No Food for Thought

In 2015, things were getting bad for Mozilla. Usage was falling rapidly, as expenses were getting out of control. Scrambling to stay afloat and diversify, Mozilla introduced Firefox Hello, for video calls. It also made a pact with a devil lesser than Google, which was not a competitor: the Pocket bookmarking service was also integrated. Probably anticipating the reaction, Mozilla tried to push through these subtly via a highly unusual "bugfix" release, 38.0.5.

Firefox 39 was therefore the first (major) Firefox version which felt like bloatware, featuring 2 superfluous icons in its default toolbar.
Firefox Hello joined Mozilla's rapidly growing graveyard quickly enough, lasting less than 2 years. But users had to pocket Pocket much longer.

During the initial backlash against Pocket, Mozilla responded by sweeping the issue under the carpet. It pretended the request to remove Pocket integration was invalid. After I asked to explain, it became clear Mozilla was willing to go as far as censoring criticism, and its infamous ":glob ✱" essentially disabled the ticket. But that request had obviously been doomed to fail from the start. Mozilla was eventually forced into going back to an extension, but still shipped by default, which did nothing to help the default toolbar.

Even when I formulated a compromise, Mozilla took it as an attack. Its equally infamous Mark Hammond pretended the issue was resolved and censored the ticket, again. From there, it was clear there was only option we had left: let it die by itself. Which took no less than 9 more years.

In May, in a blog post "cleverly"😒 titled "Investing in what moves the internet forward", Mozilla announced that Pocket was basically bankrupt and also moving to its now busy graveyard. So it's only yesterday, after 10 years, that the release of Firefox 140 finally ended that saga. Well, you'll have to look closely at the notes to notice it, but they did put it, in the otherwise empty "Changed" section🙄 Of course, after all that cash burned, there's not much left to compensate the poor users who did invest in Pocket; Mozilla will merely refund what was left from their annual subscription.

All of this is a pretty unfortunate way to announce that Firefox 140 is a nice release. If Mozilla had allowed unloading tabs a decade ago rather than integrating Pocket, perhaps it wouldn't have lost the vast majority of its market share during that time. But Firefox 140 is a significant step in the right direction. Here’s hoping Mozilla will take Cal Paterson’s analysis seriously starting from now.

Having spent all my life in Quebec, flashing green lights have nothing mysterious for me. But that was until I found myself in Vancouver (British Columbia), about to turn left and noticed multiple cars in the opposite direction crossing the street, before I overcame my initial shock and turned, looking in the opposite direction's lights to confirm that they were also green, at the same time. I had visibly missed the primer on British Columbia's traffic code.

Lewin Day’s article on the topic explains my confusion and the meaning of the flashing green in BC. An idea surely intended for safety, but so non-standard it is dangerous. Indeed, a sign which is generally reassuring is―in BC― instead a sign requiring extra caution! (Still better than Quebec City's flashing greens, which in certain cases are ever less safe than regular greens, years after I reported it to police.😒)

I can't complain about British Columbia's road infrastructure for cyclists, except for that, vegetation (including roses!) obstructing bike paths, and Google Maps sending you through unlabelled alleys all the time, though. Way better than Quebec city!

Cela commence à faire un bon moment que la science découvre à quel point… elle est douteuse. Suite à la publication de Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (un essai qui semble lui-même inexact), on parle maintenant de crise de la reproductibilité.

Mais un reportage de Découverte sur l’enjeu n’a pas que des mauvaises nouvelles. Comme bien des crises, celle-ci pourrait avoir du mérite, en améliorant les pratiques scientifiques, accélérant la solution de problèmes indignes de la science. Malheureusement, je ne peux m’empêcher de trouver que le reportage minimise le rôle de la fraude dans cette crise. Un problème qui pourrait lui-même s’expliquer par un conflit d’intérêt des journalistes de Découverte…😒

Vive la science, vive la Bonne Science (et surtout la bonne méta-science)

Humans can be very good at self-sabotage. As we enter the darkest period of the USA's history, it's difficult not to think that USA citizens have become experts at this, welcoming Vladimir Putin's sabotage of democracy, which was already bad enough to put back in place the puppet behind that decision.

How can you resist a bilingual product madde with so much Canadian pride?

Depuis plus d'un mois, Windows 11 m'harcelait constamment avec des erreurs/avertissements comme quoi je consommais une trop grande partie de mon quota de stockage OneDrive. En réalité, j'avais effacé le dossier problématique il y a longtemps, mais il était encore sur le serveur, car OneDrive n'arrivait pas à synchroniser la suppression.

Voyant que les semaines n'arrangeaient pas les choses, je me suis résigné à contourner. Je suis allé sur le site web de OneDrive. Le répertoire supprimé s'y trouvait toujours. Mais quand j'ai demandé à ce qu'il soit supprimé, j'ai eu un nouveau bogue : une erreur « L'opération tentée est interdite, car elle dépasse le seuil d'affichage de liste. » :

Avec un message aussi utile, j'ai tôt fait de me diriger vers Google, qui ne m'a fourni aucun résultat de recherche pertinent. Après plusieurs minutes, j'ai fini par dénicher une discussion sur la même erreur, malheureusement sans réponse utile.

