Firefox 69.0 Released(mozilla.org) |
Firefox 69.0 Released(mozilla.org) |
The biggest blocker for it in Firefox seems to be webrender landing in stable.
For those doubting, do a simple Google with "firefox cpu".
Also, knowing your password wouldn't be enough to identify it within a breach, assuming that the breached website does the bare minimum to store them safely (as in, uses a salt).
How about reading a thing or two before jumping to conclusions?
The email gets hashed on your device, and the start of that hash is sent off to the server. The server returns a list of all the hashes that might match. The client then checks that list for complete matches.
>Firefox Monitor gets its data breach information from a publicly searchable source, Have I Been Pwned. If you don’t want your email address to show up in this database, visit the opt-out page.
1. Right now Firefox Monitor uses your Firefox account for signups. For somebody like me who already has a Firefox account, I don't see a net difference in risk here.
2. If you don't want to make one, then Monitor is transparent in that they just use https://haveibeenpwned.com under the hood (source: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-monitor-faq#w_h...), which doesn't require anything more than submitting your email and passing their Google captcha. It's unfortunate that they're not more forthcoming about this, but the option is there.
I think this is a great functionality and it will really help the average user.
Some password managers already do this and I personally think its a nice feature. Though I often generate new emails and passwords for sites on the spot so this feature isn't of much use to me.
Good. I know a news website that was on purpose disabling sound on videos to prevent that. So not only does it autoplay, you need to click to unmute anyway to actually hear it!
Why do news websites want to shove autoplaying videos on people's throats so much, what's wrong with playing at any time when you want?
And why do news websites even care about doing shoving it to the small percentage of people who actually bother to disable autoplay in their browser?
P.S. I already had autoplay for videos without sound disabled through about:config flags, but some videos managed to autoplay anyway. I wonder if they also fixed that issue, or simply made the about:config flag part of the settings dialog.
There was a bubble awhile back when advertisers were being told that video had better metrics, and all of the news sites jumped on higher-paying ads. That seems to have tapered off as advertisers noticed poor returns and learned that Facebook had been massively misrepresenting the metrics (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/10/advertisers-alle...) but it’ll take years to de-pivot everyone’s shiny new toys and the staffing invested in producing low information density content.
You can pair that with addon called, "Image video block" https://github.com/tiborbarsi/image-video-block-browser-addo...
And finally, you can use Bandwidth hero to compress images on the fly. You need to host the server instance on Heroku. Their free tier should suffice
On what site do you find "5KB news articles"? Pretty much all news sites that I know of load a gigantic amount of useless and obnoxious JavaScript, CSS, images, etc. with or without video.
Advertising metrics.
> And why do news websites even care about doing shoving it to the small percentage of people who actually bother to disable autoplay in their browser?
I believe autoplay is off by default on mobile, so it's a significant market.
Probably so they can show advertisers that every month, they stream XXX terabytes of video, thereby getting these advertisers to pay them more money.
Not technically a lie as long as you don't pretend people are actually watching these videos.
I've never understood why news sites push silent video down your throat. They are wasting serious amounts bandwidth.
Perhaps the websites (website owners) are not the only ones who are motivated to push for inclusion of autoplaying videos. Some sources suggest ad fraud is one of the major drivers of online advertising.1 Sources also suggest that video works especially well for ad fraud.2,3,4 If there is a shift toward using video for advertising,5 then it makes sense that commercial websites would prefer ads (videos) to be shown (play) to the visitor automatically (autoplay). It stands to reason that commercially-funded browser authors, e.g., Firefox,6 will always want to implement features that cater to its primary stakeholders: commercial websites and the online ad industry.
1 https://digiday.com/media/daily-hourly-fight-digital-ad-frau...
2 https://digiday.com/media/state-of-video-ad-fraud/
3 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/in-banne...
4 http://www.adotas.com/2017/12/video-ad-fraudand-matter/
5 https://digiday.com/media/publishers-pivoting-video-5-charts...
6 https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/041315/how-m...
