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NYT: 'Firefox Is Back. It's Time to Give It a Try.' (nytimes.com)

Another high-profile endorsement for Firefox -- this time from the lead consumer technology writer for The New York Times. (Alternate link here). The web has reached a new low. It has become an annoying, often toxic and occasionally unsafe place to hang out. More important, it has become an unfair trade: You give up your privacy online, and what you get in return are somewhat convenient services and hyper-targeted ads. That's why it may be time to try a different browser.

Remember Firefox...? About two years ago, six Mozilla employees were huddled around a bonfire one night in Santa Cruz, Calif., when they began discussing the state of web browsers. Eventually, they concluded there was a "crisis of confidence" in the web. "If they don't trust the web, they won't use the web," Mark Mayo, Mozilla's chief product officer, said in an interview.... After testing Firefox for the last three months, I found it to be on a par with Chrome in most categories. In the end, Firefox's thoughtful privacy features persuaded me to make the switch and make it my primary browser.

The Times cites privacy features like Firefox's "Facebook Container," which prevents Facebook from tracking you after you've left their site.

While both Chrome and Firefox have tough security (including sandboxing), Cooper Quintin, a security researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells the Times that Google "is fundamentally an advertising company, so it's unlikely that they will ever have a business interest in making Chrome more privacy friendly."

355 comments

  1. Strong Maybe? by Sejus · · Score: 1

    I like some features, but chrome does a very good job, memory eating aside.

    1. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I switched from ff to chrome in 2009. Tried quantum a few months ago and found it feature par with chrome for my needs and i did like the bigger commitment to privacy. They won me back.

      I'm still mad that i have to manually disable pocket in flags tho.

    2. Re:Strong Maybe? by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      I like some features, but chrome does a very good job

      Call me when it has NoScript, etc.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re: Strong Maybe? by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think that they could up the stakes even more by tainting third party (and deeper when a third party site links further) cookies depending on which primary site you access so that the cookies are stored in a hierarchy and won't be cross-site accessible unless you tag them to be for selected sites.

      It will of course require a completely new cookie manager and it would consume some more resources. But your privacy would be improved.

      And that would of course also apply to other kinds of data as well so that the caching is also isolated as well as http headers.

      Isolating information areas from each other is important in the world of today. I just feel sorry for those that have Facebook accounts considering that they are usually logged in to that service and then Facebook sees almost every site they visit. It's hard to filter out Facebook, but if you at least feed them less than useful data so it always looks like you are only visiting a certain site then their pool of data is diluted.

      Of course they can still see that you come from the same IP address, but if all Facebook traffic is passed through a proxy then it won't do them any good. Selective proxy traffic routing for your internet access.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    4. Re: Strong Maybe? by theweatherelectric · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's hard to filter out Facebook

      The Facebook Container makes it easy.

      Of course they can still see that you come from the same IP address, but if all Facebook traffic is passed through a proxy then it won't do them any good.

      Tor is being integrated into Firefox. So once that happens Firefox can offer this out of the box and the Tor project will no longer have to maintain Tor Browser.

    5. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah but you are feeding all sorts of lovely data about yourself to Google who will sell it to advertisers and other naredowells.

    6. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Fuck Chrome, Firefox and IE/Edge.

      If you care about security/privacy, then use Pale Moon, Basilisk, Waterfox, SeaMonkey or Vivaldi instead.

    7. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and i did like the bigger commitment to privacy.

      Every time someone says this, it really cracks me up.

      Google gets nearly all their revenue from advertising.

      Mozilla gets nearly all their revenue from . . . . Google.

      Mozilla is currently getting somewhere in the neighborhood of $375 Million every year from The Googe. Do you really think The Googe is just handing over hundreds of millions of dollars and expects nothing in return? Are you really that retarded?

      Any "commitment to privacy" is 100% lip service. Nothing more.

    8. Re:Strong Maybe? by allo · · Score: 4, Informative

      Install uMatrix. Now you have "NoScript" and much more (uMatrix = NoScript + RequestPolicy)

    9. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What I especially like about firefox is the new plugin developed specially for Quantum.

      It rewrites all amazon affiliate links to redirect to a cash-back web site where you get the amazon commission for yourself.

      Search Google for the "Nocreimer" plugin.

    10. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would upvote you but I got no moxie. You are spot on, NYT consumer tech monkey should be in the alinsky news blacklist as well. Just so you know, by your style and boldness and truth, I am certain someone as smart as you will be able to find and apply the alinsky news blacklist without instruction.

      GOD SPEED FELLOW TRAVELER

    11. Re: Strong Maybe? by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      Sorry, facebook owns a bunch of domains to render that useless.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    12. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same ip doesnt mean much. With a lot of people connecting through public sites such as cafes, shopping malls, libraries, universities duplicate ip address connection is pretty common. And with ipv4 running out of spaces more and more isp's are sharing the same ip or dynamically allocating them.

    13. Re:Strong Maybe? by not+flu · · Score: 4, Informative

      uMatrix is vastly superior to NoScript. I use uMatrix on Firefox.

    14. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are implementing first party isolation to help stop cross-site and tracking cookies. It is a preference that can be set or you can use an extension that allows you to turn it off temporarily if you need it (for instance if you use third party login solutions).

    15. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using such a low footprint browser has its own footprint.

      "We have 1 user who uses Pale Moon, but we cannot track him as an individual. Lets track all users of Pale Moon."

    16. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might want to try uMatrix. It controls not just cookies, but also javascript, image, media, css, etc.

      For cookie management I use "CookiErazor" add-on, it's compatible with uMatrix. It has small user base, but since it works fine, I haven't bothered to find an alternative.

    17. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do know that it's trivial to change the user agent string, right?

    18. Re: Strong Maybe? by reanjr · · Score: 0

      Google is getting a prominent place as the defaut search engine and creating a competitive ecosystem to generally create a successful web, which is their arena.

    19. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Useless? Why so glum? If you look at the source code of pages you visit you'll find that only a few domains show up most of the time. For Facebook it's: fbcdn.net, facebook.net, facebook.com, fb.com

      Blocking domains for privacy is never useless. There are just degrees of efficiency. If you only block Facebook web bug logos you accomplish a lot.

      Google is far more difficult. Most large, commercial sites now are linking to google fonts, google javascript, google web bugs ("tag manager" and analytics), etc. That means Google is tracking most people nearly everywhere they go. Here's my wildcard list for Acrylic DNS that applies to only Google:
      127.0.0.1 *.googlesyndication.com
      127.0.0.1 *.googleadservices.com
      127.0.0.1 *.googlecommerce.com
      127.0.0.1 *.1e100.com
      127.0.0.1 *.1e100.net
      127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net
      127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com
      127.0.0.1 *.googletagservices.com
      127.0.0.1 *.googletagmanager.com
      127.0.0.1 *.google-analytics.com
      127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
      127.0.0.1 fonts.googleapis.com
      127.0.0.1 *.2mdn.net
      127.0.0.1 googleadapis.l.google.com
      127.0.0.1 *.gstatic.com
      127.0.0.1 plusone.google.com
      127.0.0.1 cse.google.com
      127.0.0.1 www.google.com/cse
      127.0.0.1 www.youtube-nocookie.com
      127.0.0.1 *.appspot.com

    20. Re: Strong Maybe? by reanjr · · Score: 1

      Google does not sell your data to advertisers. That would be the height of stupidity. The data they've collected is how they are able to make a fortune selling ads. They're not going to sell that data.

    21. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no need for any of those, just adblock facebook with the 'third-party only' filter option. same for twitter, instagram, etc.

    22. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hosts file.

      0.0.0.0 facebook.com

      Problem solved.

      So what happens when you browse to www.facebook.com? Oh, that's right it still connects doesn't it? So does api.facebook.com.

      You see, it isn't that easy. Like other guy noted they have other domains (fb.com comes to mind) but they could at any moment add something like spyonrudywayne.facebook.com, and your method wouldn't help at all even for the main domain.

    23. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck Chrome, Firefox and IE/Edge.

      If you care about security/privacy, then use Pale Moon, Basilisk, Waterfox, SeaMonkey or Vivaldi instead.

      Outdated garbage, every one except Vivaldi which is just Chrome-very-unstable in binary only form.

    24. Re: Strong Maybe? by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      My expertise with TOR is torrible.

      In an experiment, I used the Tor browser to log in to a burner Facebook account and those bastards downed it handsomely.

      They wanted phone numbers, photo-ID, and that shit.

      Also I got geoblocks at some sites. "This content is not available in your country."

      Tor is great for porn sites, nut it's slow.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    25. Re: Strong Maybe? by tepples · · Score: 1

      Which are these "bunch of domains" so that I can repeat the process mapping each to 0.0.0.0 in hosts or Pi-hole?

    26. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't have a clue what you are talking about, kid.

    27. Re: Strong Maybe? by mikael · · Score: 1

      So now you won't be able to tell where Firefox is sending data to using Wireshark?

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    28. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no. it's not. noscript is.

      more specifically, the pre-web extensions noscript, is far better than anything else like.

      combine it with pre-web extensions abp (because of its support for targeting individual elements and resources instead of entire domains or subdomains).

      sadly, this superior combination will go extinct in firefox by the end of the year as current esr is replaced with web extensions 'quantum' version..

      so it's pale moon or waterfox after that.

      unless mozilla gets their heads out of their own asses and implements more of the featureset for extensions that has been lost because of web extensions.. it's so long, firefox

    29. Re: Strong Maybe? by aliquis · · Score: 1

      Humble bundle purchases page doesn't seem to work with Firefox. I also no longer get all buys even added to HB.

    30. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, their arena is making money by serving advertisements.

    31. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are getting something, a competitor they can present to the EU in a future antitrust action

    32. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet when I used NoScript and AdBlock Plus all youTube ads were blocked. Now after switching to uMatrix and uBlock, I'm seeing ads even with all the blocklists checked.

      You still need to use Ghostery with either set of addons. Those addons block/enable by domains. Ghostry blocks individual scripts, so if slashdot.com loads an embedded tracking script Ghostry will block it while the others won't if you want to use JS on Slashdot.

      At least that's been my experience with these addons. Sadly there isn't one addon which does everything. I've got Ghostery, uBlock, uMatrix, Cookie AutoDelete, NoCoin, and Privacy Badger as my security addons. I probably need something to block browser fingerprinting. Any suggestions? Currently I use different profiles for different sets of sites, but that's probably not good enough.

    33. Re:Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NoScript is a joke compared to uMatrix.

      ABP is a joke compared to uBlock Origin.

    34. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You aren't the target user of Tor. Tor is designed for people who depend need a certain minimum level of anonymity. If your concern is porn or facebook it's probably not a tool which would be useful to you. Obviously you don't care enough about and understandably so as the privacy you need is of a trivial nature. Nobody is going to come knock down your door if you don't use Toor.

    35. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also he's probably an American. Tor definitely does NOT provide privacy from the various American gestapo agencies.

    36. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except every click in chrome sends data to Google. So much so that there is a dodgy 'privacy policy' that you need to click just to use the browser.

    37. Re: Strong Maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God, you're stupid.

    38. Re: Strong Maybe? by reanjr · · Score: 1

      They serve ads over the web. Or are they running TV and radio ads now and didn't tell anyone?

    39. Re: Strong Maybe? by reanjr · · Score: 1

      No matter how many dipshits like you don't understand, selling ads that target data is not selling data. Learn how English works, or learn how ad networks work.

  2. Firefox? Never left it. by dwywit · · Score: 1

    Every time I see the sheer quantity of chrome or google processes on a PC, I cringe. Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page? Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?

    Everytime I run a perforamance tuneup on someone's PC, the first place I check is Windows Task Scheduler. Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon. Ditto Adobe's products, and a bunch of Microsoft updates/uploads/telemetry.

    --
    They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    1. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must not have checked lately, as if you're using a reasonably up-to-date version of firefox you will have at least 3 processes: the main (UI) process, the graphics process, and 1+ content processes. If memory usage is your primary concern, you can go to options > general > performance and uncheck "Use recommended performance settings" to limit the number of content processes -- by default I think it mirrors the number of CPU cores up to 4.

      That said, process separation has huge benefits for stability, security, and UI responsiveness -- and arguably content responsiveness if you allow multiple content processes.

    2. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the reason I'm still on firefox-esr 24. Tabs never worked after the australis screw-up in v29.

    3. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every time I see the sheer quantity of chrome or google processes on a PC, I cringe. Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page? Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?

      Everytime I run a perforamance tuneup on someone's PC, the first place I check is Windows Task Scheduler. Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon. Ditto Adobe's products, and a bunch of Microsoft updates/uploads/telemetry.

      Sure they aren't threads? Chrome and chrome based browsers all spawn a renderer per processor by default plus threads.


      $ # Threads
      $ ps Ha |grep chrom | awk '{print $5,$6}' | sort | uniq -c
                32 /bin/chromium-browser --enable-plugins
              112 /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=renderer
                  2 /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=zygote

      $ # Processes
      $ ps ax |grep chrom | awk '{print $5,$6}' | sort | uniq -c
                  1 /bin/chromium-browser --enable-plugins
                  8 /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=renderer
                  2 /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/chromium-browser --type=zygote

      Don't get me started on the OTHER crap Chrome does.

      # grep clients1.google.com cache.log.2 |grep DENIED | wc -l
      713258
      #

      That is 24 hours worth of logs. Chrome completely ignores the hosts file and dns, as a result the firewall gets pounded. 96% of all blocked traffic is Google atm, to a mere three hosts: clients1, clients2, redirector.gvt1.com and ssl.google-analytics.com.

      Firefox/Mozilla is close but most of their garbage backs off properly.

    4. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page?

      Why do you care? If anything it will ensure a single process doesn't bring down the browser. Then you also get speed increases for non-threaded workloads on multicore CPUs.
      In other news MySQL is currently using 33 processes on my machine processing a grand total of zero requests for zero users with zero CPU time. Are you running out of numbers to assign processes or something?

      Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?

      Why wouldn't it? Google's threat and malware database is being continuously updated. Are you on a 28.8k modem where you can't spare the couple of kilobyte to do a web request to check if any components of your system's security have an update?

      Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon.

      Why are you sacrafacing other people's security for no performance gain? Or are you trying to "tune" up computers that are too slow to fire up a process and run a web request? Maybe they should consider browsing the internet on a computer instead of a TI-84.

      Ditto Adobe's products

      Ditto the above. Adobe's update service uses less than 1MB of RAM and 0% CPU time while it exists. If you're getting a "performance tuneup" as a result of disabling it then maybe it's time to throw the old 486 away.

    5. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      replace: grep DENIED | wc -l
      with: grep -c DENIED

    6. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Sejus · · Score: 1

      A performance gain? Through software? lol Install an SSD or just run CCleaner and Malwarebytes and continue to milk your clients. You dont even help desk bro...

    7. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bet that you are still using Windows XP

    8. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by dwywit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not everyone has the latest and greatest hardware, or a decent, let alone high-speed internet connection. 1.5MBit/s is common around here. Nor - like a lot of my retired customers - do they have the money for the latest and greatest. I haven't seen a 486 for a while, but core2duos with Vista are still common. Do I tell them to upgrade? Sure I do. But they're mostly pensioners and have better things to spend the money on. I also tell them what will happen if malware gets in. Then I do a performance tuneup as best I can.

      Now - I've seen chrome freeze, then crash the entire browser. Happened on my ex-wife's computer a few weeks ago. You're lucky it hasn't happened to you. Although it's a good idea in theory, anything can and does happen.

      It's not the requests every hour that I mind so much (IME hourly checks simply aren't necessary for domestic users), but that so many programs think they need to do it at logon - while the owner waits, staring at a spinning hourglass. It's simply not necessary. If there was a trigger in MS Task scheduler that said "10/20/30 minutes AFTER logon", that'd be great. I like the option in Windows services to have an automatic but delayed start. it's not available for all processes.

      It's a BIG perceived and actual performance gain if I can defer those checks until sometime after logon. FWIW I've not seen a virus, ransomware, or other malware infection for months. IMO the security suites are generally getting better at resisting these attacks. I make an educated assessment of their risk based on questions, needs, and other metrics, and then I tune their computers accordingly. Kids who surf lots of gaming and probably questionable websites? Turn the security up to 11. Ditto businesses with indifferent backup strategies (and don't think I don't berate people for not having dependable offsite backups). Pensioners who look at the weather and the sports results, and nothing else? Performance starts to take a higher priority. I'm approaching 60 myself and life is too short to spend waiting on pre-emptive URL scanning from FUD-loaded security suites. AVG I'm looking at you.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    9. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Not OP. Answers reflect Me (tm).

      Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page?

      Why do you care? If anything it will ensure a single process doesn't bring down the browser. Then you also get speed increases for non-threaded workloads on multicore CPUs.

      I may not want chrome running on all cores/threads. Incase it, you know.. goes nuts.

      In other news MySQL is currently using 33 processes on my machine processing a grand total of zero requests for zero users with zero CPU time. Are you running out of numbers to assign processes or something?

