shkkmo

> The article has a lot about how they're struggling for money.

Not really. The closest it comes is briefly mentioning some 2024 layoffs.

What the article is discussing is revenue diversification.

> Which is a constant issue for Mozilla.

No, Mozilla has had a consistent and growing revenue stream from Google.

> Which a big reason for that is the low browser share.

In what way? Software development costs have been less than half Mozilla's annual revenue for over a decade.

> He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.

This isn't a direct quote, but voy does the Author of that article not inspire confidence by the way this is worded. "It feels off-mission" should be "It would be antithetical to everything Moxilla standa for". The way this is phrased it feels like Mozilla explored this and decided that the 150 million wasn't worth the reputation hit (yet.)

Edit: I do suspect that the lack of revenue diversity led to product decisions that favored their paying customer's and prevented the types of browser innovation that would have competed more successfully for market share against that paying customer.

The HDMI Forum isn't "most people", it's a non-profit run by some of the largest companies in the space that self describes this way.[1]

I think it is reasonable to complain when "someone" is being so hypocritical and arguably engaging in anti-competitive practices. How do the crazy NDAs in any way server the self stated mission of the forum?

> [1] https://hdmiforum.org/about/

Chartered as a nonprofit, mutual benefit corporation, the mission of the HDMI Forum is to:

    Create and develop new versions of the HDMI Specification and the Compliance Test Specification, incorporating new and improved functionality
    Encourage and promote the adoption and widespread use of its Specifications worldwide
    Support an ecosystem of fully interoperable HDMI-enabled products
    Provide an open and non-discriminatory licensing program with respect to its Specifications

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> A presumably short-term price spike in RAM of all things is a non-issue. It is a luxury good that only a very small number of people care about

Um... What?

Pretty much every adult owns one or more items with DRAM chips in them and depends on businesses that use even more.

The supply crunch will effect a surprising spread of the economy given how ubiquitous computers are now.

Looking at delivery dates, the dram price blip could last over a year and the price blips further down could last even longer.

> We have needed a "Jeep of Laptops" for a while, maybe someone needs to spec out a fully open source design that any manufacturer can target.

I'm not sure if this counts in your book, but releasing all this stuff is closer than anyone else is to that dream.

> https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/Framework-Laptop-16

> They can ride their current street rep the same way Kleenex did.

Kleenex was one product of many and launched by an already 50 year old company. I'm not sure in what sense they "rode" the Kleenex brand, but it would probably have involved being able to sell that product profitably...

> they've got time to play the long game.

They have a couple of years of runway, not sure how that gives them room to focus on the long game.

> How exactly that relates to GDP has no relevance, whatsoever.

You are claiming that the increased spending on advertising is due to the internet. The relationship between GDP and ad spending pretty clearly indicates that the internet was not the cause of increased ad spend, except in as much as it increased GDP.

If the internet has any effect on ad spend growth, you would have seen the growth rates of GDP and ad spend diverge with the birth of the internet.

To see how clearly wrong you are consider this, part of GDP growth is population growth. You are claiming that population growth is irrelevant to ad spend growth?

> It should be beyond obvious that this has basically no relationship whatsoever to modern advertising.

Even your own numbers pretty clearly indicate that the pricing can be equivalent, which was my point.

> Obviously GDP growth does not magically make spending on something increase.

Its not magic, but spending on certain types of things do increase with GDP. Insisting that they don't, despite the evidence that they do historically because it is inconvenient for your argument isn't convincing.

> And similarly obviously classifieds didn't have even remotely near the same reach.

You are claiming that a classified in 1970 would not routinely reach tens of thousands of people?

> as opposed to graphical images, or even videos, imposed on people against their will

The nature of advertising has changes and I don't really doubt it has been made more harmful. What I don't see is a line between that and your fantastical claim that the internet is somehow a net negative.

> In the internet era you have high reach low cost options such that for less than $100, like $30 adjusted to 1980 dollars, you can hit tens of thousands of people.