I would totally agree with you and the others that it's an annoying practice. Yet then again when I blanket-banned autoplay, I was annoyed by youtube videos no longer doing it.
Turns out we like it where we expect it. Just not from random google results to sites we rarely visit.
Twitch does this, which is very annoying, because (on Firefox for Android) I have to unmute the video every time. As far as I know there's no way to allow audio to autoplay on a specific site on FfA.
Hopefully this moves web developers in the direction of either requesting autoplay permission (if they need it) or not autoplaying at all.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/boxscore?gameId=401110...
Because forced exposure to advertising pays better than letting you decide when to consume it (if you ever do).
Kind of silly that animated gifs will continue to work fine, but as soon as you try to use a format that doesn't take up a ridiculous amount of bandwidth...
With all due respect, if you have to call it an "experience" you know it's something nobody asked for :p
At what point do they understand that it's a failed experiment if they constantly have to re-enable and/or "ship" an "experience"?
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/unha...
I see it here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Rel...
Uhmmm...
Good. User agents already contain too much.
That's actually the first time I've ever seen a browser actively removing stuff from the User Agent.
How much of a performance improvement does this make?
macOS user base can now consider FF as a viable browser alternative.
I've been out of ad-tech for about 5 years, but when I was working in that industry it was common to drop evil cookie pixels everywhere in the page and then do cookie-matching with them ("my cookie for this user is X, do we per-chance have a match with something you have?")
Will this effectively end that by preventing cookies from domains that aren't the domain of the site itself?
I hope so.
I think Yahoo News was loading new article content into the same page (like Turbolinks does) instead of navigating to a new page. Clicking links becomes the user action that allows video playback for the current page and that permission is retained across articles because the browser is not navigating away to new pages. Just a theory...
Now, no video auto-plays when I interact on the page.
My fingers are itching to ban some sites... such as cnn.com, dailymailco.uk
Does this also block GIFs from auto-playing? Blocking no-sound videos from auto-playing will keep GIFs alive for another decade.
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.enhanced_contrast = 0
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.rendering_mode = 5
gfx.font_rendering.cleartype_params.force_gdi_classic_for_families = ""It's the little things that are making me go back to Firefox more-and-more
The gist of it is that Firefox, and only Firefox, will cause my Windows 10 system to completely hard freeze (no mouse movement, no response period) for about 30-60 seconds at a time, multiple times daily. It's so frustrating that it makes FF unusable for me.
It's odd because it seems to be a rare issue that has to do with it not letting go of a GPU handle/process/thread or something, from what I've been able to deduce from others having this issue that have posted bugs in the tracker. I've tried everything under the sun to fix it, but no other program, period has this problem. I game, I use other browsers, I do all sorts of stuff on this PC with zero issues, but Firefox gives me these temporary hard-freezes. Ugh.
Whenever I experience this type of thing I can't help but speculate that issues like this are not serendipity at work.
I recollect reading an article years back from a Microsoft developer who spoke about how it was quite common for Windows code to take specific actions based on which app was running - ostensibly to 'improve the user experience'. Though, it's not hard to imagine MS using this for the opposite purpose. And, since their code is proprietary, who would know?
> For our existing Windows 10 users, you can easily find and launch Firefox from a shortcut on the Win10 taskbar.
???
As opposed to before?!
The bad: userChrome/userContent not being loaded by default, I don't understand why it would cause a delay at startup.
The ugly: More Pocket crap.
toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets = true
I'm currently using Firefox Developer on the latest auroua update channel version ( 70.0b3 ).
I haven't really expereienced any problems and am only vaugely aware of new things from time to time. Actually mostly I'm not sure if I'm noticing something new or something that's existed for a long time. Like for instance the other day I put in an address in the address bar and it gave me a "switch to tab" option because I already had that open in a browser window, I swear that's new, but I'm not sure!
Yeah, you get a few cool features a bit early, but I just can't stand the instability anymore. Pluis, I'm not actually using any of the "Developer" features, so there's really no reason for me to not just run release.
