Gabriele Svelto

Old school nerd.
Knows things about computers that would drive you insane.
Hacks on Firefox at Mozilla.

Public Key

npub18a9mwvktyhlwqznq7mw8v2c96g9sv69vv8wxgnu9gn82zqmmv3vqu9u4at

NIP-05 Address

gabrielesvelto_at_fosstodon.org@mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsr7jahxt9jtlhqpfs0dhrk9vzayzcxdzkxrhryf7z5fn4pqdakgkqpjlgrh

Author Public Key

npub18a9mwvktyhlwqznq7mw8v2c96g9sv69vv8wxgnu9gn82zqmmv3vqu9u4at

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Last Notes

2024-09-11 16:11:15

I've just read a piece of news about this lady in Tuscany who ran over a man who had stolen her purse with her huge SUV. She drove four times over him, then got off the car, retrieved her purse, drove away and left him to die.
I'm wary of people driving large cars pretty much as much as of people who own firearms. These are violent people. There's no logical reason to own either.

2024-08-31 19:14:29

Back in 1996 I watched a play by Italian comedian Corrado Guzzanti called Nineteen-ninenty-ten (Millenovecentonovantadieci). He played a young man born in 2025 who came back in time, asking for asylum in the present, "because the future sucks".
At the time I laughed my ass off, it was a great show. In hindsight it was also terrifyingly prophetic.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/058/168/254/006/957/original/0a1b048b41028b6d.jpg

2024-07-13 13:56:25

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Firefox is currently made of 30 million lines of codes. Just running the test suites on a server costs a ton of money. You have to pay everybody's salaries, including the security people who are on-call 24/7 to respond to 0-days and similar security incidents. You have to pay for Sync storage and processing, you have to pay for download bandwidth, heck we need several people to deal with accessibility alone. 8/11

2024-07-13 13:56:13

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I'm very happy about how the fediverse works, this is one of the few spaces that's ad-free, but I've been contributing to my instance, and I hope that my contributions make it possible for other users who can't afford it to join the fediverse too. Is this sustainable? Honestly I don't know. What I know is that browser development is not sustainable with contributions alone. Not by a long shot. 7/11

2024-07-13 13:56:01

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But what if you don't want to see ads at all? You can totally do that! There are very good and effective ways to block ads, and it'll make for a better online experience. But don't be under the illusion that will somehow change the current dynamics. Most services you'll see will still be ad-funded, and they won't be able to survive if they can't serve ads. Alternatively you'll have to pay to access them. Which brings us to another topic: donations. 6/11

2024-07-13 13:55:26

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And it's not just Google. Every ad network is going to extreme measures to track you, because it is *profitable* to do it. And as long as there's an economic incentive, they'll do it. The only way to stop this is by removing the economic incentive to tracking. You'll still be served ads, but at least they'll be generic then. I don't know if PPA will achieve that, but the status quo won't. I'm 100% sure about that. 5/11

2024-07-13 13:55:02

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The reasons why it's bad are rather obvious: most ad networks know more about you than yourself. Google in particular has an incredible view of your life, they probably know more about you than yourself, because they meticulously tracked and stored every interaction you had with them for as long as you've been online. 4/11

2024-07-13 13:54:52

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So let's get that out of the way, Mozilla hasn't become an ad company, it already was. pretty much always has been. The company didn't really want to talk about it in these terms though. Which brings us to the second topic: ads are now heavily reliant on user profiling and tracking. That's bad. 3/11

2024-07-13 13:51:35

Chances are that you might have heard about #Firefox "Privacy Preserving Attribution for Advertising". I've been working for Mozilla for 12 years and I've learned about it here on the fediverse, not only because I haven't been paying much attention, but because internal comms have been occupied with other stuff. So let's talk about something I feel Mozilla desperately needs: transparency. 🧵 1/11

2024-07-08 12:08:35

It's worth recalling a small but crucial bit of the French elections in the light of the Russian strike of a children's hospital in #Kyiv.
Three days ago Marine Le Pen's stated in unequivocal terms that her party would prevent Ukraine from using French-supplied long-range weapons to strike inside Russia.
The stench of the Russian regime is all over her, her party and her allies in Europe.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/05/europe/france-le-pen-ukraine-mbappe-intl-cmd/index.html

2024-07-05 08:52:26

Friends from the UK, I have a question for you. Will the labour victory lead to actual progressive policies or do you expect a repeat of Blair's Thatcherism with a human face?

