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Leaving Mozilla

emilykager.com

131–140 of 190 posts

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#132
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there is now no way to speech freely without having your identity tied to it." Erm. Really? Aren't you a bit exagerating? You can still post anonymous in lots of places. Like right here, for example.

You can say some things anonymously, but I'm not sure how far does it extend. Anonymity is tested not by posting under an alias, but when somebody tries to break it. If you get into the middle of real controversy - how far would HN willing to go before they wipe your account and possibly give the details they have (IPs, email, etc.) to the law enforcement, from where they'd immediately be leaked to the press? Was thi…

Of course they would give your IP if there is a warrant. It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here.

But there are plenty of places left, where you can literaly say anything.

Just like in the beginning. Btw. some IRC clients or forums from the old days still run today.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#133
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Firefox + Lockwise is a great combination, will also use Mozilla VPN when that comes out.

Wasn't Mozilla VPN just a white label of a shady VPN company? Or did they switch partners? Vaguely recall some unsettledness when it was first announced.

[deleted]

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#134
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say some things anonymously, but I'm not sure how far does it extend. Anonymity is tested not by posting under an alias, but when somebody tries to break it. If you get into the middle of real controversy - how far would HN willing to go before they wipe your account and possibly give the details they have (IPs, email, etc.) to the law enforcement, from where they'd immediately be leaked to the press? Was thi…

Of course they would give your IP if there is a warrant. It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here. But there are plenty of places left, where you can literaly say anything. Just like in the beginning. Btw. some IRC clients or forums from the old days still run today.

I'm not talking about a court-mandated warrant. I'm talking about a friendly chat with a fellow law enforcement person who cordially asks for help - who needs warrants between friends? And you do want to be friends with the law enforcement, because it's a bad enemy to have, aren't they?

> It is not their duty to ensure that you can say anything here.

I'm not saying it's their duty. I am saying you can't at the same time claim anonymity is alive and well and say nobody actually will protect your anonymity once push comes to shove. If that's the case, then anonymity essentially does not exist where it counts. Nobody cares that you can anonymously praise the Dear Leader. Anonymity is only important when somebody has real reasons to want to break it. It's like with free speech - nobody worries about speech that everybody likes being free. You only need free speech protections when somebody actually wants to censor, otherwise it's just vacuous.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#135
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Emily here! Added some more context in a footnote in the blog post about this "obscene gesture" and the harassment after the fact. TLDR: The amount of disgusting harassment I received was unbelievable and could never be justified as a reasonable reaction to an "obscene gesture"

Hi Emily! Thanks for your reply. I’m sorry to hear of your being the victim of harassment and I appreciate your post here clarifying the circumstances. Thank you for your contributions to open source software. Many web users, myself included, rely on free and open source projects for our work and recreation and these products would not exist without the generous contributions of kind and skilled persons such as yours…

Awkward. Somehow I feel you would have been happily piling on with the harassment given the chance.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#136
In fairness, anyone who actually tried to use firefox for android at the time could readily observe how that release was a total mess.

edit: Also, I'm sure that this penchant for hiding behind "muh lived experience" when someone wants to address a technical failure is in no way related to her (and her cheerleaders) rubbing people the wrong way.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#137

I still use Firefox. I’m sticking around. It’s becoming more annoying to use, but I’d rather support Mozilla than anyone else. The window into the internet shouldn’t be controlled by big companies. It’s a principle thing for me. To the author, thanks for your efforts.

> The window into the internet shouldn’t be controlled by big companies. It’s a principle thing for me. That's exactly why I stopped with Mozilla. They are just a proxy for corporate controlled interests. And it is heartbreaking. Every single battle, they have folded. Nearly every decision they have made has aligned with corporate interests. And then they issue a paternalistic statement saying that selling out is in…

> They embraced EME web DRM.

They did not. They fought against it until it was clear they weren't going to win the fight.

> They didn't have to. They could have taken the position that if someone wants DRM they should do it via Flash or Silverlight, or some other external means.

That is not a reasonable position. Adobe was already in the process of killing Flash and Microsoft is the developer of Silverlight, and they were pro-EME. That's setting aside the multi-decade history of security disasters those plugins caused.

> They didn't have to legitimize it as a concept. It would have been so powerful if they had just done nothing.

It would not, it would have killed them overnight. 99% of the population doesn't give a shit, they just want to watch Netflix (etc.), and they'd stop using Firefox the day Netflix (etc.) stopped working. That's true even of most Linux users which is the only population that might would care whatsoever.

> They killed off XUL based extensions, and embraced a much more limited extension system (but at least it is more compatible and less differentiated with Google!). The functionality that was lost has not been restored.

XUL extensions were horrifically insecure and often caused terrible memory leaks that got blamed on Firefox - they also prevented proper sandboxing and multiprocess functionality from being implemented.

Although your defense of Flash and Silverlight leads me to believe you don't care much about security.

>the best outcome is for the Mozilla foundation to go bankrupt, so that maybe we can pick up the pieces.

You're delusional if you think that anything good would come of that. If that's how you feel, why wait? Go build something now.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, using Firefox on desktop is easy. It is at least on par with competitors, if not better. Firefox on Android on the other hand (the one the author worked on), IMHO, is simply an inferior product. This is kinda understandable due to their small team size (and it looks like they're overworking too), but what I didn't get is why they kept revamping it. I don't have a clear timeline, but in my recent memory they at…

Inferior to what? I have yet to find a browser that blocks ads on Android as efficiently as Firefox+uBlock.

Brave is excellent at blocking ads by default (and based off Chrome). Its tracking prevention is a double edged sword: lots of sites with reCAPTCHA make me prove I'm human, because Google can't leverage any browsing footprint to guess that I am credibly human. It's inconvenient but a welcome reminder of how profiled normal web users are.

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#139

I still use Firefox. I’m sticking around. It’s becoming more annoying to use, but I’d rather support Mozilla than anyone else. The window into the internet shouldn’t be controlled by big companies. It’s a principle thing for me. To the author, thanks for your efforts.

To me, using Firefox on desktop is easy. It is at least on par with competitors, if not better. Firefox on Android on the other hand (the one the author worked on), IMHO, is simply an inferior product. This is kinda understandable due to their small team size (and it looks like they're overworking too), but what I didn't get is why they kept revamping it. I don't have a clear timeline, but in my recent memory they at…

I wanted to make Firefox my default Android browser, out of principle. After 6 weeks, I uninstalled it and am back in Brave.

The Firefox address/omni bar seemed designed to lean 90% toward a search engine search, even if I had completely typed in the hostname of a previously visited page and hit "Enter". The cynic in me guessed this was deliberate to reap referral commissions from Big Search Engine. Pissed off, uninstall

Re: Leaving Mozilla

#140
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need to stop normalizing working beyond a 40 hour work week. I can accomplish far more and with greater clarity of purpose, mental acuity and motivation in an actual 40 hours, than I could if I attempt to push myself to 10-12 hours a day. But normalizing any number is problematic. It depends on the job, and the specific individual. A warehouse packer or a burger flipper are unlikely to accomplish more by working…

> So lets say each person can be productive for X hours per week. I don't think productivity is the right way to frame things. This makes it sound like a human is nothing more than a tool. The reason people should work fewer hours is so that they can enjoy life outside of work, remain healthy, spend time with family and friends, etc. Not to maximize productivity for the stockholders. Even if some person is capable of…

> This makes it sound like a human is nothing more than a tool.

Yes, from your employer's perspective, you are. In fact they will replace you with a literal tool as soon as possible. That might be a burger flipping robot, or a CRUD app producing bot one day, whatever. Tools

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