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

[Pinochet Was Right]

How funny that one of the newest nails in Firefox's coffin was the Son of IE.

 

[The Fool]

I really don't see an issue with Firefox dying. Chromium has basically become the Linux of browsers, as it's been stated before that they're such massive pieces of software that you need a massive corporation to even maintain one anymore. It's not proprietary or anything, it's just ruled by corporations. Linux is too, I don't see people complaining much about that or vying for alternatives to it (although I do still see that sometimes).

If you want to talk politically, Mozilla is even worse than Google. If you want to talk technically, Firefox is just dead weight at this point and another thing developers have to keep track of. Web developers used to be complaining about having to support IE, now they complain about having to support Firefox. I really think people just romanticize Mozilla as being "one of the good guys" and a "freedom fighter" because back in the day all you had was IE, and Firefox was a far superior alternative to it. Try looking at Firefox and Mozilla today without the nostalgia goggles and you'll see how much they've stagnated and how little sway and importance they have anymore. They're utterly impotent.

Nobody has anything good to even say about Firefox anymore except "well we need a competitor! monoculture is bad!" That may be true, but Firefox is definitely not a competitor, and it's awful forks even less. I've never used a single good Firefox fork, meanwhile there's like half a dozen great forks of Chromium and that's not even all the forks there are.

I think the healthiest thing to do at this point isn't trying to pump life support into Firefox, it's supporting other corporations like Microsoft to show interest in Chromium and the act of forking it so that they all start to standardize it and communicate with each other on how to improve on it in an open medium. If enough external entities show interest in Chromium, it might form into it's own entity instead of something owned by Google.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

This is true. I stayed with Firefox for 15 years since its launch day in 2004 just because of loyalty and because Chrome always crapped out for me, for one or another reason, but I was disappointed with FF ever since they started Chromifying it just to be trendy. The Quantum releases were fine, but still, it had some annoying hiccups I didn't realize I was dealing with until I switched browsers. I mean, I would have switched to Vivaldi if it wasn't for Google's fuckery making some important pages work not as good as in Chrome or FF. I now know how to fix that issue, but it's too late for Vivaldi - I took New Edge for a test run the same day it was released, and never stopped using it. It felt so comfortable and snappy, I got a feeling of being "at home" that no other browser ever gave me.

Besides, installing web apps as windows apps is the best feature ever, they even immediately integrate with the rest of the installed apps, the start menu and taskbar, and most of the time they work much better and faster than the native Windows clients. FF doesn't support this, and Chrome needs manual set-up of an "app mode" command line argument, at least the last time I checked. Edge is like Peppermint Linux's Ice app, that automates the creation of websites-as-apps into a few clicks.

Now, I just keep FF for some old bookmark backlog I gotta get rid of.

And that's without even getting into Mozilla being another woketech-venture with a Gamorrean troon dictating "codes of conduct"

I've never used a single good Firefox fork

Pale Moon? Looks like someone took one of the unstable builds and stuck with it, and after Mozilla rewrote Firefox, PM had no way to catch up.
Waterfox? What's the point of Waterfox?

 

[GHTD]

I'll still use Firefox. Why? I don't think privacy on the Internet exists anymore, no matter how much Linux using, social media avoiding, and DDG using you do.

My thought on it is that, some companies are better about being less intrusive than others. Apple and Firefox for example. Firefox is intruding as fuck, yeah, but that's by default. You can easily cut that shit out right away. Apple has a history of privacy-relating things, including refusing to make firmware to unlock the San Bernandino shooter's iPhone. Take that with what you will, but I think it's a sign to take these companies as being less intrusive than others.

Google/Facebook/Twitter, fuck no. The shit we have on Google/Facebook/Twitter keeping info no matter how much deletion requests you do, it's a given they're the devils in this cause.

Plus, if you look at the Linux kernel, there's so many corporate contributors to the kernel itself. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook all contribute code to it (Facebook being the main creators of btrfs, for instance). Corporate involvement makes me less trustworthy of the kernel itself, I don't know about you, but it's just how I feel.

 

[The Fool]

I'll still use Firefox. Why? I don't think privacy on the Internet exists anymore, no matter how much Linux using, social media avoiding, and DDG using you do.

My thought on it is that, some companies are better about being less intrusive than others. Apple and Firefox for example. Firefox is intruding as fuck, yeah, but that's by default. You can easily cut that shit out right away. Apple has a history of privacy-relating things, including refusing to make firmware to unlock the San Bernandino shooter's iPhone. Take that with what you will, but I think it's a sign to take these companies as being less intrusive than others.

