputized by the state, and then by federal law their powers are valid in any state that railroad has track. They even have arrest powers.
Hm, maybe CPD has a CTA detail then? I thought there was (or used to be) a CTA police division that had their own uniforms, cars, etc. I seem to also remember a CHA police for the housing projects, but it's been a long time since I lived there.
Presumably because police usually only have jurisdiction within their employer’s city limits, and sheriffs’ employees only have jurisdiction within their counties, so if mass transit moves between multiple jurisdictions, then their police can have jurisdiction wherever the mass transit goes (even across state lines, because a lot of metropolitan regions served by the same mass transit system span two or more states).
Most city police and sheriffs officers have jurisdiction anywhere in their state, AFAIK. They typically stay in their area, but if they’re pursuing a suspect they don’t break off if they cross the city limits.
It's pretty common around the country. If it isn't a separate entity you end up having a department of the normal local police doing it separately anyway. Also BART goes through several different police jurisdictions and trains... move. I can imagine the mess and disagreements about which police department was responsible for answering a call or riding in a car as it moved between cities/counties.
It's a chain of command (i.e. BART police report to BART, Campus police report to the school, way less messy than BART or the school having to convince the jurisdiction how to police the area) and prioritization thing. Bespoke police agencies exist to police their niche to an extent that would be unjustifiable if it were coming your normal police department and taking resources away from their other tasks.
Transit police, campus police, DEA, ATF, etc, etc, etc. Their entire job is to harass people that the equivalent generalist police couldn't justify allocating resources toward.
Irate homeless? SFPD won't show, but BART Police will.
Drunk college kids shenanigans? Normal cops don't care, but campus police does.
Weirdos making machine guns or huge amounts of LSD? FBI don't care as long as you're not trafficking, they got real crime with real victims to chase. ATF and DEA care though.
Wash rinse repeat this pattern for literally every bespoke police agency.
Yeah, jurisdiction can be a theoretical reason for these agencies but once again it's still a priority thing. When agencies care jurisdiction and coordination isn't a problem. Having one agency span multiple only helps if you're chasing stuff so petty it would get dropped.
Except for the last one in your list, the others are quality of life problems. I have no problem if police interfere with either. Even the last one, is at best borderline. If there is a weirdo making machine guns in my neighborhood and I have kids, I sure as hell want police to interfere.
That works in theory, until the police are overrun with things they don't specialize in and don't have the officers to handle the day to day plus illegal arms dealers.
Interestingly, Meta’s other property, Instagram, used the opposite approach. The old @potus account was renamed to @potus46archive with @potus being treated as effectively a fresh start.
The IG approach seems like the right one IMO — odd there wasn’t consistency there.
Pretty neat that they’re able to support logging into Discord now!
Nice to see that they’re making progress on getting actual complex webapps up and running in Servo. Looking forward to when I can use it as my main browser (one day!)
Not only that. I'd like to have AI masking, effective clone tools, lens corrections and please... actually working defaults! You import RAWs (compressed RAFs) and it render horrible results!
Its bloated with useless functions, it's slow, UI is ugly... Why not focus on important? Stop developing another demosaic method and make it more user friendly, less nerdy piece of tool.
They also fired a whole bunch of software engineers (including everyone working on Servo), and then massively boosted their executives' salaries, so that was certainly something.
IMO it’s a matter of principle. Mozilla is supposed to be a non-profit that exists to support the development of a FOSS browser and its related projects. Over the years it seems like they’ve strayed from this mission, behaving more and more like the big corporations they claim not to be like
They explicitly state that they want the internet to benefit the public good as well as commercial use.
Principle number 9 is: "Commercial involvement in the development of the internet brings many benefits; a balance between commercial profit and public benefit is critical."
Mozilla clearly strikes that balance better than Google does.
No, I never said anywhere that chrome should be used. As a matter of fact, I use Firefox myself. My original observation was that Mozilla presents itself as a benevolent non-profit yet behaves like soulless for-profit tech company, abandoning valuable FOSS initiatives and carelessly laying off employees, all while increasing executive pay
If I donate to your project I hope the money goes towards your project. If you spend it on beer or buy Jacuzzi I'm happy too. If you chose to spend it on other projects ill be excited to learn what they are.
