Mozilla (Firefox) major firing and restructure. Not mentioned: They fired their entire threat response/opsec team. - complete with woke language in blog.

[malt ipecac]

Speaking of Edge, why didn't Microsoft just update Explorer instead of creating a ~brand new~ browser?

I would assume for a few reasons reasons.

One obvious reason would be to shed IE's meme-level reputation among the tech- and semi-tech-literate.

Another is that the switch to a Chromium-based browser actually constitutes enough of a change to warrant a new name.

And, of course, the reason that they chose to use Chromium in the first place was that Google's open-source offering is objectively superior to an in-house solution in terms of performance, compatibility, and cost.

The only browser worse than Mozilla's Firefox is Window's Microsoft Edge. (excluding explorer ofc because that's ancient)

Out of curiosity, I recently downloaded the Chromium-based Edge just to try it out. To my surprise, I see no advantage to using Chrome over Edge.

 

[Juke and Jam]

The browser game just keeps getting more and more fucked up. Is it even possible to get a single option that provides a solid compromise?

 

[Potatoherder]

Oh no thats bad, i wonder when theyll go from gecko to chromium

The real question is will they last long enough for them to move over to chromium. If google doesn't re-up their contract mozilla loses 95% of their funding. What does google get out of that at this point? If anti-trust is brewing against google the deal between mozilla and google is so obvious even politicians can see through it.

 

[Benzo Samurai]

i had problems with firefox on a fairly recent kali-build. anybody else experienced some bullshit with firefox recently?

 

[BOONES]

Good thing I switched to brave mere days prior to this.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Is it even possible to get a single option that provides a solid compromise?

No, because the set of standards and technologies a modern browser is expected to implement is so complex and bloated that it's beyond the ability of a few volunteers to maintain for free. And because of the complexity and inherent dangerousness of these technologies, they're constantly riddled with security holes that have to be patched if you don't want your userbase to be someone's botnet.
In other words: the very nature of the beast requires an entire corporation backing the project. And since the corporations that do back such projects give their browsers away for free, there's no chance of an independent alternative springing up.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

Ok going back to Explorer

Google gains more control over the internet.

Remember when people went to Google to get away from Microsoft?

(Kiwi Farms remembers...)

 

[Ahriman]

Wow, that's pretty bad.

Hacker News thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24120336

 

[teriyakiburns]

Another is that the switch to a Chromium-based browser actually constitutes enough of a change to warrant a new name.

Edge wasn't originally chromium, but their own in-house software, built from the ground up as a clean-room replacement for IE. It was actually not that bad as browsers go. Significantly lighter than FF or chromium, with less baggage than IE. It just suffered two major problems: it was way behind on features (they had to do 20 years of catch-up), and it was made by Microsoft. They only ended up ditching it for a skinned chromium build some time last year.

I've been using FF because I can run my own sync and auth servers, though they're a bit fragile for obvious reasons. They also haven't adopted Google's proposed Manifest changes (yet), which fuck over adblock plugins at a fundamental level.

I'm not touching anything chromium-based again if I can help it. Maybe I'll give palemoon another try. Or waterfox. Or something.

Maybe I'll just head on back to usenet...

 

[Juke and Jam]

No, because the set of standards and technologies a modern browser is expected to implement is so complex and bloated that it's beyond the ability of a few volunteers to maintain for free. And because of the complexity and inherent dangerousness of these technologies, they're constantly riddled with security holes that have to be patched if you don't want your userbase to be someone's botnet.
In other words: the very nature of the beast requires an entire corporation backing the project. And since the corporations that do back such projects give their browsers away for free, there's no chance of an independent alternative springing up.

Thanks for a well reasoned answer. I'll just go mope in the corner now.

 

[kpXV8f8W4YzKCiZL]

"My job is done"

I hope this ends up being a lesson for tech enthusiasts to realize that those warning this would come should have been listened to.
I remember when social justice was widely considered "Not a problem, just something limited to looney college campuses".
Funny how it (predictably) ended up ruining everything.

 

[Alrakkan]

Already on Brave. Will shift all my stuff and delete my Google within a few days. Fucking spyware piece of shit barely works.

 

[Basil II]

damn it, and firefox was the only browser that worked with xfce themes

what's the least pozzed chromium fork? because I'm very skeptical of Braves "trust us goyim" approach.

 

[Vecr]

damn it, and firefox was the only browser that worked with xfce themes

what's the least pozzed chromium fork? because I'm very skeptical of Braves "trust us goyim" approach.

Does Pale Moon work with them, or is the engine too much changed?

 

[Basil II]

Does Pale Moon work with them, or is the engine too much changed?

Seems to work fine with chicago95.

 

[Stasi]

Sure, but why doesn't Microsoft just Old Yeller IE?

I imagine a lot of stuff still runs only on IE too. I work at [soulless corporate] and most of our shit only works on IE. Its ridiculous, the default browser is Edge but if you click any of the links on the intranet homepage it opens up in an IE window. I would guess a lot of corporates have their shit set up to run on IE and it would be a huge ass pain if it disappeared.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

what's the least pozzed chromium fork?

I use Vivaldi. Pretty decent so far.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Pale Moon

I wouldn't even bother looking into them if you think Firefox is going down the tubes. Unless you think the team maintaining that fork is going to pick up all Mozilla's slack from here on.

 

[Vecr]

I wouldn't even bother looking into them if you think Firefox is going down the tubes. Unless you think the team maintaining that fork is going to pick up all Mozilla's slack from here on.

It's at least a real fork, not just a re-basing patchset. I think it's the best hope for a graphical World Wide Web browser at this point, but I admit it's a bit optimistic.

 

[Kosher Dill]

It's at least a real fork, not just a re-basing patchset.

Right, but I think the only real areas of "forkage" are in the UI and extensions functionality, and for stuff like security patches in the engine they still depend on the upstream.