Matrix 1.12, performance improvements for sliding sync, the birth of gomuks web. That and much more happened This Week in Matrix!

matrix.org/blog/2024/10/18/thi…

This Week in Matrix 2024-10-18

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

^{Thib (matrix.org)}

On this day (or near it) in 2015, I joined the Mozilla project by starting work as a full-time employee of Mozilla Corporation. I’m two hardware refreshes in (I was bad for doing them on time, leaving my 2017 refresh until 2018 and my 2020 refresh until 2022! (though, admittedly, the 2020 refresh was actually pushed to the end of 2021 by a policy change in early 2020 moving from 2-year to 3-year refreshes)) and facing a third in February. Organizationally, I’m three CEOs and sixty reorgs in.

I’m still working on Data, same as last year. And I’m still trying to move Firefox Desktop to use solely Glean for its data collection system. Some of my predictions from last year’s moziversary post came true: I continued working on client code in Firefox Desktop, I hardly blogged at all, we continue to support collections in all of Legacy Telemetry’s systems (though we’ve excitingly just removed some big APIs), Glean has continued to gain ground in Firefox Desktop (we’re up to 4134 metrics at time of writing), and “FOG Migration” has continued to not happen (I suppose it was one missed prediction that top-down guidance would change — it hasn’t, but interpretations of it sure have), and I’m publishing this moziversary blog post a little ahead of my moziversary instead of after it.

My biggest missed prediction was “We will quietly stop talking about AI so much, in the same way most firms have stopped talking about Web3 this year”. Mozilla, both Corporation and Foundation, seem unable to stop talking about AI (a phrase here meaning “large generative models built on extractive data mining which use chatbot UI”). Which, I mean, fair: it’s consuming basically all the oxygen and money in the industry at the moment. We have to have a position on it, and it’s appropriating “Open” language that Mozilla has a vested interest in protecting (though you’d be excused for forgetting that given how little we’ve tried to work with the FSF and assorted other orgs trying to shepherd the ideas and values of Open Source in the recent past). But we’ve for some reason been building products around these chatbots without interrogating whether that’s a good thing.

And you’d think with all our worry about what a definition of Open Source might mean, we’d make certain to only release products that are Open Source. But no.

I understand why we’re diving into products and trying to release innovative things in product shape… but Mozilla is famously terrible at building products. We’re okay at building services (I’m a fan of both Monitor and Relay). But where we seem to truly excel is in building platforms and infrastructure.

We build Firefox, the only independent browser, a train that runs on the rails of the Web. We build Common Voice, a community and platform for getting underserved languages (where which languages are used is determined by the community) the support they need. We built Rust, a memory-safe systems language that is now succeeding without Mozilla’s help. We built Hubs, a platform for bringing people together in virtual space with nothing but a web browser.

We’re just so much better at platforms and infrastructure. Why we don’t lean more into that, I don’t know.

Well, I _do_ know. Or I can guess. Our golden goose might be cooked.

How can Mozilla make money if our search deal becomes illegal? Maintaining a browser is expensive. Hosting services is expensive. Keeping the tech giants on their toes and compelling them to be better is expensive. We need money, and we’ve learned that there is no world where donations will be enough to fund even just the necessary work let alone any innovations we might try.

How do you monetize a platform? How do you monetize infrastructure?

Governments do it through taxation and funding. But Mozilla Corporation isn’t a government agency. It’s a conventional Silicon Valley private capital corporation (its relationship to Mozilla Foundation is unconventional, true, but I argue that’s irrelevant to how MoCo organizes itself these days). And the only process by which Silicon Valley seems to understand how to extract money to pay off their venture capitalists is products and consumers.

Now, Mozilla Corporation doesn’t have venture capital. You can read in the State of Mozilla that we operate at a profit each and every year with net assets valued at over a billion USD. But the environment in which MoCo operates — the place from which we hire our C-Suite, the place where the people writing the checks live — is saturated in venture capital and the ways of thinking it encourages.

This means Mozilla Corporation acts like its Bay Area peers, even though it’s special. Even though it doesn’t have to.

This means it does layoffs even when it doesn’t need to. Even when there’s no shareholders or fund managers to impress.

This means it increasingly speaks in terms of products and customers instead of projects and users.

This means it quickly loses sight of anything specifically Mozilla-ish about Mozilla (like the community that underpins specific systems crucial to us continuing to exist (support and l10n for two examples) as well as the general systems of word-of-mouth and keeping Mozilla and Firefox relevant enough that tech press keep writing about us and grandpas keep installing us) because it doesn’t fit the patterns of thought that developed while directing leveraged capital.