Good! I remember losing quite some time before I realised something wasn't in the network tab because it never fired rather than failing to be triggered by the application code.
- The Firefox sign in process is considerably improved, with a link based sign in with email. The fact is that you will not be singed in to email on the first time usage. So you are behind a wall to start browsing and the cognitive load not to leave the tab before completing setup. This experience with Google Chrome is far far better, as it’s one time setup using your Google Account . Even if you discount the google’s ownership and single account sign in, there are considerable improvements to be made in the onboarding process
- The Pocket integration is substandard to the Pocket extension.
- The Top sites and highlights are too big for my aesthetics. It could be little cuter in the way it appears.
- Moving a video to full screen makes your blank for a second and not a smooth transition as in Chrome or Safari
- Lack of certain platform specific integrations such as Look Up on macOS to get the dictionary triggered by selected word. It works across all the other browsers well. On Firefox, I need to make a google search.
- The tab bar is ugly and has lot of blank spaces
- No default support for dark mode which works beautifully well on Chrome and Safari in a very early stage. More than a feature, the slowness in picking up platform specific features.
- The containers concept is really great but not for most of the general users to make use of it. It’s still a bit geeky in nature.
- I’ve to go with standard privacy settings to make my sites work including google. Making the privacy settings strong doesn’t help much and get signed out of the sessions very frequently. - I use an app called Magnet on Mac to snap my windows easily by dragging to corners. The snapping works great on all browsers by dragging a tab to one of the corners. But Firefox just releases the tab once it’s pulled out from the current window. We need to drag again this to the corners. More than a third-party workflow, it’s about how these windows are defined and behaves in a standard way
This. Containers are quite complicated to reason about, require a fair amount of setup and do not sync. Not to mention the color pallete is bizarrely limited.
I use both Firefox and Chrome but use Chrome for work because Profiles are much easier to use. I just open another profile, which loads with a nice theme and a set of extensions (limiting my exposure to some extensions in other profiles).
Profiles are so simple and just work.
Firefox of course has profiles, but you cannot run two of them at the same time without using the command line (or creating shortcuts to launch multiple versions of the browser).
"Set `network.trr.mode` to 2 to make DNS Over HTTPS the browser's first choice but use regular DNS as a fallback (0 is "off by default", 1 lets Firefox pick whichever is faster, 3 for TRR only mode, 5 to explicitly turn it off)."
>> "The Block Autoplay feature is enhanced to give users the option to block any video that automatically starts playing, not just those that automatically play with sound."
One time I hit a site with a huge anti-ad block message at the top that said I couldn't watch the video until I disabled my adblocker. But...I came for an article. The article wasn't obstructed. I assume the video was auto-playing. I decided to go back and try another result.
Originally when Firefox was released it was the antidote to browser forced add ons that were common at the time. I have vague recollections of Netscape Navigator having whole sections of what was essentially ads forced in the browser menu.
I don't like Pocket being built in, as it should be a browser add on. It also sets precedence. It starts the chain of thought - "Well Firefox has Pocket, so lets add backed in thing X too". I wish it wasn't baked it as it goes against the whole of Firefox's original philosophy of being light weight and everything else an add on.
about:config -> extensions.pocket.enabled: false
It seems that some people are just used to hating Pocket as if it was some kind of tradition.
EDIT: Here's a screenshot of the feature specifically that people dislike these days: https://imgur.com/a/p2rD4AY
While it can be disabled, it can be said that people are a bit annoyed that the browser that is "Privacy Focused" is shoving ads down your throat. While we as technical users can figure out how to disable it easily (in the preferences), the less technically inclined might not know that they can be disabled.
What Mozilla calls "the best of Pocket's content" is ads and articles that border on clickbait. Some people don't like marketing doublespeak.
- Options -> Home -> Firefox Home Content -> Uncheck everything
I personally leave "Web Search" enabled, which gives a Chrome-like/minimalist experience.
Switch to a privacy-friendly search engine like DuckDuckGo while you're at it.