      _Entirely_ different things. The scheduling logic alone in mysql is completely different.
        For what it's worth I do work on systems where PID rolling has happened.

      Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?

      Why wouldn't it? Google's threat and malware database is being continuously updated. Are you on a 28.8k modem where you can't spare the couple of kilobyte to do a web request to check if any components of your system's security have an update?

      Speed has little to do with it, privacy does. Since you raise it, yes, there are times when I'm roaming on cell data.... paying by the byte.

      Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon.

      Why are you sacrafacing other people's security for no performance gain? Or are you trying to "tune" up computers that are too slow to fire up a process and run a web request? Maybe they should consider browsing the internet on a computer instead of a TI-84.

      That has nothing to do with anything he said. To my knowledge there has NEVER been a case where one site needed to be shut down in under 24 hours let alone 60 minutes. Your point - if you even have one - is pure trolling.

      Ditto Adobe's products

      Ditto the above. Adobe's update service uses less than 1MB of RAM and 0% CPU time while it exists. If you're getting a "performance tuneup" as a result of disabling it then maybe it's time to throw the old 486 away.

      See above, troll harder. For such a low UID you should know better.

    10. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      replace: grep DENIED | wc -l
      with: grep -c DENIED

      It's a habbit, easier to add/remove filtering, tweak after. Same reason sort was used, out of habbit else uniq won't always work properly. They both do the same thing though separting wc gives the OS an option to schedule it on another CPU.

      Technically awk for everything would have been better too.

    11. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page?

      It's been a few years since I looked, but as I recall:

      • One is the parent process which manages the rest and holds all the rights that the program is started with.
      • One is the credential store. It manages passwords and hands them out only to the correct renderers.
      • One is the zygote for renderer processes. This does all of its initialisation and then fork()s clones so that each new tab can have a pristine renderer.
      • One is the owner for plugins (or possibly the zygote for plugins). NAPI plugins run in a separate process with reduced privileges, so that they can't compromise the rest of the tab's state.

      For something that deals with as much untrusted data and code as a web browser, I'd want it to be compartmentalised as much as possible.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    12. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by dwywit · · Score: 2

      Thanks. It's good to keep learning new things. Now I've got a bit more knowledge to help me make decisions. Cheers

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    13. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      XP? On one of my PCs, yes.

      With PaleMoon, because Basilisk didn't play nice.

    14. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Providing an update "ping" to the server is an ideal way to spy on users. Which users are running which software versions and from which locations at which times.

      Providing login information is even more useful: statistical information about when and which users log in and how much time before they launch the browser.

    15. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you care?

      Because it's my computer.

      If anything it will ensure a single process doesn't bring down the browser.

      Never have that problem.

      Then you also get speed increases for non-threaded workloads on multicore CPUs.

      No you don't.

      In other news MySQL is currently using 33 processes on my machine processing a grand total of zero requests for zero users with zero CPU time.

      Cool story bro. Too bad we're talking about web browsers and not databases.

      Are you running out of numbers to assign processes or something?

      Yes.

      Why wouldn't it?

      Because it's unnecessary, an invasion of privacy and automatic updates are a bad security practice and cause instability.

      Google's threat and malware database is being continuously updated.

      Don't care.

      Are you on a 28.8k modem where you can't spare the couple of kilobyte to do a web request to check if any components of your system's security have an update?

      Maybe. Also it's unnecessary, an invasion of privacy, a bad security practice and causes instability.

      Why are you sacrafacing other people's security for no performance gain?

      I'm not. Automatic updates are bad for security and stability.

      Or are you trying to "tune" up computers that are too slow to fire up a process and run a web request?

      It's really none of your business what I do with my computers and my internet connections.

      Maybe they should consider browsing the internet on a computer instead of a TI-84.

      Nope.

      Adobe's update service uses less than 1MB of RAM and 0% CPU time while it exists.

      Automatic updates are a bad security practice and cause system instability.

      If you're getting a "performance tuneup" as a result of disabling it then maybe it's time to throw the old 486 away.

      Nope.

    16. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 2

      What's more, folks are going on like processes are intrinsically expensive.

      If most of them are idle and the IPC is not super chatty, it's not a huge burden on system resources.

    17. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > With PaleMoon, because Basilisk didn't play nice.

      Basilisk the old classic Mac emulator??

    18. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      Not everyone has the latest and greatest hardware

      Yeah I stopped reading right there because you clearly missed the absurdity of disabling something that uses effectively no resources for "performance gains".

    19. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by justthinkit · · Score: 1

      That said, process separation has huge benefits for stability, security, and UI responsiveness -- and arguably content responsiveness if you allow multiple content processes.

      Hysterically funny. What actually happens is that Chrome will happily use up all your memory, then crash your computer. Or turn it into a dog.

      On my computer, Pale Moon uses about 4 times less memory than Chrome.

      Google must get kick backs from RAM providers; Wintel version 2.

      --
      I come here for the love
    20. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe it's time for people to quit using board libraries and runtime for their software development. That would do much for both security and performance. Who wants a dozen separate updaters hammering their cpu/network for no good reason? This is especially an issue in large networks of mediocre machines.

    21. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tabs were never an issue.... at least for me.... wow.

    22. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by tepples · · Score: 2

      so many programs think they need to do it at logon - while the owner waits, staring at a spinning hourglass.

      you clearly missed the absurdity of disabling something that uses effectively no resources for "performance gains".

      You claim that the dozen updaters that run every time the user logs in are "something that uses effectively no resources". I doubt this claim. This goes double for Windows, on which it's common practice for Windows Defender or some other real-time virus scanner to scan every executable every time it runs.

      To resolve this, I'm interested in benchmarks of the most common automatic updaters on the decade-old yet paid-for PCs that pensioners have, many of which have a Core 2 Duo CPU and a conventional HDD. Data I'm looking for include CPU time, peak resident RAM, random disk I/Os, and network data sent and received. I know a Core 2 Duo can still be useful on the web of 2018; I'm typing this very comment into a Core 2 Duo laptop running Debian (which has been upgraded from 2 GB RAM to 4 GB; cache made a difference).

    23. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really, why? Every communication channel is another surface for hackers to attempt attacking. Obsufication only stops the weakest hackers. And compartmentalization stops almost none.

    24. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      You don't need to doubt the claim. You can actually *measure* it using the startup optimisation tools MS offers. In there you'll see you can happily use your computer while those nasty background services you incorrectly claim are making the hourglass spin (they don't, that's the whole point of background service) are quickly loaded. (yes I went back and read the rest of your post... we'll get to that)

      To be clear you're talking about people running Vista, widely know for taking forever to boot, and are speeding it up by stopping a program that uses almost no resources and has buggerall system footprint. You've missed the point, no ... you've wasted your time.

      But honestly your entire post makes no sense. You're comparing an update check to something that actively scans every file when it is accessed. That is stupid. You're also talking about Chrome crashing which is just completely irrelevant since Chrome starting has nothing to do with Chrome's updater (system service remember). You must be thinking of Firefox which runs its updater every time your launch the browser.

      It may surprise you to know that Core2Duos haven't gotten any slower, and these updators most definitely existed back in the day too (actually we seem to have less of them now). You want benchmarks? Make some. The tools are available. Or use some common sense such as examining the CPU time or memory footprint of the processes on any machine so you can see how completely and utterly irrelevant they actually are.

      Side note: Yes you absolutely should tell those pensioners to throw away Vista, and if their Core2Duos can't run Windows 7 or Linux then throw away the entire PC. Doing anything else for an OS connected to the internet no longer receiving security updates is nothing other than reckless.

    25. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      You don't need to doubt the claim. You can actually *measure* it using the startup optimisation

      You made the claims
      1. for no performance gain
      2. that uses effectively no resources for "performance gains"

      The burden of proof is on you to measure and report. Ideally find a disinterested third party's already measured data, but I am not too hopeful.

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    26. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually he has one point here.

      I suspend PC and dont shut down. That means, chrome session is easily 480 hours as opposed of 24.

    27. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, your nose is so far up Google's proverbial butt, it's not funny.

    28. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page?

      The code that turns HTML/CSS/JavaScript into pixels to be shown on a screen must be:
      1) Fast
      2) Secure

      To get #1, the developers chose to write code in C++. How do you make a memory-unsafe language secure? To get #2, the code is run in a separate process with a sandbox.

      So, we need:

      1 process to do page rendering.
      1 process to manage the channel with the sandboxed process.
      1 process to draw the UI on screen, manage network connections, etc.

      If you have a modern graphics card: The GPU on the card is a shared resource. You need a process to multiplex communication to to the GPU from the sandboxed renderer.

      Do you have a computer that is not able to run four processes at the same time? I did use such a computer once in the early 1970s, but I have not heard anyone complain about this since TOPS20 became popular.

      Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?

      Will opening a network connection once an hour tax your internet connection? If so, why are you using a web browser?

      Everytime I run a perforamance tuneup on someone's PC, the first place I check is Windows Task Scheduler. Change the frequency of google's updates back to once per day, and NOT at logon.

      How much of a performance increase do you measure from doing this?

    29. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The burden of proof is on you to measure and report.

      But you won't believe anything I say so what's the point. I have said directly how to verify the claims yourself.
      Go forth and feed thyself and stop rely on the spoons of others.

    30. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by bingoUV · · Score: 1

      I have said directly how to verify the claims yourself.

      Scientifically the claims of yours I quoted in my earlier post are false. Thermodynamic impossibility for such activities to take zero resources. People here that are not calling that out are already giving you a benefit of doubt by imagining you talking metaphorically. Some possible meanings that may be somewhat true but unverifiable without further details :

      1. for no performance gain

      Example metaphorical meaning that could be true but not verifiable : In all computer usage of the world, less than X% of usage (unspecified so far whether this percentage is by time, by economic value, by resource utilization etc.) will observe at least one application taking a shorter duration of time by the genre of optimizations being talked about - specifically Y optimization.

      Cannot be verified due to unspecified nature of X and Y.

      2. that uses effectively no resources for "performance gains"

      Example metaphorical meaning that could be true but not verifiable : You have secretly defined "resources" to be a subset of actual resources but are not specifying which resources you are considering.

      Or the amount of resources used is less than X% of total resource usage by a secret resource quantifying formula.

      These are, again, unverifiable due to unspecified nature of things.

      But you won't believe anything I say so what's the point

      Another claim made without evidence. Have you got a hang of this whole "logic" thing ?

      --
      Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
    31. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is where turning the mediocre machines into thin clients would be good. Replace the local computing with one big ass PC with 32 to 64 CPU cores, hundreds gigs of memory, find a use for these 3GB/s NVMe SSD drives that are so useless on desktop because they don't have 1000 programs hammering them at once (YET).

      Of course you'll be shackled to your thin client stuff and its costs and limitations then.

    32. Re: Firefox? Never left it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a fun little article I read the other day, it deals with a very simple example

      "Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster"
      https://adamdrake.com/command-line-tools-can-be-235x-faster-than-your-hadoop-cluster.html

    33. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by toddestan · · Score: 1

      Ditto the above. Adobe's update service uses less than 1MB of RAM and 0% CPU time while it exists. If you're getting a "performance tuneup" as a result of disabling it then maybe it's time to throw the old 486 away.

      I don't know what you're running, but I have a PC at work with Adobe Audition on it, and Adobe's cloud service runs several processes, most of which chew up at least 100MB of ram, regardless of whether you've actually got any Adobe products running. I will grant that's nothing compared to what Check Point security software likes to chew up, but still talk about bloat. Between that and the other stuff on that computer, 16GB of ram is gone pretty quickly. Good thing it has a SSD, or it would feel like a 486.

    34. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      and Adobe's cloud service

      Is not the update service, something completely different and irrelevant while not being related to running the actual software, not part of anything outside of the creative suite and on top of everything not at all relevant to the conversation.

      That's what you were going to say wasn't it? I mean that's the only logical way you could have finished that sentence in the context of this conversation.

    35. Re:Firefox? Never left it. by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      Every time I see the sheer quantity of chrome or google processes on a PC, I cringe. Why does chrome need 4 processes before it displays a home/start page? Why does google schedule update checks once at logon and then *every hour*?

      Because Google interns (who are the ones who actually write the code because full-timers are too busy with offsites or facetiming each other or fattening up on the free food) learned how to start a process, and that is the one technique they remember from class. So they try to solve every problem that way.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  3. might be a valid strategy by jarkus4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This might be a valid strategy for Firefox future. They destroyed their original advantage of powerful extensions, so they need something new to attract people. Privacy focus just might be it, but if so they really need to emphasize it in their advertising. At least Chrome is unlikely to truly compete with them in this field.

    1. Re:might be a valid strategy by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      Most of the useful extensions are back, only a few aren't.

      But I miss the alternative of creating a new container window instead of a tab. And each window type should be a clean slate with its own set of bookmarks.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:might be a valid strategy by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      This might be a valid strategy for Firefox future.

      What makes you say that? All the Facebook users? The people who happily click "next" whenever they see a privacy statement? All those Windows 10 users happily sending data to the borg?

      If there's one thing that is clear it is that privacy is NOT a valid strategy for increasing market share. All but a few people stopped caring about that long ago.

    3. Re:might be a valid strategy by hviezda14 · · Score: 1

      Multiple containers in Firefox, assignment to open domain in designated container, and much more: https://testpilot.firefox.com/... It was developed by Mozilla itself.

    4. Re:might be a valid strategy by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They destroyed their original advantage of powerful extensions

      No they haven't. They did a necessary change in architecture which killed off anything using the old API. They've been working hard to make the new, more secure and (importantly) concurrent system up to scratch.

      And they've more or less succeeded. Even pretty intrusive extensions like NoScript work just fine now. Even better is that extensions have a good chance of working on firefox mobile as well as desktop so I get noscript on my phone as well.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    5. Re:might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They destroyed their original advantage of powerful extensions

      No they haven't. They did a necessary change in architecture which killed off anything using the old API. They've been working hard to make the new, more secure and (importantly) concurrent system up to scratch.

      And they've more or less succeeded. Even pretty intrusive extensions like NoScript work just fine now. Even better is that extensions have a good chance of working on firefox mobile as well as desktop so I get noscript on my phone as well.

      Don't think you understand. Those extensions only work with the "new" versions because the developers had no choice. Mozilla would have hung them all out to dry, it certainly wasn't some god damned grand vision by Mozilla, quite the opposite.

      I installed firefox in a vm and watching it call home as I write this is, well.. hillarious. The article from the NYT is complete rubbish, firefox is as it has always been -- a privacy invading nightmare. I have the pcap logs and video to prove it. Took me 40 minutes just to untrust all the bloody CA's they include because the interface is gawd aweful.

      90% of the analytics are not even mentioned anywhere in the preferences. It's only in about:config.

      Short version is Mozilla's full of shit and the EFF should be ashamed for being even remotely associated with this. As it stands now, if tor uses FF, you can kiss whatever privacy you have left good bye.

    6. Re:might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Do you know XUL-based extension can execute native library/application from user system? Has unlimited access to user's filesystem? And many nasty things. Yeah it's powerful, but also dangerous.

    7. Re:might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except by default they don't care about your privacy. This is just for show mostly.
      Until the following is true then I will stay with waterfox, which is actually attempting to be privacy oriented by default.

      Pocket with weird terms of service
      3rd party cookies on by default
      Do not track OFF by default
      not taking part in their "surveys/experiments" is opt-out last time I checked
      They show advertisements on your new tab page by default

    8. Re:might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's not surprising. All but a few people have low IQs.

    9. Re: might be a valid strategy by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      Found the Google employee.

    10. Re: might be a valid strategy by reanjr · · Score: 0

      ...demonstrating you have no idea how IQ works...

    11. Re: might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well at least we all know that you are one of the majority. I'm sorry about your mental handicap.

    12. Re:might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Is Classic Theme Restorer back?

      That's the most useful extension.

    13. Re:might be a valid strategy by epine · · Score: 1

      All but a few people stopped caring about that long ago.

      Whatever you do, don't buy yourself a boomerang, because you've yet to even pass the basic pendulum test.

      It's human nature to overreact to the most recent catastrophe.

      Did you sleep all the way through the Facebook privacy catastrophe 2016–2018? For 50.1% of the American population, what we are now living through is an ongoing catastrophe.

      Half the parents in American are now going "hey, kids, look at that pompous know-nothing bozo blowhard—whatever you do, don't grow up to be like him".

      So it's only half a pendulum, but on the flip side, it's got an actual powder charge.

    14. Re:might be a valid strategy by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      what we are now living through is an ongoing catastrophe.

      I know, I see the Facebook posts about it. From the #deletefacbook movement we have officially reached peak-missing-the-point.

      By the way half of America* has a short attention spam. They are too busy worrying about crying babies on the border to even remember why Facebook was in the news.

      *Nearly all of America.

    15. Re:might be a valid strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Can i dump my old shit into my new firefox and have it all work the way it always has?

      No. No i can't.

      I HAVE to learn a brand new series of things to strip out because they were stupid.

