Mozilla Goes Full Incubator With 'Fix The Internet' Startup Lab and Early-Stage Investments (techcrunch.com) 43
After testing the waters this spring with its incubator-esque MVP Lab, Mozilla is doubling down on the effort with a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies. From a report: The focus on "a better society" and the company's open-source clout should help differentiate it from the other options out there. Spurred on by the success of a college hackathon using a whole four Apple Watches in February, Mozilla decided to try a more structured program in the spring. The first test batch of companies is underway, having started in April an 8-week program offering $2,500 per team member and $40,000 in prizes to give away at the end. Developers in a variety of domains were invited to apply, as long as they fit the themes of empowerment, privacy, decentralization, community and so on. It drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their MVP. The rest were invited to an "Open Lab" with access to some of Mozilla's resources.
Re: How about you fix... (Score:1)
What if that is all there is left?
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That's probably the part of the Internet they have in mind to fix.
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I'd +5 your comment if I had any points.
Maybe stick to what you are good at. (Score:1)
I don't see any car mechanics trying to become neuro-psychologists either.
Or is it because Mozilla was already undermined by "a better society" "social justice" types? Because that would explain a lot.
Yes, please fix society (Score:2)
Are they going to start with ending the cycle of dependency of the welfare state?
Re:Yes, please fix society (Score:4, Interesting)
What does "cycle of dependency of the welfare state" even mean? And why is it a bad thing? And for who?
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Re:Yes, please fix society (Score:4)
However, I don't think it's difficult to see why such a supposed (remember we're still just talking about a hypothetical here) system would be bad even if we don't have one. Anyone who's wholly dependent on the charity of others is really at the mercy of their ability to continue providing it and obviously produces nothing for society in return. Anyone who participates in the administration or perpetuation of such a system is creating more of the first type of person and presumably not engaging in some otherwise useful activity.
It's pretty obvious that what's been presented above is a kind of strawman constructed of worst case scenarios and evil intentions. It should be fairly obvious that it doesn't exist simply because there are people who receive some form of government assistance that eventually stop needing it. I've always viewed it as more of the kind of notion that when designing a welfare system, one should take steps to avoid creating something that could naturally tend towards that.
One obvious example is that if you reduce welfare payments inline with any small amount of earned income then it just discourages anyone on welfare to get any job that doesn't pay more than the government assistance they receive. It isn't hard to see that from the perspective of the economy it would be far better for them to receive 100% of what they were already receiving since we've already decided they get paid that for doing no work. In the second case where they're working they're contributing to the economy and an additional amount of tax revenue is generated and collected.
Now that itself is an overly broad notion and leaves out a lot of detail that's important, but hopefully it helps illustrate the point. A good welfare system is one that helps keep people afloat or becoming utterly destitute but also incentivizes them to work to get back on their own feet. The extent to which any system encourages a person to become more of a net drain on society is the extent to which it's certainly awful. I wouldn't claim it's terribly prevalent, but there are people with some kind of savior complex that for whatever reason have no problem with creating victims just so that they have someone to save. Those are certainly rare cases, but it's not uncommon for someone with good and pure intentions to do something which only makes problems worse. The end result can be the same either way.
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Wow that's dumb. I had a party when I turned 18. Most Americans do. It's called a "birthday party". I can understand that a conservative American might be so conservative they don't want to celebrate birthdays, but you've lost that war.
Also, just on face, it's dumb because a child at home makes more money than an adult on welfare and makes it easier for their parent(s) to qualify.
Generations of people on welfare is
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Fortunately welfare creates jobs too. Here in the EU there's an entire industry of businesses specializing in welfare. If you live in an Eastern European country these businesses will get you a job in a Western European country. Zero hassle. No actual work required. After a few weeks you'll be fired from the job. This is when you're transported to the location where you supposedly worked and where you'll be enrolled into welfare. Once the paper work is done you're shipped back back home where you can enjoy
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You're describing a "welfare trap". That's almost universally not what people mean when they use the phrase "cycle of dependency." I'm going to push those who believe in the "cycle of dependency" to define it, because I think they secretly mean "I shouldn't have to help people."
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As a politically aware American I'm well aware of this old trope of right leaning politics. The notion here is that the poor are far better off 'pulling them selves up by the boot straps' & solving all of their own problems rather than leaning on the government in any way. The closer you get to pure Libertarian/Conservative politics, the more you fear that government will create dependency & corrode all the positive affects of a pure capitalist market economy. Under harder line versions of this view
Wow, just... (Score:2)
Neutral is a browser plugin that shows the carbon footprint of your Amazon purchases, adding some crucial guilt to transactions we forget are powered by footsore humans and gas-guzzling long-distance goods transport.
