Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

bugzilla.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 122 posts

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#71

Post by progval »

x0x0 wrote: post #27
cdmckay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What usability problems did you experience vs Chrome?

not gp, but 1 - crashes, approximately bimonthly. Chrome just doesn't crash for me any more. 2 - very high cpu usage if ff runs long enough. Eventually it will creep up towards consuming 50%+ of a cpu 3 - similar problems with memory usage. Chrome is a pig, but if you close windows, the system gets memory back. FF just doesn't seem to return memory to the system w/o a full restart. 4 - intermittent freezes when loadi…

Hopefully, Electrolysis will fix 3 and 4. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#72

Post by eitland »

dingaling wrote: post #70
eitland wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Know the problem but for me it is infrequent enough and the bandaid (restore last session) is good enough that I don't care. 2. Painful for me as well until I I blocked js in google search and search results. (I often have quite a number of tab trees open and the roots are often google search results and they eat CPU if not restrained. I don't know if this is intentional on googles part but it leadt it shows poor…

The burning of CPU cycles whilst idling on Google's result page is the most infuriating bug in Firefox but doesn't seem to have been accorded any priority. It has persisted for at least three years. https://support.mozilla.org/fr/questions/965360 Unfortunately I usually only remember to close the results tabs when my fan spins-up.

Is it a Firefox thing or a Google thing?

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#73

Post by mtgx »

intherdfield wrote: post #45

What is meant here IS NOT that every Firefox user would be browsing using Tor. The idea is that the Tor Browser would be standard Firefox with certain strong privacy settings enabled. i.e., the Tor project wouldn't have to patch Firefox source and recompile because their patches would already be in Firefox, just run-time disabled. They wouldn't have to maintain their own set of patches that could be broken by Firefox…

Why couldn't Firefox use Tor in the "private mode"? Wouldn't that be the ultimate private mode? It would also greatly help the Tor community, as it would "mainstream Tor" so it wouldn't have as much stigma as it does today.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#74

Post by mtgx »

Fej wrote: post #14

This would be a miracle for privacy advocates. However, I'm worried that Mozilla could become irrelevant in the meantime. I say this as a die-hard Firefox user (I even refuse to use any of the forks that remove the branding). Mozilla needs to be making moves that keep them relevant. This move is great for some privacy-minded folks who don't know that the Tor Browser Bundle exists, but unfortunately... most people don…

Honestly, the biggest thing that hurts Mozilla's market share right now is the pre-loading of Chrome on Android devices. Mozilla should hope that the EU takes some kind of action against Google over this, so at least Google shouldn't consider it a "hostile action" when a random OEM wants to put Firefox on its devices rather than Chrome.

I would say the same applies to iOS, but to a smaller degree. Also, I'm not sure if Microsoft still respects the browser option thing in Europe with Windows 10 anymore.

That said, the pre-loading of Chrome may be the biggest problem right now, but Firefox's reputation has also degraded in many users' eyes, so they need to keep doing stuff that truly sets them apart compared to Chrome, and it's also not easy for Chrome to replicate because it would be counter to Google's incentives (like the privacy stuff).

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#75

Post by SolarNet »

mtgx wrote: post #73
intherdfield wrote: post #45

What is meant here IS NOT that every Firefox user would be browsing using Tor. The idea is that the Tor Browser would be standard Firefox with certain strong privacy settings enabled. i.e., the Tor project wouldn't have to patch Firefox source and recompile because their patches would already be in Firefox, just run-time disabled. They wouldn't have to maintain their own set of patches that could be broken by Firefox…

Why couldn't Firefox use Tor in the "private mode"? Wouldn't that be the ultimate private mode? It would also greatly help the Tor community, as it would "mainstream Tor" so it wouldn't have as much stigma as it does today.