      If i HAVE to do that... i might as well do it on chrome. who haven't fucked me before.

    16. Re:might be a valid strategy by DarkRookie · · Score: 1

      I don't see how it is privacy focus when there are ads on the about:newtab page.
      That makes it seem money focus.

      --
      The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
    17. Re:might be a valid strategy by gumpish · · Score: 1

      Still waiting on a replacement for TamperData.

      No, I'm not interested in configuring burp suite everywhere.

  4. chrome does not play fair.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even when i type www.binng.com/maps it forces me to google maps.(since my area is more updated on bing than google). I understand pushing your maps in search results, but not allowing site even when i type bing..that is plain autocratic here in India.

  5. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is mainstream media being quoted on a technical subject on this site? They are largely clueless.

    Why are slashdotters discussing politics on this site? They are largely clueless.

  6. It (barely) kept me with Mozilla by Rewind · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FWIW, the new (or Quantum) version of Firefox stopped me from switching to Chrome entirely. I had been using Chrome more and more as Firefox just seemed to stagnate. Luckily they did seem to make real progress here. I hope they keep it up. A browser monopoly has never been any good for end users.

    --
    ?
    1. Re:It (barely) kept me with Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You can recognize shills easily because they can't stop using the trade names every time they mention the product.

      See, a normal person would say "the new Firefox did so-and-so".
      A transparent shill would say "the new Firefox Quantum(tm) 2.0 with Faceblock(tm) feature did so-and-so" .
      A subtle shill would say "the new Firefox (but don't forget it's called Quantum) did so-and-so.

  7. "If they don't trust ..., they won't use ..." by Nutria · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Techno-anarchist delusions. People don't trust Facebook, and yet still use it by the billions...

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:"If they don't trust ..., they won't use ..." by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      This. If there's one thing that's clear these days it's that people don't give a crap about their privacy providing that someone doesn't look in their window and get a peek of their nipple or penis.

    2. Re:"If they don't trust ..., they won't use ..." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In other words, if everybody was jumping off of a cliff you are stupid enough to follow. Got it.

  8. NY Times paid ad?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Curious, what kind of doublespeak is this crap? Did they even read Mozilla's privacy policy or was this all provided by Mozilla??

    Link - https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/

    They most certainly DO still collect every thing you do.

    I realize the EFF even endorsed this which is mind numbing to say the least.

    1. Re:NY Times paid ad?? by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They have been investing heavily in PR ever since Quantum disaster hit, and a large amount of people left firefox for any other browser, because there was no longer a meaningful reason to use it.

      First PR push was "hey look, we have speed parity with chrome now". Took them a few months to realise that "parity in speed and parity with features" means that people that wanted extra features you axed will leave for mainstream browser, while being on par won't make any meaningful number of people switch the other way.

      So now they have been trying other ways of selling firefox. This looks to be one of them, which is just silly. Firefox, as you note, most certainly collects usage patterns. Pocket which is built into firefox literally uses those to recommend web pages you should visit next if you go to your default home page in the browser.

    2. Re: NY Times paid ad?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's called a native ad.

    3. Re:NY Times paid ad?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      I have a different opinion.

      Quantum made Firefox good again.

      It's fast again and finally keeps its memory usage in check.

      There are no plugins I was using before Quantum that either weren't updated to work with Quantum or that I actually missed.

      For each feature that is kinda stupid and I don't care to use (like Pocket), you can disable it, plus there's another feature that actually is useful that alternatives don't have (like Containers).

      And I love that privacy is actually a concern that Mozilla is caring about.

    4. Re:NY Times paid ad?? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's this kind of bullet point regurgitating PR shilling that I'm talking about.

    5. Re:NY Times paid ad?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a different opinion.

      No, an opinion is something you form in your own mind, not something you are paid to regurgitate onto forums when somebody says something negative about your "product".

    6. Re:NY Times paid ad?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a different opinion.

      No, an opinion is something you form in your own mind, not something you are paid to regurgitate onto forums when somebody says something negative about your "product".

      Best part is looking at this thread now vs when it was posted. Slashdot and/or mozilla shadowbanned quite bit but still can't control the negative response.

  9. 4 out of 5? by sgunhouse · · Score: 1

    I notice that the graphic at the top of the article includes 5 browsers, but only 4 are actually mentioned in the article - while Opera is in the graphic it is never mentioned in the article. (I was actually using FF for Android when I read the article.) Given that Opera focuses a lot on the exact features he discusses (speed, security, privacy, battery life) that seems a bit cheap.

    1. Re:4 out of 5? by allo · · Score: 0

      Opera is yet another chromium build.

    2. Re: 4 out of 5? by reanjr · · Score: 1

      It uses the renderer which is the part everyone likes.

    3. Re: 4 out of 5? by allo · · Score: 1

      and the ui engine.

      Browsers like opera, vivaldi and many more are just chromium, but the default ui disabled and another one implemented using the same building blocks chromium is using. Then they add features on top of the construct.

  10. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've used Firefox since it was called Netscape. I'll never consider using Chrome, because I value my privacy.

    Can you explain what you meant by "have to manually disable pocket in flags"? I thought pocket was just a dead-weight icon (that I always remove from the toolbar) unless you actually sign up for the service. Are you saying that pocket actually does something evil if you don't manually opt-out? And if so, how do I opt out?

  11. Facebook Container by cerberusss · · Score: 2

    That Facebook container is golden. I wish Firefox would take it even further, though. The other day, I was browsing for a new monitor. Then what do you know, I open the desktop Spotify client (free tier) and there's an ad for the same monitor. I really, really hate this shit but I don't know what to do against this tracking. I already use uBlock Origin in Firefox.

    --
    8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    1. Re:Facebook Container by theweatherelectric · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I already use uBlock Origin in Firefox.

      It might not solve the problem in your particular case, but also turn on Firefox's built-in tracking protection (set it to "always" to have it on all the time). It runs after any blocker add-ons and it blocks some stuff uBlock Origin misses.

    2. Re:Facebook Container by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      uBlock Origin, Noscript, Cookie Autodelete, Lightbeam for me.

      Some sites do look a bit wonky though, but not too bad.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re:Facebook Container by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's just modern web design.

    4. Re:Facebook Container by enrique556 · · Score: 1

      I really, really hate this shit but I don't know what to do against this tracking.

      Privacy Badger for starters. And if you can live with it, noscript. Noscript is much easier to use than the pre-quantum version and it seems to have much better performance.

    5. Re:Facebook Container by hawk · · Score: 0

      >That Facebook container is golden. I wish Firefox would take it even further, though.

      they're working on it.

      the next version will, when encountering those stupid "share on . . . " buttons, automatically launch a small high explosive (but biodegraable!) missile ath the headquarters of the social media company.

      In time noone will purchase those ads . . .

      hawk

    6. Re:Facebook Container by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No offense, but perhaps you're answering your own question?

      "I open the desktop Spotify client (**free tier**)" (emphasis mine)

      What exactly will pay for that Spotify service, which you obviously find to have SOME value, if not at least some degree of advertising? Is it really so heinous to show an ad for a product you were legitimately interested in purchasing, and in doing so help support the product you're otherwise receiving for free?

      If you really want an ad-free experience, there are plenty of services which you can opt to utilize for a fee.

    7. Re:Facebook Container by ciurana · · Score: 1

      That Facebook container is golden. I wish Firefox would take it even further, though. The other day, I was browsing for a new monitor. Then what do you know, I open the desktop Spotify client (free tier) and there's an ad for the same monitor. I really, really hate this shit but I don't know what to do against this tracking. I already use uBlock Origin in Firefox.

      Have a look at Firefox Multi-Account Containers -- https://support.mozilla.org/en... -- they allow you to run Facebook, your shopping, etc. in separate contexts that insulate all cookies, web data, etc. from one another. There's a default implementation for Facebook, you may configure others as you see fit. Cookies set by Facebook in its container are invisible by the main browser set up, or in a shopping container (e.g. Amazon), or in your personal container (e.g. Shoppify).

      You may combine containers with uBlock, Ghostery, and so on and have an ad free, non-correlating data browsing experience.

      Cheers!

      Cheers!

      --
      http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
    8. Re:Facebook Container by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I finally installed a pi-hole on my network and it is awesome. Resolves DNS for ad domains to null and works for every device in your network pointing to it for DNS (easy to do if using DHCP).

      I used to use NoScript and a browser adblocker but now all I use is Privacy Badger as a FireFox addon and it is great!

    9. Re:Facebook Container by knorthern+knight · · Score: 1

      > Have a look at Firefox Multi-Account Containers --
      > https://support.mozilla.org/en... -- they allow you to run
      > Facebook, your shopping, etc. in separate contexts that
      > insulate all cookies, web data, etc. from one another.

      You could always do that; it's called separate profiles, e.g.

      firefox -no-remote -P facebook
      firefox -no-remote -P youtube

      No need for add-ons or extra code in the browser. This also works with Pale Moon.

      --

      I'm not repeating myself
      I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
  12. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I too value my privacy, and Google has been really good at keeping it for me.

  13. Brave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Fastest browser, especially on mobile, with integrated ad blocking: https://brave.com/

    1. Re:Brave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, Brave is starting to get pretty good. I'm using it almost exclusively now.

    2. Re:Brave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I find it mildly amusing that Brave is put forward by an Anonymous Coward.

      q4Fry, keeping moderation in place.

  14. FF was ditched for the same reasons as Netscape by Bonker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Firefox was ditched for the same set of reasons that Netscape was ditched:

    - Both Firefox and Netscape had become or were perceived as slow and bloated compared to the competition. I vividly remember my eye twitching back in the late 90s during my phone tech support days when I heard a fellow phone jockey recommend Internet Explorer 3 to a customer over Netscape because it was 'so much faster'. This was back in the 28.8/56k dial-up era, so take that into account. Chrome is widely perceived to be faster and more powerful at running webapps than Firefox... and regardless of the reality, this perception goes top to bottom. Developers frequently choose to develop against Chrome and then test against Firefox... if they bother to test against Firefox.

    - Privacy, browser configuration, and Internet safety are widely perceived to be 'too difficult'. This was as true in the 90s as it is today. People are intimidated by the reality of what it takes to be safe and private on the Internet and/or far too lazy to learn to configure their browser. Netscape and Mozilla have never quite made it as easy to 'click click click dubya dubya dubya' as their competition. Microsoft and Google both are much better at hand-holding... and leading their 'customers' down the garden path. Installing ad or script blockers *seems* more intimidating on Firefox than similar plugins for Chrome because Google has successfully 'App-Store-Ized' their plugin ecosystem.

    - Netscape and Firefox have never been 'The Internet'. Microsoft did its damndest to make sure that Windows users all directly equated that blue 'e' icon with 'The Internet'. Google is its own damn verb. Both companies' marketing divisions have made very good pushes to make themselves synonymous with 'The Internet'.

    - Netscape and Mozilla have never had a strong pre-install base. Every Windows Install since 95 has come with IE. Every Android device comes with Chrome. Most folks simply can't be assed to install another browser. Sad but true. If Firefox ever wants to become really relevant, it's going to have to get some kind of mainstream pre-install base going. We're not talking Linux distros here. They're going to have to pull off the Firefox equivalent of an 'Android OS' or 'Chromebook'. It's doable, but Mozilla is not strongly steered the way Microsoft was or Google is. Moz has a long history of dropping the soap far too often.

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    1. Re:FF was ditched for the same reasons as Netscape by hazardPPP · · Score: 1

      - Netscape and Firefox have never been 'The Internet'. Microsoft did its damndest to make sure that Windows users all directly equated that blue 'e' icon with 'The Internet'. Google is its own damn verb. Both companies' marketing divisions have made very good pushes to make themselves synonymous with 'The Internet'.

      What I used to do back in the day when installing and configuring computers for my non-tech-savvy relatives was to place a shortcut for Netscape/Firefox on their desktop, but with the blue "e" icon and just labeled "Internet". I would also configure the browser appropriately, and delete any easy way for them to find/launch Internet Explorer.

      I stopped doing that after Internet Explorer acquired is terrible reputation...

    2. Re:FF was ditched for the same reasons as Netscape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget their stupid 'Mr. Robot' promo being pushed to users without notification or consent...

    3. Re:FF was ditched for the same reasons as Netscape by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      Microsoft's big play is that they would intentionally break the standard so their stuff would render the way they wanted it to and Firefox didn't. So just use IE. Not demand that MS fix their buggy crap.

  15. I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please, Mozilla. I never used any other browser. I won't ever, because I know that you're the Good Folks (TM).

    But make it easy again to *completely switch off Javascript*. No "NoScript" plugin with cheap cop-outs. Help in keeping a small-but-significant javascript population out there to keep Web "programmers" and frameworks out there honest.

    Yeah, I know: users are too stupid to manage this one checkbox, your telemetry proves it (and those now quaint instructions on how to enable Javascript some sites still carry, as a reminiscence of the 2005s). Know what? If you treat your users as idiots, you'll get idiot users. I know how this may be in Microsoft's or Google's interest, but I don't get how it is in yours.

    I know, I know. Your perspective is too tightly intertwined with the ad industry's -- they wet-dream of a Javascript API to a brain implant which goes straight into the dopamine center, and you'll deliver because "the others are doing it and you else become irrelevant".

    Sigh. I really love you. I want to. But sometimes I hate you.

    1. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More than half of your rant is just (valid) reasons for not bringing back the checkbox. Just disable it in about:config if you don't want it, I'm sure pretty much everyone that want's to do that can figure that out.

    2. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm more interested to know how many sites you can actually use without having Javascript?

    3. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by aevan · · Score: 1

      Some 'javascript only' pages are hilariously unbroken (but ugly) by turning off style sheets.
      Their 'this site doesn't work' page is just an overlay blocking the page's content.

    4. Re: I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Completely shut off javascript?
      Use rhe dillo web browser. It doesn't support javascript, so it cannot be tricked. It is also fast, thanks to being small and not bloated.

      And for those rare occations you need a js-addled site, use another browser. There is no need to switch 100%.

    5. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by rudy_wayne · · Score: 1

      More than half of your rant is just (valid) reasons for not bringing back the checkbox. Just disable it in about:config if you don't want it, I'm sure pretty much everyone that want's to do that can figure that out.

      Apparently you haven't been paying attention. Mozilla disabled that a few years ago.

      The setting is still there in about:config, and you can set Javascript to "disabled", but it has no effect.

    6. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm more interested to know how many sites you can actually use without having Javascript?

      That's the bigger problem. Javascript is a cancer that has infected and destroyed the entire Internet.

      It used to be that you could disable Javacript and everything still, sort of, worked. Good enough to get by. But now, most websites don't work at all, i.e., you get nothing but a blank page or an error message if you disable Javacript.

    7. Re: I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe FF could say it's enabling Java script, but either not execute it, or run it in super type safe mode?

    8. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      But make it easy again to *completely switch off Javascript*. No "NoScript" plugin with cheap cop-outs.

      What's wrong with NoScript? You can set it to block everything always.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    9. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by theweatherelectric · · Score: 2

      The setting is still there in about:config, and you can set Javascript to "disabled", but it has no effect.

      You might want to double-check that. Using Firefox 61, this page worked with JavaScript enabled. I went to about:config, I set javascript.enabled to "false", I reloaded the w3schools page, and the JavaScript aspects of the page no longer worked.

    10. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We have all been paying attention. And I know that this one easy checkbox is amiss since years.

      With some about:config trolling (spoiler alert: it's more than one setting) you can disable Javascript. That's what I do (I use this as my default profile). It's cumbersome and scares off novices and lazy people. This significantly reduces the population of those navigating without javascript, thus encouraging the webmon^H^H^H programmers out there to declare that "there are no non-Javascript eyeballs, Master".

      Inadvertently, but intentionally (yes, that sounds like a paradox), Mozilla is contributing to a world where the users out there become dumber and more dependent on the few Masters up there. I mean: when Google does it, or Microsoft, I expect it. But Mozilla? Bitter.

    11. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I almost never enable it. Slashdot works. Washpo, NYT, NPR, TheRegister, BBC, Wired, many tech sites.... Some sites require disabling CSS because they're deliberately being designed to break without script. They do things like put a big gray box on the page that script then hides. In some other cases, unskilled web designers do things like set a dozen columns across the page that depend on script to work. The result, then, with CSS but no script is a mass of columns 1/2" wide. (Atlantic Monthly is an example of that problem.)

      But many sites are fine. I would ask the opposite question: Why do you assume it must always be enabled? If everyone accepts that view then it will become the norm and all commercial sites will really just be downloaded software programs written in script.

    12. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I keep seeing this crap and *it's not true*.
      I run without JS. Quite a bit breaks but quite a bit doesn't.
      'most' is simply untrue.
      Why not try it and see, and have the added bonus of far faster rendering, and far less memory used (I've currently got several hundred tabs open, perhaps over a thousand (I have in the past, certainly), and palemoon currently takes 865 meg).
      Open 50 tabs in chrome at work, where I don't disable JS (it's not my machine so I don't alter it) and it takes up about 2.5 gig.
      Part of the spread of that cancer is driven by posts like this that make people think JS is inevitable.
      And watch almost every bloody horrid animation disappear to boot.It's like a new world.
      Well it bloody isn't.

