1. "Show Reader Automatically" in 2010;
2. "Hide Distracting Items" in 2024.

Everything else has either been a waste of goddamned time, or actively malicious. Mostly the latter.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/plonk/feed/ 65 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/mozilla-has-1-4-billion-dollars-that-they-are-spending-on-some-ai-bullshit/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/mozilla-has-1-4-billion-dollars-that-they-are-spending-on-some-ai-bullshit/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2026 19:11:28 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk2n That's billion with a B. So if you held out hope that filling out surveys or shitposting through it might turn this ship around, no. That much money has an event horizon.

Mozilla is cooked.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/mozilla-has-1-4-billion-dollars-that-they-are-spending-on-some-ai-bullshit/feed/ 128 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/kitten-meat-deli-slices/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/kitten-meat-deli-slices/#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2026 20:42:52 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk2A Re-up:

I wrote that a couple of years ago but it remains relevant and widely applicable, so I want to do what I can to get the Kitten Meat Deli into the general discourse. My hope is that some day we can say, "Ah yes, they are using the Kitten Meat defense, that's a poplar defense" and people will know what you're talking about.

It was originally about Mozilla becoming an advertising company but it could as easily have been about Mozilla becoming an AI company or about Mozilla going all in on cryptocurrency or about Internet Archive doing the same or about Mozilla being funded by Google or about The Long Now Foundation releasing NFTs or about Mozilla allowing W3C to bless DRM or, more recently about Wikipedia taking funding from Microsoft, OpenAI, Facebook and Amazon (and without even the fig-leaf of "donation" but as customers).

Yes, the Sliced Kittens Defense. A strong defense!

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/kitten-meat-deli-slices/feed/ 34 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/the-original-mozilla-dinosaur-logo-artwork/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/the-original-mozilla-dinosaur-logo-artwork/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2025 00:01:26 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk0j As I explained in some detail in my 2016 article "They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo", I commissioned this artwork from Shepard Fairey to use as the branding of the newly-founded mozilla.org and our open source release of the Netscape source code, which eventually became Firefox. This happened in March 1998.

• I am 100% certain that we (Netscape) purchased the artwork outright.

• I am 99% certain that some time in 1998 or 1999, the artwork was open sourced under the terms of the then-new Netscape Public License.

However, I find that I can't actually prove either of these things. Can you?

I see this document that was on the Mozilla.org web site in 2005 that asserts that, though the rest of the web site is CC BY-SA 2.0, the red dinosaur is trademarked.

I don't believe that's true. I think that's lawyerly overreach. I believe the dinosaur had already been released and could not be clawed back in this way.

But what do I know. Anyway, here are all of the original vector images. Come at me.

These are the first batch of drawings that Shepard did for us. The original files were PostScript, but I have converted them to PDF and PNG for modern sensibilities:

PS, PDF.

PS, PDF.

PS, PDF.

You probably didn't know the dinosaur had legs!

Here's the artwork for the CD we gave away at the first anniversary party in 1999.

Ai, PDF.

And here are some "Netscape Now!"-style banners that some other division inside Netscape commissioned a different design firm to make, shortly thereafter. (Why they didn't just get Shepard to do it, I don't know.) Some of these were once hosted on mozilla.org.

Round two:

(If you don't see a whole bunch of wide banner anim-GIFs above, turn off your ad blocker on this site! Yes, it tripped me up too.)

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

• Plugins! This was the first time a web page could make sound, via RealAudio.

• Incremental display of progressive JPEGs on slow dialup connections (which I demoed a few years back.)

• Animated GIFs that were actually useful. Our support for GIF89a meant inter-frame timing, transparency, and the ability for animations to loop -- a Netscape extension present in every animGIF to this day: Application Block "NETSCAPE2.0"!

• HTML frames: the first time a page could have elements something like "position: fixed" and "overflow: auto".

• JavaScript! That wasn't my fault, but you still have my apologies. In our defense, if we hadn't done it, MICROS~1 would have done something far, far worse.

• And of course my baby, the first release of Netscape Mail and News.

Importantly, all of these features existed identically on Mac, Windows, and nine flavors of Unix, and were released simultaneously. This was basically unheard of at the time.

