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Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

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Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#481

Post by yborg »

ubernostrum wrote: post #476
WCityMike wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to point us towards where ... on Bugzilla and the Mozilla project wiki pages and the source code and all the other things you mentioned ... this addon was discussed?

Firefox is open source. Someone had to have committed code to make this happen, which you can use to go dig up the history if you want to. But you're not going to do that. Which is your right; it's just hard to complain about not being consulted/not getting to review/etc. when you're talking about a piece of open-source software with public repositories and trackers. Anyone on earth is allowed to see what's going on…

You speak as if this browser is used solely by elite software developers. Mozilla markets this is as a browser for the common man, indeed, the common man concerned about privacy. These people have no ability to review source code to see if a new release has inserted some stupid theatricals that the user has no interest in, merely because these users, in good faith, thought they were helping collect usage data to improve this browser.

This has nothing to do with open source development at Mozilla or anywhere else, it has to do with what Mozilla the organization portrays itself as. If Facebook had pulled something like this, well, I don't think anybody would have been surprised. For Mozilla, I think it's inexcusable, and after the major marketing push on Quantum as 'Chrome without spying!' it's an amazing own goal. I really want Firefox to succeed, and marketing retards at Mozilla are going to sink the whole thing by garnering exactly the kind of publicity they don't need.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#482

Post by michel-slm »

bigbugbag wrote: post #403
michel-slm wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I'm seeing people recommending Chromium (not Chrome) instead of Firefox because of this.

Why not recommending waterfox[1] instead ? It's firefox without the mozilla nonsense. [1]: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/

I personally am fine with using Firefox (though after Looking Glass I've disabled the setting to allow experiments).

IIRC the person that advocated for Chromium (instead of a third-party Firefox rebuild) base it on performance (they were dubious Quantum is actually better, I personally find it fast enough except when loading Facebook), as well as the alternative versions of Firefox not keeping up with the official version. Also, supposedly Chromium (as opposed to Chrome) settings are reasonably privacy-friendly out of the box.

They did recommend installing uBO-Extra in addition to uBlock Origin on top of Chromium, which is revealing -- with Firefox, there is not even a need for uBO-Extra.

My original point (which I didn't elucidate clearly enough) is that this Looking Glass experiment is resulting in unwarranted backlash against Mozilla -- whereas from the standpoint of preserving an open web and protecting user privacy it's actually one of the better players.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#483

Post by feelin_googley »

zie wrote: post #471
feelin_googley wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is that there have been other text-only browsers both before and after lynx. I have tried every one I could ever find, since the 1990s. Some of them seem to have been forgotten. IMO, whatever is in todays package collections is not a true representation of all text-only browsers ever written. Most times when someone cites "lynx", as is common on HN, I interpret this as a signal they are not too familiar wit…

I agree, I just used lynx there as a stand in for all text based browsers, since it's the most well known, and easiest to get running. I'm not sure I agree the web is getting more text-friendly.. it is getting more JSON friendly, mostly, but actually visiting web-pages where JS isn't required is becoming increasingly rare. I've yet to find a text/console browser that can actually run JS. (I know there have been some…

I use the text-only browser, in text-mode, to dump HTML tables to ASCII. I do not necessarily need the networking code. Reading HTML tables as ASCII is its primary purpose for me. TCP connections and generating HTTP headers are handled by other programs. Text processing is done by other programs. Legend has it that accounting logs on an early Research UNIX saw Ken Thompson using something like 240 separate programs in one week. While I will unlikely ever reach that plateau, I am not going to use a single, large, complex program where I can use separate, small, editable programs that give me greater flexibility.

Do I need javascript to accomplish any of these tasks? No. I am not interested in graphical web pages. I am interested in retrieving information, images, documents, sound files, video files, etc. I never need javascript to get these files, nor to read, edit or view them.

Simple example: I do not need a webpage full of javascript to view a YouTube video. I only need a video player (compiled without networking code).

Years ago, links added a javascript engine. Later it was removed. There is no point. A script can still consume inordinate amounts of RAM, even when there is no GUI. And for what? What is that javascript doing?

In the distant past, I recall browsers used to hand off media files to other programs, based on Content-Type (see article on MIME posted earlier today). Today, these external programs have been subsumed by the "modern" browser.

Perhaps modern browsers can be useful as offline image viewers, document viewers and media players. As I am in text-mode, the graphical browser is on another computer, connected via crossover cable or LAN. After inspecting their contents in text-mode, I transfer the documents and media files to a fileserver.

The decision to forgo using the so-called modern browser comes down to how important web design is to the user. If the user is interested in how fonts look, how a page of text is arranged, icons, styles, etc. and wants each and every website to look different, then the "modern" browser may be unavoidable. Probably javascript is needed to share in the web designers "vision".