    13. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Read again my post. It's not about *me*. I know how to disable Javascript, without a plugin. It's about nudging the general population into accepting "always on" execution of active content by making it ever more cumbersome disabling javascript, thus nudging web "developers" and frameworks into integrating active content ever more deeply into the Web.

      And this knowing that active content is the main vector for malware and privacy intrusions.

      Is that so difficult to understand?

    14. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by fafalone · · Score: 1, Interesting

      NoScript has been increasingly irritating me. I like the blocking, but even when I unblock something a site I (relatively) trust needs to work, half the time it continues to block scripts "partially". "Allow everything on this page", leaves the page unusable because a whole bunch are still partially blocked. As I haven't found a way to prevent this, I frequently find myself having to get around it by allowing scripts globally, then forgetting to turn blocking back on. Between that and the hours building whitelists, I can really sympathize with just forgoing the whole thing for a simple JS toggle.

    15. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I know: users are too stupid to manage this one checkbox, your telemetry proves it (and those now quaint instructions on how to enable Javascript some sites still carry, as a reminiscence of the 2005s). Know what? If you treat your users as idiots, you'll get idiot users. I know how this may be in Microsoft's or Google's interest, but I don't get how it is in yours.

      Have you tried this? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/javascript-toggler/

      I agree that it should be easily togglable. I browse with Javashit disabled by default, enable it when I need to use a web-based app like Google Maps or my bank's website, and then disable it again.

      The only other thing I'd like to do is be able to disable the browser's ability to use CSS position:fixed, which is responsible for those floating dickbars (you know the ones - navigation-headers, big site logos that waste your vertical space, click-share-like-subscribe dreck at the bottom of the page) that obstruct content and break scrolling. I used to be able to do this with a proxy that replaced most strings that parsed down to position:fixed into fuckihate:webdevs but the move to https:/// meant that I could no longer do so without effectively building an MITM proxy, and that was a security compromise I wasn't willing to make even on localhost. My hack was a crude hack to begin with, and the right solution would be to have a togglable setting in the browser whereby I could tell the browser "No, I don't care what the webdev wanted, disable this functionality because the webdev who wrote this page isn't using it for anything useful, they're just stuffing ads in my face."

    16. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Toad-san · · Score: 1

      [sniff] Wish _I_ had a dopamine center brain implant :-(

    17. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This plugin allows you to disable by domain or tab. It should fix pages that load scripts from other domains for authentication. You can also disable by default.

      https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-javascript/

    18. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, the lovely, lovely noscript tag, which runs if you have javascript disabled. Not being able to direct my browser to ignore the noscript tag is one of my biggest pet peeves with Firefox.

    19. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      they wet-dream of a Javascript API to a brain implant which goes straight into the dopamine center

      That's ANY government's wet dream. Not the AD industry's. And it's for the motor control and image recognintion centers not euphoria.

      No, the AD industry's wet dream is a Javascript API to your bank account with immediate withdraw permissions sans user prompts. As it is for most greedy capitalists.

    20. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think that's modern web design.

      The javascript you're blocking is loading a different piece of javascript from another domain.

      NoScript can't see it because it blocked the first javascript.

      You need to 'Temporarily allow all this page' twice, in other words. Or sometimes thrice...

      AC since I've modded.

    21. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot works perfectly without Javascript. LWN. My fave German newspaper (taz.de) needs some for commenting (perhaps I can talk them into...), but reading is fine. Hackaday is fine. Lambda the Ultimate.

      Are there any other important sites out there?

    22. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm browsing slashdot right now with javascript disabled (there are multiple extensions to do this) and it's just a pleasure to use. It's at least 5x as fast. Not all sites work this way, but I get around just fine with javascript OFF by default, and ON only when absolutely necessary.

    23. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try uMatrix. It's far better.

    24. Re:I want my "disable Javascript" checkbox back by nazrhyn · · Score: 1

      That's just, like, your opinion, man.

  16. "New low" by UnConeD · · Score: 1

    Did they all collectively forget the "beware predators, don't share personal information online" perma-scare that we had before "toxic" became the new buzzword?

    The internet was never safe, the only thing that changed is a bunch of people joined up who expected it to be. We wouldn't even be in this position had users not been convinced blurring their real and online identity was awesome right around when FB and Twitter showed up.

    1. Re: "New low" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Naa, the Internet went shit when big business started tsking notice. When it was just a bunch of neds and academics it was great, once the suits got involved, thsts when it started to suck.

    2. Re: "New low" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > When it was just a bunch of neds and academics

      Hi-diddley-ho, neighborinos!

    3. Re: "New low" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was "ours" then. In the end, AOL culture won the Internet by dissolving into its Social Media descendants while USENET culture retreated to places like SO, with its rigor and crankiness, and github, now assimilated by the original enemy. Beloved /. survives as a pale shell of what it was back then, when I missed a 5 digit user ID by a few days because I didn't bother registering until a few weeks after becoming a regular reader. (This still stings.)

      Those of us who lived and worked in cyberspace before the rest of society got here should feel blessed that we got to experience that electronic frontier. A message in my head, left by my 1993 self, reminds me not to fall into nostalgia, for that's the death of NOW, and of the future.

      Another recollection from that time period was a slightly younger acquaintance bemoaning (in 1995, mind you) that all the important work in computing had already been done and we're just stacking blocks, or something like that. I suppose he was right, though this also reminds me that those "suits" that messed it all up also pay a lot of our bills and for the servers/devices/tech that let me watch just about any media ever created on a device in the palm of my hand.

      In the end, everything has always mostly "sucked". This has been, and is, punctuated by moments of "not sucks" and sometimes, even "whoa, cool". Worldwide, ever-present, personal connectivity lets us see just how bad it (and people) suck in real-time and in message logs/archives in perpetuity. It also lets the truly out-of-bounds-of-reality concepts/conceptualizations find like-minded souls to infect and feed on.

      This reminds me that the topic is Firefox. Yeah, I was a big fan for many years. Then the Internet-enabled mob forced Eich out over politics and I moved to Chrome, then Brave, for most things and don't have any motivation to move back. .mpa
      (Too lazy to remember my /. password)

    4. Re:"New low" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was never as this low. You got stalking in a unified 'social networking' spynet lurking in almost every site and corner in the web ( Google Ads, Facebook/Google login, cookies etc). Everything is connected and so is centralized and a coherent profile of every thing you do online can be gathered in a flick of a finger.

      The internet always had bizarre/criminal places but those were well contained now everyone is forced to be a sucker. If you ask me it was way better when mostly geeks/nerds and then a few weirdos was in it than the insecure consumerist service that tries to cater to your Grandpa and average Joe is now.

  17. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep. The Left hates free speech... "Toxic" is their new word from removing any notion of free speech. The media loves this... they have learned to hate the internet. They've come to realise that people are using it to do an end-run around the media - and they are no longer the government's messengers.

    So you have an establishment media/political class that just HATES the internet - and their usual response to anything they hate is to claim it's bad for women and bad for children.

    Fuck the lot of them.

  18. im sick of the fake mobile ads by cheekyboy · · Score: 2

    That show 'you have a virus, clean files now' alerts
    on mobile ads.

    Any site that allows that ad in (ibtimes fuckers) should be auto ad blocked by default as punishment.

    The ad hosters should be punished for accepting those ads, or for allowing ads to be updated, or all JS ads.

    Those commercial sites deserve to loose millions, if they play dirty, and the advertisers, globally banned on a massive ad black list.

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
    1. Re:im sick of the fake mobile ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not that the site allowed that specific ad, or necessary the ad network either. It's all programmatic advertisement nowadays, and it's super scary how many parties are involved in figuring out who you are and what ads to serve you all within milliseconds of a request.

    2. Re:im sick of the fake mobile ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You probably have malware installed. Try deleting some of your apps, particularly any free crap-apps like a flashlight or compass. I bet it goes away.

  19. Re: manually disable pocket? by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Pocket tracks your site usage to "give you a better home page by providing recommendations of sites to visit" among other things.

  20. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone quickly ask Alex Jones on what web browser to use!

  21. Looking Forward to Google Container by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And Slashdot Container. Have you seen how many trackers there are on this site?

    1. Re:Looking Forward to Google Container by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  22. Re: manually disable pocket? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

    My home page is about:blank. Good luck customising that.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  23. Re:lol 'toxic' by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    Why are you posting on this site? You appear to be pretty clueless yourself.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  24. Nope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Firefox was never popular but it had a stable minority userbase, because that minority userbase were power users who had no fucking care about security because ti was a nonissue for them, they were more interested in functionality that FF provided. For security there were better alternatives and there will always be better alternatives because Mozilla and FF are both shit at it, ones from a skillset point and the other from a poor coding point which is still poorly coded even with these new "improvements". So you use Firefox for general browsing, and a more secure browser for important shit, because security is one thing and functionality is another and both can't be combined unless you have good programmers (Mozilla doesn't) and unless you sacrifice both concepts to accommodate one-another and end up with an inferior version of both (inferior functionality + inferior security).

    Power users who were the kind who would use a 3rd party program to latch to Firefox via a plugin and use it to grab and watch YouTube videos via the program rather than the site.
    Power users who had a shitload of user styles via stylish which could be managed via the browser addon management page.
    Power users who customized FF by using tools beyond merely the castrating css which is a pile of shit alone.
    Power users who used addons that weren't castrated by Firefox's new imposed coding limitations with the new API.
    Of course, when users have use of functions on FF 56 and those functions are lost in Quantum, they will either stay on 56 or migrate elsewhere where Mozilla's promises are better met because Mozilla turned to shit.
    Now Firefox is just an inferior version of old Firefox functionality and new Chromium security. Ergo decreasing userbase.
    Now they are trying to advertise themselves via New York "Fake News" Times with their clickbait retardation and moronic blogposting covering as "journalism". Get the fuck outta here.

  25. Firefox is on par with Chrome? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess its time to give Chrome a try, then.

  26. Re:lol 'toxic' by Sejus · · Score: 1

    The browser that wont make the frogs gay!

  27. Have they apologised yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ... For the appalling treatment of Eich?

    No.

    Mozilla can continue their fade into irrelevance along with the cancerous SocJus cult

    1. Re:Have they apologised yet by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure promoting him to CEO counts as "appalling treatment", especially when he clearly wasn't qualified.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  28. Never actually stopped using it by mohsel · · Score: 1

    It's insane, somehow funny, how mainstream medias condition users as much as what browser they use.

    1. Re:Never actually stopped using it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's insane, somehow funny, how mainstream medias condition users as much as what browser they use.

      No more insane than any other marketing tactic. Who do you think groomed mainstream media to groom the masses...

  29. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You think it still doesn't track your browsing habits?

  30. Developer Tools by LordKronos · · Score: 1

    I haven't used used Firefox in many years. Are its developer tools every bit as good as chrome is today? If not, switching is not a consideration (I don't want to use different browsers for normal use and development)

    1. Re:Developer Tools by SpzToid · · Score: 2

      Then in your case I urge you to spend time with the dev-tools of FireFox. I think they are far superior to anything out there. I only use chrome/edge/ie-exploder dev-tools to de-bug those respective browsers, and only when necessary. Otherwise I live the good dev life in Firefox.

      Also check out this really good add-on for maintaining multiple, simultaneous logins (identifiable via color-coded tabs): https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

      --
      You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
    2. Re: Developer Tools by reanjr · · Score: 1

      I recently switched to FF from Chrome and haven't noticed much difference.

  31. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lol. Sarcasm or brainwashed child?

  32. Can there be too much privacy protection? by Mandrel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Mozilla have to watch that they don't make Firefox's default privacy settings so restrictive that they weaken the power of the open Web relative to apps that can ask users permission to do just about anything. Apps are taking over enough already to tie the hands of website developers to do complex things, without any easy way for users to indicate that they trust a site to do certain things.

    1. Re: Can there be too much privacy protection? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I LIKE the separation between local programs and more websites. The last thing I want is remote scripts gaining deeper access to my machines.

    2. Re: Can there be too much privacy protection? by Mandrel · · Score: 1

      You make like this particular privacy feature in every instance, but others may want to give certain websites permission, making possible some website features that they find useful. At the moment it's a hidden blanket ban.

    3. Re:Can there be too much privacy protection? by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      That's a pretty horrendous attitude. Apps need to be brought to heel, not have the competing tech (Websites) dragged down to their level of lack of privacy/control.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    4. Re:Can there be too much privacy protection? by Mandrel · · Score: 1

      I don't have a problem with opt-in permissions.

      Even better would be if mobile apps and websites could ask for a list of essential and optional permissions. No installation or access if an essential permission is refused, but proceed with limited functionality if an optional permission is refused. At the moment app permissions are all take-it-or-leave-it.

  33. while a good secure browser is important by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    knowing how to use the internet without letting the internet use you is just as important

    even if you have a good secure browser if you go to places like facebook and other malicious websites and give them your personal info to make their profit from then the secure browser is pointless

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
    1. Re:while a good secure browser is important by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      Even if you opt into giving Facebook some information (e.e.g name,address, friend list) you may not want them to follow you everywhere on the web. There are valid reasons to give some sites some types of personal information. Insisting that people do all or nothing is part of the reason that FB et al can spy on its users throughout the web and have that considered okay, as opposed to overstepping what their users agreed to.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
  34. UI still sucks by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Firefox UI still sucks. Looks like Chrome and makes interacting with the browser quite annoying because everything is hidden behind non-descriptive glyphs. Firefox should recreate the pre 3.x UI as many have requested. Also didn't help that they needlessly changed the extension engine making many excellent extensions unusable. There still is plenty of user-ignoring arrogance at Mozilla. Their developers think they are hot stuff and the users are clueless by definition. Build something we want to use and we will use it. What they offer so far is just not compelling enough to make a switch. If it has to be a Mozilla based browser, then use Pale Moon. It is put together by an excellent team of developers who truly care what users want. Even if they disagree with a user request, they explain in detail why. This is how a FOSS project should be run....not like the trash talking in forums from Mozilla's devs and Dotzler.

    1. Re:UI still sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is put together by an excellent team of developers who truly care what users want.

      Until they fucked up with disabling noscript and wouldn't listen to the users, going as far as to mock the very users they "care" about:

      We changed the language strings for softblocked items so people will cry less when we do our job.

      I still use palemoon, but it's slowly creeping into that arrogant territory that they used to berate the mozilla devs about.

  35. Re: manually disable pocket? by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Informative

    So is mine. It still shoves "pages recommended by pocket" in my face when I start typing in an address.

  36. Not Really by jimbrooking · · Score: 1

    After testing Firefox for the last three months, I found it to be on a par with Chrome in most categories. In the end, Firefox's thoughtful privacy features persuaded me to make the switch and make it my primary browser.

    First, an update to make FF "new! better!" made FireFTP unable to run in FF. So had to find and use a separate app (WinSCP) to support FTP for my website development.

    Next, FireBug got killed off in favor of an internal debugger that seemed buggy.

    Finally the FF add-on (Kee) that communicates with my password manager (KeePass) won't install on my desktop.

    So FF isn't an acceptable option for day-to-day use. I will often test new goodies I put on a website in FF, but if they don't work as expected I debug them in Chrome.

  37. It gets a try again by allo · · Score: 1

    When the support for old extensions is back.

  38. Following the Americans after their recent history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hell no, if NYT says do it, do the opposite!!!

  39. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The internet may kill the msm, but what's replacing it will be even worse. Facebook etc. can not only directly manipulate users' information intake to influence their opinions/emotions/behavior/whatever, it can also get realtime feedback about how successful it is and adjust accordingly. In a world where "the internet" increasingly only means a few sites controlled by very powerful (and unapologetically political) corporations, all the ingredients for some no-bullshit Big Brother-ing are coming into place.

    CNN and the rest may be stuck in a futile rut where perpetual shrill outrage and moral scorn are the only available persuasion methods, but the new generation of media won't be so naive.

  40. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why is mainstream media being quoted on a technical subject on this site? They are largely clueless.

    Why are slashdotters discussing politics on this site? They are largely clueless.

    Says the crybullies when the politicization of everything is turned on them.

    Trump's trolled Democrats into openly advocating open borders and defending MS-13.

    How are you going to like it when Republicans start tossing Democrat pols out of restaurants and movie theaters and start beating up and literally trying to assassinate Democratic members of the House and Senate? "Progressives" have done all that in just the past few months.

    What goes around, comes around.

  41. So no more "women's projects" as a priority? by gweihir · · Score: 2

    Because that is, as I understood, the problem they had in the first place. Politics over quality and skills and a lot of money put into projects that were not core business at a time where the core business was not in too good a shape.

    Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against women as engineers. But engineers must be judged on skill, experience and capabilities, not their genetic makeup, skin color or preferences in beverages. Anything else can only cause massive problems.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:So no more "women's projects" as a priority? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against women as engineers.

