A lot of folks have asked me if I'm serious about relaunching Mozilla after their inevitable collapse.
What I can say with confidence is that if the brand assets become available, I would absolutely look into purchasing them, in the same manner Perifractic "resurrected" Commodore. I am no millionaire, so this would have to be a community-driven thing.
Imagine: everyday people like us banding together to resurrect our beloved browser. I'd absolutely do my part to spearhead that.
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So the procedire in question is a colonoscopy. In addition to the diet they've also prescribed laxatives. I just took the first dose a short while ago. Apparently these things work fast.
It's going to be an interesting night.
The original keyboards used long ago had Ctrl, Super, Hyper, Meta, and ALT keys. We now map Meta (i.e. ESC) to the Alt key on our keyboards as a convenience. I do not believe there is a way, on modern keyboards, to have both META and ALT mapped to a key. We can have Super, and Meta. I can't recall if I was able to map Hyper on a modern keyboard.
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If you want a rigorous analysis of why statistical #AI models collapse when continuously trained on their own data without external supervision and constraints, read this amazing paper from last year.
If you want to get a visual intuition of how model collapse looks like, look at this video.
When AI stares at its own reflection for too long, and its inference is purely rooted on statistics rather than reasoning, this becomes statistically inevitable.
Keep this in mind whenever you hear someone talking about “AI models learning from their own outputs” without addressing the statistical parrot issue.
AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data - Nature
Analysis shows that indiscriminately training generative artificial intelligence on real and generated content, usually done by scraping data from the Internet, can lead to a collapse in the ability of the models to generate diverse high-quality out…Nature
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The sad thing is, this actually looks official, knowing how Google neutered Incognito mode on Chrome.
Google is actually petty enough to rub that fact in people's faces by making this meme into something official.
posted about my Apple ID woes, please share widely?
20 Years of Digital Life, Gone in an Instant, thanks to Apple
Here’s how Apple “Permanently” locked my Apple ID. I am writing this as a desperate measure. After nearly 30 years as a loyal customer, authoring technical books on Apple’s own programming languages (Objective-C and Swift), and spending tens upon ten…Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison (hey.paris)
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glad you have the luxury and privilege to spend exorbitant amounts of time fucking with linux servers but not all of us do.
btw i noticed you arent the admin of your instance. also your site and code is hosted on github (microsoft).
I've been playing around with keymaps. Apparently they can be used to create menus that give the user a visual list of options. The canonical way to make them is aparently with make-sparse-keymap to create the menu and define-key to add options to it, but this causes some confusing behaviour.
Take the following example:
(let ((menu (make-sparse-keymap "My menu")))
(define-key menu "a"
'(menu-item "Foo" foo))
(define-key menu "b"
'(menu-item "Bar" bar))
menu)Yields the following:
(keymap (98 menu-item "Bar" bar) (97 menu-item "Foo" foo) "My menu")Each new entry is added to the top of the list, so when the menu is displayed, they're listed in reverse order. This is very counter intuitive.
Now, I understand that the nature of lists in lisp make inserting an element at the top of the list less computationally expensive, but when you've already got to walk the whole list anyway to ensure the key binding isn't already present, this no longer feels like an adequate excuse.
Am I missing something?
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Define key is my least favorite way to make a keymap.
I like defvar-keymap, bind-keys, if you've got a map create already. Like a sparce map.
General is nice too. But then you have to have that installed.
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M-x function calls because I had such a hard time finding key sequences that weren't used by something else. Since learning that C-c /[A-Za-z]/ is reserved for user-defined keybindings, I've gone mad with power.reshared this
C-z suspends Emacs and drops me back to the terminal until I issue the fg command to bring it back. I use this for issuing git commands. I could probably do this from within Emacs, but I haven't bothered to figure it out.
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@Zenie That's an option, but my concern is that the reason they might be vague in the docs is because the specific error might change in future versions.
Perhaps I'm just being overly paranoid.
Usually errors are obvious and for very specific reasons. You can just catch them and print the message so if anything does change you will know.