Néanmoins, en voyant le message anglophone (« Operation is not allowed because the number of affected items exceeds threshold »), j'ai réalisé que le message francophone est complètement erroné. On devrait plutôt lire « L'opération tentée n'est pas supportée, car le nombre d'éléments (fichiers) affectés dépasse le seuil. »

On ne spécifie toujours pas de quel seuil il s'agit, mais voilà qui est quand même plus utile! Une fois ce bogue dans le contournement identifié, on peut envisager contourner le bogue dans le contournement… en morcelant la suppression. Et en effet, si on entre dans le répertoire pour supprimer ses sous-répertoires petit à petit, le répertoire parent finit par se supprimer tout seul! Encore là, c'est bogué, mais on y arrive sans trop de mal.

Ma paie pour avoir perdu ½ (1?) heure avec tout ça? Cette perle de la documentation Microsoft :

Mieux vaut en rire!😂

L'année dernière, j'ai travaillé pour le gouvernement québécois. Le principal projet qu'on m'a confié a échoué, pour de multiples raisons. Une des importantes était l'obligation légale de garder les données hébergées au Québec, ce qui n'était pas possible avec la solution qui avait été prévue.

À l'époque, cette obligation pouvait paraître exagérée, puisque le fournisseur aurait pu héberger les données aux États-Unis. Mais les derniers mois ont montré sa sagesse. Le gros nuage qui bouillait depuis longtemps aux ÉU est devenu suffisamment noir pour obscurcir le soleil floridien.

Le deuil est particulièrement long lorsque la mort arrive à petit feu, mais il ne demeure pas moins important. Désormais, ce qui reste du monde démocratique devra se soucier encore davantage de sa sécurité et de sa souveraineté. Au premier lieu au niveau de l'armée, mais aussi en technologies s'il veut éviter d'être englouti par ce nuage monstrueux.

China's intelligence activity has long been one of the greatest threats to democracy. Salt Typhoon is a spectacular example of the proportions this has reached.

The USA's decision to stop investigating even before the leak is patched would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But as the USA confirms its transition to autocracy, its decision makes some sense. After all, as China is exporting its governance to the USA, it's only fair that in exchange, the USA exports the secrets and wealth it no longer deserves.

Canada has been importing much of its news from the USA for many months, but since November and particularly January, it has been an uncontrolled dump. The last ¾-hour newscast I watched (yesterday) still hadn't progressed to any other topic after 12 minutes. Tarifs, annexation, trade and wars dominate the news, with the USA now so worried about fentanyl supply that Canada is now importing czars to appease it.

The USA's new focus might be reassuring, but mostly surprising to see, now that it is leaving the WHO, has Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as its Health and Human Services Secretary and that its new President is pardoning druglords.

But perhaps this is all more coherent than it looks; indeed, by avoiding imports of recreational drugs, the USA will encourage local production, ensuring USA leaders don't stay dependant on… foreign drugs. Given the outlook for the next 4 years, it is visibly high time for North America to ramp up its local production of opioids―not just for its new leadersresurrected czars, but also for the population suffering them.

Let's drink a good shot of vodka to our recovered liberty and independence, all thanks to Russia and our new owners!

Update

This post, intended to be sarcastic, was unknowingly published just a few hours after the CBC published its news report Trump complains about Canada — but new data shows spike in U.S. drugs and guns coming north. I guess this should be funny.

2025-02-17 Update

The pardoned druglord's release has already contributed to the glorious $ROSS memecoin. As long as the planet is not entirely burned, there's money to be burned!

Depuis la Révolution tranquille, les Québécois sont fiers. De plusieurs choses, mais en particulier de leur électricité. Nous, Grands Bâtisseurs, avons bâti un parc hydroélectrique, qui, en date de 2021, fournit plus de 99 % de la puissance d'Hydro-Québec, de 37 GW. Une panacée qui nous permet de donner l'électricité aux particuliers, et même aux entreprises étrangères établies sur notre territoire!

Malheureusement, les Québécois n'ont pas encore appris à se méfier des lauriers. Notre incapacité à contrôler la demande et à poursuivre sur notre lancée s'apprête à faire disparaître nos surplus. Mais comment nous comparons-nous aux autres? Même en se comparant à un pays en développement, mal. La Chine, qui n'a que 7 fois le territoire québécois, a une capacité hydroélectrique plus d'un ordre de magnitude supérieure.1

Mais il ne s'agit là que du début. Le retard québécois ne fait que s'accélérer, alors que la Chine a installé 80 GW de capacité éolienne en 2024 seulement. Sans compter 277 GW de capacité solaire!2

Allez, Québec, on n'abandonne pas! On se relève et on repart!