      Yes you do, the entire idea makes your skin crawl and keeps you awake at night.

  42. This makes the web safer & less toxic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).

    Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any SINGLE solution (99% of threats = hostnames vs. IP address that most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

    (Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" competitors slowing you, hosts speed you up 2 ways (adblocks + hardcodes u spend most time @) vs. competition loaded w/ bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + their overheads (messagepass ('souled-out' to advertiser addons) + filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation).

    * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI on Linux/BSD!

    APK

    P.S.=> Much better vs. Windows model in speed & efficiency + new "merge" feature... apk

  43. Re:New York Times ALERT ALERT ALERT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ^ Upvote Truth

  44. Registered /.ers opinions of the Win64 model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    (APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * See subject: Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster & more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)

    APK

    P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet... apk

  45. I never left Firefox, but it frustrates me.. by toonces33 · · Score: 1

    Mainly thing just soaks up all of the memory of the computer. It isn't like I have hundreds of tabs either - maybe a dozen or so. But I can tell from task mananger that it is consuming virtually everything - minus a little bit to allow Windows to function.

    As long as I am just using Firefox, it works OK, but to launch something else, I usually start by shutting down Firefox.

    1. Re: I never left Firefox, but it frustrates me.. by reanjr · · Score: 1

      Webpages are inefficient masses of the crappiest software built under the dumbest constraints. Using large amounts of memory is how you make them operate reasonably well. And humans are notoriously bad at understanding how much memory used is too much memory.

    2. Re:I never left Firefox, but it frustrates me.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mainly thing just soaks up all of the memory of the computer. It isn't like I have hundreds of tabs either - maybe a dozen or so.

      Open another tab to about:memory when this happens.
      Which tabs and content does Firefox say is to blame?

  46. For me, it's about configurability... by gosand · · Score: 1

    Except for a year or so of trying Opera, FF has been my browser. Right up until the point a couple of years ago when I couldn't take it anymore. So much instability, performance problems, and the change for the sake of change being rammed down my browser. I tried Chromium (I'm on Linux) and I just didn't care for the way Chrome does some things. I then found Pale Moon, and I felt like I was back home with good-ol' FF. I've been using it since, on my home machine and at work (Win10). I can simplify the interface, It's fast, I can still use bookmarks the way I like, and there isn't any spying.

    I like keep a set of bookmarks for places I need to login. FF/PM give me the ability to add a description to the properties of my bookmark. That is where I put my password hint for that site. It's all nice and self contained. When I tried Chrome/Chromium, you couldn't do that. That's a deal breaker for me, since I have 20+ sites where I need this "feature". There are many other reasons as well.

    I always said I would go back to FF if I felt a compelling reason to go... but I haven't found one yet. I am happy that the FF team is apparently putting in quite the effort to improve it again though, because I wasn't happy with the direction it was going.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  47. Sorry, but I don't buy it... by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They may claim to be all about privacy and all that stuff, but in reality their main source of reoccurring income has always been from the embedded search features, provided primarily by Google, the company they're talking up as the main enemy of privacy. Because of that I'm genuinely skeptical as to how truly committed they are to privacy as a proper committing to it would require them to stop using Google as the a search provider and we're not seeing anything even hinting towards this. Not only that, they also rather conveniently try to allude they're the only company trying to dedicate themselves to privacy when Opera has been doing that for years and Chromium is also basically a Chrome fork with much of the privacy-compromising stuff removed.

    However the core of Mozilla's problems is that they've spent many years more focused on moonshot projects like FirefoxOS and politics, which includes everything from firing their CTO as he was taking the role of CEO on purely political grounds to spending a considerable amount of money modifying the codebase to modify any functionality using Master/Slave naming to not use it. To make up for this shortfall in spending on actual browser development they've also gone ahead and tried to streamline development by removing features despite very vocal opposition from their userbase. Hell, this isn't even the first time they've tried copying what their competition is doing, the last time they did major changes to the UI those changes ended up only making Firefox look more like Chrome and their users naturally hated that because if they'd want to use Chrome, then they'd actually use Chrome.

    No, the real fundamental problem Firefox has had for the last decade or so is simply unfocused and incompetent management. Until they can to a complete management "flush" and replace their management with people focused on the actual product rather than everything else, I can't see Firefox going anywhere in terms of it's already small market share.

    --
    "Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
  48. Firefox still sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm a linux user and I think latest firefox still sucks - performance wise. I needed to fix configs manually to get it to run with monitor refresh rate (144Hz) and it still had shitloads of shearing and vsync issues... went back to chromium which runs much much smoother.

  49. Another /. marketing stunt by rojash · · Score: 1

    Seems like /. is being used for advertising more and more these days by these fan boy posts. Firefox is by far more evil than Chrome for shoving Pocket down our throats. I gave up on both Chrome and Firefox for being very evil and opinionistic and having removed keywords. Tried a variety of others before settling back with Vivaldi. Couldn't be happier, even with its lack of Sync for ages (though they have some dude with a blog who boasts about it) and some minor flaws, but to me is faster and much more usable than either.

  50. I went back to Firefox... and left again by rnturn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Intrigued by the claims that Firefox used a third less memory than--was it Chrome? Or older Firefoxes?--I decided to try using it again. That trial only lasted for a week or so. I'd stopped heavily using Firefox a couple of years ago and switched to Chrome. The main reason was that Firefox seemed to handle Javascript so badly. I'd grown tired of the "A script seems to be running slowly..." messages that popped up five minutes after Firefox had become catatonic. Plug-ins helped to a degree but I found that I was spending way too much time fiddling with filters, allowing this, disallowing that: "Great, I've finally tuned Firefox and its helper plug-ins to render this page with screwing up. But what about next week?" In my latest bout with Firefox, I didn't notice those messages popping up as much but with many web pages I still saw the CPUs pegged at 100% until I got to a console and could issue "killall -9 firefox". They may have done some good things with regard to privacy but until they do more--a lot more--about the poor performance I'll stay away.

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    1. Re:I went back to Firefox... and left again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any website that causes high CPU load is a shitty website. Web browsers are amazingly fast, and I mean all of them. Web "programmers" just have no clue and do things that will never be fast. What you're most likely seeing is that the code was developed for and tested with Chrome, and "optimized" only to run just fast enough on Chrome. It's still shitty code that runs orders of magnitude slower than it could if it were written by people who know what they're doing. When you then run that shitty code in Firefox, which does some things faster and some things slower than Chrome, you get that 100% CPU load. That's not Firefox. That's a slow-ass program on a website. By blaming the browser and not the website, you perpetuate this bad situation.

    2. Re:I went back to Firefox... and left again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Web browsers are anything but fast and suffer from digital AIDS known as memory leaks, which Mozilla is especially known for due to their shit programming. Both the sum of poor web coding as well as poor browser coding results in an Internet that's worse off, and mostly because some idiots always pops up to throw blame at either/or but never "both" which makes the other party an incentive not to patch up their diarrhea.

    3. Re:I went back to Firefox... and left again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Memory leaks in the stock browser are not a significant problem. Javascript programs, in extensions and web sites, are prone to tying up memory through unwanted closures, especially when the programmer doesn't understand the functional aspects of Javascript and does "cargo cult" programming. The browser can't free that memory because it is technically in use. If you know what you're doing, web browsers are plenty fast, certainly fast enough for doing interactive and even fancy websites without hogging the CPU.

    4. Re:I went back to Firefox... and left again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You should try running it on something that isn't using a dorito as a processor.

      Chrome is a bloated mess on every machine I use while Firefox very rarely has problems.

    5. Re:I went back to Firefox... and left again by Waccoon · · Score: 1

      The problem is that if you close all but one tab/window and point the last window to "about:blank", memory doesn't come back. The browser isn't managing memory usage per page/tab/window, but collectively. Whether it's the Javascript engine or how the web pages use the heap is irrelevant. The bottom line is that the "leaks" stay with the browser until you restart the whole works. This has remained true even after the Quantum update that supposedly gives each tab/window its own process. I have no idea how the Javascript engine works, but apparently it doesn't work very well, and hasn't for over a decade.

      Yes, it's a significant problem.

  51. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ask Alex yourself. simply click on the little gay froggie.
    GAY FROG

  52. Re: manually disable pocket? by OtisSnerd · · Score: 5, Informative

    So is mine. It still shoves "pages recommended by pocket" in my face when I start typing in an address.

    Try setting these about:config values to stop Pocket:

    browser.pocket.api = ""
    browser.pocket.enabled = false
    browser.pocket.oAuthConsumerKey = ""
    browser.pocket.site = ""
    extensions.pocket.api = ""
    extensions.pocket.enabled = false
    extensions.pocket.oAuthConsumerKey = ""
    extensions.pocket.site = ""

    In Cyberfox, it kills it dead here.
    --
    If this is paradise, I wish I had a shovel.

  53. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    about:config

    extensions.pocket.enabled = false
    browser.library.activity-stream.enabled = false
    browser.onboarding.enabled = false

    That oughta do it.

  54. the lead consumer technology writer for NYTimes... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    ... obviously doesn't use plug-ins, or care about sites rendering properly. I've had too many sites not render properly with Firefox. It's not surprising, given the very low market share of Firefox. Web developers do not seem to want to test against it.

  55. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cyberfox is obsolete and not receiving updates. You should really upgrade to a modern, secure browser.

  56. Hosts work before addons & do more 4 less by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).

    Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any SINGLE solution (99% of threats = hostnames vs. IP address that most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

    (Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" competitors slowing you, hosts speed you up 2 ways (adblocks + hardcodes u spend most time @) vs. competition loaded w/ bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + their overheads (messagepass ('souled-out' to advertiser addons) + filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation).

    * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI on Linux/BSD...

    APK

    P.S.=> Much better vs. Windows model in speed & efficiency + new "merge" feature... apk

  57. Registered /.ers opinions of the Win64 model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    (APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * See subject: Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster/more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)

    APK

    P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet!... apk

  58. For the best possible hostsfile by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download)

    Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any SINGLE solution (99% of threats = hostnames vs. IP address that most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

    (Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" competitors slowing you, hosts speed you up 2 ways (adblocks + hardcodes u spend most time @) vs. competition loaded w/ bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + their overheads (messagepass ('souled-out' to advertiser addons) + filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation).

    * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI on Linux or BSD!

    APK

    P.S.=> Much better vs. Windows model in speed & efficiency + new "merge" feature... apk

  59. Chrome is a special snowflake by reanjr · · Score: 1

    I switched to FF a couple months ago because I finally got sick of Chrome's wonky special and completely broken handling of scroll direction.

  60. Registered /.ers opinions of the Win64 model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    (APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * See subject: Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster/more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time).

    APK

    P.S.=> Enjoy a faster/safer/more reliable internet... apk

  61. Re: lol 'toxic' by reanjr · · Score: 0

    Democrats have been smarter than Republicans though. They've put all the groups they care about into protected classes to whom you cannot refuse service. Republicans never bothered to make racists or assholes a protected class.

  62. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What a well-reasoned and mature response. With that obvious sophistication, culture and sagacity, I just bet you get all of the money, drugs and women.

  63. Addons = Inferior & Inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hosts protect when addons can't (or as well):

    Bad sites (past ads)
    Botnet C&Cs
    DNS down/poisoned
    Trackers (dns logs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    Dns blocks
    Spam/phish payload
    Ads in videostreams
    Slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes
    Hosts = Ez edit.

    AB+ 151mb https://www.google.com/search?q=Adblock+memory+consumption&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/

    UBlock 64MB https://www.google.com/search?q=UBlock+memory+consumption&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/

    Hosts~6mb

    Addons = ClarityRay defeatable & crippled http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    NoScript tag parses. Hosts block script prior to it!

    No 1 addon does as much.

    Stacked addons slowup.

    ADDONS = EXPLOITABLE https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11166303&cid=55266729/

    APK

    P.S.=> For something better https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12266978&cid=56837540/

  64. Vivaldi + Disconnect extension is better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been really disappointed by crap Google has done to Chrome for over a year. While not perfect, Vivaldi is a great Chromium based browser, and the Disconnect extension stops a lot more tracking than what Facebook does.

  65. Addons = Inferior & Inefficient vs. hosts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hosts protect when addons can't (or as well):

    Bad sites (past ads)
    Botnet C&Cs
    DNS down/poisoned
    Trackers (dns logs/ads/transparent ISP proxy)
    Dns blocks
    Spam/phish payload
    Ads in videostreams
    Slowdown 2 ways: adblocks & hardcodes
    Hosts = Ez edit.

    AB+ 151mb https://www.google.com/search?q=Adblock+memory+consumption&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/

    UBlock 64MB https://www.google.com/search?q=UBlock+memory+consumption&btnG=Search&hl=en&gbv=1/

    Hosts~6mb

    Addons = ClarityRay defeatable & crippled http://www.businessinsider.com/google-microsoft-amazon-taboola-pay-adblock-plus-to-stop-blocking-their-ads-2015-2/

    NoScript tag parses. Hosts block script prior to it!

    No 1 addon does as much.

    Stacked addons slowup.

    ADDONS = EXPLOITABLE https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11166303&cid=55266729/

    APK

    P.S.=> For something better https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12266978&cid=56837540/

  66. OK.... just tried FF by gosand · · Score: 1

    Hate replying to my own post... but I thought I would try the new FF. I actually still had it on my machine, as Mint has been keeping it up to date.
    First thing - backed up my bookmarks from Pale Moon to a json file.

    Then tried unsuccessfully for about 10 minutes to FIND the bookmark restore in FF. It was hidden down in the Library > Bookmarks > Show all bookmarks. This is the kind of thing that FF implemented that drives me nuts. In Pale Moon it's under Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks. They imported fine though.

    I use mouse gestures, and while the legacy add-on I used was disabled as no longer supported, it did have a "find replacement" button which gave me several options to choose from. I installed Foxy Gestures, and it worked well. I don't use a ton of add-ons, but some are essential and it's always nice to have them to make browsing easier.

    I will have to see how configurable FF is now. I am not really into themes, but I like to have words instead of icons for things like back, home, etc. I don't like HAVING to use icons. I couldn't find an immediate way to change that in FF (another thing they did to aggravate me) but will keep looking.

    As far as use, it's quick... and is what I would expect from FF. I opened up the same few tabs in each, and looked at the memory usage, and at first glance, was impressed! I have a script I can run to show the top 10 memory users. Slashdot says the output is junk characters and won't let me post the results.
    But it was using this: ps axo %mem,rss,comm,ppid,pid | sort -nr | head -n 10

    palemoon at the top, with an rss of 812544 (10%), then firefox with 496528 (7.9%). Wow, that looks great.
    But... there were 4 "Web Content" processes that were spawned by FF as well. So the real FF total was 1536780 (19%) - almost twice as much as pale moon.
    Do I really care? It's yet to be seen. Previously when I left FF it was gobbling up memory and was slow. Now it's consuming plenty, but is fast. I only have 8 GB of RAM on my machine, and I rarely even use half of it. So not a huge deal. But I know on my Windows10 machine at work, I am very often pushing the limits of memory usage. So take my quick test for what it is worth, and check your own usage.

    I am not switching back to FF just yet, because pale moon is doing great. But it's good to know that they are making strides in the right direction.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  67. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Democrats have been smarter than Republicans though. They've put all the groups they care about into protected classes to whom you cannot refuse service. Republicans never bothered to make racists or assholes a protected class.

    What about the Harvard racists? You know, the people who run the university and use racism to keep Asians out?

  68. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As opposed to adhom spewing intellectual lightweights like yourself?

  69. Re: the lead consumer technology writer for NYTime by reanjr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Web designers should be the ones caring about their sites not rendering properly, not you. You should care about the quality of the content.

  70. Re: lol 'toxic' by reanjr · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Asians aren't minorities though. Just look at any newspaper article talking about minorities in college and you will find that Asians are consistently left out of minority status. And we all know racism isn't really racism unless it involves the oppression of minorities.

    Asians gotta suck it up like the white people when it comes to college.

  71. Use Firefox ESR by williamyf · · Score: 1

    That way, you get a stable browser for a full year, that is widely supported on the internet and Big-Boy applications, and your browser is not changing:

    Every Six months (Like Edge).
    Every 3 months (Like Firefox mainstream)
    Every 2 months (Like Chrome)

    The new ESR 60 is Fingerlicking Good.

    --
    *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
  72. The modern web is beyond repair by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The only reason that browsers are so controversial is that building a new one from scratch is practically a billion dollar project at this point, thanks to the ever-increasing complexity of the standards which are now being manipulated by the browser incumbents to their own advantage.

    Compare this situation to other open protocols like RSS or email: picking a mail reader doesn't get a spotlight article from the NYT, and there are no societal religious wars over it. There are many choices, and implementing a new one is a very achievable goal. Same with RSS, the barrier to entry for making an RSS reader simply isn't that high.

