Nozilla

Posted 2024/11/15

Via Lunduke:

The Mozilla Foundation has released their latest annual report — covering the time up through December of 2022 (Mozilla’s reporting always lags by one year) — and something peculiar leaps out of the data:

* The compensation of the Mozilla CEO has skyrocketed (by millions)
* While the Mozilla revenue drops
* And the Firefox Marketshare takes a nosedive

As a child of the internet, I have been following Mozilla since day 1 (even before that, as I was a user of Netscape 1.1, but that lineage is complicated!) Talk about an organization that has just completely lost its way. Mozilla is like a non-profit that is also trying to operate like a start-up beholden to its VCs. They started chasing growth at all costs while largely ignoring (or de-emphasizing) the product that got them there: Firefox.

The non-profit org, which oversees the corporation that develops the Firefox web browser, insists it will continue its advocacy mission…

Except they laid off the entire advocacy team!

I get that there was some fear, inevitably, the Google money firehose would be shut off. But at no point have I gotten the sense that the non-profit portion of Mozilla was ever doing anything to secure a future beyond that. If the browser is the mission, and the funding of that mission is cloudy, what does your endowment look like?

I love the web. The web has been the single greatest democratization of information and communication that the world has ever seen. Technologically speaking, the web is strongest when there is a diverse ecosystem of web browsers competing and bringing innovations to a 30-year old platform. We saw what happened when Internet Explorer had a 95% marketshare: stagnation and terrible user experiences. If you suffered through the IE days, you know what will happen in a future that is only Chrome. We need Firefox (and Safari!)

Harris for President

Posted 2024/11/04

It has been official for a while, and should come as little surprise to any one who knows me, but I joined fellow Reagan, Bush, McCain, and Romney alumni in endorsing Kamala Harris for President.

We must vote for the kind of country we want to live in – ideally one where freedom, justice, and equality are cherished values, not just ideals for the privileged few. As a conservative who’s come to realize that our shared values should transcend party lines, I’m proud to endorse Kamala Harris for President.

It is possible that we will each pay a heavy price for standing against Trump, but I do it proudly and without hesitation. I still believe in the great American experiment.

The Mac Mini

Posted 2024/10/29

Via 9to5Mac:

Apple’s exciting week of Mac announcements continues today with the introduction of the completely redesigned Mac mini. The new Mac mini is powered by the M4 and M4 Pro chips and features a significantly smaller design. It’s also the first Mac with support for Thunderbolt 5 connectivity.

I think this is a great update. I’m not sure it needed to be smaller, but I love that they were able to pack pretty much everything that the prior Mini had into this revision (minus some USB-A ports; keeping one of those would have been nice, but it’s probably time to start letting those ports go…we’ve had the form factor since 1998!) Love that 10GbE is still a BTO option.

I think that Thunderbolt 5 (only available on the Pro version) is a really underrated update. We’ve been stuck at basically the same version of Thunderbolt since 2016 (TB4 ran at the same speed as TB3, but it mandated some previously optional features and improved on security.) Assuming the 3rd party ecosystem follows, this unlocks a ton of fast storage, expansion options, and improved display technologies. That alone will be enough to have me looking at an upgrade from my launch-day M1 Max 14″ to whatever iOS announced tomorrow. I’m a big fan of the single-cable lifestyle, but I definitely feel the pinch sometimes when I’m driving my Studio Display, 10GbE, and a locally attached SSD through my single dock connection. Granted, that is not often, but usually when I have returned from a weekend of shooting a club volleyball tournament, and I have 200GB of photos to process and backup.

The Zappa Family

Posted 2024/08/09

Via The WaPo:

There is a gap between being edgy and being mean, between caring for someone as best you can and as much as that person truly needs. But how you measure these things depends on how you were brought up — standards and expectations imprinted upon you early, even if you spend the rest of your years making sense of them — and guides how you treat the other people in your life.

For the Zappa children, raised with one foot in the counterculture and one foot in show business, it’s an emotional calculus that became ever more complex after the 2015 death of their mother, the keeper of her late husband’s challenging legacy.

WaPo: Trump loyalist pushes ‘post-constitutional’ vision for second term

Posted 2024/06/08

Via Washington Post:

“We are living in a post-Constitutional time,” Vought wrote in a seminal 2022 essay, which argued that the left has corrupted the nation’s laws and institutions. Last week, after a jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records, Vought tweeted: “Do not tell me that we are living under the Constitution.”

Vought aims to harness what he calls the “woke and weaponized” bureaucracy that stymied the former president by stocking federal agencies with hardcore disciples who would wage culture wars on abortion and immigration. The proposals championed by Vought and other Trump allies to fundamentally reset the balance of power would represent a historic shift — one they see as a needed corrective.”

Don’t get me wrong — this is bad. Trump and his handlers like Vought are a true threat to our country. But even if Trump loses, the danger they represent remains, lurking in the background and waiting for the next opportunity to seize power. The Christofascist threat is real and they will not stop until all of us are subservient to their ideology of hate.

Quick Hits

Posted 2024/06/05

Just added a new section to this site, the Notes page. This is just a feed of my Mastodon posts, excluding replies. Sometimes I have something I want to write about here, but it doesn’t really deserve a full post, just a quick shitpost like I used to fire off on Twitter.

The Omelette

Posted 2023/10/05

I just finished watching both seasons of The Bear (one of the best things I have watched this year; I will have more to write about it later.) Given the restaurant premise of the show, a lot of different dishes are prepared on screen, and most of them look incredibly delicious.

One of the dishes that caught my eye was the relatively simple French omelette prepared by Sydney in a later episode. The entire scene is beautifully shot and cathartic to watch (in a show that is anything but chill.) I tried my hand at her technique and recipe this morning:

A little overdone on this first try, but it was still easily the best omelette I have ever made. Possibly the best I have ever eaten. Wow.

Yes, it has crushed sour cream and onion chips sprinkled on top. Yes, those are absolutely vital to the yumminess of this dish. Incredible!

I get texts

Posted 2023/08/21

Sometimes I get political fundraising texts:

Screenshot 2023 08 21 at 6 34 56 PM

Don’t tease me like this, you’re giving me hope.