Do you use any of that? Is there anything there I should be using? (honest question) It seems premature to donate to things I don't know.
> Solo helps entrepreneurs expand their web presence with a suite of AI-backed tools for building websites, optimizing for SEO, and showcasing your best work.
> Solo will instantly create a beautiful website so you can grow your business.
> Improve brand visibility: SEO keywords are automatically added to help drive search traffic. View statistics by connecting a Google Analytics account.
I'm very biased no doubt, it reads like I donate to progress the commercial web, more canned template websites, product SEO and to promote the use of google analytics. I'm sure it is awesome to some people, to me it is the opposite, I'm sure it is a project that should exist some place but I don't want to pay for it.
> If I donate to your project I hope the money goes towards your project.
Firefox is not a project of the Mozilla Foundation, but the Mozilla Corporation, so you just can't donate to Firefox at all; in fact, the money flows the opposite direction between them. I know it's frustrating but this argument is misleading yet keeps showing up in every thread.
I don't know about their other expenses, but SEO/advertising is probably one of their better uses of money even if we don't like it. It's hard to gain market share against a browser that is pitched each time you do a Google search no matter how good the product is.
I mean Llamafile is great and is built on fantastic tech, but no I definitely want my Mozilla money to go to Firefox, not what Thing is currently in vogue by Mozilla execs.
Honestly all of these x/y names just imply that they are knockoffs of firefox. Which is fine if you want your browser to just be firefox±some feature firefox doesn't include, but not so great if you're wanting to stand on your own branding wise.
Plus ladybird is the less popular name of the ladybug and if you aren't aware of that, it just seems like some weird needlessly gendered name, which doesn't make sense for a browser to have. Plus a bunch of ladybug type branding with red and black dots and such seems cringey.
Just a complete all around fail to consider branding.
huh? of all the bugs in the world, ladybugs are among the most popular, the majority of them are harmless and prey on agricultural pests. at least where i come from the association with "ladybug" is "cute".
> If only Mozilla (the parent organization) wasn’t horrible.
Well, they're not getting any of my money, and they're not selling my eyeballs to any advertisers. For a while I used a filesystem written by a convicted murderer. I'm not sure at what point I'm supposed to avoid software because of who wrote it.
At the very least, I do not trust a browser that was putting affiliate links to unsuspecting users' urls [0]. Plus I tbh I am really sick of everything tending to be chromium-derivatives nowadays and I think it is good to have greater diversity, to exactly avoid situation susch as the one here.
Up near the top? It literally had a controversies section on Wikipedia due to all these shady things it did, with cryptocurrency and others, I am not sure how worse it can get [0]. I'll take URL ads any day of the week compared to the kinds of things Brave pulled over the years.
The list for Firefox over the years would warrant a whole page on Wikipedia. Browser choices are a who's who of who's debased themselves the fewest number of times trying to squeeze money out of a free product. The current state of Brave is better than the current state of Firefox right now.
I simply don't understand how you could think that about Brave yet in the same breath say that Firefox is worse, what exactly is worse about Firefox than hiding a literally cryptocurrency scam token in the browser itself?
Brave today: Here's a free browser with no ads, built-in adblock and user-respecting defaults. If you want there's also this crypto thing you can try. No pressure, most people don't. We also have an ad supported search engine as our default.
Firefox today: Here's a free browser with ads on the new tab page, ads in the url bar, ads in Pocket, ads for our VPN service, and we let advertisers collect your data same as Chrome with "privacy preservation ad measurement" and you have to turn all of that off. We have an ad supported search engine by default. We also redirect your DNS queries to a third party "for your privacy."
I think people want Firefox to be better than it is in practice because of the historical good will they've built up over the years. I wish they were better too.
Personally I'd much rather have a non-Chromium browser with some unintrusive ads than one with cryptocurrency, perhaps that is where our differences lie. And anyway, with Chromium being upstream with Manifest v3, who knows how long Brave can keep up its adblocking capabilities?