Terry and I got to push Netscape Mail out to something like 4 million users in those first few weeks, most of them new to the internet, so for a huge number of people it was their introduction to email. It didn't have some power-user features found in Eudora, but it was light years ahead of AOL.

Also it was almost certainly the first mail reader that allowed you to send HTML email. You had to compose them separately and then attach the files, but it worked. So HTML email is probably my fault. You're welcome.

It was also a USENET reader. You will not believe (or probably you will) the hate I got for this from people whose thought this was an abomination, because their ideas about user interface design told them that a mail reader and a USENET reader have nothing to do with each other and should have no UI components in common. It's not like they display lists of messages and allow you to reply to them. They certainly don't do that. That's just science.

Anyway this also meant it was the first easy-to-use program that let you post HTML to USENET. Again, you're welcome. Oh and also MIME-encoded attachments rather than uuencode, and it would also display those attachments inline -- so again, for all the porn, you're welcome.

The wild popularity and success of Netscape Mail indirectly helped kill the company.

We had built this really nice entry-level mail reader in Netscape 2.0, and it was a smashing success. Our punishment for that success was that my boss (now capo of noted criminal enterprise Andreessen-Horowitz-Whorfin-Lizardo, and a noted murder enthusiast and fascist in his own right, but I digress) saw this general-purpose mail reader and said, "Since this mail reader is popular with normal people, we must now pimp it out to 'The Enterprise', call it Groupware, and try to compete with Lotus Notes!"

To do this, Netscape bought a company called Collabra who had tried (and, mostly, failed) to do something similar to what we had accomplished. By which I mean: they had like 20 or more engineers and over several years had built a Windows-only mail reader that did did like 3/4ths of what Terry and I had built in 6 months, and had completely face-planted in the market. So Netscape bought this company and spliced 4 layers of management in above us. And like a chestburster, somehow Collabra managed to completely take control of Netscape, as if Netscape had been acquired instead of the other way around.

Anyway, since they won the startup-acquisition lottery, they then they went off into the weeds with Second System Syndrome so badly that the Collabra-driven "3.0" release was obviously going to be so mind-blowingly late that "2.1" became "3.0" and "3.0" became "4.0". Netscape "3.0" was the bugfix patch-release for 2.0, because it had been intended to be called "2.1" all along.

And "4.0" was the beginning of the long death spiral.

(I mean, the fact that Microsoft illegally used their monopoly in one market (operating systems) to destroy an existing market (web browsers) by driving the market price for browsers to zero, instantaneously eliminating something like 60% of Netscape's revenue, didn't help. We were stabbed in the front and the back at the same time.)

I would say that Netscape 3.2 is the canonical, best version of the original browser. But 2.0 was pretty fuckin' good.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/09/netscape-navigator-2-0-was-released-30-years-ago-today/feed/ 147 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/important-update-about-your-internet-service/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/important-update-about-your-internet-service/#comments Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:48:38 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yksw AOL Dial-up Internet to be discontinued:

AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans. As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued.

This change will not affect any other benefits in your AOL plan, which you can access any time on your AOL plan dashboard. To manage or cancel your account, visit MyAccount.

For more information or if you have questions about your account, call:

U.S. - 1-888-265-5555
Canada - 1-888-265-4357

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/important-update-about-your-internet-service/feed/ 19 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/superfund-ceos/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/superfund-ceos/#comments Sat, 31 May 2025 05:13:34 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykoe Lead pipes? Pfffft! Netscape Cancer says "hold my beer."

Toxic Origins, Toxic Decisions: Biases in CEO Selection:

We examine how selection bias in CEO promotion amplifies risk-taking, using prenatal exposure to pollution as an exogenous shock to individual risk preferences. CEOs born in future Superfund sites are more likely to be promoted internally, suggesting firms reward observed success without recognizing underlying risk tolerance. These "Superfund CEOs" excel in internal roles but pursue riskier external policies once promoted-leading to greater volatility and weaker performance. Our results suggest firms may systematically mistake luck for skill in promotion decisions, filtering for high-variance risk-takers whose traits only become problematic when decision-making shifts to exposed, irreversible domains. In short, Superfund CEOs display performance with essentially lower mean but higher variance.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/superfund-ceos/feed/ 7 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/02/marc-andreessen-murder-enthusiast/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/02/marc-andreessen-murder-enthusiast/#comments Wed, 05 Feb 2025 19:18:42 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykhN I didn't think that my former (extremely former) friend and coworker could be more of an unmitigated piece of shit, but "We hired this completely inexperienced guy solely because he murdered a black man" really takes it up a level.

