This is the shell script it runs on Mac/Linux: https://github.com/corbindavenport/just-the-browser/blob/mai...

For FireFox it downloads this: https://github.com/corbindavenport/just-the-browser/blob/mai...

  {
    "policies": {
      "DisableFirefoxStudies": true,
      "DisableTelemetry": true,
      "DontCheckDefaultBrowser": true,
      "FirefoxHome": {
        "SponsoredStories": false,
        "SponsoredTopSites": false,
        "Stories": false
      },
      "GenerativeAI": {
        "Enabled": false
      },
      "SearchEngines": {
        "Remove": [
          "Perplexity"
        ]
      }
    }
  }

Stupid to run random scripts you find online, but browser makers push users into it.

My son wants to eat "Chinese" food with chopsticks, but he can only really use a fork, so we adapt the chopsticks. He'll be able to use them eventually, but not everyone has a) the desire, nor b) the dexterity.

Making it easier to do what users want with a computer without telling them 'just learn to program' (or script in this case) is actually a good thing imo.

A computer is meant to be programmed by the user. That is its raison d'être from the very beginning and why it is called like that.

Do you see how stupid that sounds?

Good UX is one of the most important-yet-underserved areas in the tech industry (the topic of this site), and this sort of attitude goes beyond being smug and naive to being actively harmful. Your goal should always be to make things easier and with as little friction as necessary.

Normie users would be better off reading some detailed step-by-step instructions on how to do it by hand using built-in methods than to run random code from the internet that can be malicious.

My mom is 75 years old and barely knows how to use a web browser to begin with. There is zero chance I encourage her to run random pwsh scripts from the internet.

God forbid we're going to start giving them AI agents to do this kind of stuff for them. God help us.

Knowing where to look and which settings are relevant, for yourself, is a crazy ask of even very computer savvy users.

Why?

When Mozilla updated Firefox with the AI chatbot feature the first thing I did was look in settings in how to remove it. When that failed I just googled it, which pointed me to about:config and which keys to look for.

Much easier to figure out with your intuition what `browser.ml.chat.enabled` could possibly mean than running pwsh script.

All it takes is a bare minimum of curiosity.

Personally, I don't trust most popular software either, but its easy to see why people would be fooled into thinking that software written by a major corporation used by millions of people might be more trustworthy than a script uploaded by a random anonymous person who couldn't be held accountable if their software infested your system with malware.

Otherwise, you're the sort of normie carpenter who doesn't even do their own land clearance ready for seeding. For whom you must express your utmost contempt! /s

What I'm getting at is that I think the risk varies depending on how often you leave the headset paired; for example, if the headphones are over-ear, those are more prone to not be turned off --- and remain connected; thus, a greater chance of success for establishing a BlueTooth classic connection without getting noticed and performing the WhatsApp account take-over until they listen to "I'm gonna take a shower, honey!" in the distance.

    <form id="my-form">
      <input name="number" type="number">
      <output name="result"></output>
    </form>

    <script>
      const myForm = document.getElementById("my-form");
      const inputField = document.elements.namedItem("number");
      const outputField = document.elements.namedItem("result");

      outputField.textContent = inputField.valueAsNumber ** 2;
    </script>

    -   const inputField = document.elements.namedItem("number");
    -   const outputField = document.elements.namedItem("result");
    +   const inputField = myForm.elements.namedItem("number");
    +   const outputField = myform.elements.namedItem("result");

Thoughts from Derek Lowe (In The Pipeline).

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sarepta-s-approval... ("Sarepta's Approval Woes" (2013))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sarepta-s-duchenne... ("Sarepta's Duchenne Therapy Is A Lot Further Away" (2014))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sarepta-s-day-fda ("Sarepta's Day at the FDA " (2016))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sarepta-gets-appro... ("Sarepta Gets An Approval - Unfortunately" (2016))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/gene-therapy-duche... ("Gene Therapy for Duchenne" (2018))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/opening-lid-sarept... ("Opening the Lid on Sarepta's Drug Approvals" (2020))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sarepta-tries-agai... ("Sarepta Tries Again" (2023))

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sarepta-why ("Sarepta. Why?" (2024))

I don't know if you have ever worked in a larger team that lacked someone to make decisions, take responsibility and set a strategy, but in my experience that is almost always a disaster.

