https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/donate/ if you’re actually interested in donating.

Right now browser usage patterns are shifting because people are trying new things. Most of those new things are AI integration. If those new things prove popular or have staying power remains to be seen.
Firefox , in my estimation, is looking to leverage their existing reputation for privacy focus while also adding new technologies that people seem at least interested in trying.
A larger user base means that people will pay more for ads, which if they maintain their user control and privacy standards users are less likely to disable on the default landing screen.

It’s why they keep getting flac for working on privacy preserving advertising technology: they want you to use Firefox because they don’t stop you from disabling the bullshit, and they hope to do the bullshit in a way that makes you not mind leaving it on.

All the AI stuff was mentioned in the same context as discussion about how they need to seek money in ways that aren’t simply being paid by Google.

Their CEO makes more than I think CEOs should earn in general, but the rest of their executives earn relatively normal to low salaries for their roles and the sector.

Non-profit doesn’t mean everyone works for free.

But that’s just saying that instead of using Firefox and not turning on the feature, you’ll use a less maintained version of Firefox where they didn’t enable the feature. I don’t feel like those projects have much value add in the privacy spectrum compared to Firefox, particularly when one of them was owned by an advertising company, and neither of them actually has the resources to maintain or operate a browser in isolation, which is a major concern regarding security and privacy both.

A very vocal portion of the user base, but we don’t actually know what absolute portion cares. I’m personally unlikely to use possible AI features outside translation, but Mozilla has generally done enough that I don’t feel particularly worried they’re going to mess with my privacy or force me to use a feature I don’t want.

For a slightly less dramatic description: the person who’s been in charge of Firefox is now the CEO of Mozilla. In an interview they detailed their vision which includes trying to get money in more ways than just making Google the default search engine, all of which involve growing the user base. He said that ignoring changes in technology doesn’t benefit users or the Internet, and alluded to some previously announced features that are in progress for Firefox, including on device AI tools for things like alttext generation and translation, and upcoming features like an AI browsing window which has more integration with an AI including ones that aren’t on the device depending on what the user selects.
He reiterated that user control of data and privacy remains their biggest selling point, so that has to remain the focus of whatever path they take.

Not necessarily saying our system is wrong, just that the systems being so different can make people confused. :)

The alternatives involve pushing some of the financial costs of driving onto people who create less of these costs

I mean, our current model does that. All insurance does. You pool costs with the expectation that most people won’t need as much as they put in.
A significant amount of our costs are based on statistical, not individual, risks. A 23 year old male is going to be charged more for car insurance regardless of their driving record.

A better system might just be universal car insurance via vehicle registration. Bigger pool, easier to accommodate people who can’t afford adequate coverage, and it better ensures everyone’s cost is covered.
It’s also nice to not have a law forcing people to buy a product from a private company.

I can’t fault people for being confused or frustrated when we also have insurance that’s intended to work as the primary means of payment.

Having our crap tastic excuse for a medical payment system be based in insurance, and then having another mandatory insurance system that’s somehow less helpful is reasonably frustrating.

We’ve actually figured out that that one is basically a “stutter” in your memory encoding system. Consciousness isn’t as continuous as it feels, and so you can get a situation where your memory says it just put some stuff in working memory and consciousness thinks it means your current thoughts or observations. So you end up with a feeling of a past recollection of a current awareness. Because it’s tagged “past” you can’t do anything other than understand it to be in the past, even though you’re actively experiencing it.
A related phenomenon is how you “always” wake up just before the loud noise. Even though you’re asleep you still hear things and process audio. A loud noise happens and your audio processing tells you to wake up. Conscious you wakes up, creating that new memory, and then processes the noise that woke you.

Consciousness is a process that takes place over a duration, not an instant.

Why? The US is where a lot of technology innovation was directed for a lot of the things being discussed here, so it’s kinda limiting to leave them off. Not every US company is bad.
In the os category, it honestly feels odd that they’re going by the distro location, when every alternative they list is based on Linux, which is just as American as firefox.

My standard for an orm is that if it’s doing something wrong or I need to do something special that it’s trivial to move it aside and either use plain SQL or it’s SQL generator myself.