To disable it: Settings, General, Home, Top Sites, disable "Recommended by Pocket".
I've had this for a long time, so I don't know why it's being presented as a new option.
I do think Mozilla managed the Pocket acquisition poorly (relative to the standards I would expect Mozilla to hold itself to...other companies do far worse without being criticized, but that's irrelevant...I used Firefox when it sucked because of the greater trust I placed in Mozilla) but since then they've done a decent job, considering it's their version of the read it later features every other browser has.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/yet-another-s...
Uncheck everything except Top sites.
extensions.pocket.enabled -> false(I'm paranoid and FUDing because I care: there's some UX low hanging fruit before they could get rid of userChrome.css. For instance, you need userChrome.css to autohide the toolbar in full screen mode on macOS — that's not even a customization, it's a missing feature.)
For a user with an SSD, perhaps not much. But there are still a lot of users out there with magnetic hard drives. Firefox has to do a decent amount of I/O at startup, and unneeded disk seeks add up for these users.
In addition, Firefox formerly checked for these files on the main thread, which is especially bad for performance. (Firefox engineer Mike Conley wrote about this at length at https://mikeconley.ca/blog/2019/05/16/a-few-words-on-main-th...)
If you read through the related bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1541233), you can see that folks went to some trouble to keep anything from breaking for people using these files today. The claims that this is a step toward removing the files completely is FUD.
I don't know if it's a purposeful process or not, but I'd say it's perfectly reasonable for users to think that pref-gating is the first step toward removal. The long road to RSS being completely removed from the browsers started with "just" taking it away from the defaults.
Unfortunately they also changed the css model, so even with the flag on - userChrome.css has become useless (to me)... I guess 66 will not be seeing an upgrade for the time being.
As for the question - should be less than 1ms (depends on the OS/filesystem obviously but still negligible)
I fear the change is just to take away this important customization option in the future and I don't like it.
A few ms isn't much by itself, but when you add up a bunch of small optimizations like this one, it can add up to be a significant improvement.
Even just checking for the existence of a file can take a really long time depending on the disk speed and other on going IO.
Why wouldn't they just load them asynchronously?
I read that custom CSS files are often used by disabled users, which makes it doubly odd that they would just disable it by default.
I'll have to run an extension that will be injecting JS/CSS into every page, to get the same effect. That will likely be slower. Not a speed improvement exactly.
At least it's more powerful. I can replace any rule inside already loaded CSS. Useful to escape this braindead age of "font-size < 16px && font-weight < 400".
Antivirus software does add a measurable delay to file operations sometimes, and each file is gonna be in its own sector so I could see them losing at least a few milliseconds there. Applying CSS does add overhead but the average user can't have that many rules in there so I suspect it's purely on the file i/o level.
Two big changes related to performance: - the baseline javascript interpreter is now enabled (this is probably responsible for improving things for Google related stuff). - they optimized a few things with the compositor for mac to further reduce battery usage. I'm guessing this might include some of the work that has been done to port parts of the browser to rust.
Upcoming versions should at some point include the webrender changes that are currently available to some windows users already.
If you are wondering, the beta channel is generally rock solid for me. You end up restarting the browser a bit more often to get the latest beta and obviously they are still finding and fixing bugs. But I can't remember the last time Firefox crashed on me. I've been on the beta channel for close to two years. By the time features land to the beta channel, they've been on nightly for some time already. So, that generally means all the obvious stuff has been resolved already.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=688990
Edit: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-touch-z... seems to help, though still not perfect.
Most of my lock-ups seem to happen when I try to access specific sites using Firefox, especially financial sites.
The next version will drop OpenGL and use Core Animation instead.
I know a lot of people have become impatient, but they have been doing a huge amount of work behind the scenes.
An app tells an OS it gonna use OpenGL to 3D render stuff. Generally, the OS doesn’t know whether it’s a competitive 3D shooter where each FPS really matters, or a web browser which only uses OpenGL to render a few textured quads. If the OS will default to slower integrated GPU, users will be unhappy, they want 3D performance. So the OSes typically power up the faster GPU in such cases.
