@mdavis @firefoxwebdevs

The Firefox AI "kill switch" is not "complicated" except insofar as it's incoherent. it's not "undisclosed nuance" except insofar as it's incoherent.

the "kill switch" doesn't exist.

this is important to keep in mind. once you remember that NONE OF THIS EXISTS, you will realise that every one of the dilemmas you posit is an imaginary problem that follows from incoherent postulates.

e.g. "AI kill switch purists" is not a coherent postulation because the "kill switch" does not exist.

the "kill switch" is a hypothetical proposed in this post:

https://mastodon.social/@firefoxwebdevs/115740500373677782

the "kill switch" is a proposal to satisfy the demand for an opt-in by providing an opt-out. you might think that's a failure to respect the question, and you might even begin to suspect the proposal was in bad faith.

note that Jake, in presenting the kill switch and calling it a kill switch and getting it into all the papers as a kill switch, says he's uncomfortable with the name he's publicised it as. you might think that's oddly incompetent for literally a PR (devrel) person.

the concept as presented imposes multiple false dilemmas.

the LLM stuff should *incredibly obviously* be an extension. this is the purest possible opt-in, despite jake's past attempts to muddy the meaning of "opt-in".

making it an extension is also eminently feasible. There is literally no technical reason it needs to be a browser built-in.

this suggests the reasons are not in any way technical. some person with a name, who has yet to be named, dictated that it would be a built-in. so that's what Mozilla is going with.

why Mozilla went hard AI is entirely unclear. this would have been late 2024? we have no idea who was inspired with this bad idea nor why they were so incredibly keen to force it into the browser.

nor is it clear what Mozilla will do for external LLM services when the AI bubble runs out of venture capital and pops in a year or so, most of the chatbot APIs shut down and whatever remains is 10x the cost at least. but that's a problem for 2027's bonus, not 2026's.

note how the poll provides no option for "no LLM functions built-in to Firefox", in a pathetically transparent attempt to synthesize consent. jake wants to use this poll as evidence of what the user base wants, deliberately leaving out the option he knows directly a lot of them want.

and in conclusion:

1. solve the "kill switch" naming problem by branding it the "brutal and bloody robot murder switch with an option on the executives responsible".
2. make all this shit an extension like they should have a year ago.
3. and your little translator too.

@6D696B6B6F @ssundell jep - a line of code is not an asset, it's a liability.

Tuhat apinaa tuhannella kirjoituskoneella tekemässä jotain jonka toiset tuhat apinaa jollain sapluunalla varmistavat olevan Shakespearea..

@cora @Chip_Unicorn @cstross
I also like to think of vibe coders as fertilizer.

Mobility and robotics companies are deliberately testing the boundaries of how far they can go in converting public infrastructure into private profit. When you see rental scooters or food delivery robots parked on sidewalks, that's a company using taxpayer funded infrastructure to externalize their own costs, even while they work to minimize their own tax liability. Naturally, they pocket the difference.

nipples itch after transporter

@gdinwiddie
Settling in this case, definitely.

Also I am one of the cats being herded, not a cat herder so my takes on tools are somewhat useless

cc: @maaretp

@gdinwiddie
Providing some kind of proof training wasn't completely useless.

Not coming to a meeting wasting everyones time going 'sorry i wasn't paying attention just now can we recap last 5 mins' every time your name is said.

(Does not mean meetings and training should also be improved a lot)

cc: @maaretp

@gdinwiddie
Imagining a perfectly spherical cow-orker, internal motivation and 'all the good ways' makes sense, but in a workplace setting neither them or the holes they're forced through are.

So cruder tools are needed, imo.

cc: @maaretp

@maaretp @gdinwiddie
This.

I think "multitasking" training should be discouraged and multitasking meetings should be disallowed.

I report useless training to my mgr (and ecourage them to ask anon / 1to1 opins from others) but unwilling to do it publicly b/c everyone i know hates the precanned bollocks and being the first to voice discontent and have ppl agree out loud will do me no favors, least of all now that the kings new clothes will skyrocket our productivity

If you have any Postgres performance issues, I'd love to hear about them and try to help: https://pgmustard.com/office-hours

@mensrea @maaretp @gdinwiddie anything that, at a glance, shows bob ross and pastafarianism is def good

@mensrea @maaretp @gdinwiddie
Adding insult to injury, I know a guy who has to add mickey mouse "certs" off those to his company cv.

@mensrea @maaretp @gdinwiddie
@mensrea @maaretp @gdinwiddie
I think it's more of a industry/culture thing.

There are (diff levels of) mandatory trainings people are(n't) given the choice of attending.

Having to do hourly reporting of time spent also affects this.

Just having something (you already know is gaun be shite with 90% accuracy) playing in the backgroung to claim you attended and doing 'actual work' or smth more interesting is, if not the norm, really widespread.

Whilst everyone was looking at #Venezuela...

"The Israeli military has spent the past 24 hours expanding the so-called “yellow line” in eastern Gaza, particularly in eastern Gaza City’s Tuffah, Shujayea, and Zeitoun neighbourhoods, according to Al Jazeera teams on the ground, squeezing Palestinians into ever smaller clusters of the enclave."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/5/israel-extends-gaza-occupation-beyond-yellow-line-in-north-bombs-south

@ultrazool @geospacedman @concretedog @ianturton On driving innovation, an opensource licence (especially GPL) and varied consultancies really help this. The @pwramsey quote

"You get what you pay for [with open source], everyone gets what you pay for, and you get what everyone pays for.”

explains it well. #BritishGeologicalSurvey paid @northroadgeo for features in their SLYR plugin and @lutraconsulting for #MerginMaps work. We needed the tools, but everyone can use it. 3/n

God Emperor of Dune but make it British children’s book (testing daughter’s copics)

Here is my latest article on the world of databases: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2026/01/2025-databases-retrospective.html

All the hot topics from the last year:
• More Postgres action!
• MCP for everyone!
• MongoDB gets litigious with FerretDB!
• File formats!
• Market movements!
• The richest person in the world!

The two hardest problems in Computer Science are:

1. Getting up in the morning
2. Going to bed at a reasonable time

Found a DOS game that's basically a train control simulation of an actual Dutch station, apparently written for train staff to celebrate some new building: https://www.folst.nl/download/download.htm