The text-only browser OTOH makes all websites look more or less the same, regular, and if in text mode there is only one font, easy to read, IMO less eye strain on black background. It is perhaps better suited for the user that wants fast information retrieval, reliable, efficient file retrieval and cares little about graphical web design.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#485

Post by fencepost »

kryptiskt wrote: post #383
kryptiskt wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major problem is that they installed an add-on without properly communicating what it was. A somewhat smaller problem but still a big problem is that was an utterly frivolous add-on that shouldn't have been pushed to people who didn't explicitly want it. But the biggest problem is that Mozilla seems to have trouble understanding why any of those two would be a problem, I want my browser vendor to be serious and n…

So this is the first response from Mozilla in the Gizmodo article: “Firefox worked with the Mr. Robot team to create a custom experience that would surprise and delight fans of the show and our users. It’s especially important to call out that this collaboration does not compromise our principles or values regarding privacy. The experience does not collect or share any data,” Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, chief marketing offi…

What are the odds that [current] Chief Marketing Officer Jascha Kaykas-Wolff is also the highest-ranking person in the organization to have signed off on this?

If they'd decided to sneak in a Mr Robot-themed easter egg I wouldn't really care. The fact that they decided to use a debugging/telemetry permission to push out a stupid marketing gimmick makes me question the judgement of everyone involved.

Much like some other situations in the political arena over the past 2-3 decades, I don't care that much about what was done but the decision to do it makes me question the judgement of people that I'm supposed to trust to make good decisions.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#486

Post by chris_wot »

franga2000 wrote: post #394
chris_wot wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really will not. My workplace saw that OpenOffice had a security issue, and banned it AND LibreOffice. Nothing I can do about it. Can’t argue. Trust is very, very easily lost and incredibly hard to regain. And it can hit innocent third parties. It’s very, very wrong to do anything that could destroy trust.

Have they seen the shit that's been found in Microsoft Office? It seemed like there was a new RCE every week for while.

I didn’t say it was logical.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#487

Post by wux »

ubernostrum wrote: post #479
gorbachev wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood. I don't want to review the damn source code. I don't have time to do that. I am pretty sure the Mozilla developers are all better developers than I am as well, so my contributions there would be a complete waste of time. However, when you decided that the source code I could review would be installed on my computer without my consent, then I do object. It's my computer. It runs things that…

You chose to install Firefox, and you chose not to participate in the process that creates it. What happened next was not "without your consent". What happened absolutely had your consent. You consented by deciding that the whole messy process of producing the software was going to be someone else's problem, and you just wanted the sausage without having to see or take part in how it got made. You consented by delega…

Actually, according to comments on one of the Bugzilla reports about this issue (#1424977), the original bug implementing the feature is:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1423003

As you'll see, this bug is marked as private (at least as of writing this comment). So, as a matter of fact, it does not appear that even the most diligent user had the option of reviewing what's going on. So far, it has not even been disclosed who among the Firefox peers signed off on this change; that information appears to be private as well.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#488

Post by justinclift »

bigbugbag wrote: post #455
bwat49 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being hyperbolic, you don't need to go into about:config. It's right in the main browser settings, under the Privacy and Security section where one would expect settings like this to be

If what you say is true, please point me to where I can find the following privacy settings in the main preferences: network.websocket.enabled network.IDN_show_punycode dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled dom.storage.enabled dom.indexedDB.enabled dom.battery.enabled dom.enable_user_timing dom.enable_resource_timing dom.netinfo.enabled layout.css.visited_links_enabled browser.safebrowsing.phishing.enabled browser.safebr…

Errr... is "dom.enable_performance" really a privacy setting?

Doing someone online searching now, not seeing an explanation for it. There is one other HN post though, also mentioning it in a privacy context, but not further info either. :/

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#489

Post by Sylos »

bo1024 wrote: post #117
dahart wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There almost certainly is not a way to invisibly install add-ons, unless you are part of Mozilla, and, you know, making Firefox. If paranoia is your thing, it might be worth considering that Mozilla can do anything it wants inside Firefox core, all of it is "invisible" to you.

Yes and a big part of this entire issue is users deciding whether we can trust Mozilla with that power or not.

And he's saying that this occurence should have no effect on this decision, not in any rational mind.

Re: Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

#490

Post by Sylos »

zzzeek wrote: post #40
bwat49 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't supposed to be visible on the addons page

that would be worse

How exactly? Whether they push out code to you by just changing the binary or by installing an extension makes no difference. In fact, pushing it out as an extension, means they actually have less control over your browser, because are bound to the restrictions that extensions have.

Every browser vendor has this control over you when you use their browser. Some have even more, because they don't even need to tell you about it when they're closed-source.

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