I am an IT guy, so my needs, preferences and priorities are not the norm.

IMHO software is mostly a shit-show, doesn’t matter if property or FOSS. My most loved target of critique is macOS/Apple, because the user experience is so bad for me. (Forced by my work to use it, so I have several years of experience/suffering with it.)

I think it is more about finding software which works by accident (or your training/prior knowledge), as you expect it should work. The biggest problem with proprietary software is that they usually need to up sell, dump down features (hello, macOS window management, finder and everything else) or want to force you into their walled garden.

One easy example where FOSS kicks ass compared to proprietary is managing/installing and updating software: Linux and the BSDs have all sane centrally managed systems for native packages and Flatpaks/Snaps, compare that to the shit-show on Windows and macOS devices. Don’t let me start on provisioning and other topics, where FOSS is by now decades ahead of the stuff one sees in macOS/windows.

One proprietary system which works awesome is Steam and SteamDeck. No questions there and I’ll happily throw my money at Valve.

I had the pleasure of working with great UX designers, but you are sorry out of luck if you are not the persona they target and their decisions are guided by making money and making their manager happy, so a good user experience is at most their 3rd concern, if you are lucky.

Concerning documentation I fully agree with you, with very few exceptions (Arch WIKI, FreeBSD handbook, RHELs documentation), the FOSS world is a sad place.

In the end, there is the potential for great UX in both proprietary and FOSS systems, but when you want to focus on user centric, FOSS wins IMHO for IT guys because they are the only systems which are literally build by their users.

This.

Media has always had an agenda, which even if meant in good faith is manipulativ.

Just speaking about newspapers:

• the topics are mostly chosen for the audience who can afford newspapers (= good/settled middle class)
• the journalists usually have a social background which allows for having unpaid internships and can afford to study journalism at university (e.g. rules out working class people)
• advertisement is a big (paid newspapers) or the only income source (‘free online news’)
  • this implies to not fuck around with the companies/people paying the advertisement
  • this implies also, to not fuck around with the world view of what your readers seem acceptable too much (less readers = less money for advertisement)
• newspapers are owned by reach people which also impacts what topics are covered or not
• newspapers have competition in search engines/internet etc. which they will fight / badmouth
• in Germany at least newspapers/their companies tried to fight adblockers and the peoples freedom to use adblockers in court - w/o making much noise about it
• every topic I have a little bit of knowledge about which is covered by so called specialists in newspapers is full of shit/wrong assumptions/lacks any kind of deeper understanding

Long story short: Everyone/everywhere has grown up consuming deeply manipulative content from media. Given the bullshit and propaganda we are getting each day by people with an agenda/on someones payroll, crazy hallucinations / generated content won’t make things worse than they are already.

Add to that ‘The Lamplighters Leage’ from HBS.

• Learn a proper tooth brushing technique (Bass, Stillman, etc.)
• Floss
• Strength training 2x a week
• Get some daylight every day
• Have great manners all the time
• Be nice and respectful to people around you (especially the ones you don’t benefit from)
• Read the classic books in literature and your field of work
• Get a hobby and follow it with discipline
• Go to the free health checkups that are provided to you
• Save early and regularly
• Plan your next day, week, month, year
• Have some fun and spent yourself from time to time on your own terms - YOLO ;-)

I stand corrected!

Open BETA on Steam

Best advice I ever got regarding this kind of things: Try it out and see where it goes! Play open, be honest and have fun! ;-)

Yes, Apple! :-) Obviously Apple doesn’t have the win margins to put proper parts in their hardware…

Just yesterday I realized my Thinkpad Edge 330 is running w/o any trouble for 11 years now, cost me little above 300€, brand new back then. :-)

Thanks, this would indeed solve my problem. Still hoping for a better solution, but if everything else fails I’ll utilize it!

Thanks, that would be a valid approach and my last resort.

As you said, I hope someone knows a more elegant solution, though!

The CEO is for a good reason an easy target: Show me another company where this level of incompetence is rewarded with steady salary increases?!? (I am afraid you’ll be able to. ;-))

Given your calculation is correct, you are correct that paying the CEO nothing would not make a big difference for Mozillas income. Although it would hopefully open the road for a better CEO.

Your argument that hitting at the CEO ignores the whole context of market dominance of Google could IMHO also used against your argument: If the CEO is so powerless that she cannot take the responsibility for the decline of Mozilla, than why does she get payed at all. If all is a function of the environment and the tides of the market, we can easily replace her with ChatGPT and have the same results w/o wasting money.

At the end of the day, we are exactly where we have been literally a decade ago: Finding a sustainable business model for Mozilla/Firefox. Once more: This core problem of Mozilla/Firefox has been well known for over a decade by now, and again the CEOs only answer is advertisement. Why do we pay money for the bullshit every first semester MBA student would come up with a brainstorming within the first 3 minutes.

Mozilla survives thanks to Google and their (rightful) fears of being outed as a monopoly.

The discussion is always if Mozilla could survive on donations. I do not now if they could. I still think there are a lot of actors with an interest of an independent browser, even whole governments. What I know for sure is, I won’t donate to Mozilla as long as incompetent CEOs are payed.

Are you kidding?

A very big thank you for taking your time to answer in such an elaborate way and giving pointers for further information. Highly appreciated!

Who else can survive for years on eating their own foot-skin? :-P

Very happy to read that, but honestly, when reading “$1 million USD” as investment sum, it reads more like an advertisement stunt than a real investment. (Like, 2 senior developers for one year?)

We need more diversity in Open Source operating systems for desktops, laptops and any of the *BSDs is a great candidate. (Would love to see Haiku getting some sponsorship or even ReactOS!)

Nice, I like it very much when one can separate between personal fit and quality! :-)

For me the whole point of the book is to accept the story, while your own sense/mind tells you to not play along, which made me reflect about how much - dare I say everyone of us - plays along everyday… Besides this, I simply like Ishiguros writing style (non native English speaker here, so wonder what a native would think about it.)

Would love to get a list of books from you that you respect and like (or respect and don’t like ;-)).

Short book that hit hard:

• Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
• Never let me go, Kazuro Ishiguro
• The last unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
• 1984, George Orwell
• Prince of Thieves, Chuck Hogan

Mandatory heads up: The writing gets better over time.

The first time I tried to read it, the writing style of the first book really turned me off.

Great pick!

So many quotes from Casablanca are part of our everyday culture… and AFAIK it is the first movie ever to feature a flashback in a flashback. Combined with the awesome cast of actors this is a masterpiece. :-)

One is not enough, and a lot of great movies where already named, still, some great movies are missing:

• Heat (Michael Mann) Every single time I see it, it is brilliant and I discover something new
• Jin Roh (The original animation movie), awesome atmosphere and only after the 2nd viewing one can really appreciate it
• Near Dark (1987) Why the hell did nobody ever produce something like this ever again?
• Miami Vice (Michael Mann), ‘Style over substance’, in a great way, although I have the shaky camera
• Seven Samurai
• Casablanca
• Strange Days
• Point Break
• XXX (Nobody understood that it was a parody back in the days :-P)
• What we do in the shadows
• Brazil
• Rocky
• Eternal Sunshine …
• The city of lost children
• Leon the professional
• Dolls
• The Killer (The original of course)
• The last unicorn
• Dark City
• The thing
• The Lost Boys
• Spirited Away
• Donnie Darko
• Rashomon
• Brother (2000)
• Parasite
• Hatsukoi (First Love)

… from the top of my mind. :-P