Kev QuirkModify

2026-01-06 20:28:00

I’m not sure where I first heard about Joan and her superb writing, but I’ve been following her for around a year or so now, I think.

Anyway, I was catching up on my RSS feeds and came across this post from a few days ago. It’s fantastic, as it most of what Joan puts out.

Start a blog. Start one because the practice of writing at length, for an audience you respect, about things that matter to you, is itself valuable. Start one because owning your own platform is a form of independence that becomes more important as centralized platforms become less trustworthy. Start one because the format shapes the thought, and this format is good for thinking.

I couldn’t agree more.

2026-01-05 21:42:00

Two days ago I published a simple survey asking how you read the content I put out on this site. Here's the results of that survey.

Originally I was going to leave the survey running for at least a week, but after less than 48 hours, I received an email from Zoho telling me I’d hit the monthly response limit of 500 responses. If I wanted more responses, I’d have to pay.

Nah. 500 responses is enough to give me a good indication on how people consume my content, so I was good with that. Also, 500 responses in less than 48 hours is bloody brilliant. Assuming only a small proportion of readers actually responded (as that’s usually the case with these things) that means there’s a healthy number of you reading my waffle, so thank you!

The results

The survey simply asked “how do you read the content I put out on this site?” and there were a handful of options for responses:

• RSS
• Mastodon / Fediverse
• Email
• Occasionally visit the site
• Something else

If someone selected the last option, a text field would appear asking for more info. There were a few people who used this option, but all were covered by the other options. People just wanted to add some nuance, or leave a nice message. ❤

So I updated all the something else responses to be one of the other 4 options, and here’s the results:

A highly accurate pie chart

What this tells me?

Well, quite a lot, actually. It tells me that there’s loads of you fine people reading the content on this site, which is very heart-warming. It also tells me that RSS is by far the main way people consume my content. Which is also fantastic, as I think RSS is very important and should always be a first class citizen when it comes to delivering content to people.

I was surprised at how small the number was for Mastodon, too. I have a fair number of followers over there (around 13,000 according to Fosstodon) so I was expecting that number to be a bigger slice of the pie.

Clearly people follow me there more for the hot takes than my waffle. 🙃

This was a fun little experiment, even if it did end more quickly than I would have liked. Thanks to all ~500 of you who responded, really appreciate it.

See, you don’t need analytics to get an idea of who’s reading your stuff and how.

2026-01-04 20:35:00

I've yearned for a Blackberry form-factor for years, and now Clicks have made that wish come true. I had to pre-order one!

If you don’t know what the Clicks Communicator is, this 12 minute video should help:

BlackBerry’s design will always have a special place in my heart. I much prefer a physical keyboard over a touchscreen, and I’ve said many times that smartphones are far too big these days.

The Clicks Communicator is smaller and it has a proper QWERTY keyboard. It is all very BlackBerry, and I love that.

The team have also teamed up with the Niagara Launcher developer to deliver a more focused UI. That was yet more good news for me, as I already use Niagara Launcher on my Pixel 9a.

It felt like a match made in heaven, so I pre-ordered one immediately.

Companion device?

In all honesty, I do not understand why Clicks are marketing the Communicator as a companion device. I assume they are positioning it as a slimmed down alternative for people who still want a flagship phone, but that framing feels odd.

It will be running full fat Android 16, and their FAQ confirms (in the very first question, no less) that the Communicator can be used as a primary device. That is exactly how I intend to use it.

The companion device messaging is confusing. At first, I assumed it was something closer to the Light Phone, but it is not that at all. It’s a normal phone. I am not a marketer, so perhaps there is a strategy here that I am missing, I just hope it does not hurt their sales.

Either way, I am genuinely looking forward to receiving my Clicks Communicator later this year. I will, of course, write about it once it arrives.

Has this cool new phone piqued anyone else’s interest?

2026-01-03 21:35:00

I'm trying to get an idea on how people consume the waffle I put out, it should only take 5 seconds to respond, and I'd be very grateful.

It’s well publicised that I don’t run any kind of analytics on this site. For me, engagement is far more important. But I’m trying to better understand how you fine people consume the waffle I spit out into the world.

The only reason I want to do this is that I think it will be interesting to know. I could temporarily add tracking to the site, but that feels icky to me; I’d rather have something that’s opt in. So I’ve created a really simple form that you can fill in. It only has 1 question, so should take no more than a few seconds to complete.

If you’re a regular reader, I’d be very grateful if you could take a few seconds out of your day to cast a vote please. The form is embedded below, but it may not embed properly in some places (like on the RSS feed), so just in case here’s a direct link to the form too.

I’ve removed the embedded form now, as I’ve already hit the maximum amount of responses that Zoho allows on their free forms package. Thanks to everyone who responded!

2026-01-01 02:48:00

I'm glad to see the back of 2025, so let's focus on 2026.

As I write this, it’s 18:49 on New Year’s Eve. I’m sat in the lounge, with the fire going, annoyed that our NYE plans have been ruined by me having the flu.

I feels like an appropriately shitty end to a very shitty year.