(( Which I don’t like, if my tone isn’t coming across clearly enough for you to have guessed. ))

Okay, that’s more than enough editorial for a Moziversary post. Let’s get to the predictions for the next year:

• I still won’t blog as much as I’d like,
• “FOG Migration” might actually happen! We’ve finally managed to convince Firefox folks just how great Glean is and they might actually commit official resources! I predict that we’re still sending Legacy Telemetry by the end of next year, but only bits and pieces. A weak shadow of what we send today.
• There’ll be an All Hands, but depending on the result of the US federal election in November I might not attend because its location has been announced as Washington DC and I don’t know if the United States will be in a state next year to be trusted to keep me safe,
• We will stop putting AI in everything and hoping to accidentally make a product that’ll somehow make money and instead focus on finding problems Mozilla can solve and only then interrogating whether AI will help
• The search for the new CEO will not have completed by next October so I’ll still be three CEOs in, instead of four
• I will execute on my hardware refresh on time this February, and maybe also get a new monitor so I’m not using my personal one for work.

Let’s see how it goes! Til next time.

:chutten

chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2024…

#anniversary #mozilla #thisWouldBeThePotteryOrCopperAnniversaryIfThisWasAMarriage #work #yearOfGleanOnTheDesktop

Eight-Year Moziversary

At the end of my post for my seven-year moziversary, I made some predictions about what was to be and now has been the next year of work. And I got them pretty spot-on: Predictions for the next yea…

^chuttenblog

A lot of comedians are really smart. Not just quick witted. Smart as in, they read things, they know things, and they understand things. They keep the mask up though, because it's not as entertaining to know things.🤷🏿‍♂️

Sometimes they let the mask slip though. Here's Roy Wood jr, temporarily letting it slip that he knows things about hurricanes.

tiktok.com/@hignfyus/video/742…

¿Andan buscando #novelas juveniles que #leer o regalar? @raxxie hizo esta #lista con 10 #recomendaciones de lo más variado:
open.substack.com/pub/albertoy…

#literatura #escritoras #literaturajuvenil #escritores #libros #librosrecomendados #listas #LiteraturaMexicana #LIJ #RaquelCastro #AlbertoyRaquel

Diez novelas juveniles que me encantan

Recomendaciones de Raquel

^{Raquel Castro (Alberto y Raquel)}

When Netanyahu is done with his genocide of Palestinians and is done with sacrificing the Israeli hostages the world will still have on its hands an entire population of genocidal men and women who enjoy seeing others suffer.

All of this was preventable were it not for the US and Germany.

#Israel #Gaza

Big news from NBC today archive.is/rd35w

Edit: Cut down in its prime, replaced with an archive link

@Tusky
Hi Tusky Team.
The #moshidon client has a very, very nice feature that allows you to track timelines from self-defined servers.

Is there a plan to implement such a function in #tusky ?

Was wondering if pocketbase.io could possibly be improved upon, then I found pocketpages.dev.

This might just be my new goto tech stack. Kinda hard to argue with a single-file backend, and by the time you outgrow it you can likely afford to transition away.

PocketBase - Open Source backend in 1 file

Open Source backend in 1 file with realtime database, authentication, file storage and admin dashboard

^{pocketbase.io}

Daniel's weekly report October 18, 2024

lists.haxx.se/pipermail/daniel…

libssh2, Undefined behavior, hackerone, commit count, rock-solid curl

This piece on reading the Baby-Sitters Club books as a middle-aged man is pretty decent.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

I’m a similar age to the author, so as I read it I absolutely recognised that feeling of repulsion I’d have as a kid at the very notion of accessing any ‘girl’ content. Wonder-Woman, She-Ra, Supergirl, ‘girly’ pop music, books about girl things; I’d actively have nothing to do with them.

I don’t think I’m unusual in that. Perhaps these days, but not then.

#Bookstodon

As a middle-aged man, I would’ve saved loads on therapy if I’d read Baby-Sitters Club books as a kid

Boys weren’t exposed to emotionally intelligent characters in the books marketed to us. I won’t let my son be a victim of the same social taboo

^{Russell Marks (The Guardian)}

📱 Vyšla nová verze upravené Instagram klienta Honista v10.0. Přináší mnoho zajímavých funkcí a odstraňuje reklamy.

