Firefox bullshit removal • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#71

Post by dreae » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

Feniks wrote: post #61

zachlatta wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have worked on products and have made changes based on data I got on how users were using them. Telemetry doesn't replace user feedback or interviews, but it really does help.

Some of us are assholes though and don't really care about helping you out with making money. No offense intended.

That's just stupid. Obviously the product has some value for you or you wouldn't be using it, and telemetry is a practically zero effort way for you to help improve it.

Note, when we're talking about telemetry we're not talking about tracking your time on a site to show you ads, we're talking about tacking bugs you encounter so they can be fixed.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#72

Post by sli » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 1:56 AM UTC

JepZ wrote: post #30

MollyR wrote: post #3

Interesting. Though at that point why wouldn't you just use Brave ?

Better use a safe© solution: curl -sL https://www.mozilla.com | html2pdf | pdfviewer Just kidding ;-)

That isn't too far from how Stallman browses the internet, I don't think. I know he does some weird, roundabout thing involving email (or used to, anyway).

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#73

Post by jkolem2 » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 1:58 AM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #70

kirb wrote: post #49

This gist misleads in a few ways by being so vague and seems to be more about disabling every somewhat useful feature that sounds bad for tinfoil hat enthusiasts. Still has useful things, like disabling Pocket if you don’t want it and forcing newer TLS versions. Others are silly (disabling things that already ask for your permission, like location), dangerous (disabling Google Safe Browsing), or already exposed in th…

> for most people it’s fear-mongering about nothing To be fair, a core argument in favor of Firefox is essentially fear-mongering about google and your personal data. It always struck me as odd that actions many people would call "shady" if google does it are condoned in FF because Mozilla.

Mozilla is not the largest advertising company on Earth whose core business is profiling people to package and sell them.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#74

Post by megablast » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

stonogo wrote: post #43

SquareWheel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And another thing -- what's the deal with automobiles? Horses do a perfectly fine job at getting us around.

Shitty analogy. Cars provided demonstrable benefits to users. Telemetry does not.

Sure. Over 1 million deaths a year. Cars are a great idea.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#75

Post by girvo » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:04 AM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #70

kirb wrote: post #49

This gist misleads in a few ways by being so vague and seems to be more about disabling every somewhat useful feature that sounds bad for tinfoil hat enthusiasts. Still has useful things, like disabling Pocket if you don’t want it and forcing newer TLS versions. Others are silly (disabling things that already ask for your permission, like location), dangerous (disabling Google Safe Browsing), or already exposed in th…

> for most people it’s fear-mongering about nothing To be fair, a core argument in favor of Firefox is essentially fear-mongering about google and your personal data. It always struck me as odd that actions many people would call "shady" if google does it are condoned in FF because Mozilla.

Alphabet/Google has significantly more power than Mozilla.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#76

Post by girvo » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:06 AM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #34

outworlder wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Companies should be transparent about the data they collect and how they anonymize it – and should be easily disabled if needed if you need serious privacy, as is possible that some resourceful actor could de-anonymize the information somehow. But this kind of data is not necessarily harmful. People disabling telemetry will often be the same ones complaining about "poorly written applications and company X shou…

Yet organizations went decades making fantastic and ever-improving software without telemetry. What changed? Why would telemetry suddenly become a basic requirement for improvement?

I don’t know — my Pentium used to run software that crashed constantly, corrupted files, and was in hindsight horrendously insecure. I don’t think there’s ever been a time where software quality was magically excellent?

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#77

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

gsich wrote: post #65

kirb wrote: post #49

This gist misleads in a few ways by being so vague and seems to be more about disabling every somewhat useful feature that sounds bad for tinfoil hat enthusiasts. Still has useful things, like disabling Pocket if you don’t want it and forcing newer TLS versions. Others are silly (disabling things that already ask for your permission, like location), dangerous (disabling Google Safe Browsing), or already exposed in th…

Location is pretty useless. It is based on what address your ISP has in most cases.

You can get an addon to set your location manually if like mmost non mobile devices there is no actual gps.

I use this so that I get actually accurate results.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#78

Post by Viper007Bond » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

gsich wrote: post #65

kirb wrote: post #49

This gist misleads in a few ways by being so vague and seems to be more about disabling every somewhat useful feature that sounds bad for tinfoil hat enthusiasts. Still has useful things, like disabling Pocket if you don’t want it and forcing newer TLS versions. Others are silly (disabling things that already ask for your permission, like location), dangerous (disabling Google Safe Browsing), or already exposed in th…

Location is pretty useless. It is based on what address your ISP has in most cases.

On the contrary. Maybe if you're on a hardwired desktop, but for everything else it is incredibly accurate. You don't even need to have GPS in your device -- WiFi is plenty.

Try it: https://whereamirightnow.com/ It puts my laptop exactly where I am.

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#79

Post by qwerty456127 » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:25 AM UTC

mediocrejoker wrote: post #10

Websockets are used for nefarious purposes?

Websockets can be used for many things and are actually a sound tech idea but I don't know about a single website that would use them to do something I need (no, I don't use social networks, don't play online games and don't use web voip - these are the 3 major areas that can make use of them) so disabling them seems a good idea. In general: disable everything you don't use - this will most certainly increase your safety and disrupt a huge portion of mainstream malware and spyware functioning.

When I was using Windows I had a software firewall that would ask me about every app that is trying to access the Internet and let me choose if I want to block or allow it - I would only allow the web browser, the messenger and the SSH client and completely block everything else (DroidWall and XPrivacy let you do this on Android, LittleSnitch does this on Mac, I miss such a tool on destkop GNU/Linux a huge lot).

Re: Firefox bullshit removal

#80

Post by qwerty456127 » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:29 AM UTC

Is there something like this for Chrome too?

BTW I wish I could just disable all features but those basic ones every website uses (and "data URIs" support please!!! I really want to to disable it!) and enable them manually on per-domain basis (the way I do with scripts using NoScript and uMatrix).