I don't think it's worth worrying about.
#PSA: Calling someone cringe is cringe.
Just let folx like stuff 
Don't try to blow out someone else's candle because yours is dim.
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I've long known that certain ASCII control sequences could be mimicked by holding control and pressing a key, e.g.: backspace is CTRL-H, newline is CTRL-J, but I was today years old when I learned that the ASCII control code is just the ASCII value of the key being pressed along with control bitwise and-ed with 0x1f.
It feels weird that I hadn't caught onto this sooner.
Welp, it looks like our Instacart account is probably cooked. We need to find a replacement for that income quickly.
Fortunately, we were already in the process of trying to do that because of the wear and tear it was putting on the car. I have a few irons in the fire, but nothing concrete yet. We need something we can do on an on-demand basis so that we can work when our mental health permits.
I'm notoriously bad at interviewing for jobs. It always involves some element of exaggerating the truth (a.k.a. lying) which I suck at. It turns out for instance that the honest answer to "why do you want to work here?" (so I don't starve and end up homeless) isn't a good answer. 🙃
Looks like we've officially been fired from Instacart. It was the customer's word against ours. In the long run, this is probably a good thing as it was slowly killing our car with all the mileage it was putting on it. It was never meant to be a permanent solution anyway.
Edit: typo
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My partner has been dealing with $condition for a very long time. In that time we have tried many therapies and medications without much success. We have found $medication_a which actually helps, but causes $side_effect which is not sustainable. Fortunately, we've found $medication_b which makes $side_effect tolerable.
She's been on a waiting list to see a specialist for a while and finally had her first appointment today. After a single 30 minute appointment, his solution was to increase $medication_a while completely stopping $medication_b. When she objected about $side_effect (which she'd already told him was the reason for $medication_b) he said to just do $obvious_thing as though we hadn't tried that already.
What's worse is that he faxed the order to our pharmacy canceling her previous prescriptions.
Of course, I am not a doctor but what the hell is this guy thinking??
I think I've been able to pin down what it is that I like about #Emacs so much. When I first started using computers, I was using a TRS-80. If you didn't have a cartridge inserted, It'd boot directly into BASIC where you could program the machine directly. That wasn't a bug, it was a feature.
Modern computing seems to do its best to hide all that stuff away. Everything is treated more like a simple (albeit specialized) appliance, not a powerful machine that can be made to do literally anything you want. Instead, it's about what the various software vendors want it to do.
Emacs by contrast not only gives you all the tools you need to modify it in any way you want, but actively encourages you to do so. It feels a lot more like the computing systems of old. Perhaps that's not for everyone. There's a reason computers were so niche back in the early days. Most people just didn't care to learn what was going on under the hood, and that's valid. There's something to be said for a tool that just works effortlessly out of the box. Also, to be clear, you don't strictly speaking need to dig into the internals to use Emacs, but I prefer for my technology to serve me, and I'm willing to put the effort in to make that happen.
That's why it's a good fit for me.
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I'll spare everyone the details as to why I couldn't.
Welp, I guess it's finally time to retire my jacket. I keep fixing it and it keeps tearing in other places. I got four years out of it, which isn't terrible by modern standards, I suppose.
It turns out they still sell that exact same style of jacket, so maybe Santa will be nice to me this Christmas. In the meantime, I'll just have to fall back on my older coat and just layer sweaters and such underneath.
I use a giant #org-mode repisitory to keep myself organized. I synchronize this repisitory between multiple devices using #git because occasionally I'll find myself out without an internet connection and it's useful for merging when they fall out of sync.
To that end, I frequently find myself issuing the command git commit -am stuff, which makes me feel kind of dirty, but it's just the easiest thing to do.
Luckily no one but me will ever see this repisitory.
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I've now seen two separate YouTubers refer to obscure stories from their past as " the lore".
I mean, really??