If you work for or with any company that has taken money from Andreessen Horowitz, this is what you are supporting. It is blood money.

Daniel Penny, who was acquitted after choking a mentally ill subway passenger to death, will work for Andreessen Horowitz:

Daniel Penny, a Marine veteran acquitted on a charge of criminally negligent homicide in Manhattan in December, has been hired by one of Silicon Valley's most prestigious venture capital firms to join its "American Dynamism" team. [...]

Mr. Penny was charged in 2023 by the Manhattan district attorney's office with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after a video of him fatally choking another passenger, Jordan Neely, on the subway circulated online that May. [...]

Mr. Ulevitch said in the memo that the firm plans to teach Mr. Penny "the business of investing" and that he will support several of the firm's portfolio companies. On Andreessen Horowitz's website, Mr. Penny is listed as a "deal partner."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/02/marc-andreessen-murder-enthusiast/feed/ 43 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/contrafactuals/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/contrafactuals/#comments Fri, 18 Oct 2024 22:56:55 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykbD

Cons:

• Everyone smokes inside, all the time, everywhere. So disgusting.

Pros:

• Literally everything about:
  • The entertainment industry;
  • The music industry;
  • The economy;
  • The feasibility of running a small business;
  • Housing costs;
  • Artistic culture.
• Live Nation doesn't exist.
• AEG doesn't exist.
• APE doesn't exist.
• TicketMaster is a hardware company.
• Frequency of needing to retain a lawyer:
  • 90s -- twice a decade.
  • Now -- twice a month.
• Never need to learn what an Injury and Illness Prevention Program Model Plan is.
• Nobody has a mobile phone.
• CASH ONLY.

Plus! I'd get to watch the stillbirth of the web!

But The Past Sucks!

This missive written on my phone, with my thumbs, while leaning against my bar as a truly deplorable band plays.

Enter the shimmering arc.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/contrafactuals/feed/ 62 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mosaic-netscape-0-9-was-released-30-years-ago-today/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mosaic-netscape-0-9-was-released-30-years-ago-today/#comments Sun, 13 Oct 2024 09:10:57 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yka7 According to my notes, it went live shortly after midnight on Oct 13, 1994. We sat in the conference room in the dark and listened to different sound effects fired for each different platform that was downloaded. At some point late that night I wandered off and wrote the first version of the page that loaded when you pressed the "What's Cool" button in the toolbar. (A couple days later, Jim Clark would go ballistic in a company-wide email because I had included a link to Bianca's Smut Shack.)

For those of you who are unaware of these finer details, 0.9 was the first release of the Netscape browser (which begat Firefox) available to the general public. This beta release was an unannounced surprise. Prior to this, everyone assumed that what we were doing was going to be a standard for-sale product where you sent off your $35 and then some time later got a disc in the mail with a license key. That we just said, "Here's our FTP site, come get it, go crazy" was, at the time, shocking to people.

These anniversaries keep piling up, so I don't really have a lot to add, but check my NSCP tag or the Previouslies for more, particularly the links in this one.

I'd still like to find a way to run a mid-90s vintage Unix version of the browser under emulation on an M1 Mac. I asked about that a while back but was never able to Make It Go.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mosaic-netscape-0-9-was-released-30-years-ago-today/feed/ 62 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-on-them-being-an-advertising-company-now/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/10/mozillas-ceo-doubles-down-on-them-being-an-advertising-company-now/#comments Fri, 04 Oct 2024 02:22:21 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykaO tl;dr: "LOL get fucked"

They've decided who their customers are, and it's not you, it's people who build and invest in surveillance advertising networks. But in a "respectful" way.