On dual-GPU Windows laptop, nVidia partially solves this in their drivers, they have very long list of process names saying which ones are games or other 3D intense apps.
It usually works but very far from being 100% reliable. It requires GPU drivers to be updated regularly. For cases when it fails even with latest drivers, they have multiple methods for user to select the GPU. They implemented context menu on .exe files “Run with graphic processor” with 2 further options, for nVidia and Intel GPUs. They implemented GUI for users to customize that apps list. They also implemented a proprietary API for programmers to customize that list in code, I’m using this method in the installer of a CAD/CAM app I’ve developed.
These things cause quite a lot of complexity, both software bloat, and UI clutter. Traditionally, Apple wants the GUI to be clean. AFAIK they don’t push driver updates, and they avoid UI clutter even if it means some power users won’t get some advanced settings they might like.
For new users who install and download Firefox for the first time, Enhanced Tracking Protection will automatically be set on by default as part of the ‘Standard’ setting in the browser and will block known “third-party tracking cookies” according to the Disconnect list. We talk more about tracking cookies here. Enhanced Tracking Protection will be practically invisible to you and you’ll only notice that it’s operating when you visit a site and see a shield icon in the address bar next to the URL address and the small “i” icon. When you see the shield icon, you should feel safe that Firefox is blocking thousands of companies from your online activity.
A better source is probably the disconnect site [2]:
> Tracking is the collection of data regarding a particular user's activity across multiple websites or applications that aren’t owned by the data collector, and the retention, use or sharing of that data.
> Our definition focuses on collection AND retention. So, for example, the definition wouldn’t apply to sites that log an IP address, but don’t save that information in a database. The definition also focuses on particular users, so data that is immediately aggregated doesn’t apply. And the collection is across context, so it doesn’t apply in cases when there is solely a first-party relationship with the user, for example the site only collects and retains information on site visitors.
[1]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2019/06/04/firefox-now-availab...
The way I remember it is, as the page host I have a cookie on you. Then I drop in a 1-pixel image to a third party, and in the query string to it I write in a hashed form of the cookie I have for you. That HTTP request then itself can go through the cookie process, but for the third party. They then check their DB for both their own issued cookie and the value you passed in, and are then able to perform some asynchronous (batch or otherwise) match to associate the two IDs. From then on, an ad etc. can be targeted based on that info.
> In the address bar, type about:config and press Enter.
> 1. The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear. Click I accept the risk! to continue to the about:config page.
> 2. Type pocket in the Search box above the list of preferences.
> 3. Double-click the extensions.pocket.enabled preference to toggle its value to false.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-re-enable-po...
To avoid this, it still seems like the best approach is to use an ad blocker add-on like uBlock Origin, which will block any content from known tracking domains from being loaded. That should get rid of the third party image.
There's also uMatrix (from the maker of uBlock Origin), which can selectively block images, scripts, etc. from third party sites.
Fun fact: I'm on HN posting this post, not because this is what I want to do, but because it was the easiest thing I could think of starting to do after I finished up some work. If only it were easier to aim at stuff that I actually want to do... Hmmm...
"Get a challenging hobby" is basically the idea. Which is a great idea! I just have to, y'know, do it...
Most importantly, though, are smartphones: you didn’t used to have so much just a second away anywhere you went. There’s an entire industry building entertainment for people in lines, on transit, walking to their car, etc. so I don’t think it’s as much that distraction is replacing previous big activities but filling in lots of space throughout the day.
You can deliver ads without tracking (for example, contextually based upon the page you are looking at, without any storage of that information or historical state.) And you can track users without violating their privacy (by not sending the data to a remote server and only analyzing it locally.) So in general, it's certainly possible to be able to preserve a user's privacy while also be monetizing your product through advertising.