    The modern web is a tower of babel that cannot be fixed, ever. It is so ridiculously complex that we will be forever locked into already existing browsers, and are slaves to the organizations that maintain them, because what else can you use?

  73. Mal & Kaylee ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People would get more excited for the return of Firefly.

  74. Trust? Complete BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "If they don't trust the web, they won't use the web,"

    There have been hundreds (thousands?) of major security and privacy breaches over the last two years.

    Overwhelmingly, the market (and users) have said, "Meh."

    The web shows no sign of slowing down. If anything, it has grown over the last two years.

  75. They've been running that angle for years by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    Very few people care about privacy they care about browsers working. Firefox makes it's money off the add revenue by selling default search. So it needs a _lot_ of users. A few hundred thousand privacy focused users won't keep the lights on for a project as large as a web browser.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  76. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My home page is about:blank. Good luck customising that.

    But that doesn't prevent it from phoning home all the time. You can tweak those things in about:config, and personally I block where it tries to connect to by default in my hosts file anyway.

  77. Re: Following the Americans after their recent his by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why? You old world people are so used to taking your marching orders from Marxist types, why not the NYT as well?

  78. Re: manually disable pocket? by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thanks for the instructions. I hope they will be helpful to me once I switch my main desktop beyond 52ESR.

    My point wasn't that I am haven't stopped pocket though. The point is that if you use default browser, without going into about:config fuckery, which average user is not going to do, firefox tracks your usage closely and is not a "privacy minded browser" by any reasonable measure no matter what PR shills try to tell people.

  79. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All i remeber is being annoyed with the integration on the homepage and finding a guide that mentioned a tweak in flags to completely kill it.

    Also in the critique section i wish my homepage settings would carry over through sync to my laptop and phone, but that's minor and a one time setup

  80. Using Firefox (but...) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I always used and preferred Firefox. I have Chromium as a backup for those really rare (once a year) pages which do not work 100% right in Firefox. For a short time I needed Chrome for Netflix, but now Firefox has that covered (thanks BTW Netflix for allowing it).

    I'm not against Google, nor do I think it's evil to know what I like and provide me with ads (if they don't use 100% of my CPU/GPU, that is). One thing that irritates is not the ad "de per se", but the fact that I must watch a video at 480p while the ad wants to be shown at 1080p 60fps. What do these Marketing folks use instead of a brain?

    Quantum is nice, works probably faster than previous versions, privacy is important etc etc... BUT... it meant a serious disruption in my usage habits.

    I need those clear field buttons which Midori has (and apparently Safari, too... not a user). In the past, I used the "Clear text fields" add-on (there are others, it seems, like Xclear). Why? Because they make it possible to copy-on-select, clear the search field with a click and then middleclick-paste a new text to search with a single "Enter" (a paste&go here would be very nice).

    Now I must:
    - select a desired text, often with a double-click (copy-on-select);
    - press Ctrl-K or click in the search field;
    - press Ctrl-A, then Del (or just Ctrl-U);
    - and finally paste with a middleclick.

    It's not the keyboard use; it's the alternation between mouse and keyboard which kills me. And I'm totally in favor of just using the keyboard... except it sucks for pointing and selecting things on screen... for vim, keyboards are nice, for browsers... not so much.

    I've been searching high and low, but neither field cleaners nor CTR (Classic Theme Restorer) seem to be available.

    Therefore, I'd like to ask whether anyone knows of a good-enough replacement for them or a way to make such a clear button appear. It seems it appears on the address field, but I cannot recall how exactly to make it come up.

    Thanks in advance.

  81. Stopping auto-play video brought me back by Tony+Isaac · · Score: 2

    I had switched to Chrome because Firefox was...slow. But a few months ago, Firefox started making dramatic improvements in performance. But the most important feature that brought me back was the setting that lets you prevent videos from automatically playing. I wish they would make it not even load the video, but at least stopping the playback will do, until then.

  82. The Web was lost over six months ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As I said in my post back on that fated day. Now the ESR liferaft is sinking as Mozilla discontinues support for version 52 next week. I am currently using Waterfox, but I fear that will be compromised eventually as well.

  83. Re: manually disable pocket? by OtisSnerd · · Score: 1

    Cyberfox is obsolete and not receiving updates. You should really upgrade to a modern, secure browser.

    It isn't dead yet, and recently received an update to 5.8.0. It may be shortly, but I'm waiting to see if someone else picks up development. If not, then it's time for something else.

  84. Not smart enough by ArchieBunker · · Score: 0

    Democrats have been smarter than Republicans though.

    to win an election though!

    --
    Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  85. You know who isn't back? The NTY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Look, I use Firefox (for now), but bragging about an endorsement from the failing New York Times isn't a good strategic move. The New York Times is better suited for use as toilet paper.

    1. Re: You know who isn't back? The NTY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks for the tip Donald. Has your wife tried to off herself yet this week?

  86. Re: manually disable pocket? by OtisSnerd · · Score: 2

    My point wasn't that I am haven't stopped pocket though. The point is that if you use default browser, without going into about:config fuckery, which average user is not going to do, firefox tracks your usage closely and is not a "privacy minded browser" by any reasonable measure no matter what PR shills try to tell people.

    "privacy minded browser" is why I switched from Firefox to Cyberfox. While the dev originally said he was going to quit working on it, he hasn't stopped yet. If no one else picks it up after he stops, then it's time for something else.

    There are some about:config changes that can be made to FF that thwart the phoning home, many of which are posted on Martin Brinkmann's gHacks blog by one of the regular commenters.

    --
    "Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!" Another parroty error.

  87. Re: manually disable pocket? by vux984 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't value pockets functionality so i remove the icon. And I thought it was idiotic that it was integrated instead of left as a 3rd party extension.. but...

    As far as I can tell, Pocket operates locally; while the pocket extension functionality in the browser does track you *locally*, its about as evil as the firefox "history" list, which is to say: not even slightly evil.

          Neither Mozilla nor Pocket receives a copy of your browser history. The entire process of sorting and filtering which stories you should see happens locally in your copy of Firefox.

    https://help.getpocket.com/art...

    Near as I can tell, the list of all pocket recommends is sent to you. Your local browser then filters and sorts the list by comparing it to that. Your history and preferences aren't sent to pocket in this process.

    Read how it works for yourself. What part specifically do you object to? What am I missing?

  88. FireFox Focus on my Android by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

    It's an ad blocker, and erases cookies and history when closed,
    https://play.google.com/store/...

  89. "Good job" doing what? In whose interest? by jbn-o · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google Chrome is said to have made it easy for an extension to do total snooping on the user's browsing, and many of them do so. Chrome includes a module that activates microphones and transmits audio to its servers, and Chrome contains a key logger that sends Google every URL typed in, one key at a time. Google Chrome does a good job securing access to a user's data without telling the user what's really going on or giving the user a chance to stop the behavior they likely don't agree with.

    Google Chrome is proprietary software. Nobody but Google has permission to study what Chrome does, alter Chrome, or distribute a modified Chrome. This is also how Google can get away with malware, hardly surprising behavior for a known international spy. As the GNU Project rightly points out:

    Power corrupts; the proprietary program's developer is tempted to design the program to mistreat its users. (Software whose functioning mistreats the user is called malware.) Of course, the developer usually does not do this out of malice, but rather to profit more at the users' expense. That does not make it any less nasty or more legitimate.

    Yielding to that temptation has become ever more frequent; nowadays it is standard practice. Modern proprietary software is typically a way to be had.

    The New York Times called Google Chrome "secure" but didn't explain how they arrived at that conclusion. Regardless of what they meant by that claim, it's hard to see how any of the above behavior or whatever else Google can get away with via proprietary malware could reasonably be called 'secure'. Any feature Chrome offers has to be considered in the context of being implemented in proprietary software which by its nature imposes a power over its users.

    Firefox was never proprietary; users could always inspect Firefox, edit out the portions of Firefox they didn't want to run or redistribute, edit any other part they wished, and distribute the rest (even if under another name with another logo), and Firefox derivatives have done just that many times. There's good reason Tor Browser, for instance, derives from Firefox. Free software (software that respect's a user's rights and community by allowing users to run, inspect, share, and modify the program) provides verifiable security; one need not guess or blindly trust a proprietor to do right by them. Firefox's technical achievements or detriments are thus a matter of spending time developing Firefox. This is a practical example of how you're better off with less technically capable free software than more technically capable proprietary software; we can make Firefox better in a technical sense but we can't make proprietary software free.

    1. Re:"Good job" doing what? In whose interest? by Kjella · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Google Chrome is said to have made it easy for an extension to do total snooping on the user's browsing, and many of them do so. Chrome includes a module that activates microphones and transmits audio to its servers, and Chrome contains a key logger that sends Google every URL typed in, one key at a time. Google Chrome does a good job securing access to a user's data without telling the user what's really going on or giving the user a chance to stop the behavior they likely don't agree with.

      You're nuts. The first was a bug that a malicious hacker could use to make Chrome think an extension is corrupted and is long closed. The second is an opt-in extension to enable voice search that was downloaded but never enabled by default. And the third is just Google's autocomplete, which it obviously can't do unless it sends partially typed addresses to Google. Maybe it's not behavior you want - in which case it's possible to disable from the UI - but it's easy to see the moment you type something. If anybody thinks those suggestions appear by magic then it's a PEBCAK problem. Basically you're the kind of tin foil hatter who makes people think they should stay away from Firefox and crazy town.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    2. Re:"Good job" doing what? In whose interest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously? You have no idea what Google is doing because we don't have a complete set of source code. It may make no difference when your running entirely or mostly proprietary operating systems. But for those of us who understand what it takes to design a truly secure system you can't start from anything dependent on even a tiny bit of propitiatory software. We don't have secure systems today in part because we don't have source code for everything. Though we are getting close to a point where that may be possible. But even then it's just the starting point. EOMA68 is a standard and the first generation card should be shipping in October. With that a truly trustworthy secure solution could be developed. Its yet to be seen if that happens. Obviously just because you have the code doesn't make it secure. But it is a quintessential starting point. And more code is still better than less- but there are certainly more privacy respecting free software operating systems where both are free software. Free software doesn't mean it is privacy respecting- but you have to have the code before you can start talking about privacy and security.

    3. Re:"Good job" doing what? In whose interest? by jbn-o · · Score: 1

      It's ironic that you complain about a feature on the basis of it not being enabled and yet defend Google's interests for an information leaking/privacy-busting feature that is enabled by default (one might not want to use Google's search engine). You also don't recognize that with proprietary software the program can do (and apparently already does) lots of things we don't know about, things that are also (as another poster points out) unalterable without source code and a license to alter and share a modified variant of that program. The details will vary from proprietor to proprietor (as the instances details on the GNU Project's proprietary webpages point out) but the theme of power over the user remains the same. Proprietary software power is the underlying problem by which we're prevented from controlling our own computers and thus harming our community from looking out for what's in our (singular or collectively) interests.

  90. Here's what I do ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    I use FF in private window, using DuckDuckGo as the search engine, and FF is loaded up with NoScript, uBlock Origin, AdBlock, Facebook Container, NoMiner.

    --

    I religiously perform the following steps before and after using FF:

    I run a batch file with the following commands ...

    --

    taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe
    taskkill /f /im firefox.exe
    taskkill /f /im chrome.exe
    taskkill /f /im MicrosoftEdge.exe
    taskkill /f /im MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe
    RunDll32.exe InetCpl.cpl,ClearMyTracksByProcess 4351
    cd\
    cd C:\Program Files\CCleaner
    ccleaner /auto

    exit

    --

    I have CCleaner remove everything, including all cookies.

    Then I run ATF-Cleaner.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  91. Re: manually disable pocket? by Clit+++Boner · · Score: 0

    Yes, please

    Clit Boner

  92. On Windows, starting a process is expensive by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What's more, folks are going on like processes are intrinsically expensive.

    On Windows, starting a process is expensive for two reasons: spawn semantics instead of fork semantics, and the common practice of real-time antivirus. On any system, RAM owned by a process and not shared with other processes is expensive, particularly if it causes cached disk sectors to get evicted to make room or (worse) leads to swapping.

    1. Re:On Windows, starting a process is expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but who cares about Windows? And who cares about Chrome, anyway?

    2. Re:On Windows, starting a process is expensive by tepples · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but who cares about Windows?

      Desktop and laptop users, apparently. Its usage share greatly exceeds that of macOS or X11/Linux.

    3. Re:On Windows, starting a process is expensive by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      On Windows, starting a process is expensive for two reasons

      OK, but how often is Chrome starting new processes? At worse, it may create a couple when you create a new tab, or perhaps have a web page with an IFRAME on it (I don't know, I'm guessing at this point, and my guesses are worst case scenarios, Chrome probably doesn't even do that.)

      On any system, RAM owned by a process and not shared with other processes is expensive, particularly if it causes cached disk sectors to get evicted to make room or (worse) leads to swapping.

      I dispute how you're wording this as it's "Technically correct, but really misleading." RAM owned by a process that's not shared with another process is "expensive" in the sense that it means more RAM Is being used, but the question is actually "Does this model lead to more RAM being used?"

      Somewhere (maybe this thread, I'm not sure) someone posted what these processes actually do, and it looks to me as if the same amount of RAM as would be if the processes were collapsed into one with one memory space - minus the tiny inefficiencies produced by page boundaries and having your own stack, obviously, and the latter may happen anyway if the collapsed process would need multiple threads. There may be some shared libraries that would store the same information in all processes, but that would say volumes about the shared libraries in question more than Chrome's memory model.

      Ultimately, we're looking at minor memory increases in exchange for massive security improvements. Is that a good idea? I'd say yes.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    4. Re:On Windows, starting a process is expensive by tepples · · Score: 1

      These "shared libraries that would store the same information in all processes" are part of the problem. I imagine that some of them are required for interfacing with the operating system.

      So I propose a benchmark: Open 10 tabs with one Firefox content process and exercise them for a while. Then open 10 tabs with four Firefox content processes and do the same. How does the RAM use compare?

    5. Re:On Windows, starting a process is expensive by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 1

      On Windows, starting a process is expensive for two reasons: spawn semantics instead of fork semantics, and the common practice of real-time antivirus. On any system, RAM owned by a process and not shared with other processes is expensive, particularly if it causes cached disk sectors to get evicted to make room or (worse) leads to swapping.

      First, real-time anti-virus is a anti-pattern. The idea that we should enumerate and scan for every single on of the billions of executable that we don't want to run instead of code-signing the couple-dozen we do want to run has always been an absurdity. It's like designing a door to your office to recognize criminals instead of giving keys to your employees.

      More importantly, RAM that is not being used is sitting idle and not benefiting anyone. So in order to evaluate whether the extra memory footprint is meaningful, you'd have to see whether the typical system running Chrome is memory constrained. My experience has been that the typical system is either I/O or throughput constrained (or just insanely overspecced) rather than being short on RAM. YMMV though.

      Finally, yes, the kernel can fill RAM with disk cache, but the hit rate drops fairly sharply after the first GB or so. By the time you are caching many GB, the marginal difference from evicting the LRU pages is minimal. With modern PCIe/NVMe SSDS, this is even less pronounced.

    6. Re:On Windows, starting a process is expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By the way : I looked for the Firefox setting that sets the number of content processes, but I didn't find it.
      I didn't find it in regular options/preferences ; I didn't find it in about:config (haven't tried filtering with 'content') ; I web-searched it and found discussions about Firefox 42 and 46, 47 etc. which by now is outdated stuff.

      For some reason Firefox decides eight processes (!) is a good thing for me, but I can't afford it. It's 64bit version too, so a good waste of RAM. I want one or two. I would just add 16GB RAM, that's perfectly possible since it's a low end laptop and thus supports a ton of DDR4 RAM. I can't because it's very expensive (stick of RAM costs about the same as : Playstation 4, smartphone, bicycle, eating at a starred restaurant, blow and hookers), I would if 16GB cost $/€ 60.

  93. Bug 1325692 by tepples · · Score: 2

    They've been working hard to make the new, more secure and (importantly) concurrent system up to scratch.

    Let me know when this hard work results in enough functionality in the system to allow a WebExtension counterpart to the defunct Keybinder extension, even if only for disabling accidental presses Ctrl+Q or Ctrl+Shift+Q for quit when I was aiming for Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Shift+Tab. (No, Restore Previous Session didn't restore text entered into a Slashdot comment composition form last I checked.) That's reportedly waiting on a fix for long-standing bug 1325692.

    1. Re:Bug 1325692 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Solutions :
      - use a big laptop not a small one
      - switch to an AZERTY keyboard
      - What do you mean? This works perfectly fine on my ma(...) NO CARRIER

      Really, if you never use CTRL-Q for anything else could you just use X11 or the window manager, and bind CTRL-Q to nothing? Under Windows Autohotkey allows that, pretty trivial and easy to switch on/off (load or quit your trivial .ahk script)

  94. Re: manually disable pocket? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

    No counter arguments from me on that one. I'm looking for alternatives to switch to right now, because 52ESR is going away soon.