So I cancelled my YouTube Music subscription a while back. Interestingly enough, it still works without a paid subscription; they just add anti-features (i.e.: a ton of ads and the inability to navigate away from the app without stopping the music).
As it turns out, all these anti-features go away if you use it through a browser with an ad-blocker. I wonder how long it'll take them to lock that down.
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You could try package-build-create-recipe
It will need to be filled in, but if your headers are correct, with author, packages-required, version, etc.
Edit the recipe for your git. You'll be in recipe mode.
Saving it puts it in .../elpa/recipes/
Building it with C-c C-c will make a package and install it in your elpa..
That might teach you what you need.
It will automatically pick up .el and .texi files.
Not eld, but if you have some odd file, you can add the pattern to the recipe. I have an eld which is not in the list of automatic files.
See the contributing doc at GitHub Melpa.
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We've all heard the tale of how to own a Nazi bar, i'm fairly sure.
I was drumming up interest in a local board game group i really enjoy, on my local queer Discord server. I got some interest.
Someone on the board games group's server asked "why did you make a point about us being queer friendly?" Not rudely, just curious.
"Because a lot of community groups are invisibly closed to us. We daren't reveal ourselves because of antipathy to queer folk. This place doesn't do that, at all. So i tell people it's safe, and they feel more comfy coming along."
Someone said, "Oh, so it's like the Nazi bar story, only good." I thought for a moment, and they're right. Sort of. Because unlike Nazis, queer folk aren't an invasive species. We don't push people out. Assholes just self-select choosing not to be associated with a bar that's queer-friendly.
Which is fine, system working as designed.
So...how do we tell the tale of the Queer-friendly bar, and the positive feedback loop that can occur when a business is explicitly friendly to queer folk?
Cause I think that could be a simple, true, and effective point about the great difference between choosing to be nice to Nazis instead of queer folk. Or vice versa, being nice to queers and bum-rushing the Nazis.
The Nazi Bar story is one we all know. Anyone got a proposal for how to do a good tale of how the bar got so lively? "Oh, I bought a drink for this gay fella once, and soon there were loads. But they're great guys, and if ya tell them no, they stop bugging ya, which is giving me weird feelings about how I treat women. And we get a lot fewer assholes, too."
Someone? Got a seed for the good story lurking here? I wanna make us some rippin' good properganda.
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When I lived in San Francisco, once I was wandering around the city and I was hungry so I went into the nearest place that was advertising lunch.
They had really good burgers.
*Years* later I looked the place up and found out it was the neighborhood's gay bar.
I just accidentally dropped my Jinhao 10 #FountainPen and bent the nib slightly (at least it wasn't an expensive pen, right?).
I did my best to bend it back into shape by hand and oddly enough, I kind of like the way it writes now better than before.
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It's been brought to my attention that while #BuyNothing groups are pretty useful, they tend to exist mainly on Facebook. It'd be nice to have such a group for #WaterlooRegion here on the fedi as well.
I'd be happy to set one up, but if there's one that already exists, I'd rather use that than start from scratch. Is anyone aware of such a group here?
#KWAwesome #WRAwesome #Kitchener #Waterloo #Cambridge #Guelph
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FWIW, while I’m not what a # BuyNothing group talks about, the local KW Techs Slack team has a # buylocalandcanadian channel that has great recommendations for local and more-broadly Canadian products, and is focused mainly on independent businesses. It's a great resource, though obviously not fediverse.
Also FWIW, I’d love to see something similar here.
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A comic that I will think about every day for the rest of my life, probably.
(Sauce: analognowhere.com/_/ogmxha/ )
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@Jeremy List I've had this before. It took years to get a conclusive diagnosis. Turns out of was reflux, and two antacids a day typically keeps it in check.
This past week though Katy and I have been sick, and it's upset the balance.
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Ao-freaking-nishki!
yoasif
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Putting my name here to be considered for a job when this happens.
Y'all think I'm joking.
Draken BlackKnight
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •ClaudioM reshared this.
Veronica Explains
in reply to Draken BlackKnight • • •ClaudioM reshared this.
