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...
View ArticleMy 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...
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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...
View ArticleViewing 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...
View ArticleWe 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
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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...
View ArticleOpen Source Doesn’t Make Money Because It Isn’t Designed To Make Money
Or: The Best Way To Do Something Is To At Least TryWe 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...
View Article“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...
View ArticleKling’s Axes of Politics, and the Technocrats
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...
View ArticleThoughts on Voice Interfaces
I’ve been working on the Consumer Voice Products team in Mozilla for about a year now. My primary project has been Firefox Voice, but our mandate is larger.I still feel like a beginner in the area of...
View ArticleA History Of Projects
I’ve had a lot of projects, and at this moment of reflection I thought I’d look back through those that felt most meaningful, and which despite my excitement I’ve also let go of. If there’s a thread...
View ArticleProject ideas for (what’s left of) 2020
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View ArticleFirefox Was Always Enough
There are many concerns about Mozilla right now, and reason to be concerned. While I am no longer with Mozilla, it’s still a place that supported me for many years; I believe in Mozilla and want the...
View ArticleInfinite AI Array
making new string and list classes that call gpt3 under the hood so you can access elements beyond the final one. no more index errors!— shb (@himbodhisattva) December 24, 2022Some ideas are dumb...
View ArticleThoughts On Voice Interfaces 2 years later: LLMs
Over two years ago I wrote Thoughts On Voice Interfaces, a scattering of ideas about voice interactions. Time has passed, I’ve been working more on voice interfaces, and though products in the market...
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World Building With GPT
I’ve been doing lots of experiments with GPT, though I’ve only written about one until now… the more serious something is the harder it is to call it finished or identify the outcomes. Here I’ll...
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World Building with GPT part 2: bigger, better, more declarative
In my last post I described a city builder using GPT. I was planning on putting a pin in that work with the post, but the heart wants what the heart wants and I found myself returning to that work.In...
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Roleplaying driven by an LLM: observations & open questions
I’ve been making some experiments with roleplaying and LLMs (Large Language Models, such as ChatGPT). After a lot of coding I think it’s time to step back and think about what I’ve done and what I...
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AI AITA
I’m pretty sure reading /r/AmItheAsshole is harmful to my psyche, and yet…… and yet why shouldn’t I be able to participate in this collectively harmful behavior?I don’t have good enough stories so I...
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