Now of course, most people dislike ads, which is a separate issue. But advertising is not inherently a violation of privacy, at least if you see privacy through the lens of surveillance by a third party. (You could stretch the definition of privacy to a point where seeing ads I suppose could be privacy violating, but I don't feel my privacy is being violated when I see a billboard on the highway, for example.)
For most of us, adware is a type of malware. For Mozilla, they have a tradeoff between user autonomy and cash flow. They can at least say that the bad things they do are because of the sacks of cash and not for any positive user "experience." Lying about it makes it worse, not better.
Aside from ads, there is the issue that Firefox comes with backdoors (see Mr. Robot ad) and spyware (see telemetry that can't be opted out of.)
Alas, that's not likely. So I do what I can to use web services ethically - pay for services where possible (like Fastmail), whitelist when a site owner seems to be using ethical non-tracking ads, donate where appropriate (like open source developers looking for help with hosting fees).
And you can also use a single click to disable Pocket suggestions entirely.
I honestly don't see any reason to complain there.
And yes, file I/O was the issue.
Zero intention of doing so or just have yet to do so? Did they say they were no longer considering the option?
[1] https://github.com/Pocket/extension-save-to-pocket/issues/75
No one ever talked about open sourcing the service that the pocket client relies on, as far as I can remember.
They moved the option to keep browsing history but not keep download history to a user-pref, and then later removed it.
They moved the option for tabs-on-bottom to a user-pref, and then later removed it.
They moved the disable-automatic-updates to a user-pref, and then later buried it in an external policy JSON, which I guess it's okay to see if that file exists at startup but not the user*.css files.
And on and on.
However, I don't believe that's an issue for the specific features discussed here (userChrome.css and userContent.css). These are by their nature features that are only accessible to users with particular knowledge/skills and the Firefox user base is much broader than web developers. But moreover, nobody is proposing to remove this capability and I think its debatable whether it is now harder to access in practice (existing profiles that use this capability were automatically converted, for new profiles you already have to manually add a file to the profile directory, flipping a preference in addition is not a serious barrier).
> I don't know if it's a purposeful process or not, but I'd say it's perfectly reasonable for users to think that pref-gating is the first step toward removal
It might be reasonable if no other reason was given, but there is a specific and compelling reason (avoiding unneeded main thread I/O during startup for something like 99% of users) here.
You can still install Tridactyl in a normal installation of Firefox by following the instructions on our readme [1]. Admittedly, that may cease to be the case if Mozilla ever tire of us; people in locked-down corporate environments would then find it hard or impossible to install Tridactyl but we'd make it as easy as possible for everyone else.
On topic, I'd argue that Mozilla are just desperately trying to cling on to ordinary users; the "war" against power users is a war of (totally understandable) neglect rather than spite.
[1]: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl/blob/master/readme.md
But I also would imagine the usage was quite low already and any incremental hassle will push it lower and it won't be hard to get to an analysis where maintaining a rarely-used non-default codepath is seen as not worth it. Of course it all depends on what's going on with the specific code at issue, but the basic point of my post is that "nobody is proposing to remove this capability" is true, until it isn't.
This isn't a feature I actually use, but I also find the removal of a minuscule startup delay of a program I don't actually start very often to be a pretty marginal improvement, so I don't really have skin in the game in either direction.
There was some of the same phenomenon with Google, but the real difference is that Google pushed Chrome very strongly on the biggest web properties in the world, had it packaged in some other software installers, and advertised it. That's why Chrome has the market-share it does today.
Mozilla appears to now be courting the ordinary user market without having either the passion of power users driving it, or the world's biggest web properties shilling it.
To this day, visiting google.com (#1 website) in my default browser pops up a large notification informing me I need to switch to Chrome to 'hide annoying ads and protect against malware on the web.' Visting YouTube.com (#2 website) pops up a slightly less annoying notification on the bottom that says "Google recommends using Chrome, a fast and secure browser."
I haven't been able to figure out for years now how they think this is going to work. Ordinary users are going to do what their IT administrator/IT friend says, use the OS default, or use products recommended by massive marketing campaigns.