In 2025, I:

• Worked way too much
• Spent too much time away from home travelling for work
• Neglected those I love
• Helped my Mum, where possible, through recovering from a heart attack
• Lost my sister

Yeah, it’s been rough. But toward the end of the year I made some decisions to make my life more sustainable. So I’m going to try and not dwell on the past, but instead look forward to the future.

As I look to 2026, I want to:

• Eat healthier and lose weight
• Exercise more
• Spend more time with loved ones
• Stop being such a shitty friend and make more of an effort

There’s more I want to do, but if I can get these done, I’ll consider 2026 a win.

We’ll see…

2025-12-19 18:07:00

I've been using Firefox for over 20 years at this point, but after a stream of cock-ups, I'm thinking about moving on.

I’ve been using Firefox since 2005, so not long after it was first released. I distinctly remember the first time I heard about it - I was on a training course with the Army and the instructor was using Firefox. Netscape was effectively dead, and everyone was using Internet Explorer, but I’ve always been a magpie for the new shiny, so when I saw his browser, I asked him about it.

He told me about it being a fork of Netscape (which was my browser of choice when I first started using the Internet), so I jumped on board and have been happily using Firefox ever since.

Well, I was happy up until the last few years.

Slow decline

I first wrote about my concerns with Firefox’s direction back in 2022 where I talked about the ever increasing CEO salary, despite their ever decreasing market share, their teaming up with Meta on Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA), them shilling cryptocurrencies, and of course the fact they’re pretty much entirely funded by Google.

Well, over the last 3 years, things haven’t gotten any better and my concerns around the direction Mozilla is taking Firefox have continued to rise.

On top of the few concerns I had back in 2022, there’s a bloody list of additional concerns I’ve picked up since then:

• Privacy Preserving Attribution (PPA) - In Sept 2024, Mozilla rolled out this new PPA feature that was enabled by default and helped advertisers measure performance without traditional tracking.
• Adjusted telemetry in mobile app - Firefox mobile versions shipped with a third-party telemetry SDK (Adjust) that sent usage and install data without prominent user disclosure. After pushback, this was later removed [slow clap].
• Buying an Ad firm - yes, that’s right, dear reader. Everyone’s favourite FOSS web browser decided to buy an ad firm, because, you know, “privacy-centric adverts”.
• We won’t sell you data, pinky promise… - in early 2025 a formal Firefox Terms of Use was introduced, which included a clause granting Mozilla a “non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence” to use user-entered data. At the same time, they quietly removed explicit “never sell user data” language from privacy messaging. Brilliant.
• What’s the strategy? - as we move to mid-2025 it started to become clear that Firefox’s leadership is out of touch with their users.
• Firefox to evolve into an AI browser - that’s right, according to their new CEO Firefox is set to “evolve into a modern AI browser”.

Mozilla’s strategy problem (and why AI is just a symptom)

Mozilla have been getting a lot of shit for the last few days about the whole modern AI browser comment their new CEO made. And rightly so, I think. To me, there’s a clear difference between a browser that has AI capabilities embedded in it, like an AI chat bot, and an AI browser.

The latter aren’t browsers. They’re an abstraction layer between you (the user) and the web, summarising, filtering, and rewriting it before you ever see the original, and I have no desire to be a part of that mess.

I don’t mind having a browser with a chat bot embedded in it, as long as it can be switched off. I’d prefer for it to be opt-in, but meh, if it’s only a rocker switch in settings, while annoying, I can live with it.

But having this layer of abstraction between me and the web that I know and love? No thank you.

I’m worried about the direction Firefox is headed in. Not just because of their AI strategy; I actually think that’s a symptom, not the root cause.

The root cause, as I see it, is that the leadership team at Mozilla has no fucking clue how to make Firefox a sustainable business, so they’re just throwing shit at the wall and hoping something sticks. All while giving their CEO larger and larger salaries.

Because Mozilla has been suckling on Google’s teat since the very early days, they’ve never had to make a sustainable business. Google dodged the bullet and wasn’t ultimately forced to sell Chrome, but it exposed just how dependent Mozilla still is on Google’s money, and now it looks like they’re scrambling to invent a strategy of their own.

But it’s shit, and as a long-term user of Firefox, it feels almost user-hostile at this point.

So what now?

Honestly, I don’t know. I’ve been dabbling in other browsers, but haven’t found anything I like as much as Firefox.

While I appreciate the sentiment, I’m not looking for browser recommendations. So please don’t contact me with recommendations. By all means contact me with your opinions on all this though.

Vivaldi has too many bells and whistles for my liking, plus there’s a number of UI inconsistencies that annoy me. Brave has all the crypto nonsense embedded, but it can be switched off. Then there’s forks like Librewolf and Waterfox, but they’re intrinsically tied to upstream Firefox, and they don’t have mobile apps. So I’m not sure they’re a good option, either.

Correction from future Kev: Waterfox does in fact have an Android app.

Firefox won’t be changing to a modern AI browser any time soon, so there’s no rush for me to jump right now. So I’m planning to continue testing alternatives and just hope that the Mozilla leadership team have a course correction. But if the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that a course correction is unlikely to happen.