geoelectric

Unfortunately, it probably even makes sense that they'd want that for non-nefarious reasons.

If you shut down your extension and they had to put up their own copy, they'd have to re-acquire your installed base. That could be a sharp decline in value to them, particularly if the extension mostly got popular off a one-time front-page feature rather than via gradual discovery with active word of mouth.

The chance that people jump through all the hoops to impulse-install again twice is low. They'd have to really like your extension, even if your version notified them of shutdown of yours and availability of the new one. Growing an installed base is generally more a factor of not chasing your users away than explicitly doing things to retain them. That change would chase them away.

In an ideal world, you'd be able to officially transfer the single extension to a new owner while keeping all the installed users--preferably with a notice dialog enforced by the browser popping up to tell the user the ownership changed and offering them a chance to uninstall. That would also chase some users away, but it's sort of the ethical minimum (hence this HN post).

But I doubt many browsers, if any, work like that.

Thanks for correcting me on this.

My take (as a subscriber) is still that the majority of information I'm seeing is assimilated and distilled from the more mainstream sources, but I'm possibly underestimating how much comes from their own indexes.

I will admit that for news I tend to use the !gn bang to jump straight to Google News as it tends to be a more complete feed than Kagi's news tab, so wasn't thinking about TinyGem. But I'd also forgotten completely about Kagi's "Small Web" initiative for indexing non-commercial content that's not interlinked enough for other engines to prioritize it. I believe that's what Teclis (and possibly TinyGem as well) concentrates on.

IIRC, the few times I tried routing searches into that index I didn't find much, so I set it aside, but that's probably because I'm usually searching for more widely-consumed content.

Yeah, if it doesn’t already exist this could be the forcing function. I know a lot of people like that functionality you describe.

I’m fairly sure Kagi reuses Google and Bing search results, then de-craps and applies your customized preferences to them. I’m not sure it even runs its own spider.

In rural Georgia they were just outside wandering around in my otherwise meadowish yard with lots of wild plants among the grass. I think I remember finding them just outside my house, so they may have preferred walls or shade, but they weren’t the inside or even necessarily crawlspace kind of arthropod.

5 and 3 in front of 4 and 6 is an unusual take.

You're luckier than I am with the chargers! Fortunately, I almost always AC charge at home.

> We're somehow doing worse than an era where smoking was the norm and cola contained cocaine.

Of course, both those things tended to contribute to either hunger management or calorie burn, but I'm sure that's not what you meant!

I think the max charge rate for an Ioniq 5 is actually more like 225kW. The bit about 350kW stations enabling the 15m 20->80 charging is because the next step down in an EA/Chargepoint station is 150kW. And in practice, mine rarely gets up anywhere near max charge rate, though that probably has more to do with EA's station quality than the car itself.

The bigger issue with Supercharger is the voltage, if it's not a 800V charger. The internal converter in the E-GMP platform for a 400V source ends up being a limiting factor and drags the system down to something like 75kW, similar to a Bolt.

If the blog author is lurking on here, I tried to bookmark the article since it's very relevant to my current situation, but it didn't have a title set for the page. NBD to copy/paste one in, but it took me by surprise.

Well, they spent 248M and India spent 74M. 74 * 3.5 == 259M so that tracks

Thanks for this. Kevin has been a part of the Bay Area SF fandom community for a very long time, and I’ve never known him to be anything other than a good, honorable person. I was saddened to see his name on the list of people associated with this, and would have a hard time believing he’d ever act intentionally to undermine Worldcon or the Hugos.

Next Christmas, or next time you’re feeling Christmas-minded, find the Adult Swim Yule Log movie, aka The Fireplace. It’s on Max, among other places.

It’s Casper Kelly’s (the creator of Too Many Cooks) first full length feature—a 90 minute horror-comedy film that Adult Swim stealth-released a couple of years ago disguised as an airing of a Christmas fireplace video. It actually has very little to do with Christmas, though a surprising lot to do with Yule logs.

Max also has an Adult Swim series called “Infomercials,” which is where Too Many Cooks originally debuted a decade or two ago.

The series consists of a bunch of other very creative short films in a similar vein that aired very late at night. The TV guide block Adult Swim created for them just said Infomercials, much like what every other basic cable station scheduled after hours, except these were all designed to go off the rails partway through and mess with your head.

Too Many Cooks is the only one with a catchy theme song though!

Except they were responding to a comment criticizing USB-C PD as a standard. Non-standard cables are irrelevant to that discussion.

