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User: Eravnrekaree

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  1. What are you talking about? The bootmarks in google chrome are utterly retarded. No adjustable resorting by alphabet or date? You've got to be kidding. I love the Firefox bookmarking system, its far, far better than Chromes nonsense. You can sort the bookmarks any way you need to and at any time.

  2. The reason the old extension API had to be broken was to increase security and allow for sandboxing. Sandboxing and multi content processes are the two must haves if you want security. So all of these people who like the old extensions system have been a cause of preventing Firefox was addressing its security problems and sandboxing the content code. The content code is now sandboxed by default on Linux which is highly recommended.

  3. Re:Firefox 57 shows a big disadvantage of plug-ins on Firefox Quantum Arrives With Faster Browser Engine, Major Visual Overhaul (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    the old extensions mechanism was insecure. Extensions could access all of the browser internals, plus the filesystem. No sandboxing, No security, No nothing.

    The old extension API was great if security is of no concern for you.

    I would never trust any of the extensions of the old API because of this, so removing the old API is not a downside if one is concerned about security.

    For people who are concerned about security, removing the old API is a good thing. It will force a refactoring of the extension code into much more secure code and will smoke out a lot of insecure code, and make the extension systems much safer.

    The idea of adding additional functionality through extensions was dubious at best via the old API, especially if third parties are adding the features rather than the Firefox developers, especially since it was becoming very hard to security review the extensions that were coming from third parties due to the high numbers.

  4. Re:Even MOAH CHROME LIKE!!! on Firefox Quantum Arrives With Faster Browser Engine, Major Visual Overhaul (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    The new firefox release moves it further away from Chrome by going back to square tabs and reversing the Australis UI regressions.

  5. Re:Who cares about the features? on Firefox Quantum Arrives With Faster Browser Engine, Major Visual Overhaul (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    The old extension API was horribly insecure, would expose all browser internals. The WebExtensions does improve security since there are better controls, and a user has to approve an extensions access to information. There is no direct access to the filesystem. Policing extensions was a huge problem and you could not trust the stuff that was in the repository because of the old API and its open ended access.

    Another reason was major architectural changes to the browser meant the old API was going to break anyway.

    WebExtensions has upsides, better security, its compatible with Google Chrome so you can have one extension for both browsers.

    I do kind of agree, it would have been nice to support the old legacy API for current plugins and only require new plugins to use WebExtensions.

    But, quite frankly, I wouldnt trust the older extension API or things written for it. So, given that I would not use the older extensions, the old API being removed is of no loss for anyone for whom security is a top concern, and really a benefit for people who are concerned about security. If it forces a refactoring of the extension code into a more security conscious model, it will smoke out a lot of old insecure and vulnerable code.

    The old API was okay if you don't care about security.

  6. The square tabs are far better than Chromes rounded tabs. Originally Firefox had square tabs but they tried to emulate Google Chromes UI. The community was upset by the change and has been asking for square tabs for for sometime. Rounded tabs are not what Firefox originally had so this is just Firefox going back to the original Firefox way. As for the gaps, I can see it makes sense to have the address bar fill in the space rather than to have wasted space.

  7. Dropped the ball on mobile on AMD, Which Lost Over $2.8 Billion In 5 Years, Takes a Hit After New Report (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Both AMD and Intel dropped the ball on getting x86 onto smartphones, despite the benefits in compatibility between desktops and phones it could have provided. It certainly would have been possible.

    Desktops and laptops are still going to remain the top end of the market, and the choice for doing real work, also gaming, since the form factor allows for expansion and ventilation to support more powerful systems. We are still far away from being able to have the CPU power for real, lifelike gaming, such as real time ray tracing. So there is plenty to drive the need for faster CPUs. Desktop systems should still be for people who want a lot of expansion including a larger case, this is the niche it can fill. The idea that by offering compact desktop cases sort of runs against why someone would want a desktop system and weakens what differentiates it from a laptop. Why buy a compact desktop system when it offers no expansion advantage over a laptop? I see many manufacturers offering compact desktop systems, when really I doubt it will help.

    Mobile and desktop systems really fill two different market niches so its a mistaken idea that the mobile can replace a desktop system. Working on a spreadsheet or taxes on a 3" screen? No thanks.

  8. Re: Why can't we have a flat tax? on 'Significant' Number of Equifax Victims Already Had Info Stolen, Says IRS (thehill.com) · · Score: 1

    Most of the paperwork seems to be in documenting income and determining what counts as income, and all of the deductions. Going to 3 or 1 bracket does not reduce the amount of paperwork by much, since its not the source of most of the complexity.

