In Arnold Kling’s The Three Languages Of Politics he argues that we don’t all exist along some set of objective political axes, left and right, or even the classic two-dimensional spectrum (or even three dimensions). Instead different groups use different axes, or different dichotomies, to look at the …
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“Users want control” is a shoulder shrug
Making the claim “users want control” is the same as saying you don’t know what users want, you don’t know what is good, and you don’t know what their goals are.
I first started thinking about this during the debate over what would become the ACA. The …
Open Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed To Make Money
Or: The Best Way To Do Something Is To At Least Try
We all know the story: you can’t make money on open source. Is it really true?
I’m thinking about this now because Mozilla would like to diversify its revenue in the next few years, and one …
The Firefox Experiments I Would Have Liked To Try
I have been part of the Firefox Test Pilot team for several years. I had a long list of things I wanted to build. Some I didn’t personally want to build, but I thought they were interesting ideas. I didn’t get very far through this list at all …
The Over-engaged Knowledge Worker
I recently listened to a discussion of knowledge work in the browser. Along the way people imagined idealized workflows and the tools that could enable them. This result felt familiar from concept videos since forever (such as this old Mozilla concept video):
The result featured lots of jet-setting highly engaged …
We Need Open Hosting Platforms
In Bringing people back to the open web Chris states:
But most users don’t care about the principles or implementation of an open web, at least not in those terms. Most people don’t see themselves as ever having left the open web behind, and if you told them …
Viewing Python execution with source code rewriting
A while back I experimented with a Jupyter Notebook-like interface. Ultimately I hit some roadblocks and knew that I couldn’t keep working on it indefinitely, as I had no personal purpose for the project.
But I do want to share the idea I most liked from the project: tracing …
Thoughts on the Firefox Email Tabs experiment
We recently released Email Tabs in Firefox Test Pilot. This was a project I championed, and I wanted to offer some context on it.
Email Tabs is a browser add-on that makes it easier to compose an email message from your tabs/pages. The experiment page describes how it works …
My Lunch With A White Supremacist
About ten years ago I got a call out of the blue from Soren. I’d always published my phone number on my website, and it’s only been used a handful of times. Hardly anyone wants to actually call another person.
Soren had come upon a post of mine …
Improving the web with small, composable tools
Firefox Screenshots is the first Test Pilot experiment to graduate into Firefox, and it’s been surprisingly successful. You won’t see many people talking about it: it does what you expect, and it doesn’t cover new ground. Mozilla should do more of this.
Small, Composable Tools
One of …