ℹ️ Vychází z oficiálního Instagramu: v347.3.0.41.103

🔗 Článek o aplikaci Honista: infoek.cz/honista-je-instagram…

🔗 Stáhnout instalační APK Honista v10 z OSCloudu: oscloud.cz/s/GTef33KKpJmE24p

For all the email writing pros - comment your best email greeting 🥰

And if you can't decide on the email greeting - we can help!

Read our QUICK GUIDE to starting an email 👉 tuta.com/blog/how-to-start-an-…

#email #emailwriting #tuta #emailtips #encrypted

Summarizing the state of the last few months of #accessibility work, slowly but surely getting a full stack with no vision support across all layers from CLI shell to window management to cooperative clients to uncooperative clients.

arcan-fe.com/2024/10/18/access…

Accessible Arcan : Out of Sight

Our reference desktop environment, Durden, rarely gets covered here these days. This is mostly due to the major features are since long in place and that part of the project is biding its time with…

^Arcan

📏 LA PARADOJA DE LA MEDIDA PRECISA 📏

🪵 Encima de una mesa tenemos dos palos de diferente longitud. Los vamos a medir con un instrumento que cada vez que lo usamos comete un error de medida aleatorio, de una cierta magnitud que llamaremos Sigma. El instrumento se equivocará más o se equivocará menos aleatoriamente cada vez que lo usemos (con un error diferente en cada caso), pero el error en la medición siempre será en torno a Sigma unidades. Eso sí, el instrumento está INSESGADO, es decir, el error es aleatorio pero centrado en el valor real; no tiene una desviación sistemática que ocurra siempre.

❗ Podría parecer que la mejor estrategia es medir cada palo individualmente… pero no. Gracias a una investigación desarrollada por Harold Hotelling en 1944 sabemos que hay una manera más eficiente de medir los dos palos sin tener que darle más vueltas de la cuenta y consiguiendo mayor nivel de precisión.

💡 El error de medida aparece en muchos instrumentos de todo tipo que utilizamos en nuestro día a día.

🧑‍💻 Código de la simulación: github.com/picanum/misc/tree/m…

#estadistica #divulgacion #matematicas

This is Nathan. Nathan is trying to make money by offering overpriced domain names which are otherwise free for registration.

Don't be like Nathan. Get a real job.

🚩Red flags in supply chain security

- "There is a significant amount of unaccounted for mass”
- Hezbollah noticed the battery was draining faster than
expected
- Salesperson who conveyed the offer made a very inexpensive proposition for the pagers, and kept bringing the price down until he was pulled in

reuters.com/graphics/ISRAEL-PA…

Long time no post! Been building a graphical #WASM interpreter!

Very useful when your program is doing funky stuff and you don’t know why… Here’s a sneak peek 👀

The #38C3 presale is starting soon.

If you have worked 15 hours or more as an angel on #37C3 and checked the "Please send me emails" checkbox in your user settings in the angel system, you should receive a voucher on Tuesday next week (October 22nd).

There will also be community vouchers again and the open presale starts on November 12th.

All further details can be found on the event blog: events.ccc.de/2024/10/17/38c3-…

38C3 Presale: Modus Operandi

Wir freuen uns, euch den Vorverkauf für den diesjährigen Chaos Communication Congress anzukündigen. Der Vorverkauf wird dieses Jahr etwas anders ablaufen als letztes Jahr: Wie schon seit vielen Jahren muss unser Vorverkauf sicherstellen, dass der Con…

^{CCC Event Blog}

Found this in a discussion about Strava but applicable to all tech companies

#AI

NEW

How the Chagos sovereignty deal shows the UK’s legal and diplomatic weaknesses.

The agreement suits the United States and Mauritius, but does little for the displaced Chagos islanders.

By me, at Prospect

prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/l…

The Chagos sovereignty deal shows the UK’s legal and diplomatic weakness

The agreement suits the United States and Mauritius, but does nothing for the displaced Chagos islanders

^{www.prospectmagazine.co.uk}

Whether you need to save, find, or access your sensitive data across your devices, 1Password makes it seamless, simple, and secure.

We’ve heard your feedback and we’re excited to share new and updated 1Password features that you’ve been requesting! 🎁

Each of these enhancements helps streamline the many ways you use 1Password, making it easier than ever to manage your digital life. blog.1password.com/product-upd…

1Password product enhancements [Fall edition]: Autosave, sharing, getting started, and more | 1Password

The latest 1Password update improves password manager security and features with simplified authentication, enhanced browser experience, easy autofill and more.

^{Agile Bits, Inc.}