  9. Why not pipe CO2 from plants into a greenhouse? on World's First 'Negative Emissions' Plant Has Begun Operation (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    We do have fairly affordable CO2 collectors, plants. Idea: Why not pipe the CO2 from coal and gas plants into a sealed greenhouse with fast growing plants inside. The CO2 will make the plants grow faster and will absorb the CO2. Maybe then every so often the plant matter in some way can be compressed, bricked and stored. Or the plants can be fed back into the plant, burned, and the CO2 recaptured and piped back into the greenhouse to grow more plants and the cycle can repeat, a closed CO2 cycle.

  10. Wayland/Linux based phone on Slashdot Asks: Does the World Need a Third Mobile OS? · · Score: 1

    Why not a device sold with a full featured standard Linux distribution with standard Window systems X11 and Wayland. There never was a need for Google to make yet another incompatable window system when it could have easily adapted X or Wayland to its needs. And please, I dont mean Ubuntus phone with Mir, which was a mistake since Canonical could have worked with Wayland folks to get whatever they needed added to Wayland for their phone project, Canonical coming up with Mir was sheer idiocy and threatened to splinter the Linux ecosystem into a bunch of incompatible window systems.

  11. Re:For those of us that don't know on Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor (designnews.com) · · Score: 1

    This isnt true. With implementing a compiler, you want to have AVX, SSE instructions etc so that you can more easily optimize your code. A simple instruction set would mean less ways to optimize the code. The compiler can choose which instructions to use it.

    Writing a compiler for a Turing Tarpit is more difficult, the smaller the instruction set, the more code that the compiler has to write to emulate things not implemented on the CPU.

  12. Re:For those of us that don't know on Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor (designnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Licensing? If your making your own electronic schematics, you dont need to license anything. As far as instruction set architecture itself, the ISA is basically a language, and it has been independantly implemented without licensing, such as BOCHS, since language are not copyrightable. Since RISC-V is not using Intel schematics, it could have easily supported x86-64 without any licensing fees, with its own electronics implementation.

  13. Re:For those of us that don't know on Linux Now Has its First Open Source RISC-V Processor (designnews.com) · · Score: 1

    There are no technical advantages. RISC is basically dead as a serious idea, most chips today are CISC with complex parallel instruction sets for math. So called RISC instruction sets such as ARM are quite complex, as complex as x86 is, certainly far more complex than an 8086.

    It has been mentioned that there is no significant overhead in implementing x86 over other CPU ISAs. Its an old myth that doesn't hold water.

    Licensing is cited as a reason for another ISA. I think that this if I am not mistaken applies only to schematics of the chip, rather than to the Instruction Set Architecture,. People have made independant implementations of x86 ISA, it can be done, you dont need Intels schematics to do it, you can make your own electronics. Since RISC-V seems to be using their own schematic anyway, they could have made it support x86-64, why reinvent another incompatible instruction set? Then it could use off the shelf and well supported x86 binaries.

    So, I dont see any logic in them inventing an incompatable ISA rather than just using x86.

  14. Re:Why? Which features? on Mozilla To End All Firefox Support For XP, Vista In June 2018 (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    It is to forestall and get rid of buggy proprietary binary blob add-ons like Unity3D plugin that only run on Windows. With images, video, CSS, Javascript, the browser is already a rich media platform as it is, so WebGL really doesnt do anything that the browser is not already doing, it does what the browser is already doing a little bit better. The HTML renderer and DOM already renders graphics, if we are in the business of rendering graphics, might as well make it flexible by supporting a more versatile API.

  15. Re:Defenestrate it on Mozilla To End All Firefox Support For XP, Vista In June 2018 (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    With the way Linuxland keeps on turning its back on old computer users as well, think again. Like how they fucked over people using old video cards by deleting XAA driver support from X.org, Ubuntu dropping 32 bit images, etc. Its at the point you pretty much have to have narrow range of recent hardware to use Linux. They drop support for old hardware left and right.

  16. Re:Why? Which features? on Mozilla To End All Firefox Support For XP, Vista In June 2018 (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    Not that big of a deal, just use a third party font rendering library.

  17. XUL should be kept for existing extensions only on AskSlashdot: How Do You See Your Life After Firefox 52 ESR? (mozilla.org) · · Score: 3, Informative

    I gave up on Firefox a long time ago, after far too many crashes. XUL is pretty badly designed as an extension API. Many had asked firefox devs, nevertheless, about the possibility of maintaining backwards compatability with existing plugins, only requring the new API for new plugins. They said that such major changes were planned to browser internals that the amount of porting it would take for plugin developers just to keep up would mean a major rewrite of plugins anyway.