My experience is querying an LLM usually does ok if the only knowledge it needs is directly included in the prompt (including for summarization). It’s not perfect but its reliability is within the realm of human error and so isn’t significantly worse than me skimming the text myself.

But it’s really unreliable if it’s leveraging “knowledge” from its training. Asking what something in an article means, for example, is pretty risky. Open-ended questions that cause knowledge dumps are very risky—the longer the answer, the riskier. Even text translation is risky, even though it’s ostensibly a simple transformation, because it has to draw the word mappings from training. And god help you if you ask it a leading question without realizing it. It’ll often just parrot your assumption back to you.

To your point, though, using an LLM as an oracle/teacher would be a lot less dangerous if it were always laughably wrong but it’s usually not. It’s usually 90% right, and that’s what makes it so insidious. Picking out the 10% that isn’t is really hard, especially if you don’t know enough to second-guess it. The wrong stuff usually looks plausible and it’s surrounded by enough valid info that what little you do know seems to corroborate the rest.

I wouldn’t trust an LLM when asking open-ended questions like that, but it’s correct that the specific wording and presentation of a recipe is copyrightable if it’s creative enough. The information conveyed by it is not. That’s the phone book principle in a nutshell.

Like someone else said, that’s why recipes are often written with a lot of conversational prose and have pictures whether needed or not. Those are all copyrightable.

I suspect the basic issue is that an LLM is likely to output either chunks of the original text verbatim or something that’s plainly just a word-swap here or there from the original. If it doesn’t do that, and has general browsing access, my guess is it could potentially grab the markup version you can import into tools like Paprika and just echo that verbatim.

You probably could get around that tendency by telling it to format the recipe as a computer program or something completely transformative like that, but nobody will. So they instruct the LLM to avoid responding completely.

I suspect it’s because Apple is credited with inventing the word “app,” in the particular sense of a small mobile software application (the Mac App Store came later), as part of other trademarks they owned and it hadn’t genericized into a descriptive term yet.

https://www.osnews.com/story/24882/the-history-of-app-and-th...

This we knew – but the great thing about the Oxford English Dictionary is that they list the earliest known usage (to them, at least). This is the first starting point when it comes to the history of the abbreviation – and according to the OED, the earliest known usage was in 1985, in a product name… From Apple. In July 29 of that year, Info World wrote about MacApp[:]

The essence of the new wave of evangelism for Apple and IBM is to provide software developers with the tools they need to reduce software development time, a costly and labor-intensive process. One step in that direction is Apple’s recent beta testing of the new programming tools called Mac App, developed at apple by Larry Tesler. This is a Smalltalk shell that goes on top of Lisa Pascal and reduces program development time by providing frequently used components of the operating system.

That said, the article mentions similar usage by Ashton-Tate the same year, so who knows. But it wouldn’t surprise me if “it’s an Apple product term” was their argument to the USPTO.

It does seem like any usage before that was as an explicit abbreviation (or file extension, in the case of Atari ST GEM) for “Application” as opposed to “App” as its own word.

I’m a 50something lifelong computer geek and don’t remember using “app” as a standalone term of art until the iPhone came out, though I didn’t go so far as to hit the Jargon File to see when “killer app” started.

But generally, things that aren’t already words in the dictionary get higher trademark protection, particularly when you tack other words on to them. “Application Store” wouldn’t have flown, for example, and probably “app” as a standalone wouldn’t have either.

The article was sparked by Apple trademarking “App Store” and causing legal issues for others using it. While I haven’t read it past the bit the search found, I’m sure the article has more to say towards your question.

On a very special episode of MythBusters…

Oh, hi! Long time.

Don’t take my words as being too critical of the Android version FWIW, at least the Gecko one. I think that’s been one of the few mobile successes. But what I personally perceived as discounting desktop as a viable strategy was a gross mistake IMO.

Yeah, I agree FxOS was largely a dead end for Moz by the time it was killed and there wasn’t much choice there. My take was partners pretty much lost faith when it became obvious we’d never have performance parity with Android even if feature parity were reached.

But I’m not sure what they—or Moz—expected. FxOS was running core apps on multiple layers of browser stack. Even a Dalvik-based app was going to be faster than that for having a JIT optimized to that purpose, much less native core system utilities. WebAssembly could possibly have mitigated some of that, but partners were universally putting FxOS on the lowest of low end smartphones since cheap was the selling point for them.