  95. Re: the lead consumer technology writer for NYTime by QuietLagoon · · Score: 2

    ... You should care about the quality of the content....

    It's difficult to care about content when I have trouble reading the content due to rendering issues. So, yes, I do care about rendering problems.

  96. Re: manually disable pocket? by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another user already posted Mozilla's relevant policy page in this discussion, which clearly states that they do indeed reserve the right to track your usage patterns.

    What specific mechanism they use for it is rather irrelevant in scope of this discussion. "Oh it's not Pocket that sends it, it's that other module. Pocket just handles the received data based on it" is quite a disingenuous way of dancing around the issue.

  97. USELESS by Khyber · · Score: 1

    >check HOSTS
    >add 127.0.0.1 *.facebook.com
    >visit facebook.com
    >everything still fucking loads
    >127.0.0.1 everything from Microsoft to prevent Windows update
    >Fucking Windows 10 STILL updates without me telling it to

    HOSTS HAS BEEN USELESS FOREVER. OS and Browsers and apps ALL bypass this. Fuck off with your useless shit.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:USELESS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't see that how you made that hosts entry is wrong? You are really ignorant and stupid Khyber. Really stupid.

    2. Re:USELESS by Khyber · · Score: 1

      I only put * in my statement to indicate blocking the entirety of facebook at the domain level.

      In reality, the entry is 127.0.0.1 facebook.com

      Facebook still fucking loads.

      Ahh, too stupid to figure out how I state and phrase things, eh Anonymous FUCK?

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    3. Re:USELESS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You say hosts don't work. They don't if you fill them with erroneous data you typed yourself and hosts file entries you typed are completely wrong Khyber. Just like you.

  98. I have no idea why you guy think FF sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean I have to use all browser at work, for test purpose and that include being forced to use IE... So I can compare how they perform. I don't see how chrome get so many thumb up. Add on are much easier to find and have on FF. And they are not beholden to an advertising company...

  99. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What kind of Asians? Orientals? Indians? Russians? Arabs? Asia is a big place.

  100. opinion from an ignoramus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Times's writer, if you look at his previous work, don't hardly know shee-it 'bout nothin'. It's a column for granny and gramps. And I qualify as a gramps, so I should know.

  101. Re: manually disable pocket? by vux984 · · Score: 2

    I didn't find it. Where is this policy page? Where does it say they track usage patterns of pocket?

  102. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Republicans already tossed gays out of their cake shop and fought in court to keep it that way. Turnabout is apparently fair play now, at least in retail venues.

    Cry us a river of your crocodile tears. Next up, Republicans against state's rights!

  103. Your /. peers disagree w/ you Khyber jailbird by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    (APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * See subject: Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster & more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)

    APK

    P.S.=> See subject & your /. peers disagreeing w/ you JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie"... apk

  104. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I worry about SSDP streaming and all those connections to Amazon, Facebook and Akamai

  105. Re:lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Liberal definition of 'toxic' is 'anyone who disagrees with us', which of course is why they block comments on the majority of their site, just like NBC and CBS also have done. You can't have the proles interrupt the narrative with inconvenient facts. Fox still lets you comment, so does Breitbart.

  106. Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? LOL... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? I love it whenever Alex McClown alias "Khyber" https://unicourt.com/case/ca-r... the jailbird blows it on tech errors - funnier than hell!

    * He's a loony whimp (maybe 135lbs soaking wet whimp)

    APK'

    P.S.=> As you said - he's TRULY really stupid, no questions asked & his post you replied to PROVE IT from his own DULL 'brain', lol... apk

    1. Re:Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? LOL... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dick move apk. if he paid his debt, why bring it up here when it haz zero to do with the subject at hand?

      with all the insults thrown your way here, you resort to throwing shit like a monkey by insulting someone else here.

      i no longer pity you for the hate you receive here. good job!

    2. Re:Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? LOL... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's a multiple FELON who violated a PRIOR crime that he was still on probation for and he THREATENED a public official (funny since he's only a 160lb WEAKLING). He can't ever pay those debts and he deserves whatever scorn he gets for it from his social and ethical superiors. The consequences of the law aren't the only consequences one faces when they act like an irresponsible jackass.

      BTW, here is more:

      https://www.rapsheets.org/california/riverside-jail/MCQUOWN_ALEX/201425598

      APK

      P.S.=> When you LEAP to the defense of criminal scum like that, you reveal a lot about yourself. I'm guessing that you too are a CRIMINAL and are trying to JUSTIFY or HANDWAVE your own CRIMINAL past.

    3. Re:Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? LOL... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      APK is just jealous that even a convicted felon is more respected here than he could ever be. Unlike APK Khyber appears to have turned his life around while APK is just a retarded spammer who doesn't understand real security.

    4. Re: Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? LOL... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reads like he was a political prisoner of some sort.

    5. Re:Aw, WHY'd you TELL him? LOL... apk by Khyber · · Score: 0

      Guess what APK? All that got proven wrong, it's being settled in court right now, which means you're lying, intentionally, and knowingly since I TOLD YOU BEFORE. :D

      Which means I have standing to come after you in court, now. :D

      Mr Kowalski, I can find you, and I will.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  107. Re: manually disable pocket? by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

    Don't forget "Experiments" which are exempt from the standard privacy policy and can collect any information they want.

  108. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    He can upgrade to a secure browser, but he will downgrade to a modern one. More secure but less functional.
    Modern in the sense of functionality, which there is still more of on FF 56 than on the new FF, which by definition makes it a downgrade.

  109. Wrong approach? by JustNiz · · Score: 1

    > Firefox's "Facebook Container," which prevents Facebook from tracking you after you've left their site.

    Why is this only implemented for FB? Why aren;t they sandboxing everything by default?

  110. Crash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bought into this about a month ago. And i still hope it to eventually be true. Neverthless my android version crashes 1 out of 5 uses.

  111. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they were't thrown out of the shop (more fake news provided by you!) - the shop just didn't want to be forced to make a custom wedding cake - the couple was free to buy anything else in the shop

  112. Still sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am posting this from chrome with 7 tabs which has been open since friday and was used very heavily (5 addons). Lets open Firefox for a few minutes (2 addons) and see what happens.

    chrome ram usage - 571mb

    firefox ram usage on boot with blank page - 229mb

    firefox 2 tabs and less than 5 min - 431mb

    firefox 4 tabs open less than 5 min - 693mb

  113. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That simple huh?
    Looks like they don't want you to turn it off.

  114. Re: manually disable pocket? by danomac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pocket Privacy Policy

    Snippet 1:

    We also use non-identifying, aggregated information to analyze the manner in which the Pocket Technologies are used, which also allows us to improve our services. The aggregated information we use includes the manner in which articles, videos, or content has been accessed, saved and shared.

    And above it in a separate paragraph:

    . The types of information we collect includes your browser type, device type, time zone, language, and other information related to the manner in which you access the Pocket Technologies. If you are on a mobile device, we collect the advertising identifiers provided by Apple on iOS and by Google on Android.

    and in that same paragraph:

    ou can change this identifier in your device settings. We also collect information about your use of the Pocket Technologies so that we can provide our services. For example, as a part of providing Pocket’s syncing features, we sync information about the items that you save and view within Pocket so that your list, tags, scroll position, and other account and usage information may be synced across all of your devices.

    They are collecting this information and telling you they aren't going to use it for anything bad; this always results in they sell your information at some point. I find it *really* hard to believe it's anonymous, as on mobile devices it captures your advertising ID on iOS and Android.

    There's a reason people wanted this to stay as an extension.

  115. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the shop just didn't want to be forced to make a custom wedding cake for those fags

    There, FTFY. I'm sure that's what you really meant.

  116. Left FF after they fired CEO for donating to Trump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I left FF/mozilla after they fired the CEO for donating to the Trump campaign. How could people so adamant about free speech and privacy fire someone for "donating" to a campaign? The height of hipocracy and two-faced facist!

    Donating to a political campaign is reason to fire someone? How arogant to think that only libtards can be best at running a company. When mozilla ditched the CEO, I forever ditched FF and mozilla.

    Something are off limits, including the Bill of Rights... When we start demanding people lose their job because of the 1st Amendment, we have devolved into a 3rd world banana republic. Sometimes, you need to stand up and be offended. There is no "Right to be not offended". Otherwise, everything you thing, say, do... offends me and you should just leave the country..... see how it works?

    Peace out!

  117. Re:Left FF after they fired CEO for donating to Tr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You need to work on your false flag skills, they stink too much.

  118. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pffffffff....

  119. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's worth noting those browser.x settings don't exist in at least the latest FF. They are extensions.x


    extensions.pocket.api
    extensions.pocket.enabled
    extensions.pocket.oAuthConsumerKey
    extensions.pocket.site

    Illustrates quite nicely the problems with Mozilla.

  120. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If your software isn't receiving continuous (at least daily) automatic software updates, then it isn't modern or secure.

  121. Constantly logging out of web apps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I recently tried to switch to Firefox because Chrome was causing issues.

    I eventually had to give up and just solve the Chrome issue (Reinstall my computer and Wipe my Win profile).

    This was because using firefox, it would constantly log me out of web application sessions, well before the session had expired. This effectively changed the default operation of those apps, and made the whole experience so frustrating that I dropped Firefox after about a week.

    I have no idea why this happens and why anybody would think this is a good idea, however it has basically driven all the firefox users in our organisation over to Chrome.

    1. Re:Constantly logging out of web apps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I recently tried to switch to Firefox because Chrome was causing issues.

      I eventually had to give up and just solve the Chrome issue (Reinstall my computer and Wipe my Win profile).

      This was because using firefox, it would constantly log me out of web application sessions, well before the session had expired. This effectively changed the default operation of those apps, and made the whole experience so frustrating that I dropped Firefox after about a week.

      I have no idea why this happens and why anybody would think this is a good idea, however it has basically driven all the firefox users in our organisation over to Chrome.

      Given the amount of replies getting outright removed by mods this may die like them. At any rate what you describe is fairly common due to extensions manually purging cache/cookies after X time in a failed attempt to address cache timing attacks. uMatrix and uBlock for example do this. It's under Settings->Privacy: Delete blocked cookies, delete non-blocked session cookies, and Clear browser cache every X minutes

  122. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Keeps trying to show me fat ass porn sites. I spend a lot of time there.

  123. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's dead Jim

  124. Less memory? by xenobyte · · Score: 1

    "Mozilla said the revamped Firefox consumes less memory than the competition, meaning you can fire up lots of tabs and browsing will still feel buttery smooth."

    Unless the code for Facebook has changed significantly, I call bullshit on that statement!

    I used to use the old Firefox (pre Quantum) with sometimes up to a hundred open tabs (one or more Facebook) and it it slowly built up to using about 2GB memory.
    The new Firefox usually has about 3 open tabs, one of which is Facebook, and within hours it has eaten 4GB or more memory and it feels like a glacier, moving ever so slowly...

    --
    "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
  125. Contention for HDD IOPS, not CPU or RAM by tepples · · Score: 1

    In there you'll see you can happily use your computer while those nasty background services you incorrectly claim are making the hourglass spin (they don't, that's the whole point of background service) are quickly loaded.

    I can technically "use" File Explorer once I log in, but if I actually try to open anything, the process will be told to get in line for use of the HDD behind all the other updater processes that are trying to use the HDD right now.

    You're comparing an update check to something that actively scans every file when it is accessed.

    The antivirus "actively scans" the update check executable "when it is accessed." And once the update check is running, it reads the existing main executable to see which version is installed, which causes the antivirus to "actively scan[]" the main executable "when it is accessed." That's two scans per updater at every login.

    It may surprise you to know that Core2Duos haven't gotten any slower

    Agreed. But the updaters of newer versions of popular Windows applications have become more bloated. Whether it's a Core 2 Duo or the latest i7 matters little because it's not the CPU; it's the HDD. And unless the PC owner splurges for an SSD and an external enclosure for his existing HDD, the laws of physics limit how many random inputs and outputs per second (IOPS) you can get out of an HDD.

    My Core 2 Duo laptop running Debian is still snappy. But Debian has the advantage that only one updater is running at once (APT), compared to a separate updater for each application on Windows. Even if background update (such as unattended-upgrades ) is enabled, APT is single-threaded, which gives other applications a chance to use the HDD while APT is using the CPU. In addition, unattended-upgrades doesn't run at every login; it runs only once daily.

    You want benchmarks? Make some.

    Microsoft already made some of the tools used in my benchmark. Since Windows 8, Task Manager displays what fraction of time is spent servicing disk I/O requests. When a bunch of updaters are running, that's pegged at 100%, which can take a minute or more. Before that, one could look at the HDD access light or just listen to the HDD's head moving back and forth and use a stopwatch from pressing Enter on the password screen to when it settles.

    Or use some common sense such as examining the CPU time or memory footprint of the processes on any machine so you can see how completely and utterly irrelevant they actually are.

    In my experience, CPU time and memory footprint are less relevant to responsiveness at login than HDD usage time.

    Side note: Yes you absolutely should tell those pensioners to throw away Vista, and if their Core2Duos can't run Windows 7 or Linux then throw away the entire PC.

    Agreed. But in most cases, an Xfce-based GNU/Linux distribution (such as Debian Xfce or Xubuntu) works well on older hardware, with the exception of oddball laptop hardware without good Linux drivers. So for someone whose PC's preinstalled operating system's support period has ended, my advice is "backup user profiles, wipe, and Linux".

    1. Re:Contention for HDD IOPS, not CPU or RAM by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      But the updaters of newer versions of popular Windows applications have become more bloated.

      Citation required. Let's have a gander shall we:
      Adobe Update Service: Active working set 648KB
      Java Update Scheduler: Active working set 1,759KB
      Google Update Service: Unfortunately even on this shitty hotel internet connection the service starts and stops so quickly that I can't even see how much memory it uses. But for shits and giggles: It's a 140KB executable.

      I'm sorry I take it all back. These result surprised me. I stand corrected: You should be able to run all these just fine on a 486 too.

      Now if you have a lot of HDD activity loading these services, maybe its time to throw out the HDD since it is clearly failing.

      When a bunch of updaters are running, that's pegged at 100%, which can take a minute or more.

      Yep, your computer's broken. 100% I/O on disk to load these updaters, you have either a horrible problem in your system or failing hardware.

      In my experience, CPU time and memory footprint are less relevant to responsiveness at login than HDD usage time.

      Agreed, however how much disk do you use to load a tiny executable which does barely anything for a split second into borderline non-existent memory?

      So for someone whose PC's preinstalled operating system's support period has ended, my advice is "backup user profiles, wipe, and Linux".

      That I fully agree with. Especially if someone hasn't upgraded their computer since the Core2 / Vista days, it's unlikely they are emotionally attached to specific Windows only software.

    2. Re:Contention for HDD IOPS, not CPU or RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I disabled some Lenovo shit that took 90MB-110MB RAM, sitting and doing nothing (I had uninstalled the Metro Windows 10 applications)
      It used a "driver" which I disabled, and a service.
      Perhaps it's the thing that prompted me for firmware upgrade, but it could have been Windows Update. Anyway firmware was upgraded (I guess it was a Lenovo dialog, since it was modal and I would try to close the browser before updating, which made the window go away)

      Trackpad driver? Three processes, totalling about 30MB (I am keeping it)
      SearchUI.exe : Windows search garbage that pretends to be Cortana. It permanently used about 60MB, just so that the Windows 8 / Gnome 3 / Apple kind of search feature works as soon as I use it (almost never). This is pointless, since so much of my RAM was wasted before pruning all these shits down, that the start menu was swapped out.

      Search and indexing and "Office click to run" used some RAM, but they raped the hard drive with disk I/O. Got these disabled along Superfetch (to remove Office-click-to-run, I uninstalled Office). When I mean raped it's 100% I/O for ten minutes, etc.

      Now if you have a lot of HDD activity loading these services, maybe its time to throw out the HDD since it is clearly failing.

      Now your example are very mild compared to what I had above (yet, Vista and 7 have search indexing and superfetch too)
      Still, loading 5/10 programs simultaneously to have them scanned would suck.

      I never had Vista, but I had 7 on my PC for a few months as main OS, boy it still sucked with the crap disabled (or not installed in the first place). I was coming from XP with no antivirus (got pwned) which booted in like 10 seconds on my 7200 rpm HDD, and made stuff appear instantly (start menu, file explorer, command prompt, etc.)

    3. Re:Contention for HDD IOPS, not CPU or RAM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That I fully agree with. Especially if someone hasn't upgraded their computer since the Core2 / Vista days, it's unlikely they are emotionally attached to specific Windows only software.

      Why so. They may have Word 2003, or the software that came with the printer, the software that came with the scanner, or perhaps any random thing like audio editing software, or anything. Normal people tended to use the computer for a purpose, whereas for us it's an end in itself. Especially normal people who had a PC in the late 90s or early 00s.
      It's likely though, that users stopped using all their software (the IM client for IM, the music player for music, the video player for video..) and went web-only since then.