2024-07-01 08:10:29

Never thought I'd agree with someone from GS
> AI technology is exceptionally expensive, and to justify those costs, the technology must be able to solve complex problems, which it isn't designed to do," [...] The starting point for costs is also so high that even if costs decline, they would have to do so dramatically to make automating tasks with AI affordable [...] In our experience, even basic summarization tasks often yield illegible and nonsensical results.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-return-investment-disappointing-goldman-sachs-report-2024-6

2024-06-25 13:58:30

I can't help but notice that, when people mention supposed real-world use-cases for chatbots they've seen, it involves almost exclusively the free tiers.
That is, some people find some use of chatbots as long as somebody else is footing the bill.
The very significant hardware, energy, development and support bill that is currently being paid by burning VC money and ignoring laws.

2024-06-20 21:01:50

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Also, no judgement if you decide to buy a cat, but please consider adopting one if you can instead. The white-and-tabby in the picture is called Yogi and was born in a house litter but nobody wanted him because his tail was all crooked, so he was already "oldish" when we picked him up. The dark one is Boo Boo and she was found abandoned in a box. They're both lovely and affectionate, and that's all we need from them.

2024-06-20 20:55:28

I just found a picture of our cats from the first few weeks after we adopted them. They were extremely cute.
#CatsOfMastodon
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/650/933/911/959/128/original/851ebe4da73ed893.jpg

2024-06-19 10:05:55

As an employee of Mozilla I have absolutely no control over what the C-suite does. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. And so do my colleagues.
Just in case you were wondering.

2024-06-18 16:25:03

In the never-ending debates about #SystemD one argument that is often brought up is how many people whine about it but aren't willing to put in the work for a valid alternative.
Well, here's the thing, systemd development is entirely corporate-backed. It's done by people who are paid to do it. The alternative would be an entirely community-based project.
That's not the same thing neither from the point-of-view of available resources nor of how choices are made. 1/2

2024-06-12 09:35:28

One way to confront AI-generated drivel on the internet could be to cryptographically sign human-generated content. This would also have the advantage of certifying the origin and integrity of a page/post.
The major problem about this is that the tooling sucks. And I mean, it sucks for users with deep technical knowledge; it's completely obscure and unusable to non-tech users.

2024-06-01 15:47:23

It's become a bit of a sport to post screenshots of chatbots answering silly questions by suggesting dangerous stuff, such as eating rocks or drinking battery acid.
While it might sound fun on the surface, it worries me a lot. It worries me because there's a class of people who are likely to ask silly but potentially dangerous questions and who could be fooled by a human-sounding answer without realizing it's from a machine: children.

2024-05-28 09:51:57

Normalize calling AI "plagiarism as a service"

2024-05-18 18:29:47

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@npub1xdl…ks6q close but not quite: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-secret-history-of-dune/

2024-05-16 08:45:36

I'm gonna say it: I'm really, really grateful to our QA people. Testing stuff over and over and over is not fun, but it's crucially important. There's so many things that can't be caught by automated tests. There's no replacement for a user manually interacting with your software.

