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“Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

bugzilla.mozilla.org

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Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#51

Post by conradev »

confounded wrote: post #48

Note: I believe "un-fork" in this context means the Tor browser being able to use the latest version of Firefox (instead of an old fork), by Mozilla merging-in some of the privacy enhancements made in the Tor Browser, for ordinary clearnet use (likely as default-off options). It does not mean making Firefox into the Tor Browser. It's a great way to make the efforts of both teams available to both groups of users. I'm…

Tor browser uses the latest version of Firefox that they can verify their patches on. The developers need to verify the correctness of all patches and that there are no new ones needed.

"Un-fork" in this context means "upstream", or get the patches that Tor browser uses into mainstream Firefox.

The developers of Tor Browser will still always need to check that Firefox isn't doing anything improper and that privacy is maintained – but upstreaming the patches will make it a lot easier.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#52

Post by Sylos »

shimonamit wrote: post #36
Paul-ish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see that % share is going down for Firefox, but is there any indication that total number of users is dropping for Firefox? I suspect that as more people have been getting on the internet, the absolute number of FF users is actually going up. It stands to reason that Firefox isn't dieing at all.

I haven't tried it recently (as in the past month), but I like to fire up the browser, press Ctrl+L, type an address and press Enter in a few seconds. That seems to take forever on Firefox compared to Chrome.

AFAIK Chrome starts up a background process after your computer has booted up, which then helps it start faster. So, if you just told your OS to start up Firefox on boot and then didn't close it afterwards, that should have pretty much the same effect.

I agree, though, that having an option for this in Firefox would be good.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#53

Post by peteretep »

Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

    > most people don't care about
    > their privacy online
Apple are betting they will do, and I think that's prescient. Only need a few more Ashley Madisons to see a sea change in this area, and a browser that's been ahead of the curve for a long time has a lot to gain.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#55

Post by frik »

Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

I think the clear path is launching a new browser (eg Firefox NT) based on Servo engine (coded in Rust) with an HTML UI and an compatibility layer to support legacy plugins from Firefox era (at least the simpler newer API). With great multi process support and rendering done on the GPU.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#56

Post by frik »

kyllo wrote: post #43
x0x0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not gp, but 1 - crashes, approximately bimonthly. Chrome just doesn't crash for me any more. 2 - very high cpu usage if ff runs long enough. Eventually it will creep up towards consuming 50%+ of a cpu 3 - similar problems with memory usage. Chrome is a pig, but if you close windows, the system gets memory back. FF just doesn't seem to return memory to the system w/o a full restart. 4 - intermittent freezes when loadi…

I also get window rendering issues in FF on Windows 10 after waking my laptop from sleep. The browser can still be used but the frame goes totally white. Very weird.

I get rendering issues after waking the notebook from sleep in Win7 as well. Also I get rendering issues in a Remote Desktop session.

If the PC is running for days Firefox crashes automatically after some days.

Firefox crashes (whole browser) more often than other browsers. It's annoying that the multi process implementation that so many years to implement and will still break plugin compatibility.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#57

Post by Sylos »

yusee wrote: post #17

Who really thinks that the NSA, Palantir, Mossad, Russia, etc. aren't surveilling the dark net? Privacy is dead.

Of course, they are surveilling the dark net. The idea is that you're anonymized in such a way that you don't have to care about the surveillance.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#58

Post by mrswag »

Sylos wrote: post #52
shimonamit wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't tried it recently (as in the past month), but I like to fire up the browser, press Ctrl+L, type an address and press Enter in a few seconds. That seems to take forever on Firefox compared to Chrome.

AFAIK Chrome starts up a background process after your computer has booted up, which then helps it start faster. So, if you just told your OS to start up Firefox on boot and then didn't close it afterwards, that should have pretty much the same effect. I agree, though, that having an option for this in Firefox would be good.

This is awful, how do I turn this off?

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#59

Post by frenchy »

neoncontrails wrote: post #47
zorgmonkey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To change the default search engine you can click the magnifying glass and then click Change Search Settings from there you can set the default search engine.

I know how to change the default search engine, but the settings don't persist from session to session (at least not when the browser is launched from Selenium).

Perhaps Selenium doesn't use an existing profile when it loads because that could subtly change its behavior every time it is run (for example, which links are visited).

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#60

Post by dredmorbius »

This is awesome.

No, backfitting a stock browser isn't going to give you high-level security. An Uber-Incognito mode, however, would be a real plus.

Far more useful: making Tor so available and ubiquitous that site operators and infrastructure providers have to address Tor usability issues. Yes, I'm looking at you specifically, Cloudflare and Craigslist.

On the site ops side, this is going to play major havok with methods typically used for mitigating site abuse (and other problems), specifically IP-based tracking. If I find a specific issue and can note that a single address or block of addresses which likely represents a single user or user-class is problematic, I can take action. If "the Internet" becomes a Tor-undifferentiated request cloud, as we've been diagramming it on zero-content slidedecks for 20 years, then that really useful tool will end its useful life (or more likely: be less useful in more cases).

But that's a hell of a good reason for coming up with other ways of establishing and enforcing good user behavior through ad-hoc, anonymous, systems-based reputation systems.

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