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It also doesn’t (nor can it) load images, which is #2
Yeah, right after I hit post it occurred to me that assorted media codecs (pictures, video, audio) were probably the next largest attack surface that lynx would also necessarily be immune to :)
> We’ve been motivated by the improvements we’re seeing in our telemetry data, and we’re convinced that our efforts this year are having a positive effect on Firefox users. Mozilla gets a lot of flak (especially around here!) for their sometimes heavy-handed usage analytics, but it's nice to see that used for its stated purpose! Great use of data here.
I don't think that data gave them anything more than what testing on a few consumer computers in different price ranges would have. (Edited, original comment read: "What more information does that give them than just buying a few computers at different price points?")
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I'm not a fan of telemetry in any browser (I love Lynx because of this), but Mozilla is definitely more trustworthy than Google or Microsoft. Edit: I'm not saying that Lynx should be a daily driver or that it's more secure, but it's a neat little project that avoids some of the bad patterns in modern browsers.
How do you expect companies to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes without telemetry? Honest question.
2) Conduct user studies
How are companies that aren't software vendors and aren't able to spy on their customers able to do it? Did software companies not have good ways to do this before spying on their users?
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I just don't like being bullshitted. Constant marketing about privacy while they're phoning home a bunch of data when you start and stop the browser. I did at some point find a doc page with a zillion steps to disable all of it but that doesn't remediate the hypocrisy IMHO.
What telemetry are you objecting to? Telemetry has good and bad uses. For example, sending in automatic crash reports helps companies find bugs. It can also expose sensitive information which was in ram at the time of the crash. Another example is usage telemetry tells developers what part of the app is being used and can help them focus popular features or on working to let people know about useful but under used po…
Probably because there's little disagreement about the existence of the benefits of it or what they are. That's not the issue.
For me, the issue (as with all things like this) is about consent. Opt-in telemetry? I have no issue with it. Opt-out telemetry? Very sketchy, but at least you can opt out. Undisclosed or mandatory telemetry? Completely unacceptable.
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How do you expect companies to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes without telemetry? Honest question.
Others have answered this, but I just wanted to point out the software devs have been managing to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes from long before telemetry was a realistic possibility. Telemetry doesn't make it possible, it makes it less expensive.
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How do you expect companies to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes without telemetry? Honest question.
They could ask their users.
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How do you expect companies to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes without telemetry? Honest question.
1) Ask 2) Conduct user studies How are companies that aren't software vendors and aren't able to spy on their customers able to do it? Did software companies not have good ways to do this before spying on their users?
Only listening to data from 1 & 2 results in the sort of angry posts you frequently see on HN complaining that devs aren't listening to "real users" or have the wrong priorities.
You end up needing data from additional sources, telemetry being one of them.
I can subjectively confirm that Firefox feels snappier recently and deeply appreciate and enjoy all improvements. But I have some itching concerns about that methodology with heavy anonymisation and stuff there: Couldn't it be that the web itself got faster, and folks have better hardware? I mean, yes, generally these sloppy script kiddies with bloated frameworks produce less and less effective code … but I can imagi…
It would’ve been nice to see this normalized by CPU cycles or javascript tokens executed or something like that. Something so that more megahertz/cores doesn’t throw off the number. Whatever the reason, it is nice to see it improving. I think it would be interesting to also see a median figure in addition to a 95% figure.
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Others have answered this, but I just wanted to point out the software devs have been managing to understand how their products are used for improvement purposes from long before telemetry was a realistic possibility. Telemetry doesn't make it possible, it makes it less expensive.
Do you think it is the same asking a small subset of users than having info on all the users? I work as a Product Manager, and trust me, it is not the same.
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1) Ask 2) Conduct user studies How are companies that aren't software vendors and aren't able to spy on their customers able to do it? Did software companies not have good ways to do this before spying on their users?
1 and 2 are problematic because it's very hard to get representative data from either one. The people who have time for user studies or post on your forums are not representative users. Only listening to data from 1 & 2 results in the sort of angry posts you frequently see on HN complaining that devs aren't listening to "real users" or have the wrong priorities. You end up needing data from additional sources, teleme…
If that's the sort of responses your studies produce, then your studies are seriously flawed.