    XUL and friends is a very low level interface, and is extremely unsafe since it exposes so much of the browser internals. This is a serious security problem. It is infeasible for the browser maintainers to verify the safety of these extensions. WebExtensions will improve security greatly. Really, Ive always thought the way Firefox does extensions is foolish for this reason and just asking for trouble.

    WebExtensions does have an advantage, its compatable with Google Chrome, so if you do port, your extensions become available to many more people.

    yes, it would be nice if there was a way to keep XUL for existing extensions only, and only require Web Extensions for new extensions. But really, XUL is pretty bad from the security standpoint.

  18. A good idea is to simply whitelist what sites you want to allow Javascript to be run in. Also, Javascript being interpreted, there's no excuse for having some sort of feature to put a "speed limit" on javascript and automatically disable javascript that uses too much CPU.

    Javascript is critical and desirable in some sites, in particular messaging, office online applications and so on. If the browser didnt have Javascript, you would end up with Flash again, a lot of proprietary plugins, which are much worse,where there is little or no opportunity be able display on non javascript browsers. Its better to have open standards and open source to fill the need rather than to let the proprietary crap do it.

  19. I doubt that is a problem on servers where you have to handle thousands of concurrent sessions. It would apply more a desktop machine where the zip is the only process you are running.Where you have one sequential process running on the entire machine, of course the extra cores are wasted. That is not an issue on a high volume server.

  20. It is interesting to note that Florida has several other nuclear reactors on the coast. One of them, Crystal River, was just a few feet above a Category 5 storm surge. Its basically built on a little platform that just barely brings above projected storm surge level. It would be a little island admist 10 foot waves should the worst happen. Very comforting.That often would cause me to wonder. I think that wondering more would be a good idea given what happened with Fukashima. The levy plant was located further inland in acknowledgement of the bad location of the Crystal River plant. Crystal River was closed it is interesting to note because they screwed up a turbine replacement and cracked the containment,

  21. Yes the longer this goes on the fear is the more and more behind we are going to get with being able to execute these projects due to so much of the supply chain and engineering know out atrophying. Couple that with the horrible US education system where kids are taught social justice, transgender studies, safe spaces and so on, and turned into social justice warriors to tear down everything in site and reduce the country to rubble because of the brainwashing with all of this America-is-the-worst-country-ever garbage

  22. Re:Jail term for US man who illegally shared nucle on Power Company Kills Nuclear Plant, Plans $6 Billion In Solar, Battery Investment (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    It seems as though China is Westinghouse's main customer now for AP1000 reactor, with this Levy plant being scrapped.

  23. They are not actually designed by people in the state. They were going to use the AP1000 reactor design from Westinghouse.

  24. Solar environmentally friendly, hah on Power Company Kills Nuclear Plant, Plans $6 Billion In Solar, Battery Investment (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 0, Troll

    The idea of solar being environmentally friendly is a joke. Ever look at the materials that go into solar panels, and the amount of electronic waste this will produce? Also consider the possible wildlife loss due to the amount of acreage this is going to take. Due to the fact Florida has many endangered ecosystems already due to overdevelopment and it hosting a high biodensity, its actually a pretty poor place for solar. Out west in the desert areas where you have low biodensity would be the least impact. Florida also does have rain and a lot of rain days.

    I'd hate to think about what goes into the batteries, the heavy metals and the environmental damage it will cause to mine it all out of the earth to extract these finite resources. The way these things use up rare earth metals its really hard to see how its sustainable.

  25. Leave the cable in on Ask Slashdot: What Can You Do With Old Coaxial Cable? · · Score: 1

    My advice is dont remove the cable. Put up an outdoor antenna, hook it up to your cables, and you have 20-30 free channels, use it to get free OTA TV and pipe it over your coaxial cables. With the upcoming ATSC 2.0 standards, digitial OTA is going to get even better with data streams, and more channels. Its free, so why not take advantage of it.

    There are HDMI over coax adapters. Coaxial cable is great for digital data so you can use such things to repurpose your cables for digital .

    MOCA also came to my mind, which allows you to transmit your own data around your house using your cables, probably video and other data. If you have a PC with with a tuner card in one room,it may be becoming possible to have a MOCA adapter to send the data to other rooms over the cable.

    I have seen Moca adapters for connection Ethernet to the coaxial cable and sending data over the coax using Moca. Actiontec has some of these on sale.

    Coaxial cable has a very high bandwidth. Combined with modern chips, what could the data transfer rate be? A lot higher than trying to squeeze data over twisted pairs, I bet. With todays technology 1 Ghz of the cables bandwidth can be used. A coaxial cable is sealed so you can put high frequencies on it without interfering with transmissions over the air. Its still a very good, viable transmission medium. Im surprised its not used more for computer networks.