Just about every person I know that uses or used to use Firefox does so because I told them to use it or (more likely) I installed it for them. That's how most people start using Firefox.
> On topic, I'd argue that Mozilla are just desperately trying to cling on to ordinary users; the "war" against power users is a war of (totally understandable) neglect rather than spite.
Perhaps, but meanwhile, as we muse about Tridactyl and the abandonment of userChrome and userContent, a thread about the possibility of Firefox removing webRequest in the future rises to #2. It's getting harder to justify Firefox and Mozilla by the moment.
Mozilla's claimed principles include privacy, interoperability, and free and open source software.[1]
2. Is there an open source implementation of compatible server software, that you could use to run your own server?
The answers to these questions will tell you whether Pocket is open source.
If you're not paying Mozilla for their browser, it seems weird to me to bitch and complain about ways Mozilla explores to generate some revenue without selling out their user's privacy. Especially when they make it very easy to opt out of the thing you don't like. Comments like yours are what makes me very nervous about the future for Mozilla. They are still entirely at the mercy of Google and their revenue sharing agreement for enabling Google as the default search engine. The day that ends, they are going to be in deep trouble if their user base is so hostile to any potential avenues they choose to explore to stay afloat.
This is the key. I think sending any unsolicited traffic to 3rd party websites counts as violating my privacy. Pocket goes far beyond that.
Pocket Recommendations are personalized based on your browsing behavior in Firefox. It doesn't matter that Mozilla and Pocket don't see your browsing history directly. While the choice of which links to push at you are made client side if Pocket knows which pages are suggested to you (either as they are pushed to your browser or after you've clicked them) then they can take away from that information about why you were targeted for those sites.
Sure enough, Pocket collects stats on which links show up in your browser and whether or not you click on them.
"Sponsored stories" often link to DoubleClick or Bitly who redirect you to the suggested site so those companies are also collecting your data because of Pocket. Handing data to DoubleClick is not protecting user's privacy.
Even if you opt out of data collection in Firefox's preferences Pocket and Mozilla will continue to serve you personalized sites and will continue to collect data on you and your browsing history.
I don't mind that pocket exists, but it shouldn't be enabled by default, and it shouldn't take going into about:config to disable.
Firefox should be applauded for taking steps to try to make money off their user's personal information without selling it outright, but at the end of the day they are still trying to make money off their user's personal information.
They do have to compete with Google, but they can best do that by providing a better experience for users and by protecting their privacy.
I've been a long time user of firefox because it's still the best browser when it comes to privacy and control, but it takes an increasing number of default setting changes and about:config edits to get it to stop leaking my data to 3rd parties. It's already to the point where I can't just recommend it to others without explaining there are a ton of settings they should immediately disable or change to protect themselves.
* https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/02/27/mozilla-acquires-po...
When I open a new tab, I am "on task" - I have a problem that needs answering and the last thing I want is any distraction. Everything from news articles, todo lists or witty quotes is counter-productive to staying on task. It's almost the worst possible time to be shoving some unrequested content into my face to break concentration and pull me in the wrong direction.
It's not Pocket that's the problem, it's the gross attempted force-feeding (that just makes me want to try some other browser like Brave (not an endorsement, just what I personally would investigate next)).
How about, instead of "we plastered all this shit from the crap we bought onto every single browser window you henceforth open, you mindless peon!": how about they did some promo graphic and well-done animated enticement, along the lines of, "Hey! Pocket has tons of subscribers who upvote the most meaningful and relevant stories to them — how about we replace your blank homepage with the best of the best?"
But instead they're just like EAT THIS SHIT PLEEB and you know what fuck it I did just switch my default browser while typing this. :middle-finger-emoji-that-HNs-1970s-site-generator-isnt-compatible-with:
If you want the least-gross behavior, it's not going to come from a for-profit startup.
Hell yeah! Stick it to the man! Totally consume that content with a different browser!
minimalism: minimalizing the amount of stuff you have with hopes of getting LOTS of value out of them.