"Improving online advertising through product and infrastructure."

We know that not everyone in our community will embrace our entrance into this market.

Gee, ya think?

In parallel to our existing consumer products, we have the opportunity to build a better infrastructure for the online advertising industry as a whole. Advertising at large cannot be improved unless the tech it's built upon prioritizes securing user data. This is precisely why we acquired Anonym.

Anonym is building technology that can provide more privacy-preserving infrastructure for data sharing between advertisers and publishers.

Good to see that they're taking time out from their hard work promoting the climate-incinerating "AI" grift, following on their hard work promoting the climate-incinerating cryptocurrency grift, to focus a little more on the privacy-incinerating advertising-surveillance grift (where that does not already overlap with the other two; this Venn diagram might be a circle.)

Spelling out my relevant Previouslies so that you're more likely to click them:

• Mozilla's Original Sin.
• Mozilla is an advertising company now.
• "Open source, at least in a spiritual sense."
• CEO pay skyrockets, while Firefox Marketshare nosedives.
• "Today I learned about Mozilla's new AI startup from my gas pump."
• "The only way to get a corporation to behave ethically is to create a PR disaster for their comms team."
• "This is where the Innovation goes in."

As I have said many times:

Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3. There is no 3.

Those are different things and are very much in conflict. They picked one. They picked the wrong one.

In light of Mozilla's recent parade of increasingly terrible decisions, there have been cries of "why doesn't someone fork it?" followed by responses of "here are 5 sketchy forks of it that get no development and that nobody uses". And inevitably following that, several people have made comments in the "Mozilla is an advertising company now" thread to the effect that it is now impossible for a non-corporate, open source project to actually implement a web browser, since a full implementation requires implementing DRM systems which you cannot implement without a license that the Content Mafia will not give you.

This is technically true. ("Technically" being the best kind of "true" in some circles.)

Blaming and shaming:

• It used to be that to watch Netflix (and others) in an open browser required the use of a third party proprietary plugin. That doesn't work any more: now Netflix will only work in a browser that natively implements DRM.

• That step happened because Mozilla took that license and implented DRM.

• That happened because: "it's in the W3C spec, we didn't have a choice."

• How did it get into the spec? Oh, it got into the spec because when the Content Mafia pressured W3C to include it, Mozilla caved. At the end of the day they said, "We approve of this and will implement it". Their mission -- their DUTY -- was to pound their shoe on the god damned table and say: "We do not approve, and will not implement if approved."

  But they went and did it just the same.

"But muh market shares!" See, now we're back to the kitten-meat deli again.

If you were unable to watch Netflix in Mozilla out of the box, yes, that would have impacted their market share. You know what else would have happened? Some third party patch would have solved that problem.

When Netscape released the first version of the Mozilla source with no cryptography in it due to US export restrictions, it was approximately 30 minutes before someone outside the US had patched it back in. I'm not exaggerating, it happened that night. This is the sort of software activism at which the open source community excels, even if it is "technically" illegal. ("Technically", again, being the best kind of illegal in some circles.)

Mozilla had a duty to preserve the open web.

Instead they cosplayed as a startup, chasing product dreams of "growth hacking", with Google's ad money as their stand-in for a VC-funding firehose, with absolutely predictable and tragic results.

And those dreams of growth and market penetration failed catastrophically anyway.

(Except for the C-suite, who made out quite well. And Google, who got exactly what they paid for: a decade of antitrust-prosecution insurance. It was never about ad revenue. The on-paper existence of Firefox as a hypothetical competitor kept the Federal wolves at bay, and that's all Google cared about.)

Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

As I have said many times:

In my humble but correct opinion, Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

1. Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2. Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3. There is no 3.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozillas-original-sin/feed/ 196 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/#comments Thu, 20 Jun 2024 18:11:29 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykVg This seems completely normal and cool and not troublesome in any way.

Mozilla has acquired Anonym, a [blah blah blah] raise the bar for the advertising industry [blah blah blah] while delivering effective advertising solutions. [...]

Anonym was founded with two core beliefs: [blah blah blah] and second, that digital advertising is critical for the sustainability of free content, services and experiences. [...]

