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Wed Dec 16 06:00:01 EST 2020 ======================================== Slept from eleven to seven without waking. Slight chance of snow early in the morning, then snow in the late morning and afternoon. Accumulations around an inch. Highs in the lower 30s. East winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent. Worked on Gneto, my Gemini proxy. Watched anime. Watched the snow fall. Called Mom and chatted for an hour. Drain-O'd the tub, washed a load of laundry, watered plants. https://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2020/11/firefox-was-always-enough.html > At some point I took to asking people in Mozilla: what is the purpose of Firefox? This was during Firefox 3 days when optimism for the product was low. > I expected a few answers, like to give the users of Firefox a great experience, or to give us a delivery vehicle for our principles of autonomy and privacy, or to keep the web relevant and vibrant in people’s lives. > And I did get all those answers, but also one I didn’t expect: Firefox exists just to give Mozilla a seat at the table when the web is defined. > The standards don’t just apply to Firefox users. They affect all browsers and many devices that aren’t even browsers. So if Mozilla can positively affect these standards it can benefit everyone. > One good way to get a seat at the table is to be an important implementor. > With this in mind the argument is: Firefox has to be popular enough that Mozilla has at least a veto over problematic points of standards, and the ability to vigorously advance positive standards. > This is a real thing at Mozilla. It still is to this day, even if exact kind of influence Mozilla is trying to apply has changed. > This is terrible for Firefox. > I see four visions for advancement of browsers: > Quantitative improvement: The browser is window onto websites, and we should make it the best window it can be. Faster, lighter. Everything it is now, but more. (See Servo) > All encompassing: The web hosts most of our desktop applications. It should host even more of them, it should host mobile applications, it should be the universal platform. More APIs. More ways to package and present sites. (See Project Fugu) > Technological pessimism: The internet is terrible and we should make it less terrible. We need better privacy. Better security. More process isolation, more sandboxing. Less APIs and more restrictions on those APIs. (See Unfck the Internet or Brave) > A better browser: The browser is used to… browse. To manage tasks, multitask, remember history, manage navigation, get us back to where we want to go. It’s an information tool. Browser should have better tab and task management, easier recall, tools to capture and move information. (See new browsers like Vivaldi, Shift, and up and coming things like [Amna or The Browser Company) > Chrome started out very focused on quantitative improvement but seems to be expanding towards all encompassing. > When I started at Mozilla it was focused on all encompassing (culminating in Firefox OS). But Firefox was frankly underwater quantitatively, and Quantum represented a bit of a pivot to quantitative improvement. Now it’s focused on technological pessimism in the form of a security and privacy emphasis. > An organization with a love of the web and an understanding of the technology underneath the web could do something great. If only Firefox could be enough for Mozilla. I mean… existing to influence standards may not be good for Firefox, but it's probably good for the web. So, technological pessimism seems to have been a long-standing, if not always primary, theme for Mozilla. Firefox suffers from having priorities not entirely aligned with Mozilla, while Mozilla is captive to funding from Firefox. Or, rather, Mozilla holds Firefox captive. This is one of the big reasons I'm so into the Gemini protocol — it's simple enough that it's possible for individuals to build an independent client. Chatted with Jay and Ed on Signal. Servings: grains 9/6, fruit 2/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 2/2, meat 2/3, nuts 0/0.5 Brunch: cheese curls, banana, pear Lunch: egg and cucumber wrap, coffee Afternoon snack: cookies Dinner: spaghetti

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