You could buy a classified with the same or better reach and same price in 1980.

> Your GDP thing is a complete red herring. GDP has no relevance on the meaning of increases in advertising.

You've claimed that internet cause ad spending to grow. Ad spending only grew because the GDP grew so you can't blame the internet for it.

> Yes it is increasing exponentially

Again, because GDP is increasing exponentially.

Also your graph doesn't show total spend, only the breakdown by sector.

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> The study used ad spend as a proxy for ads viewed

Yes, clearly that was the intent. That doesn't mean you can generalize from your proxy to the thing you have a hard time measuring.

> So ad spend is going up at the same time that the number of ads per spend is increasing, at a rate substantially faster than during their study period.

It seems like you are just making up facts.

The fact is that global spending on advertising is a fairly steady percentage of the GPD. It does occilate a little up and down, but the "exponential" growth you are talking about is merely the exponential growth of GDP.

Thus your argument that internet has increased ad spend and thus decreased happiness is false.

Addionaly, while this is also hard to quantify, the trends for cost per ad view does seem to be moving in the opposite direction. The cost of an impression seems to be moving upwards, not downwards.

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> 3% decline in satisfaction was indeed a lot

That is 3% if you double ad spend. You've failed to demonstrate that the internet increased ad spend at all, let alone came anywhere near doubling it.

> Or now if you learn that economies, especially European, grow dramatically slower

I just was telling you what your own source claimed, not endorsing those claims...

> behaving like somebody on the defensive desperately trying to argue against something but having no foundation beyond the dislike of a seemingly inescapable conclusion.

Perhaps you should re-read the comment you just left...

> And advertising spending is increasingly exponentially. Good numbers on ad spend are available here [1]

I don't see a single place in that PDF that lists historical ad spend data. You do realize that is a "forecast" not a mearement?

And even that forecast contradicts the point you are trying to argue. It projects that ad spend will grow exponentially...at a rate lower than GDP.

So again, the only evidence here that the Internet increased advertising spending is by arguing that the Internet increased GDP.

> Ad spending was estimated at growing around 14% per year

This is false. The only place that numer was used in your cited text was here:

>> We forecast paid search to grow at an average rate of 14% a year to 2016

So that isn't a measurement, it is a forecast. It is also not for all ad spending growth, but for "paid search".

I too dislike mass advertising, but if you wanna argue against it you need to do MUCH better.

I didn't claim it would be easy. I do claim that it will be more effective than pretending that charging people to get on the bus will have any real impact.

In a clean room design, the person doing the implementation needs to have never seen the original. So the same would apply to the human or GenAI doing that in this case.

Homeless already often get access to free or cheap passes, often that allow unlimited rides.

Insisting that we charge everyone a bus fare because we think otherwise it might make it eaier to homeless people to use the bus is not only uninformed, but also heartless.

If you have problems with homeless people on buses, then figure out why those people aren't in a better shelter and solve that problem.

> I'm somewhat unsurprised that my off the cuff hypothesis has been tested, and is indeed likely accurate.

That study is a correlation with self reported satisfaction. The effect size is that a doubling of ad spend results in a 3% change in satisfaction. I struggled to find good numbers but it appears as if ad spending in the USA has been a more or less constant percentage of GDP growth.

Thus the only real conclusion you can draw from your argument is that any increase in unhappiness caused by the internet was caused by its associated GDP growth increasing ad spend per capita.

Personally, I do think advertising has become more damaging precisely due to the internet but good luck proving it.

> And a practical point on this topic is that the benefits of the internet are, in practice, fringe, even if freely available to everyone

Ok, nevermind. I can't take anything else you say seriously when you call the ways the the internet has improved people's lives "fringe". I take it you never tried to take a bus pre-internet? Drive a car across the cohntry? Or lookup any information? The internet's effects on people is so far from fringe that it has seeped into almost everything we do at a fundamental level. Perhaps because of that you can't see it.