2024-05-08 22:06:53

Memory errors in consumer devices such as PCs and phones are not something you hear much about, yet they are probably one of the most common ways these machines fail.
I'll use this thread to explain how this happens, how it affects you and what you can do about it. But I'll also talk about how the industry failed to address it and how we must force them to, for the sake of sustainability. 🧵 1/17

2024-04-29 16:40:51

This is gonna be fun: OpenAI runs afoul of the GDPR because it generates false information about individuals and they don't have full access to the data that pertains to them.
From the article:
> Maartje de Graaf, data protection lawyer at noyb: “The obligation to comply with access requests applies to all companies. [...] It seems that with each ‘innovation’, another group of companies thinks that its products don’t have to comply with the law.”
https://noyb.eu/en/chatgpt-provides-false-information-about-people-and-openai-cant-correct-it

2024-04-13 07:28:31

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@npub1sua…szrk [...] and it is complete, because it ended here.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/262/729/284/541/566/original/4248e5e8876dc273.mp4

2024-04-11 12:47:03

A relic from the old world
#Rust #Python #Javascript #Java #CPlusPlus
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/112/252/637/643/045/224/original/ccfc1dd4b57018fc.png

2024-04-04 12:21:23

In the light of the #xz backdoor, if you're a #RustLang developer, I recommend you familiarize yourself with cargo vet:
https://mozilla.github.io/cargo-vet/
Auditing your dependencies, or relying on external audits, adds an important layer of protection.
It's not a silver bullet against bad dependencies as there's no such thing. However adding more layers of protection makes attackers' lives harder and this is one of them.

2024-04-03 12:19:20

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@npub1sg4…xslc these people are called "visionaries" in the mainstream press 🙃

2024-04-03 10:44:05

What sound does a tech bubble make when it bursts?
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/03/stability_ai_bills/

2024-03-20 19:53:38

So I just learned what "The Stack" is today: an aggregation of GitHub repos for machine learning from which I can opt out.
But I won't.
I won't because they scraped some hot garbage I wrote in bash and Python that would make you faint. Bottom-of-the-barrel throw-away scripts full of coding crimes. Stuff like
find | grep | awk | xargs | ugh
...invoked via subprocess.run() then fed into more garbage.
I want "artificial intelligence" to learn this. It's going to be fantastic.

2024-03-07 14:14:05

Being in tech be like
Internet of things!
me: I don't care about the inter—
INTERNET OF THINGS!
[later...]
Virtual reality!
me: I don't care about virtua—
VIRTUAL REALITY!
[later...]
Metaverse!
me: I don't care about the metav—
METAVERSE!
[later...]
Blockchain!
me: I don't care about the blockch—
BLOCKCHAIN!
[later...]
Artificial intelligence!
me: I don't care about so-called artif—
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE!
[etc...]

2024-03-04 14:36:51

Some people like to claim that LLMs/image generators and humans learn and create in the same fundamental ways.
This is patently false. The output of an "AI" generator is solely the function of its input and training set. Give it the same inputs, get the exact same output. That's not how human beings work.

2024-02-27 17:11:07

I can't help but think that return-to-office mandates are gonna hurt the companies doing them: they'll lower their productivity, make them less attractive when it comes to hiring, increase their costs and overall make them less competitive.
The problem is, when the results will suck they'll blame it on the employees which will also bear the cost of their managers' errors.

2024-02-25 23:00:10

Please, please don't spoil #Dune part 2 for those who haven't read the book. I know it's been 59 years, but please, pleaaaaase, be nice people.
You haven't spoiled #LotR to those who went to watch it right? RIGHT?!?!

2024-02-21 10:50:40

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@npub1q0f…rdcz I seem to remember that crack-the-skyscraper-with-his-head scene was in the movie. It's been such a long time since I've watched the anime I might be wrong though

2024-02-14 14:46:33

My former colleague Asa Dotzler tried asking generative AI models to create pictures of people writing, playing an instrument or playing tennis with their left hand and it went exactly as you would imagine it to go.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/930/337/329/900/175/original/87386494fa4e4466.png
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/930/341/965/450/259/original/85624d37a88c9943.jpg
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/930/348/299/090/256/original/8ab663db3316d10f.jpg
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/930/361/220/739/781/original/965f84eee2a44840.png

2024-02-11 07:55:13

We're fucked
#GlobalWarming
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/911/764/181/162/253/original/b49aed60bb75017a.png