Draken BlackKnight
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •phooky
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Philippe Jadin
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Veronica Explains
in reply to Philippe Jadin • • •Stéphane Calonnec 🗿
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •ClaudioM reshared this.
David
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •I would love to help support if I can. If you are serious and open up a donations fund for this please let me know! Or post a follow up with a link!
Go Linux Mom!
Veronica Explains
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Imagine a reconstituted Mozilla as a cooperative owned by the community they serve.
That's the web we were promised. I'm an optimist and I believe it can happen.
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Bernie Newly Does It, ClaudioM, Shannon Prickett and 🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑 reshared this.
xinit ☕
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Draken BlackKnight
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Guda Blues
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •kuulman
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •progo in NYC
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •This is not a "you can't do it" message, but there will be challenges.
MDN is a massive effort. Maintaining Firefox and its core, or rebuilding it, is practically a state-level project requiring salaries, benefits, a legal department, and the need to attract people who can do the work.
Maybe "rebuild it" is the solution though. LadyBird is not a massive non-profit, and it's been very successful so far on its plan to make a new competing browser core.
dbat
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Esther Payne
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •That would be awesome and so needed. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks we need an independent organisational hard fork. But picking up the pieces and putting it in the hands of the community could work as well.
chaos.social/@onepict/11554929…
Esther Payne
2025-11-14 17:46:08
Only Exception
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Lab148
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •26 Peachez
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •🐜
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •leobard
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •a cooperative is fine, but the members/owners should be the maintainers, not us users. I don't want to be involved in voting a board/steering the org structure.
I want to pay for Firefox for its features.
I want that Firefox / Mozilla start a business model to
motivate the majority of users to pay for development. I want to vote for features/dev priorities.
Stop #enshittification
Stop the ad/search engine based revenue dependency.
Start making the value Mozilla provides to its users visible.
leobard.net/blog/2022/05/18/i-…
四
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •What do they own that we need? Am I missing something? Not trolling here.
WebKit and Gecko are open source (more or less, I’m not up to date on MPL). There’s currently a fair number of browsers based on them, but the non corporate efforts are spread out.
A non-profit organization with the intent to fund free/open/private WebKit/gecko (fork if forced) as well as an official cross platform UI that works with both engines could be created.
I think that would be the tipping point for me to actually put money into something.
Obviously YMMV, and I can’t tell if I’m in a minority here or if many others would be interested.
Would you consider a stream to talk about it with chat?
Choobs
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Kevin Russell
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Hedders
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Sassinake! - ⊃∪∩⪽
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •or as pinboard.in bought del.icio.us. IMO moz://a was peak word-mark.
Welcome to Pinboard—Social bookmarking for introverts!
pinboard.inRandy Hughes-King
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •քʏʀǟȶɛɮɛǟʀɖ
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Christian Berger DECT 2763
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Tau
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •ClaudioM
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •rob los ricos
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Ministerofimpediments
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Here are the likelier outcomes:
1: Does the zombie thing like Radio Shack for another decade.
2: Gets propped up as ‘competition’ for a larger company facing fines/lawsuit.
3: Gets bought by some AI company looking for a plug/play use case.
4: Bought and retired by a larger company.
Patrick H. Lauke
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •gunstick
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •gkrnours
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •ok but imagine.
Wozilla.
like wario but instead of being obssessed with money, gold, castle and minigame, run a decent browser.
Debian used to have a IceWeasel branding for firefox, I'm curious what happened to it
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •‘The French people want to save us’: help pours in for glassmaker Duralex
Kim Willsher (The Guardian)Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •The only real asset (other than the user accounts, of course) the brand has is the code, and all the important code is already available.
For the people who want to see a return of "Netscape", the assets were sold to Sun (now owned by Oracle) and AOL (now owned by Yahoo, now owned by private equity), so good luck with that.
My advice to you would be to get involved with one of the many forks of the Firefox code.
mauvedeity
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •Shadowbottle
in reply to Veronica Explains • • •