The positive benefits in education, science research and logistics are hard to understate. Mass advertising existed before the internet. Can you be more explicit about which downsides you thibk the additional mass advertising on the internet caused that can come anywhere close to the immeasurable benefits provided by the internet?

> but if it operates in a free market then it has to compete

There is no such thing as an actual "free market", nor should there be. Markets need rules to operate otherwise you get fraud and "unhealthy" competition like sabotage and assassinations.

> Socialism can indeed only ends one way and that is the removal of individual freedoms.

That's like saying that capitalism only ends one way and that is slavery.

In reality, there is no inherently slippery slope in either direction. There is a spectrum of ways to aporoach market regulation and individual freedom with various tradeoffs.

Blind partisan rhetoric like yours doesn't help uncover what those tradeoffs are so we can make good decisions. Instead it spreads ignorance and division.

Let me introduce you the concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Instead of blaming people, perhaps it is better to look at the systemic factors that we can change to help people who are already playing life on hard mode.

Your source lists wage growth during that period as 13.2%

Meanwhile inflation over that period is significantly higher at 19.18%.

So, no, low end wage growth has not kept up with inflation.

> Moreover, I think the article author would call for those leaders to step down if he thought that would be effective.

You are welcome to believe that. However putting words in other people's mouth doesn't lead to a productive conversation and so is against the site guidlines.

> Rochko wanted to step down, which forced Mastodon to come up with a succession plan. So I'm not sure why praise is due for this.

Because Rochko chose not to go with picking a new BDFL to replace him. Instead he setup a system where there will be no BDFL, which is what is being praised. I'm not sure why you are struggling with this concept so much...

> You ignored my question, though: "how do you know that Rails and WordPress don't already have their own succession plans?"

I ignored the question since it was clearly made in bad faith. I never made such a claim.

Edit: I'll also posit that secret succession plans don't build the same trust or provide the same benefits as a public plan.

> 1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge.

How is the french judge "rogue"?

How is a ICC warrant "extra territorial"? It only calls for the arrest of the individual inside ICC member countries.

> We're talking about investments that range well in the tens of million of dollars. It's an insignificant drop in the bucket. The design team's salaries alone eclipse that value. On top of that, a single engine alone sells for thousands. Is this hypothetical regulatory cost that high if it can be covered by selling a few dozen units?

I think you missed the context here. Revey, the company being asked to do these certifications, doesn't make diesel engines for semi-trucks. The company makes an electric "powered converter dolly" which puts a mini trailer between the semi truck and trailer that uses batteries and electric motors to reduce the amount of diesel burnt per mile.

It's clever solution, there are externalities to consider (increased truck weight and length, changes to turning behavior, etc) but expensive certification per motor to prove that giving a truck an extra electric push doesn't increase the emissions doesn't strike me as making sense.

The person that was killed was the person who started the violence, the wife. I would posit that instead physically attacking someone who comes over to apologize, you should try listening first.

Also, if your wife and her family are that crazy, give them time to cool down before you put yourself in that situation...

> Those who use AI as tool today will replace those that aren't tomorrow.

Unless they let their skills atrophy by offloading them to AI. The things they can do will be commodified and low value.

I suspect there will be demand for those who instead chose to hone their skills.

> I don't think my interpretation is a stretch.

It isn't charitable and I don't think it adds to the discussion.

> Also, from a comment by the article author: "I feel that part of the problem with WordPress and Rails is that that there is no model for replacing poor governance."

He is explicitly calling out the lack of a governance replacement model, not calling out the failure to choose to step down by those leaders.

> Was there a Mastodon succession plan before Rochko unexpectedly stepped down?

No, but there should have been. What if he had been hit by a bus?

Not having governance and plans for sucession means that the only option for change is "non-peaceful" which means that when people think a change is required there will be problems. I would argue that many of these problems in these projects is caused more by this than by the particlar bad leaders.

To me that memo is pretty clearly a sacarstic version of reductio ad absurdum.