2024-01-18 13:02:02

I reported an obvious scam to Google and got this as the reply: they can't review the ad. The ad that they served and which made them a bit richer. But they can't review it.
Large tech companies must be made accountable for the content they serve. We must legally bind them when they serve monetized content. They can't deflect responsibility and let scammers, propagandists and even criminal groups do whatever they please.
We can't let them continue to profit without accountability.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/777/065/163/052/117/original/2db6541fcfcb9f7e.png

2024-01-08 07:32:41

The #AlpineLinux maintainers have enabled crash reporting for #Firefox and the very first reports are trickling in. I want to thank them publicly because this will help us keep Firefox stable on the platform.
For users, remember that crash reports are strictly opt-in, so send them our way if you experience instability.

2023-11-30 06:26:38

Live your life so that the internet reacts to your death like to Rosalynn Carter's, not Henry Kissinger's

2023-10-17 09:05:40

I just learned that #Bandcamp has been essentially gutted, with half of the staff being let go. It sounds like it will soon be turned into the shadow of itself and it's such a shame.
I'd like to thank all the people who worked there and built a service that had the artists' back. In our stagnant, corporate-centric cultural environment you made something that really enabled music to develop in many new interesting directions.

2023-10-13 13:05:30

You periodic reminder not to buy batteries on AliExpress and friends.
Unless you really want to check if these 9900mAh models hold just 1/10th of the advertised capacity or blow up in your face when you charge them.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/111/227/840/514/058/593/original/7abe372ad3d3eb64.png

2023-10-07 20:30:23

Pro-Russian propaganda accounts are spreading the false rumor that western weapons provided to Ukraine were sold to Hamas, and used during today's attack. This is false, but you'll soon see this rumor accompanied by videos of Hamas militants operating western weapons... because they've captured a significant amount of them from IDF bases around the #Gaza strip.

2023-10-07 17:09:39

A lot of things could be said about the situation in #Israel and #Gaza, but there's one thing I believe we can all agree upon: today the leadership of the Mossad look like a bunch of clowns

2023-09-21 14:44:17

In a move that proves how modern capitalism has nothing to do with feudalism, Rupert Murdoch appoints his eldest son as the new ruler of his empire

2023-08-27 07:52:58

Any sufficiently hyped technology is indistinguishable from magic and ultimately will deliver just as many results as magic does.

2023-08-19 10:12:37

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Before we dive into the bugs themselves it's important to understand just how complex our platform support is: Firefox runs on 4 different operating systems, and for each of them it uses dozens of platform-specific APIs to implement a huge amount of features: input handling, media decoding, various forms of hardware acceleration, accessibility, window management, the list goes on and on... 2/13

2023-08-19 10:12:16

Starting with version 116, #Firefox will drop support for macOS versions prior to 10.15 as well as Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. This has understandably annoyed a few users so let me explain why we're taking this step: the maintenance burden of supporting several versions of each platform is very significant. I'll show you how much by citing three platform-specific bugs I've worked on over the past two years. 🧵 1/13

2023-08-14 22:18:42

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@npub1sne…m70q yes! Or at least that's the idea...but UX is going to be critical for us not to look like your average "we've detected an issue with your computer" scam

2023-08-14 14:43:42

I am extremely excited because we're testing a new system to detect #Firefox crashes caused by bad memory.
We're currently finding a very high correlation between potential bit-flips detected by this system and crashes we thought were caused by bad hardware.
This will help us in two ways: we'll be able to avoid spending time looking at those crashes and we might also inform users that their memory went bad and they need to have their machines checked.

2023-08-11 06:20:14

Extensions are coming back to #Firefox for Android: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2023/08/10/prepare-your-firefox-desktop-extension-for-the-upcoming-android-release/

2023-08-07 08:04:39

In today's corporate absurdity piece: an Amazon exec says that now that workers have been forced back into the office everybody's happier. The strong argument he used to back his assertion being: “I don’t have data to back it up, but I know it’s better.”
https://fortune.com/2023/08/03/amazon-svp-mike-hopkins-office-return/

2023-08-05 22:59:08

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@npub1znz…8l64 you've got a point there

2023-08-05 22:44:40

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@npub1znz…8l64 Just when I thought heatwaves were taking the first spot. But I guess heatwaves can't kill you all year round.