As we integrate Anonym into the Mozilla family, we are excited about the possibilities this partnership brings. While Anonym will continue to serve its customer base, together, we are poised to lead the industry toward a future where privacy and effective advertising go hand in hand, supporting a free and open internet.

Anonym was founded in 2022 by former Facebook executives Brad Smallwood and Graham Mudd. The company was backed by Griffin Gaming Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Heracles Capital as well as a number of strategic individual investors.

Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

Oh wait.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozilla-is-an-advertising-company-now/feed/ 217 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/firefox-blocks-add-ons-to-circumvent-russia-censorship/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/firefox-blocks-add-ons-to-circumvent-russia-censorship/#comments Thu, 13 Jun 2024 05:06:27 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykVG This story is going to age like fine milk.

The Mozilla Foundation, the entity behind the web browser Firefox, is blocking various censorship circumvention add-ons for its browser, including ones specifically to help those in Russia bypass state censorship. The add-ons were blocked at the request of Russia's federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor -- the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media -- according to a statement by Mozilla to The Intercept.

"Following recent regulatory changes in Russia, we received persistent requests from Roskomnadzor demanding that five add-ons be removed from the Mozilla add-on store," a [cowardly, anonymous] Mozilla spokesperson told The Intercept in response to a request for comment. "After careful consideration, we've temporarily restricted their availability within Russia." [...]

According to Mozilla's Pledge for a Healthy Internet, the Mozilla Foundation is "committed to an internet that includes all the peoples of the earth -- where a person's demographic characteristics do not determine their online access, opportunities, or quality of experience." Mozilla's second principle in their manifesto says, "The internet is a global public resource that must remain open and accessible."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/firefox-blocks-add-ons-to-circumvent-russia-censorship/feed/ 26 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/04/my-dinner-with-andreessen/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/04/my-dinner-with-andreessen/#comments Wed, 24 Apr 2024 19:30:36 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykPg I haven't spoken to the guy since he was a mere hardscrabble multi-millionaire, but this story 100% tracks.

Rick Perlstein:

My first impression of them came of their response to my small-talk description of my delightful afternoon [walking in San Francisco]. Jaws practically dropped, like I had dared an unaccompanied, unarmed stroll through Baghdad's Sadr City in the spring of 2004. [...]

One participant was a British former journalist become computer tycoon who had been awarded a lordship. He proclaimed that the Chinese middle class doesn't care about democracy or civil liberties. I was treated as a sentimental naïf for questioning his blanket confidence.

Another attendee seemed to see politics as a collection of engineering problems. He kept setting up strange thought experiments, which I did not understand. I recall thinking it was like talking to a creature visiting from another solar system that did not have humans in it. [...]

I knew from the New Yorker that Andreessen had grown up in an impoverished agricultural small town in Wisconsin, and despised it. But I certainly was not prepared for his vituperation on the subject. He made it clear that people who chose not to leave such places deserved whatever impoverishment, cultural and political neglect, and alienation they suffered. [...]

And that's when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.

"I'm glad there's OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet."

I'm taking the liberty of putting it in quotation marks, though I can't be sure those were his exact words. Marc, if you're reading, feel free to get in touch and refresh my memory. Maybe he said "quiescent," or "docile," or maybe "powerless." Something, certainly, along those lines.

He was joking, sort of; but he was serious -- definitely. "Kidding on the square," jokes like those are called. All that talk about human potential and morality, and this man afire to reorder life as we know it jokingly welcomes chemical enslavement of those he grew up with, for the sin of not being as clever and ambitious as he.

There is something very, very wrong with us, that our society affords so much power to people like this.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/04/my-dinner-with-andreessen/feed/ 35 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/02/sgi-retrocomputing/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/02/sgi-retrocomputing/#comments Thu, 15 Feb 2024 21:01:08 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykMy Dear Lazyweb,

Some time at the end of the nineteen hundreds, I took the Indy and O2 that I had liberated from Netscape and retired them to a shelf in my laundry room. They worked fine at the time that I did that! Now, not so much. Neither boots.