  126. Does Khyber get this kind of respect? No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017

    (APK's work), I've flat out said it's good by BronsCon February 11 2016

    his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015

    his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015

    I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015

    I do use APK's host file on all my systems at home by OrangeTide December 01 2017

    I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017

    * See subject Khyber/Alex McQuown threatened 3x to sue me & can't: That's breaking more laws you know Khyber (it's you now stalking me by UNIDENTIFIABLE ac posts).

    APK

    P.S.=> Best part's the Linux 64-bit model's faster & more efficient (does 2x the work in 1/2 the time)... apk

  127. Is it centrally manageable yet? GPOs? by sabbede · · Score: 1
    Because if I can't centrally manage it in my domain, it's not going to be used. There are admin templates for Chrome, but last I checked for Firefox there were only woefully lacking 3rd party templates that require a plugin to work. That won't fly, not worth the time and trouble.

    Firefox needs better enterprise support.

  128. Dear Khyber stalking me by anonymous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject: I put out truth like when you THREATENED TO SUE ME (breaking laws) & didn't https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10245269&cid=53914723/ & threats to me https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5713131&cid=47927485/ (try it RUNT) + to "DOX" me https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5713131&cid=47927109/ which is breaking laws.

    YOU MAKE MORE THREATS to ME https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12199712&cid=56738758/ breaking more laws!

    Here today you try crap on me & BLOW IT (bad hosts entry) https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12266978&cid=56838260/

    Tell LIES about my ware (libel)

    "NOD32 detects a trojan in APK's HOSTS bullshit." - by Khyber on Saturday August 22, 2015

    VirusTotal & NOD32 SHOW CLEAN IN ITS EXES

    https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    + MORE LIES

    "he's tying to get your fucking information." - by Khyber on August 22, 2015

    My program doesn't transmit outward! TONS more than this on you too.

    APK

    P.S.=> KHYBER go to jail AGAIN? apk

  129. Re: the lead consumer technology writer for NYTime by Headw1nd · · Score: 1

    How is this considered insightful? Of course as a user of a website I am concerned about content - which is exactly why if my browser can't access that content, or has rendering issues where I can't view the content easily, I will use a different browser that can. I won't bother to try and figure out if it's because of lazy designers, bad standards, or a crappy browser. I will just access the content that I care about in the easiest way. I used to use Firefox, but after I had difficulty accessing the content I wanted, I switched to chrome. Why did firefox have issues? I don't know or care. As long as chrome works I doubt I'll switch back.

  130. extension death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately, Firefox committed suicide by breaking the extensions. No matter what anyone says, their numbers are declining and they will go extinct: http://gs.statcounter.com/

  131. CTR by DarkRookie · · Score: 1

    The new FF still doesn't have a replacement for CTR so it can still go fuck itself.

    --
    The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
  132. Khyber we KNOW it's you, so... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject:... Who're you trying to FOOL other than yourself? You're a crackpot loon recidivist on his way back to jail https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12266978&cid=56841772/ & after anyone reads that or this (which wasn't me in this 2nd post IF that 1st one doesn't FINISH YOU OFF in everyone's eyes IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT ALREADY YOURSELF (looking @ your post history shows you are an ANGRY LITTLE man - you ought to be having F'd up your ENTIRE LIFE from now on the way you did) but I KNOW you've been arrested in other states besides California + I've heard you are ONE f'd up person (homosexual deviant, drug addict & worse)) https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12266978&cid=56839750/

    NOW - that 2nd post someone else did though they said it was I, it's not me (I didn't but I know it's accurate from OTHER MATERIAL I have on you OTHERS put out on /. before me & from researching you AFTER YOUR THREATS to me (now the sword of damocles HANGS over you you did it to yourself as always))?

    * Imo, serious one - *You NEED SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL PSYCHIATRIC HELP if not MORE JAILTIME*, you puny FREAK!

    APK

    P.S.=> I've met some real weirdos over time online (mostly sadly here on /. - REAL "twistos") but YOU are, without question, the worst & MOST screwed up... apk

  133. Re: lol 'toxic' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To those folk it's anyone who is brown and doesn't speak Spanish or 'brazilian'

  134. Re: manually disable pocket? by vux984 · · Score: 1

    All that seems to be taken in context of 'if you use pocket' this information recorded as part of that transaction. It's also not clear if that is 'extra telemetry'; or whether it's the same telemetry as firefox itself -- which you can turn off if you want.

    Nevertheless, I agree it should have remained a simple removable extension to remove all confusion and doubt. I have always been in strong agreement with that.

    I find it *really* hard to believe it's anonymous, as on mobile devices it captures your advertising ID on iOS and Android.

    I agree. I'd like more information about that from them. Why, and what for; how do they justify that.

  135. Waterfox by Artemis3 · · Score: 1

    I'm using Waterfox, currently based on Firefox 56, and there is an option "Enable multi-process" you can turn off (and I did), the browser is now lean, fast and more importantly won't eat your memory like chromium does.

    One thing the Chrome crowd doesn't get is that Chrome is not the only program you want running, so it shouldn't be hogging resources from everything else in the name of "speed", which is ironic because in Linux (across distros) my experience with chromium/chrome is always the same: Fine the first minutes but then it starts swapping and making the desktop unusable if you open/load 10+ tabs or so.

    I still use chromium but only for couple of tabs, mostly youtube or anything requiring audio playback (as chromium lets you pick the ALSA device you want), but for heavy browsing Waterfox it is.

    --
    Artix
    Your Linux, your init.
  136. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What about Comodo' browser: "Ice Dragon " [based on Firefox's source code?]

  137. You threatening me you 10lb. WHIMP?... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's what I see as FACT about you: Arrest & prison time + probation violation threatening a gov't. official (District Attorney - HOW STUPID ARE YOU?) #1/2 https://www.rapsheets.org/cali...

    #2/2 prison time https://unicourt.com/case/ca-r... (brb in a minute w/ ones out of state of California)

    Guess what DUMBFUCK? Can't SUE me for facts about you I read from LEGAL SOURCES stupid fuck!

    Nobody BELIEVES A WORD YOUR DEMENTED ASS SAYS after the above & what you've DIRECTED MY WAY TOO you fucking LITTLE 10lb. PUSSY motherfucker bitch homo https://slashdot.org/comments.... (despite your UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS SUPPORT NET here & there, lol)

    From what I heard about you? YOU ARE A BITCH that TAKES IT RIGHT UP THE ASS, ugh (disgusting/abnormal/DEVIANT/weirdo) AFTER you've been PUMPED UP with "good drugs" (man, even worse - sounds like you SELL it for dope, lol) per https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7892497&cid=50385967/ @ a porn shop as a sexworker (lol) YOU BRAG OF https://slashdot.org/comments.... & FIRED JOB AFTER JOB+ ARREST after ARREST https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... BRAGGING YO A Gangstuh https://slashdot.org/comments.... (lol, punk pussy is more it).

    FELONY THREATS to a DA & threats to SUE me repeatedly https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... is that AGAIN with your other EXTORTION, JAILTIME, PROBATION VIOLATION recidivism.

    * Keep it up like THIS threat of yours @ me AGAIN sweetie https://slashdot.org/comments.... pusscake - you'll be in the BUNK w/ "Good Ole' LEROY" soon enough as his Special "Lil' Teddybear" that you OBVIOUSLY deeply MISS, SOON enough BOY, hahahaha!

    APK

    P.S.=> Perhaps LIBEL of myselfshould be amongst your "FINE RECORD" (not) per:

    "NOD32 detects a trojan in APK's HOSTS bullshit." - by Khyber on Saturday August 22, 2015

    VirusTotal & NOD32 SHOW CLEAN IN ITS EXES

    https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    + MORE LIES

    "he's tying to get your fucking information." - by Khyber on August 22, 2015

    My program doesn't transmit outward!

    TONS more than this on you too on your HUGE tech fuckup record vs. me!

    WHO IS "GOING CRAZY" NOW BOY? Not I, though you said you would try drive me insane BITCH, I'm TOO STRONG for you & you are (truth about you KILLS you, blame yourself, not I - freak)... apk

  138. Toxic political policy by MarkOden · · Score: 0

    As long as one person of the Board who fired a promising CEO for making a donation to a political campaign some ten years earlier Firefox will remain dead to me.

    1. Re:Toxic political policy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here, I overlooked that offence. Moreover, talking about offences by browser manufacturers, think about Google who fired an engineer over an internal memo, a memo that Google requested of him then blew all out of proportion and made public simply because he tried to be honest.

  139. Damed autocorrect by MarkOden · · Score: 0

    Grumble grumble grumble

  140. Alex McCLOWN = Khyber "phantasyland" freak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See subject & FACT about you FAKE NAME for your FAKE LIE of a F'd up "life": Arrest & prison time + probation violation threatening a gov't. official (District Attorney - HOW STUPID ARE YOU?) #1/2 https://www.rapsheets.org/cali...

    #2/2 prison time https://unicourt.com/case/ca-r... (brb in a minute w/ ones out of state of California)

    Guess what DUMBFUCK? Can't SUE me for facts about you I read from LEGAL SOURCES stupid fuck!

    Nobody BELIEVES A WORD YOUR DEMENTED ASS SAYS after the above & what you've DIRECTED MY WAY TOO you fucking LITTLE 10lb. PUSSY motherfucker bitch homo https://slashdot.org/comments.... (despite your UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS SUPPORT NET here & there, lol)

    From what I heard about you? YOU ARE A BITCH that TAKES IT RIGHT UP THE ASS, ugh (disgusting/abnormal/DEVIANT/weirdo) AFTER you've been PUMPED UP with "good drugs" (man, even worse - sounds like you SELL it for dope, lol) per https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7892497&cid=50385967/ @ a porn shop as a sexworker (lol) YOU BRAG OF https://slashdot.org/comments.... & FIRED JOB AFTER JOB+ ARREST after ARREST https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... BRAGGING YO A Gangstuh https://slashdot.org/comments.... (lol, punk pussy is more it).

    FELONY THREATS to a DA & threats to SUE me repeatedly https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... is that AGAIN with your other EXTORTION, JAILTIME, PROBATION VIOLATION recidivism.

    * Keep it up like THIS threat of yours @ me AGAIN sweetie https://slashdot.org/comments.... pusscake - you'll be in the BUNK w/ "Good Ole' LEROY" soon enough as his Special "Lil' Teddybear" that you OBVIOUSLY deeply MISS, SOON enough BOY, hahahaha!

    APK

    P.S.=> Perhaps LIBEL of myselfshould be amongst your "FINE RECORD" (not) per:

    "NOD32 detects a trojan in APK's HOSTS bullshit." - by Khyber on Saturday August 22, 2015

    VirusTotal & NOD32 SHOW CLEAN IN ITS EXES

    https://www.virustotal.com/en/...

    + MORE LIES

    "he's tying to get your fucking information." - by Khyber on August 22, 2015

    My program doesn't transmit outward!

    TONS more than this on you too on your HUGE tech fuckup record vs. me!

    WHO IS "GOING CRAZY" NOW BOY? Not I, though you said you would try drive me insane BITCH, I'm TOO STRONG for you & you are (truth about you KILLS you, blame yourself, not I - freak)... apk

  141. Toxic political policy by MarkOden · · Score: 0

    As long as one person of the Board who fired a promising CEO for making a donation to a political campaign some ten years earlier remains Firefox will dead to me.

  142. Re: manually disable pocket? by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    Netscape and Firefox are two different browsers. That's almost as bad as confusing netscape with mosaic.

  143. Re:Left FF after they fired CEO for donating to Tr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google fired an engineer for being honest in a memo. They requested his opinion, he gave it, then they went hysterical and made the opinion public, then allowed it to be misrepresented to boot, then fired him for it. So I would venture you are left using Edge?

  144. Re: manually disable pocket? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    It was a joke. Feel free to laugh, or not.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  145. Re: manually disable pocket? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I worry about all tracking and spyware and don't give a pass to any just because they are perceived as somehow being lesser.

  146. Getting hobbyist software signed is also expensive by tepples · · Score: 1

    The idea that we should enumerate and scan for every single on of the billions of executable that we don't want to run instead of code-signing the couple-dozen we do want to run has always been an absurdity.

    That'd be fine if there were some counterpart to trust on first use (TOFU) or domain validation (DV) in the code signing certificate management policies of popular operating systems. Mac OS X used to use TOFU, where the user could choose to trust a particular app signed with a self-signed publisher certificate, and then the OS would trust updates signed with the same certificate. But in 10.7, with the introduction of Gatekeeper and Mac App Store, Apple switched to the single-CA model that macOS uses to this day. Apple's certificate is $99 per year, and Authenticode CAs for Windows tended to charge a similar amount last I checked. This poses a financial burden for free software developers and good-faith hobbyist proprietary freeware developers, who find it difficult to afford the necessary certificates and renewals thereto when distributing their work to the public in executable form across multiple operating systems.

    It's like designing a door to your office to recognize criminals instead of giving keys to your employees.

    In your analogy, how much does it cost to issue each key?

    More importantly, RAM that is not being used is sitting idle and not benefiting anyone.

    Some amount of free RAM decreases latency when starting a new process or when making a large allocation in an existing process, such as opening a large document, as the memory manager doesn't have to block the process while mass-dumping pages to swap. (Disk cache on the bubble for being evicted helps the same way.) And a laptop with two RAM slots could theoretically power down one slot on demand in order to decrease battery current draw. (I'm not aware of any that actually do.)

    My experience has been that the typical system is either I/O or throughput constrained (or just insanely overspecced) rather than being short on RAM. YMMV though.

    Mileage does vary. As DRAM prices doubled over the course of 2017, PC makers continued to skimp on RAM in budget models. Just this year, Dell finally increased the RAM of Inspiron 11 3000 series laptops on its deals page from 2 GB to 4 GB. In my experience, Xubuntu is happy with 2 GB, but Windows 10 really needs the 4 GB. This goes double if you run many applications built with Microsoft Electron, such as Slack, Skype, Discord, Atom editor, or Visual Studio Code. Each of these contains a separate copy of Chromium, and none of them share memory the way web applications open in Chromium/Google Chrome or Firefox can.

    With modern PCIe/NVMe SSDS, this is even less pronounced.

    On a desktop, that's fine, as you can fit both an SSD boot drive and a conventional HDD for bulk data in the case, or an internal SSD and an HDD in a USB enclosure. But I was under the impression that most laptops lack space/slots for both SSD and HDD. Change my mind.

  147. Re:Getting hobbyist software signed is also expens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Replace the optical drive with a hard disk caddy or use a hybrid drive if you want both kinds of storage in an older laptop.

  148. Re:Getting hobbyist software signed is also expens by tepples · · Score: 1

    Replace the optical drive with a hard disk caddy

    The laptop's optical drive is already external (USB), and I usually leave it at home anyway. I don't have quite the same luxury of leaving the HDD at home. In order to use an internal SSD, I would have to put the HDD in a USB enclosure and carry it everywhere.

    or use a hybrid drive

    I would have bought my most recent laptop with a hybrid drive if Dell offered a hybrid drive as an option. Which maker of compact (11.6" class) laptops with a hybrid drive should I choose next time? If I were to replace the HDD with a hybrid drive and sell on the HDD, where would I get a good price for the HDD?

    if you want both kinds of storage in an older laptop.

    It's not even just "an older laptop" that lacks support for "modern PCIe/NVMe SSDS". A Dell Inspiron 11 3000 series laptop purchased new in 2018 still doesn't have an NVMe slot according to this photo with the bottom cover removed. A search on Crucial.com shows only SATA SSDs, intended to replace the HDD, not supplement it.

  149. Re:Getting hobbyist software signed is also expens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why sell the internal hard drive? Stick it in a USB enclosure and you'll have an extra backup drive, there ain't no such thing as too many backups.

  150. Re:Getting hobbyist software signed is also expens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I saw a couple laptops that are your soldered-in netbook but with a twist.
    You have your pitiful eMMC, but also a 2.5" drive slot (trap door on the bottom. right : I have to mention it!)
    So you can drop a 2TB HDD in, as long as it's 7 mm high.

    Sadly it's a non-notable laptop brand (retailer branded. but they deliver to remnants of French Empire)

    https://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00241704.html
    https://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00241707.html

    Well, you might have the OS on eMMC, and swapping on HDD (and hibernation)
    Needless to say the real solution would be 8GB RAM on these Atom/Celeron things.
    I forgot it's 14", but it's a lightweight 14", kind of a 14" netbook, try to not damage the keyboard.
    In 2019 there's a low end, single channel Zen 2. Imagine if it simply had one So-DIMM slot : there's one and only one stick of RAM. It can be 4GB, 8GB, 16GB or 32GB.

  151. The New York Times??? by NikeHerc · · Score: 1

    Who could possibly give a rat's ass what the New York Times says about anything???

    --
    Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
  152. Re: the lead consumer technology writer for NYTim by reanjr · · Score: 1

    Can you provide an example of a site that A) renders in FF so badly you can't read it and B) has any quality content?

    My guess is this is more of an academic argument and there aren't really sites like you describe.