2023-07-19 20:08:42

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@npub1znz…8l64 it's still min-29C over here max-42C. Cold tap water is warm and when I put my clothes on after showering this morning they also felt warm to the touch.
I'm complaining just because I can. There's people working outside these days. In the fields, in the streets, in construction yards, warehouses, etc...

2023-07-14 09:09:31

I'm starting a thread of peculiar #Italian sayings that you might find fun, witty and maybe even useful.
Let's start with: mio nonno in cariola con le mutande viola
Literally: my grandpa in a wheelbarrow wearing purple underwear (purple and wheelbarrow rhyme in Italian). Used to express utter disbelief. E.g.
- AI will help us solve global warming
- Sure, my grandpa in a wheelbarrow wearing purple underwear
🧵 1/

2023-07-11 10:05:28

I know of several NP-hard problems that are significantly simpler than parenting

2023-07-07 21:49:33

Here's a reminder of what Facebook really is: today I've looked into one of the shitposting groups I follow there and was presented with an ad about renewable energy with a bunch of comments. I checked them and found what I expected: a bunch of terrible takes from your typical mouth-frothing FB users. Their profiles were filled with anti-vax takes, denialism... and racist posts. So I reported a few and was promptly informed that they all complied with community guidelines.
That's Facebook.

2023-07-06 20:12:03

For the first time today I heard the phrase "this sounds like it was written by #ChatGPT" to describe a blog post that was verbose, boring and full of platitudes.

2023-07-04 13:25:18

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@npub182s…q6t5 thank you! Sorry that I replied so late but you post got swallowed by the mentions and it took me a while to find it again

2023-07-01 15:32:19

> #ChatGPT is autotune for bullshitters.
My colleague Asa might have found the perfect description for "artificial intelligence" tools.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/110/639/539/232/585/543/original/368cc72e8ef3311d.png

2023-06-30 21:32:22

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@npub1znz…8l64 how will they get all the bikes out and the SUVs in? They won't fit!

2023-06-20 12:37:27

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Also I refuse to call them immigrants. These are people, human beings.
It's like being called an expat just because you're a wealthy immigrant. I'm not an expat, I'm an immigrant myself, just one that happens to be rich enough to be accepted without a peep.
People literally hide behind the word expat because immigrant is placeholder for poor, and we live in a world that frowns upon poverty as if it were a crime, not a condition deliberately imposed on people.

2023-06-20 12:34:03

Wherever I look I can see news about a few very rich individuals being stranded on a submarine that was supposed to take them on a tour of the Titanic. The effort put in place to rescue them appears huge in scope.
Last week over six hundred people died in a #shripweck off the coasts of #Greece and nobody cared. Nobody even bothered to start a rescue operation until it was too late.
Stop pretending people are equal, I hate this hypocrisy.

2023-06-12 09:05:44

Silvio Berlusconi just died. During his life he caused immense damage to both Italy and the EU.
For decades he used his media empire to propagate a culture of sexism, racism and utter disregard for culture and science. He facilitated organized crime and helped Putin gain a foothold within the EU both politically and financially.
Even though he was already waning politically after the 2012 crisis, the damage he has done within Italian society will take decades to undo.

2023-04-03 06:49:52

I've been hacking a #[0] DSi XL I had laying around for my children to play on. It was a US model and I wanted to switch it to EUR so I could change the language but also retain the default functionality and run stuff off of an SD card. Turns out it's possible!
1. Install unlaunch
2. Dump the firmware
3. Move the firmware to the SD w/ HiyaCFW-Helper
4. Patch the SD with hiyalang
5. Install TWiLight Menu++ to launch games w/ nds-bootstrap
6. Boot into the DSi menu by default
#[1]