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In 2024, please switch to Firefox

roytanck.com

671–680 of 850 posts

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#671

The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be…

I would not use the "we" word with quite that much confidence.

You are essentially arguing that a monopoly position in this particular industry minimizes what is known as "welfare loss". That would be quite an exceptional claim, IMHO

This in general only happens within market areas that appeal to the formation of so-called "natural monopolies" - typical examples being water, postal services, electricity, and the like (utilities). The rationale being that the monopoly formation in this case spares society as a whole for excessive costs as these industries are characterized by a very high proportion of fixed costs (infra, machinery, ect) relative to variable costs.

With browsers it seems that on the contrary the overwhelming majority of development costs are indeed variable (man hours) which -- all else equal -- would support the assumption that competition in this market would be better for society as whole, and that a monopoly here would be a loss for society (and eventually it would fall).

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#672

The engine monopoly point has been kind of stupid for a while now. Blink is open source. It's a stable target. It's not vendor-locked. There is no problem with it having a monopoly, and I am sure the industry can decide to fork it or start over if the leadership goes absolutely cuckoo. When it comes to good open source projects, we WANT to be converging on that one leading project and ensuring it's the best it can be…

We would absolutely not be better off. Engine monopoly is harmful to security. When you have an exploit for the only engine, all users are at risk. If there was even just 3 engines with comparable market share, that would increase the costs for attackers, and make it easier for people to switch if their current engine is compromised.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On desktop, various Firefox updates would change my settings subtly and nag me about features I had no interest in If Firefox suited my needs 100% as well as Safari, this is why I’d still not use it. God damn is it noisy. You’re a browser, I have no interest in engaging with you more than necessary, whatever-I-was-trying-to-do is what I care about. Please stop acting like a kid who’s not getting enough attention. I…

It's been a long time since I've had a fresh install of ff (I do recall some notification bars in the window you have to close out), but as a very longtime user, I have no idea what you're talking about...example?

Been using it since quantum, it happens after some updates, recently there was some modal about some feature I didn’t care about, and I had to click twice to close it. That was only a few weeks ago.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#675
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archive Page Bypass Paywalls Clean CSS Exfil Protection Decentraleyes DDG Privacy Essentials Ghostery NoScript Privacy Badger Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy Stylus Tampermonkey uBlock Origin uMatrix Yes, there is overkill in there but that's fine. It does not impact my browsing experience.

Doesn't many of those extensions due the exact same thing? Like why have Ghostery, DDG Privacy Essentials, Privacy Badger and to some extend uBlock Origin and Decentraleyes (maybe uMatrix as well), either one would do.

Agreed, but which one?

As I have said I see no effect on my browsing so I'm happy to just let things lie.

Maybe one day I'll find a good in-depth comparison article.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#676
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Archive Page Bypass Paywalls Clean CSS Exfil Protection Decentraleyes DDG Privacy Essentials Ghostery NoScript Privacy Badger Privacy-Oriented Origin Policy Stylus Tampermonkey uBlock Origin uMatrix Yes, there is overkill in there but that's fine. It does not impact my browsing experience.

heads up, I think Decentraleyes has been superseded by a "LocalCDN", it's more frequently updated and I thing Decentraleyes has bee abandoned by the devs.

Thanks - will look into that.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#677
post #273

Anyone else remember Mitchell Baker (Firefox CEO) calling for more than deplatforming? https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

[flagged]

> Mozilla makes 100% of its money from advertising. Safari and Edge are the browsers built by companies that don't make money from advertising. This argument is just completely wrong.

Yeah I never got that argument. It's not like it's any secret that Mozilla survives on handouts from Google.

Safari really is unique in that it's subsidized by iPhone and Mac sales instead of ads and is still using its own rendering engine.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#678
post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publishers, already pushing back against ad blockers and now suing because their sites were scraped and incorporated into LLM weights, would love to have clients "attest" to the "humanity" of the user and "integrity" (read: no ad blockers) of the browser. It's not hard to imagine that, if given access to the feature, they'd jump on it as soon as it ways feasible and make the user experience for non-attesting browsers…

Your point is that struggling publishers will stay relevant, gain subscribers and afloat/make more money by implementing ad blockers, worst user experience and safety checks to make their sites less accessible. I'm sure it'll happen any day now.

Absolutely, yes. They will be empowered by tools they don't yet have to make it feasible to slowly "boil the frog". Remote attestation is just such a tool.

Re: In 2024, please switch to Firefox

#680
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no issues with Google? Every exec is paid just right, every endeavour is pure and good?

What tends to rub people the wrong way in situations like this is hypocrisy. Google hasn't claimed to be a virtuous nonprofit, so people accept it when they do shitty things. The Mozilla Foundation is an ideological nonprofit, so people hold it to a higher standard. This may or may not be productive, but it's how people tend to work. :D

I can appreciate that to an extent

Though there’s hypocrisy in only critically analysing the actions of one party and giving the other a free pass too

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