In production code, plain SQL strings are a concern for me since they’re subject to the whole array of human errors and vulnerabilities.

Something like stmt = select(users).where(users.c.name == 'somename') is basically as flexible as the string, but it’s not going to forget a quote or neglect to use SQL escaping or parametrize the query.

And sometimes you just need it to get out of the way because your query is reaaaaaal weird, although at that point a view you wrap with the orm might be better.

If you’ve done things right though, most of the time you’ll be doing simple primary key lookups and joins with a few filters at most.

Oh, they totally will. It’ll be another website boom. A lot of the big web presences will be damaged by the bust and hosting costs will fall through the floor. Less barrier to entry for making your little website and some portion of those will become problematicly large due to cheap cost driving bad design and we’ll go through the third or fourth round of this.

Or, for deepest irony, some of the most optimally located datacenters could be converted into steel mills and industrial bakeries.

Also a good point!

Even the best company has an intrinsic unequal power dynamic with their workers, and competing interests.
That doesn’t mean that a company that has a policy of trying to be fair should be treated with the same attitude as one that doesn’t, it just means that their employees still would benefit from a union, and hopefully the union just has an easier time, since negotiations as equals are easier with a willing company.

Every anti-capitalist sentiment can be true of every company, while we still acknowledge that the ire doesn’t need to be directed uniformly.

Of specific note from your article is them reporting holding food prices in place during shareholder updates.

Costco is a business, and so they’re not your friend. But they’re one of the few businesses that seems to recognize that long term customer goodwill is more valuable than a few percent on next quarters balance sheet, so they don’t deserve disdain either.

They likely did do actual training, but starting with a general pre-trained model and specializing tends to yield higher quality results faster. It’s so excessively obsequious because they told it to be profoundly and sincerely apologetic if it makes an error, and people don’t actually share the text of real apologies online in a way that’s generic, so it can only copy the tone of form letters and corporate memos.

Insurance, benefits and labor expenses. Even in places with little worker protections there are costs that scale with the number of workers instead of the number of hours.
A brief look indicates employers in India can expect to budget on the order of 18% of an employees take home per year for those expenses.

There are some circumstances and places in the US where you don’t need to provide as many benefits to employees who work below 40 hours. Then you see employers hire more people and schedule them for just under the threshold to give them benefits.

The answer is always because it’s cheaper for them somehow.

You’re currently connected to your neighbors that intimately. Chances are a good chunk of your neighbors are on the same ISP as you.
What disconnect do you think a non-local ISP is providing that a local one wouldn’t?

Well, they didn’t specifically feel concern for them electing a despot. They were concerned simply that they might pick wrong from the viewpoint of those with political power at the time. They weren’t specifically afraid of a despot or demagogue, but someone who would either threaten the political elites wellbeing, or loosing support from the “less populous” slave states. A system that gives disproportionate weight to smaller states to buy their support while also giving themselves more influence over a check on the legislature and one of the branches of power is what they went with.

They weren’t afraid of Trump, they were concerned about Lincoln.

Some countries have more consumer protections than the US does, and consumers from there are wary of the lack of assurances a lot of us products have.

To them, it’s like being told you have to pay for your food at the restaurant even if they mess up your order and you don’t get to eat it. It doesn’t matter that the waiter probably isn’t going to drop your food on the floor, throw it away and then give you a bill: the fact that they could makes you not want to go there.

Likewise, your watch will almost certainly not break via factory defect after more than a month, but the expectation is that if they sell you something it’ll either last the expected lifetime or be suitably replaced or refunded on failure.

We’re used to our particular blend of capitalist hellscape, so a company saying they’ll replace things if they’re obviously broken the moment you buy it, but beyond than you’re out of luck just seems normal. It’s on us to make sure they don’t mail us subtly damaged microelectronics and tiny lithium bombs.

It actually largely has. It both reduced the numbers of people who needed to ride horses around to figure out the winner, and it helped keep power consolidated with the powerful.

A good chunk of our early democratic institutions were designed with a lot of influence by people who didn’t entirely trust their constituency and wanted to keep things from being too democratic. So you have several options for elected officials to disregard voters in most matters, and the president has the power to say “nah” to legislation.