Speed for starters (Tor is an order of magnitude slower) and many things, like advanced JavaScript (websockets for example), flash and Java, simply can't traverse it reliably. Also it's not what people expect. Many people expect private mode to make it so their active session's browsing doesn't effect their browsing history or they tracked history, not to anonymize them entirely.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#76

Post by netcan »

confounded wrote: post #48

Note: I believe "un-fork" in this context means the Tor browser being able to use the latest version of Firefox (instead of an old fork), by Mozilla merging-in some of the privacy enhancements made in the Tor Browser, for ordinary clearnet use (likely as default-off options). It does not mean making Firefox into the Tor Browser. It's a great way to make the efforts of both teams available to both groups of users. I'm…

It will be very interesting to see how much Tor uses increases if FF just has "Tor Mode" available as a convenient option.

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#77

Post by sleepychu »

netcan wrote: post #76
confounded wrote: post #48

Note: I believe "un-fork" in this context means the Tor browser being able to use the latest version of Firefox (instead of an old fork), by Mozilla merging-in some of the privacy enhancements made in the Tor Browser, for ordinary clearnet use (likely as default-off options). It does not mean making Firefox into the Tor Browser. It's a great way to make the efforts of both teams available to both groups of users. I'm…

It will be very interesting to see how much Tor uses increases if FF just has "Tor Mode" available as a convenient option.

Definitely, if it's in a mainstream browser it suddenly seems a lot less clandestine. Just like a VPN.

I wonder if this will create a load on exit nodes as the new users are unlikely to bring proportional exit nodes?

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#78

Post by netcan »

sleepychu wrote: post #77
netcan wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be very interesting to see how much Tor uses increases if FF just has "Tor Mode" available as a convenient option.

Definitely, if it's in a mainstream browser it suddenly seems a lot less clandestine. Just like a VPN. I wonder if this will create a load on exit nodes as the new users are unlikely to bring proportional exit nodes?

This is really nothing to do with Tor specifically, but it's a good fit for a question that I think is curious about optional payment systems.

If your browser counted how much resources you've consumed in browsing and asked you to retroactively & optionally "pay your bill," could this generate the cash to keep the service running?

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#79

Post by majewsky »

micaksica wrote: post #40
Uptrenda wrote: post #4

It would be really cool if Tor became like an open web standard that every browser supported. We would be able to freely host services with incredibly strong privacy guarantees and then work them into existing web infrastructure so that normal users can benefit from strong privacy without having any special knowledge. Doing the same thing with Bitcoin wallets would also be a good idea, though I'd want for there to be…

I agree with this. "Tor Browser Mode" should become the default "Private browsing mode" on Firefox. It seems to me that a lot of uneducated users seem to have the idea that Incognito/Private mode does, somehow, give them more anonymity in a way other than locally. The extra streaming traffic would probably cripple Tor exit nodes in the short run if Mozilla didn't run worldwide fast exits on their own, but it'd be a s…

> It seems to me that a lot of uneducated users seem to have the idea that Incognito/Private mode does, somehow, give them more anonymity in a way other than locally.

Well, there is this "tracking protection" thing that they added in FF42 but I don't know how it works (and frankly I don't care because I'm using a tracking blocker anyway).

Re: “Our primary goal is to un-fork the Tor Browser”

#80

Post by phyzome »

mtgx wrote: post #73
intherdfield wrote: post #45

What is meant here IS NOT that every Firefox user would be browsing using Tor. The idea is that the Tor Browser would be standard Firefox with certain strong privacy settings enabled. i.e., the Tor project wouldn't have to patch Firefox source and recompile because their patches would already be in Firefox, just run-time disabled. They wouldn't have to maintain their own set of patches that could be broken by Firefox…

Why couldn't Firefox use Tor in the "private mode"? Wouldn't that be the ultimate private mode? It would also greatly help the Tor community, as it would "mainstream Tor" so it wouldn't have as much stigma as it does today.

Because that's not safe. Exit nodes can trivially screw around with plain HTTP (both snoop on and rewrite), and it also puts them in a MitM position for new HTTPS bugs. That's a risk you take when using Tor, and it's not a tradeoff you can reasonably convey to existing Firefox users who are used to Private mode meaning a certain thing.

Also, the Tor network probably doesn't have enough exit node capacity to handle the volume it would get.

Post reply on HN