These issues make live migration impractical. AFAIK, modern OSes don’t do that, the GPU is fixed at the moment an app creates D3D or GL context.
Picking the best GPU for the job can be tricky. By the time the app creates a 3D rendering context, the OS has no idea what it’s going to render.
Write a code that renders something simple, then downloads the frame buffer from GPU back to system RAM — Intel will probably be faster, for nVidia that copy back is expensive because PCIx, for Intel very cheap, no PCIx IO, just memcpy.
Even exposing an OS API where apps can request high or lower power GPUs is still unreliable. An app which does very simple rendering can sometimes demand way more resources, connect a 5k monitor and simple rendering can become too expensive for intel due to count of pixels. A game which reports it needs a lot of GPU power will be very light workload in 10 years from release, perfectly suitable for low-power integrated GPUs.
Is it possible to submit application names for this? This issue frequently comes up with our free simulator/game.
1. If your app’s main .exe is written in C, C++ or something similar, you can change the default by DLL exporting a DWORD variable from your exe. For more info, search the web for `NvOptimusEnablement`.
2. If you can’t export variables from your .exe, you can do what I did: make an installer, write a custom installer action in C (technically they’re just DLLs), in that custom action consume NVApi and create a new profile for the main executable of your software. For more info, read this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/40915100
Update: you can also detect dual-GPU system and use NVApi from your app, but it has 2 disadvantages. Slightly increases startup time. Also the new settings will only be applied next time user launches the app, you’ll need to communicate it that with your user, with a message like “please restart the game for better 3D performance”.
For what it's worth, this change happened because people were seeing the stat() call involved in startup profiles, taking sufficient time that it seemed worthwhile to avoid it if possible, as far as I can tell.
C'mon the directory structure would be cached already, even if it was not - the seek times for HDD are 3-4ms.
If your HDD has a seek time of 3-4ms on average, that means it needs to rotate completely in at most 6-8ms, which gives you a rotation speed of 7500-10,000 rpm. HDDs in data centers do that, sure. Consumer HDDs just don't do that, last I checked; they're mostly in the 5400-7200 rpm range, with laptops firmly in the 5400 bucket. See https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-laptops/sc/laptops?appl... for example (currently offered Dell laptops "for home" with an HDD: they're all 5400rpm). At 5400 rpm, your average latency from just the rotation is 5.5ms and your worst-case latency from the rotation is 11ms. That doesn't include other latency sources, but let's assume those are somehow scheduled away to happen during the rotation.
Keep in mind that what typically sticks in users' minds is worst-case, not average-case, behavior, so you have to bring your worst-case time budget down to whatever your target is.
Yes, there are. They are not a niche cohort.
EDIT: In fact, we have many more users with magnetic HDDs than who use userChrome.css. That tells you everything you need to know about this decision right there.
I'm less forgiving. The Pocket service is proprietary - this technology couldn't fall into the right hands - and it directly competes against open web standards like RSS/Atom. I honestly don't know how they justify it against the Mozilla Manifesto.
That still leaves them on the hook for sending your data to companies like DoubleClick. I hope it also means the data the pocket guys are collecting will fall under Mozilla's policies because I've been trusting them so far not to sell my data to anyone willing to pay for it, while generally I wouldn't put that kind of faith in a targeted adverting company.
I've never seen it show me an ad (including paid placement type ads) so far. I guess if they junked up their new tab page with intrusive encouragement to start using Brave Rewards and Basic Attention Token (BAT) then that would sort of be the equivalent of what Firefox is doing...
The other frustration I’ve had with news websites is they don’t link to source material, so it’s impossible to dig into a topic and accidentally learn something.
Eg. "Disasters and accidents" had disasters and accidents.
It did highlight how much of our news isn't the most uplifting of topics however.
This would be slightly more legible if there was a clearer distinction between the tags introducing each item and the text of the item itself.
Also, it would be more usable if the dates in the URLs were numeric and international-style (ISO-8601 / xkcd-1179).
But nice!