So really, all modern browsers are either forks of KHTML / KJS or are based on the Mozilla codebase. But, at least right now, there are 3 separate engineering teams working on 3 independent codebases. Which hopefully will mitigate some of the issues you get when one company completely controls a software “ecosystem”.

Strange, because they say it’s a “custom version” of Firefox. That normally means it’s a custom build, not a true fork.

Mozilla was doomed from the start.

Netscape Inc. wanted to sell browsers eventually, which makes sense. It’s product which requires a massive amount of engineering effort. But, when Microsoft started tying IE to Windows and giving it away free, there was no way that Netscape could actually make any sales. The bigger reason their business was crushed was that Microsoft was also giving away their web server (IIS) away for free, while Netscape was charging for theirs.

Some kids today are too young to know that Microsoft was sued by the US government over this and lost the case (along with what was very likely Microsoft falsifying evidence). But, then Bush Jr. took office and the government basically took a case they had won and effectively threw out the win.

When it was clear that Netscape was going to fail as a business they open-sourced the browser either as an act of charity or spite. The problem is that it’s still a massive and expensive project to build a web browser. That’s especially true in a world where standards keep evolving and the browser has to keep having new features added.

Since making a browser was so expensive, they needed financial support, and eventually that came from Google. At first Google just wanted Firefox to exist as a hedge so that Microsoft wouldn’t dominate the browser market. But, once Google came out with Chrome it was both a way to keep directing traffic to Google search, and a way to pretend they don’t have a monopoly on browsers.

But, if 90% of the funding of your project comes from Google, there are some obvious lines you can’t cross. So, Mozilla has to keep doing this dance where they make a browser that competes with Chrome, but one that doesn’t cross certain lines that would make Google mad and result in them shutting off the funding.

Google would shut off the funding to Firefox in a heartbeat if they took ad blocking and privacy too seriously. But, Google doesn’t care too much if Mozilla messes around with AI or ads.

Doesn’t Safari use a different codebase? It’s not available on non-Apple platforms, but it’s good to know that there are still engineers working on a different codebase.

Is it a true fork, or is it a project that follows the Firefox tree and builds a customized browser from it?

The difference being, if it’s a true fork, they have to do all their own browser engineering starting at the time it was forked off. That sounds like a monumental effort.

I looked at their jobs list and counted 35 jobs. Of that I count 9 that are AI-related and 4 that are ads-related. The list also includes a few generic jobs like “Chief of Staff”, “Client Analytics Manager”, “Staff Test Engineer” or “Fixed-Term Social Media Trainee”.

Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they’re advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.

You can’t do this with any company. The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.

I don’t know, you’d have to ask the expert.

Yes, many, many people piled on Elon Musk to defend Taylor Swift. Who could have seen that was a good way to get Internet points. Oh wait! That’s you!

So, have some fun with the other players at the expense of the player who refused to do even some basic work for the benefit of everybody else. It doesn’t have to be massively cruel, just give them a nudge so that next time they do put in the required effort.

Sure, but given that the player did avoid doing the work, the DM can take the opportunity to punish them for it.

because you can’t call from this thing or communicate with it any other way because it’s receive only

Yes, it’s a pager. Pagers are still useful, that’s why they’re still being manufactured and sold. Someone in IT who’s on call can have a pager set up so that an automated process sends them a notification if a system breaks. They don’t need two-way communication for that. A doctor can use one to be notified if they’re needed at the hospital. It’s more reliable than a cell phone and in many cases the battery lasts a lot longer. They could even be useful for a parent to give to a kid, so that the parent can get in contact with the kid and have the kid call home if something happens. In rich countries that could happen because the parent doesn’t want the kid using the device all the time to scroll TikTok. In poorer countries it could happen because a pager is much, much cheaper than a phone.

The fact that thousands of these devices were exploded suggests that it was a pretty wide group of people who were using them, so the odds are pretty good that at least some of them were given away / sold.

Mostly just you though.

I think you kind-of have to grade Partey and Jorginho on a curve. They were thrown into a midfield where Rice, Odegaard and Merino were all unavailable, so they had to do the full 90 minutes with no relief from the bench. Jorginho especially should be given credit for coming in for his first minutes in what, half a year? They weren’t spectacular, but given the situation they handled it well.

You know you’re not being honest, I just showed that it’s true because you refuse to provide any evidence to support your opinion.

In other words, “My backstory is whatever you want it to be”.

If you were the DM and this bothered you, the player just gave you powerful ammunition.

You could even have it so whenever the player entered a shop in his home town, the shopkeepers looked at him with disgust and refused to serve him. The DM wouldn’t even have to necessarily come up with a reason. Just, that the player is extremely well known among the locals and they universally think he’s absolutely disgusting and want nothing to do with him.

It’s what an person would do if they were being honest. If someone’s lying, of course they’re not going to.

If the device in my pocket started smoking like that, I’d throw it away pretty quickly. I suspect these were actual explosives, and there are almost certainly more of them out there.

The scary thing about a supply chain attack is that Hezbollah aren’t idiots. This is basically like buying a “burner phone” (that name will now have different connotations now).

In the movies, people buying burner phones go to a random corner store and buy a random phone off the shelf. That way, even if they’re under surveillance, the cops / CIA / FBI can’t pre-bug the phone because they don’t know which corner store the person’s going to go to, let alone which phone they’ll pick off the shelf.

If you’re an armed group in Israel’s crosshairs, you’re going to take similar precautions when buying thousands of pagers. The safe way to do it would be to slowly and unpredictably get a small sample of ones that are being sold to the general public. If this is true, it could mean that there are tens of thousands of pagers out there that contain explosives that were merely sold as “decoys” in order to try to make Hezbollah feel safe in buying them. In other words, there may be tens of thousands of explosives in pagers that weren’t activated because they weren’t in the hands of Hezbollah when Israel decided to hit the button.

You’d best recognize Leo Pellegrino

Also, how many pagers are still out there with explosives in them?

Option 1: Israel blew up all the pagers containing explosives, regardless of whether they’d been sold / passed on to family members, friends, or other people who had no connection with Hezbollah, so many of the thousands of injured were innocent bystanders.

Option 2: Israel got the pagers into the hands of tens of thousands of people, then only blew up the ones that were actually in Hezbollah possession, leaving thousands of pagers out there containing explosives.

Knowing Israel, it’s almost certainly option 1.