The fact that "high performance leaders" need to make tens of millions of dollars is one of the greatest lies being told in the modern age.

Right now my chief in the fire company where I volunteer makes the same amount of money I do: $0.00. He is the greatest leader I have ever personally met, and I've been around for a while.

When I was in the Army, my company commander (a Captain) made ~4x what the newest private did. The highest-paid officer makes ~9x.

There are government senior executives and university professors running labs with budgets and teams that make Mozilla look like a lemonade stand for practically nothing.

Mozilla should ask the Linux Foundation what their budget is, what their leadership structure is, and do that.

Mozilla, no matter what they say or think or try, is and will always be a web browser developer. A web browser. Anything else is a side project, a hobby. A distraction. Every single molecule of fuel used by their brains while at work and every single microwatt of power used by their infrastructure should be wholly and aggressively dedicated to building the tools and organization needed to create the best web browser possible.

Bloated payrolls are tolerable if the decisions made are wise, responsibility is taken, and strategies exist and make sense.

Mozilla seems to have none of these.

But man they're spending a shit-ton on "AI"!

Debian has an elected leader that is not paid and has pretty limited authority overall.

There's also the Linux kernel, with Linus doing both managerial and technical work, running circles around Mozilla's leadership in both. He makes just a few millions per year, less than Baker did even two years ago AFAIK.

FreeBSD seems to have three paid directors: https://freebsdfoundation.org/about-us/our-team/

Debian has a leader and also seems to be more a volunteer organisation than a full company: https://www.debian.org/intro/organization

Compare to Torvalds. You may or may not like his leadership, but nobody feels sour about his salary.

> We are a worker-owned, employee-run company with more than 20 years of experience building open source software in a wide range of exciting fields.

If there's enough money to go to the developers actively working on a product to make it sustainable, I think a lot of people would get on board with that and would pay for FF.

That's a big if. AFAIK most open source project developers don't get remotely enough donations to support them working on it full-time. The ones that do are the exception, not the norm.

I’m fine with twice the amount of a developer. Taking into account responsibility, public involvement and special clothing. Travel costs and so on are separate. The developers are doing the hard work.

There is not “team” if a MBA or lawyer gets 38 times the wage of an actual person doing the work.

I don't personally like it (so generally did not allow to happen to me), but if some people feel "safer" getting lower pay (less chance of getting fired, easier to get re-hired as there are more low paid positions than high paid positions), the natural result is that it will happen.

My experience is that both high and low paid positions are not as "safe" as people think they are (seen multiple changing in various organizations types), so people should care more about finding a reasonable organization.

There are plenty of competent people that could be CEO for far less, like $200k/year.

All said and done, that will still be way more reasonable than that ludicrous salary.

I had once. The ultra micro-managing boss went to surgery and was off for two months. The whole company happily cruised along, numbers kept going up, his toxic pressure was absent, people kept working and making things.

I don't know how it would go for long term, but these were some of the best months.

The reality is that Firefox would have done much better had Mozilla fired their CEO 15 years ago and never hired another one. All of them executed significantly worse than mere government bonds did.

They specifically targetted two things:

1. directing funding towards Firefox development. Mozilla have been criticised for spending large portions of their income on non-Firefox endeavours while not publishing breakdowns of Firefox-specific spending in their annual reports

2. The CEO's salary: the commenter said nothing about not wanting the CEO position to exist, merely a desire for the funding to the Foundation to not be excessively funnelled into salary increases while the company's resources contract. Which seems reasonable.

Unfortunately, CEO is not always leadership.

Aside from that, leadership can come from the people doing the work. It is working in many cases.

I am pretty well off now but I come from a pretty poor background. I used to have to drive a cheque to my landlord's office when rent was due, during university in the late 2000s

I thought a lot of my fellow devs would be from similar backgrounds, but that is not the case at all mostly. I find a lot of my coworkers come from white collar families, or relatively well off immigrant families and I am the outlier coming from a very blue collar family

It is very common for me to have a very different perspective on things than my coworkers.

Economic background shapes us so much more than people realize

>Rent's due today, thank heavens I just got paid.

I assume the "last minute" wasn't entirely their choice.

Anyway, this same sort of nonsense could also make it very difficult to enroll in autopay, so the main points stand.