I also think the split personality it put on development of Gecko was a huge detriment to Mozilla’s momentum. The browser-focused devs plainly didn’t appreciate the pressures FxOS put on the stack. Then there was the bit where a zero-day in the browser would have been unfixable without potentially compromising all the phones that wouldn’t be able to update for weeks or months later across a disjointed ecosystem.

I left largely over my dissatisfaction with how Mozilla handled that whole period of time and particularly the FxOS effort. It really damaged my impression of Moz as an effective org, primarily due to the leadership and execution issues and what struck me as extreme tunnel vision.

I hear you that after being on that path, Moz was pretty much forced to fold when partners walked away, but maybe some unrealistic expectations were set in the first place. And maybe there wasn’t enough consideration for how that half-pivot would divide the org and drag on Gecko.

I do think the opportunity for feature phones could have panned out technically, though the way reorgs played out may still have gutted it. But when I said I don’t know if it would have advanced browser synergy or the open web (i.e. pushed market share back to full-featured Firefox) I’m saying I’m deeply skeptical it would have been anything other than a purely business success.

KaiOS isn’t a mission-based product and just needs to succeed in being adopted. Moz would have needed to make it mean something. Plus I’m just not sure the audience for feature phones and the audience for web-standards-requiring websites are the same. That’s why I think brand recognition and cash influx were the only real potential gains there.

I think IOT played out well after I was gone, but another comment on here suggests it was never a serious effort so much as a tactical positioning.

Re: TV OS, if you mean Panasonic I’m not sure exactly how much of Mozilla’s code actually survived into that product. I’m pretty sure I’d heard that there was a lot of work done on under the hood on Panasonic’s part to make it viable, while keeping the look and feel plus the FxOS brand on the label.

Maybe that was exaggerated or Moz took a more active role in it after I left, but I didn’t get the impression we had many people in the org dedicated to it when the first implementation happened.

I personally tend to think if Moz had focused on desktop browser development rather than thrashing around on mobile versions on restricted platforms where they’d always be second-class citizens, smartphone OS moonshots well after that was very likely to succeed, Pocket at a time OSes were introducing their own reading lists, etc. that they could have at least sustained the open web standards goal Firefox used to achieve.

Instead they freaked out about overall browser usage going to mobile, and threw shit against the wall trying to make some kind of mobile strategy stick no matter how late they were to the table. But I personally still use desktop universally at work, and sometimes browse that way at home too. Maybe Moz could have maintained significant market share in just that space and still be more relevant today.

To be fair, that was more Gary Kovacs and immediate successors as CEOs than Mitchell. But Mitchell had a lot of influence on direction even then, and could have decided to pivot back to core competencies once she did take the reins directly. Servo looked pretty promising to me. At least we got Rust’s success out of it. Maybe she could have leveraged that more.

Fabrice seems pretty convinced that embracing feature phones would have made the difference, and KaiOS shows that the FxOS platform certainly is more well-suited for that than for smartphones. She was involved in the decision-making around killing FxOS right as Mozilla started exploring pivoting to feature. Whether that would’ve helped drive Mozilla’s higher-level goals of browser synergy and making sure the web stayed open, I don’t know, but you’d at least still know their name as a thriving organization.

Or if data privacy is the way to go, maybe pivoting to that focus years ago would have been successful. I guess we’ll see how much potential it has, but I bet it would be even more if Mozilla and Firefox still commanded the respect they used to.

I just think Mozilla had way more routes to success than the routes they picked. Almost everything they tried either struck me as too late, too unlikely, or something nobody really wanted. That’s what I meant by questionable execution.

FWIW, my take back in 2010-2015 when I was at Moz wasn’t quite that cynical. I’m sure that was at least some of it, at least after Chrome started really gaining users, but Mozilla and Google had a good relationship for a long time before Chrome was popular.

Mozilla used to actually have their offices on Google campus (even though I started after the HQ had moved out, I was still given a Google badge for their cafeteria) and I believe the early Chrome team already had ex-Moz people on it. Goals around standards, etc, were relatively aligned, at least early on.

When Mozilla decided to go rapid release, Google was the one who walked them through how to do it (then Mozilla bungled it by diving into a very accelerated schedule and not considering how it affected add-ons, but that’s another story). It was all pretty friendly.

I’m also pretty sure Bing offered similar incentives for referrals, just without the flat-fee contract Moz had with Google, and they didn’t have the same antitrust issue in that particular space. Referrals and default search provider status have always been part of the financial model between browsers and search engines. Dealing that value back to themselves is one of the reasons search providers publish browsers.