I got an OSSC that lets the Indy display to a modern HDMI monitor (earlier attempts with other scan converters had failed) but the Indy says no SCSI drive, no keyboard (even with a 90s-vintage PS2 keyboard). So probably the drive is bad, but I can't even get into the recovery system. And I also don't have a spare SCSI drive, or a boot floppy, or restore media, or a SCSI CD drive to put that in.

As for the O2, it appears to maybe be putting out VGA sync, but the screen is black. Possibly I don't have the OSSC configured right. It does have a CD drive, which may or may not work. Initially it was playing the adorable boot song, but then I re-seated everything and now it doesn't play the song and the LED stays red. So I guess I blew away some load-bearing dust.

I would like to believe that these classic machines are not just paperweights now. Any suggestions on how to rehabilitate them?

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/02/sgi-retrocomputing/feed/ 50 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/hypertext-emerges-from-his-well-to-shame-the-tech-industry/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/hypertext-emerges-from-his-well-to-shame-the-tech-industry/#comments Wed, 31 Jan 2024 07:22:27 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykL6 I was introducing a friend to Serial Experiments Lain and when we got to the episode where the Knights of the Eastern Calculus are doing an infodump on MAJIC-12, Vannevar Bush, John Lilly and Ted Nelson, I made a comment about Nelson and my friend said, "Wait, these people are real??"

So then I got to tell the story about the time I met him. He came to Netscape to, basically, yell at us for fucking up his dream, with our unidirectional hyperlinks, our documents that were not editable by all readers, our complete lack of version control and transclusion. This halfassed abomination we had built, this was no MEMEX. This garbage had set back the dream at least 50 years.

We just sat there and took it, no lie detected. "Hypertext emerges from his well to shame the tech industry."

He also showed us the most recent version of Xanadu, implemented in Emacs Lisp.

It turns out Nelson's visit to Netscape was one month before the first episode of Lain aired on TV in Japan.

Anyway, watch Lain, it's just so weird and perfect.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/hypertext-emerges-from-his-well-to-shame-the-tech-industry/feed/ 33 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/web-browser-retrocomputing/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/web-browser-retrocomputing/#comments Sat, 27 Jan 2024 23:33:38 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykLl Dear Lazyweb, I momentarily got interested in being able to run the primordial browsers because there was a screen shot I wanted to make. I took a brief crack at it, mostly failed, and gave up. How about someone else does the legwork on this? Some or all of the things that I would like:

1. Tell me how to get my Emularity upload of the Mac versions to have networking.
2. Tell me how to get that same disk image running in BasiliskII on macOS 14 M1 to have networking.
3. Figure out how to get the Emularity to boot Red Hat 5.2 i386 in order to run the Unix versions of the browsers.
4. Tell me how to install Red Hat 5.2 in UTM / Qemu. It just gives me a UEFI prompt and never boots the install floppy.
5. I'm guessing the "emulate Red Hat" approach would be easier than convincing a Raspberry Pi to execute i386 a.out executables, but maybe not?

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/web-browser-retrocomputing/feed/ 37 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/international-version/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/international-version/#comments Fri, 26 Jan 2024 23:34:19 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykLf only in the EU. Mozilla's mad that they will have to maintain two different browser releases.

Hmmm, this rings a bell, why does this sound so familiar....

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/feed/ 17 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/my-dinosaur-just-threw-up-in-its-mouth-a-little/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/my-dinosaur-just-threw-up-in-its-mouth-a-little/#comments Fri, 05 Jan 2024 18:42:00 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykId Long story short, Mozilla found that they had just Too Much Money from the firehose of cash that Google had been spraying at them as antitrust-enforcement insurance, so to launder that money, they fissured themselves into at least three interlocking shell corporations. But what to spend the money on? Well, they decided to cosplay as Y Combinator and re-invent themselves as some kind of off-brand "startup incubator".

Get ready for Clippyzilla in your browser.

"Open source, at least in a spiritual sense":

"In the last year and a half, we've been focused on making a pretty dramatic shift at Mozilla -- to make it about not just more than the browser but also more than our kind of activist personality and build out a kind of portfolio that sets us up -- and sets others up -- to go and take our values into the AI era, or to the next era of the internet, however you want to talk about it." [...]

