For a while now I've been using it a few times a week to find reference images for drawing. I find it beats Pinterest in terms of speed and relevance for most of my searches.

I really really don't want it to go down.

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I just browsed the creator's inactive social media pages. I wonder if they've passed away..?

Maybe someone at Tabnine knows...

Yeah, this is spot-on based on my experience.

I got into Twitch in the early days and have been a watcher and lurker for most of the past 10 years. The periods where I've been most content and fulfilled in life have easily correlated with spending less time on Twitch because those needs were being met in a healthier way.

On one hand I'm thankful to have discovered it because the faux-social fulfillment it provided when I've dealt with depression. It wasn't ideal but it was a good option in times where I didn't have energy to commit to real life relationships. OTOH, I wonder if ignoring Twitch altogether would have pushed me to get out and do the things that would have helped me climb out of the hole sooner.

I was never ‘happy’ when I scrolled through Reddit for 3 hours. (Reddit in particular was horrible for my mental health). I never watched 4 hours of YouTube when I had friends to go out with. Finally I realized that I felt much better when I cut those out and spent time on more important things.

All of these websites are trying to take as much of your attention as they can and it’s difficult to have a healthy relationship with them.

Given that a huge number of Chrome users probably come from societies that actively despise this kind of stuff, it might actually backfire.

Lucky for them I guess most people outside of HN probably never even read that marketing material, so I think it's more of a circle jerk for the marketing dpt.

I'm pretty sure Chrome is the most common browser on the planet because Google abused its market position in search and mobile (Android) to shove it down people's throats, helped along by bundling it with other installers. Everything else was secondary.

Mozilla has hundreds of millions of dollars at minimum, very likely billions. It's absurd that they're failing so miserably, and it's obscene that their CEO has taken increasingly large 8 figure bonuses while the company has floundered under her leadership.

Self respect?

That may have helped but chrome really was a great browser.

I don't use chrome and haven't done so outside of work for over a decade.

And Firefox has always had themes. Real themes. Colorways is just some coloring and it's not even staying around for these supposed mainstream users to enjoy

Yes, the marketing behind it is stupid because it attempts to correlate some deeper symbolic meaning to the act of choosing colors for your web browser. But as a fellow Firefox advocate, I would rather Mozilla plays around with these sort of corny marketing concepts as a way of gaining market share rather than rely on Google's patronage ad-infinitum.

It feels to me like they just ran out of either the will or the engineers to do the hard innovative stuff and are just trying to turn Firefox into their own UX art project at this point.

To play devil's advocate, that may well be exactly what they're doing. I've always used Firefox, but I'm aware that I'm not a typical user andmy interests likely don't align with mass adaoption.

I've said it before when Firefox has released new features that the HN crowd aren't interested in - there's not enough of you (us) for your opinions on [ themes ] to matter. And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term.

I don't have access to statistics to qualify whether or not this is the case and contribute to making it harder to evaluate by turning off telemetry and never using Google ads, so I can't exactly complain.

Yes you can complain. They should be well aware that their remaining userbase is very averse to telemetry.

If anything the companies going all-in on telemetry and A-B testing are making ever worse products. Like Microsoft with their Teams that gets slower and more confusing every month.

> And if this is a quicker way to grow adoption then it's a good thing in the long term.

What growth? I only see a decline. All they succeed at is alienating the users that were still using it. Not gaining new ones.

I also read that section and thought it unfortunate the author missed that realization as being the likely root cause. External validation seems to be a major driver of his unhappiness. There's nothing wrong with finding solace in structured work but I think if he returns to his old job he's likely to reach burn out unless he can identify this as a root cause.

I made that connection for myself as I've had a strangely similar recent experience to his, albeit without the Amazon warehouse job. I burned out, took multiple months off of work, didn't implement any lasting structures, and became depressed. But I did spend a ton of time in therapy to evaluate my mental health and what drove me to burn out. Practicing self-awareness and emotional awareness has made me more optimistic about finding routines and habits which will bring more fulfillment.

The author gives the example of needing dozens of images to accompany scenes in his book. If you feed DALL-E something like: "create a panoramic view of a grey ocean with four mountains and an ominous dark sky", then sure, it can handle that prompt fine. It'll do a great job at broadly interpreting adjectives and phrases that are unambiguous. Mass produced art for advertising/media is going to change drastically because it doesn't need precision.

However, once you introduce specificity and detail the tools are going to suck. For example, telling it to generate a portrait of a specific person with subtlety in expression, body language, pose, and demeanor. It'll create something that looks aesthetically sane but not anywhere near what you had in mind.

And just for some extra counter-predictions of my own:

- The novelty of seeing thousands of "good enough" images in mass media is going to wear off

- AI generated images will become obvious to the average person

- Society will largely get tired of AI art due to the lack of novelty

- The utter collapse of the art profession some are predicting is never going to come

Nowadays my main vice is Reddit with the occasional YouTube binge. I find I *can* manage using both in moderation but it's a slippery slope. It's even harder if I don't have a healthy outlet to focus on instead, like an interesting project, hobby, or class. But honestly, complete avoidance of those platforms paired with really good internet hygiene ("digital minimalism") are only consistent solutions for me.

I prefer video games over most outdoors activities but still largely agree with you.

One minor critique is that I would substitute "infantilizing" for "psychologically beneficial." I also think the gap in inherent value between the two groups of activities could be summarized into the tendency of screen-based activities to produce instant gratification with minimal discernible gain. The latter group activities involve aspects of mindfulness and require a degree of active physical/mental labor over time, therefore you could argue less "outdoor-sy" creative efforts like painting, long-form writing, or sewing could all provide the same benefits.

I believe they're designed to do that, which is why I think they're infantilizing. They encourage us to do adopt an unhealthy short-term gratification selfish comfort mindset.