I was pretty surprised when there was such a huge backlash against Apple for that recently since it had been SOP in the business for a long time.

To your point though, given the current market share of Firefox, $500M has to be about more than that if that’s an accurate number.

Pretty sure it popped up to closer to $300M/yr around the time you left, at least based on the internal rumor mill around the value of the three-year Google contract immediately prior to the Y! debacle.

That said, since it was MoCo and not MoFo, I think the specific numbers were never divulged. Take the rumor mill and my recollection with a grain of salt.

Market share was/is a means to an end.

Mozilla positioned Firefox in part as a reference for how web standards should behave (*), particularly for ones where Chrome/IE/Safari diverged with competing non-standard implementations.

But for that to work in the real world, not just at W3C debates, you need major websites to care if they function correctly on your browser. And for them to care, enough people have to be using your browser that these companies see a business case for spending money to add your browser to project plans and QA test matrixes as a compatibility target.

That decision is heavily informed by market share, whether global or as a percentage of the site’s own access records. In particular, double digits is a rough threshold for that, and that was pretty much Mozilla’s target. 50% would be wonderful but 10%+ let them assert standards in the ecosystem via the implicit threat of users leaving a site if Firefox didn’t work.

As a test professional at the time, one of the most discouraging things I saw after leaving Mozilla was Firefox dropping off all the test plans I knew about when they hit single digits. I’d poke at that decision where I had influence, and would basically get back a response that “Firefox is dead, just look at the numbers.”

(*) I’m pointedly ignoring some of the more aggressive introductions of things like device-interface APIs crucial to making a browser engine act like a phone OS, etc. Ultimately, someone has to build a working implementation before it’ll become a standard, anyway. There’s a race aspect for new ground and Mozilla was part of that.

But generally speaking, where there was an actual recognized standard, Firefox used it and not some homegrown alternative. So websites also had to develop to that standard to function correctly for a significant percentage of users.

Worth noting Fabrice was one of the primary devs on FxOS, and I believe the primary dev on KaiOS. I'm pretty sure he's familiar with the history.

I also worked for Mozilla in that time period (I left just before they canceled FxOS) and found Mitchell to be an inspiring leader. OTOH, the track record over the last few years suggests she's not as great an executor.

Worth mentioning DBT is a subset of CBT, not a synonym.

https://www.skylandtrail.org/4-differences-between-cbt-and-d...

DBT originally stems from therapies for Borderline Personality Disorder. While it has applications beyond that for things like anxiety and bipolar management, it may or may not be the right answer for people who don't struggle with negative impulses or behaviors.

I'd probably start with sources on more general CBT for someone just needing a nudge or who is more depressive than impulsive.

“Acquired” is only really used for the purchase of businesses, at least in headlines, and especially in tech news. The awkward translation is indeed a garden path sentence when delivered to this crowd.

About the only real counterargument is that you could also interpret the translation as trading the business for 110,000 students and teachers. That would not be garden path as it would be (accidentally) misleading wording in its entirety!

Grammarly is one of those services with an obscene base price and fat discounts available, though. I’ve been getting it for $60-70 a year for a while now via 50+% off Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.

They also have AI-based functionality along with traditional correction. Their correction works pretty well for me, but their client software blows and hasn’t gotten better with time, to your point.

OTOH, my employer has vetted and allows Grammarly but doesn’t allow random AI-based products or OpenAI API utilities that take my own key, for security reasons. I suspect a lot of others who actually would need to use a grammar checker professionally might be in a similar position.

I remember the Buddy Holly video but I think I may never have found the Plympton videos. I missed out—was a huge Plymptoons fan back then.

I do remember discovering the video for GWAR’s Saddam A-Go-Go inside the Beavis & Butthead adventure game that came out that same year. Weird what sticks in our heads. Good times.

Would it? How much total throughput and power would that be, vs a skinny USB-C PD 3.2 Gen 2x2 cable that can carry a 100W or more along with 20 Gbps of data? How about 2 or 3 of them in a wrapper?

The Quest can be a PCVR headset with a 3.2 Gen 1 cable, ie 5 Gbps. How different is this?

I’m pretty sure outboarding most of the hardware that’s not speaker, camera, or screen is plenty doable. It just blows Meta’s selling point of making it a self-contained device. I’d probably prefer it though, especially if I could attach the outboard module to the back of the head strap as a counterweight.