Mozilla AI [has] a broad mandate around finding open source, trustworthy AI opportunities and build a business around them. [...] While Mozilla did do some press around launching its AI efforts, we haven't actually seen a lot of movement in that area from the organization since. Surman told me that the leadership team had been planning these efforts for almost a year, but as public interest in AI grew, he "pushed it out of the door." But then Draief pretty much moved it right back into stealth mode to focus on what to do next. [...]

"I think that's what you'll see from us, over the course of the next year, is how do you use the browser as the thing that represents you and how do you build AI into the browser that's basically on your side as you move through the internet?" He noted that an Edge-like chatbot in a sidebar could be one way of doing this, but he seems to be thinking more in terms of an assistant that helps you summarize articles and maybe notify you proactively. [...]

"The question that we're asking ourselves now is: What's the pop-up blocker for the AI era?"

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/my-dinosaur-just-threw-up-in-its-mouth-a-little/feed/ 82 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/boardwatch/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/boardwatch/#comments Sat, 30 Dec 2023 04:05:31 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykH8 I knew we had finally made it when I walked into the restroom, and right there on the floor next to the toilet was a crumpled copy of Boardwatch with the cover story, "WORLD WIDE WEB - THE NEW BBS".

And now The Internet Archive has them all.

Come for the skepticism of this whole "internet" thing, stay for the article that profiles Kibo!

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/boardwatch/feed/ 18 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/remember-when-mozilla-made-a-web-browser/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/remember-when-mozilla-made-a-web-browser/#comments Fri, 29 Dec 2023 19:39:58 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykH2 Mozilla 2023 Annual Report: CEO pay skyrockets, while Firefox Marketshare nosedives:

Earlier this year, Mozilla laid out their vision for the future of their organization -- and it did not include Firefox. The focus for the future of Mozilla -- according to Mozilla -- is primarily based around Artificial Intelligence services.

In fact, Mozilla leadership stated, quite plainly, that they intend to take Mozilla "in a different direction."

When you consider the goals of Mozilla... the decreasing Firefox marketshare is no longer much of a concern. In fact, moving revenue away from Firefox, while investing in A.I. systems (and other subscription services) becomes the primary goal. [...]

What have we learned from Mozilla statements coupled with their financial reports?

• Mozilla rewards executives who oversee a decreasing success and reliance upon Firefox -- so we can expect more of that.

• In turn, that likely means reduced investment in Firefox development and promotion over the coming years.

• Mozilla intends to focus on A.I. -- so we can expect more A.I. investment, and possible A.I. services, in the year ahead.

• If all of that holds true, we can likely expect the Mozilla CEO to receive additional raises in the next annual reports.

If you are a fan of Firefox... none of that points to a particularly bright future.

That said... if you are the CEO at Mozilla... you might bring in enough income to buy your own island fortress pretty soon. And who doesn't want an island fortress?

Now hear me out, but What If...? browser development was in the hands of some kind of nonprofit organization?

Oh wait.

Sometimes I think back on my time amongst these clowns and realize that if I had stayed in the tech industry instead of buying a bar, I would be repellently rich right now. On the other hand I probably would have killed myself, so there's that.

Please donate to DNA Lounge. We make people happy and our CEO earns $0 per year.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2023/12/remember-when-mozilla-made-a-web-browser/feed/ 251 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/11/happy-they-live-day-to-all-who-celebrate/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/11/happy-they-live-day-to-all-who-celebrate/#comments Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:38:35 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykFo They Live debuted at #1 at the box office. In honor of my favorite documentary about the Reagan administration, here are some highlights from my OBEY tag:

2016, just before the election:

They Live and the secret history of the Mozilla logo:

One of my most popular posts of all time.

"I'm going to draw a line through 1930s agitprop, Ronald Reagan, methane-breathing zombie space aliens, the Mozilla logo, Barack Obama and the International Commiunist Conspiracy. It's a long walk, so please stick with me."

I ended with, "In this upcoming presidential election, please vote against the methane-breathing zombie space alien."