Screenshot shows a Mr Coffee maker, and the plugin shows: 12.5Kg of CO2, Equals 62.5km of driving, 178.4kg of glacial ice.
I'm not really even sure what I can say about this.
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Grow your own beans?
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Interesting thing I learned on the Internet once: growing coffee at home is difficult and provides very small yields. It's quite similar to growing coca plants.
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Neutral is a browser plugin that shows the carbon footprint of your Amazon purchases, adding some crucial guilt to transactions we forget are powered by footsore humans and gas-guzzling long-distance goods transport.
Screenshot shows a Mr Coffee maker, and the plugin shows: 12.5Kg of CO2, Equals 62.5km of driving, 178.4kg of glacial ice.
I'm not really even sure what I can say about this.
How about: Some actual problems would fix these children right up?
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Screenshot shows a Mr Coffee maker, and the plugin shows: 12.5Kg of CO2, Equals 62.5km of driving, 178.4kg of glacial ice.
Screw "glacial" ice - I want to know its equivalent in cocktail ice.
It's Not The Internet That's Broken (Score:1)
Hasn't the TV show Silicon Valley taught us anything about trusting "tech" to save people? If you build a large "tech thing", it just becomes a tool to be wielded for any aim that anyone wants, good or bad. Tech doesn't shape society, society shapes tech. Sure, tech can exacerbate problems or help them. But the same can be said for any "tool".
Take this plug-in to analyze Amazon purchases to tell you about your impact on glacial ice melt. That's not changing your society. Glacial ice melt isn't something tha
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People should be discouraged from causing glacier-melt. They are causing way too much.
Without paying the cost or even knowing the cost, the inconvenience and discomfort of going to a doctor already discourages people from going enough that, on average, Canadians would be healthier and reduce health care costs if then went more.
Support SRV records and DANE for HTTPS (Score:1)
CO2 from the Coffee Maker? I'm done reading this (Score:1)
As long as people are still flying their private jets then I'll forever spew CO2 with reckless abandon.
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Maybe they can incubate a company (Score:3)
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What's actually wrong with Firefox?
It seems pretty good to me. If they could just fix mobile it would be my primary browser.
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To give you an idea, I've been using Chromium all day, I have at least 7 plugins and an external password manager and 3 tabs open, including this one
CPU usage: 4.1%; 38 threads, 11 idle wake ups, 0.18% GPU usage, 355MB RAM
I just opened Firefox and gave it about 2 minutes to settle, it's just sitting on the 'front page' of a 'native' Firefox experience, no plugins:
CPU usage: 4.0%; 64 threads, 114 idle wake ups, 1.85% GPU usage, 264MB RAM. I go to Slashdot frontpage (still just one tab): 448MB RAM, 77 threads
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I find Firefox uses less RAM than Chrome on Windows, not that I have an issue with either of them.
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The engine of FF is good, and it's a good browser, but it stinks high heck of SJW ideology. The UI implementation is shit because arrogant Shitzilla thinks they know what is best for everyone and removes options in the preferences, about:config, and even in that prefs.js file. Look at that stupid new magnification address bar they just came out with. So many people hate it, yet FF/Mozilla fucs "wont fix" any suggestion to include an option to disable it. They are pushing their SJW 'everyone is the same s
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Not wanting to maintain a million different UI configuration options that only a small number of people care about is SJW. Got it.
The reality is that many have tried to fork Firefox and all have failed. Turns out building a browser is hard work and users are ungrateful whiners.
Could they fix CSS first? (Score:3)
CSS 4 draft 5 is proposing that we use / as a multiplier:
rgb( <percentage>{3} [ / <alpha-value> ]? )
WTF is wrong with these people and why were they not thrown off the committee as soon as they displayed the fact that they're fucking morons?
@ is the correct symbol there as that's what people say "Red at 50%"; "Pantone 125 at 20%" etc.
I know, it's off-topic, but it's really pissed me off.
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From what I've been able to gather about "web programming" everyone seems to use some incompatible "framework" which then transpiles it's code to something an actual browser can run. So does it matter what CSS 4 does? Will anyone actually write it?
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CSS 4 draft 5 is proposing that we use / as a multiplier:
That would be ridiculous, given that "/" is already used in CSS with a completely different meaning. Such as
grid-column: 2 / 4
a better society? (Score:2)
So they are going to make better people? How do you do that?
Incubator? (Score:2)
"Madoka, make a contract with me and the internet project of your dreams will become reality!"