Reader, my supplication did not work.

2016, just after the election:

Bubble Failure:

I wore my They Live costume, including the "MAKE AMERICA OBEY AGAIN" hat, and some guy -- in San Francisco, at a DNA Lounge synthwave event -- thought I was not joking and straight up admitted that he voted for Trump.

And another guy told me I was "brave" for wearing it, and that he threw away his vote for some third candidate whose name I don't even recognize any more, "Because Hillary? Is like corrupt? Or something?"

When I heard that 9.7% of San Francisco voted for Trump, I was puzzled, because does San Francisco even have that many cops?

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2023/11/happy-they-live-day-to-all-who-celebrate/feed/ 3 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/10/manifesto/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/10/manifesto/#comments Tue, 17 Oct 2023 07:17:21 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykFO

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2023/10/manifesto/feed/ 3 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/today-in-email-hegemony/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/today-in-email-hegemony/#comments Sat, 09 Sep 2023 05:05:30 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykEG People keep telling me how email is a great federation success story.

The DNA Lounge store has a simple spell checker attached to the email field that knows about the 30 or so most popular domains, and valid TLDs. Every few years, I update the list of domains based on how many orders came in to our store with those domains.

Here's the current top ten from the last ~2 years since our post-lockdown re-opening:

67%	gmail.com
13%	yahoo.com
4%	hotmail.com
2%	icloud.com
1.2%	aol.com
0.8%	comcast.net
0.6%	sbcglobal.net
0.6%	me.com
10.8%	everything else

I'm slightly surprised that the gmail number isn't even higher, but how in the absolute fuck is AOL still on that list??

Also, my spell checker thingy won't let you hit "Purchase" with an invalid TLD, and yet, I have 56 orders from gmail.con. There is no .con TLD yet, I checked, though I would not have placed bets on that. So how did those get through? JavaScript turned off? Nope. Every one of them was via Apple Pay, which does not do the typo check as Apple tells us the email directly.

That means these people have Apple IDs in the CON domain. I'm sure that's working out really well for them.

Previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/today-in-email-hegemony/feed/ 65 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/jwz-org-is-now-25/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/08/jwz-org-is-now-25/#comments Thu, 03 Aug 2023 07:11:54 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykC3 ftp://lucid.com/pub/jwz/index.html. In July 1994, that became http://home.mcom.com/people/jwz/, then http://people.netscape.com/jwz/ in 1995, and finally I registered jwz.org on Aug 2, 1998.

It took me a little while to accept that having my email and web presence completely beholden to my employer was perhaps not the greatest plan. That is obvious to you now, but it was the 90s, we were like little children.

Why that date, though? Oh, there was a stupid Netscape PR disaster that made the comms team pull the plug on all of the employee home pages. There were five days, Friday through Tuesday, when nobody could download XScreenSaver, and such indignities up with we will not put.

And I know what you're thinking but the PR disaster was not my fault! I had absolutely nothing to do with this one! Some anonymous asshat writing at Cnet thought that the fact that you could type about:rmw into the URL field and get redirected to another employee's personal web page meant that the software was "bloated" because the application itself contained a photo of John Wayne Gacy. Our coworker nearly got fired over this:

It was, indeed, time to think different. Except for a brief interlude from 2002 through 2010 when I did my blogging on LiveJournal instead of self-hosting it all, this has been my web site. There are many like it but this is mine.

The redirects that I left behind on my old netscape.com pages contained a reproduction of this dialog that actually existed in NCSA Mosaic in 1993:

In context, jwz.org came to be six months after I registered mozilla.org, one month after I made my first offer on DNA Lounge, and 17 months before I got the keys and took control of the dnalounge.com domain.

The desperation is palpable. The grifters pivot from "crypto" to "AI", and as the rats' milk returns to the sewer, the cycle of life is complete.

I covered most of this on my post in January about the 25th anniversary of mozilla.org itself, but I thought this date also deserved honorable mention.

Also, twenty-five years ago tomorrow was the first time that I rented a big nightclub and booked a bunch of DJs, bands and circus acts. Spoilers!

Previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2023/03/three-thirty-one/feed/ 13