Google/Facebook/Twitter, fuck no. The shit we have on Google/Facebook/Twitter keeping info no matter how much deletion requests you do, it's a given they're the devils in this cause.

Plus, if you look at the Linux kernel, there's so many corporate contributors to the kernel itself. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook all contribute code to it (Facebook being the main creators of btrfs, for instance). Corporate involvement makes me less trustworthy of the kernel itself, I don't know about you, but it's just how I feel.

You think software is going to spy on you, not due to any evidence, but just because you say so?

You do realize this is a hard, scientific tool that you and others can verify, and isn't a religion, right?

Corporations contribute to open source projects like Linux, not so they can inject backdoors into it, but because it already exists and it's free work already done for them, and that it would be more work to privately fork the software and maintain it themselves than to just push back their changes so other people can also work on their contributions for free. It's not a conspiracy. You're handling corporations contributing to software like you'd handle a girl having cooties.

 

[GHTD]

You think software is going to spy on you, not due to any evidence, but just because you say so?

You do realize this is a hard, scientific tool that you and others can verify, and isn't a religion, right?

Corporations contribute to open source projects like Linux, not so they can inject backdoors into it, but because it already exists and it's free work already done for them, and that it would be more work to privately fork the software and maintain it themselves than to just push back their changes so other people can also work on their contributions for free. It's not a conspiracy. You're handling corporations contributing to software like you'd handle a girl having cooties.

lmao even if you use ungoogled-chromium or some shit you're still complacent to Google. It's their fucking code, and even if it has "backdoors to Google removed" I legit consider Google to be a spawn of Satan and prefer to be paranoid about that shit.

Legit, just look at DuckDuckGo and Brave. Even the "privacy friendly" guys fuck you over. Privacy online is a myth, especially with NSA backdoors. Unless you're doing some fucking Tor psyop shit, you've got no privacy

 

[XYZpdq]

Is there DTA for another browser yet?

 

[The Fool]

lmao even if you use ungoogled-chromium or some shit you're still complacent to Google. It's their fucking code, and even if it has "backdoors to Google removed" I legit consider Google to be a spawn of Satan and prefer to be paranoid about that shit.

Legit, just look at DuckDuckGo and Brave. Even the "privacy friendly" guys fuck you over. Privacy online is a myth, especially with NSA backdoors. Unless you're doing some fucking Tor psyop shit, you've got no privacy

That shitty Brave post has been debunked several times on this site, yet I keep seeing it brought up by privacy loons who think you're not secure unless you're running TempleOS on a computer housed in a lead box.

I hate Google too. How am I complacent to them by using a Chromium-based browser? Am I a slave to IBM for using Linux? Just because they make a piece of open source software doesn't mean I'm bending over to them if I use someone's heavily modified derivative of it. I'm just as much a slave of Google as I am the Web consortium and pals.

 

[ZMOT]

I really don't see an issue with Firefox dying. Chromium has basically become the Linux of browsers, as it's been stated before that they're such massive pieces of software that you need a massive corporation to even maintain one anymore. It's not proprietary or anything, it's just ruled by corporations. Linux is too, I don't see people complaining much about that or vying for alternatives to it (although I do still see that sometimes).

you want another silverlight? that's how you get another silverlight. "linux of browsers" sounds good in theory, now go and find me a widespread distro without system-dreck that works ootb for normies. so with google at the helm you gonna support whatever shit they want to push, for the single reason that you want your users not to have switch browsers for specific websites. on top of all the money/manpower you gotta spend removing that shit.

I hate Google too. How am I complacent to them by using a Chromium-based browser? Am I a slave to IBM for using Linux? Just because they make a piece of open source software doesn't mean I'm bending over to them if I use someone's heavily modified derivative of it. I'm just as much a slave of Google as I am the Web consortium and pals.

I'd rather call it woefully ignorant for wanting a chrome monopoly. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nPu6Wy4LWR66EFLeYInl3NzzhHzc-qnk4w4PX-0XMw8/edit#
hint: how does google actually make money?

 

[The Fool]

you want another silverlight? that's how you get another silverlight. "linux of browsers" sounds good in theory, now go and find me a widespread distro without system-dreck that works ootb for normies. so with google at the helm you gonna support whatever shit they want to push, for the single reason that you want your users not to have switch browsers for specific websites. on top of all the money/manpower you gotta spend removing that shit.

Yeah, Linux doesn't work without systemd. Most OSes don't work when you remove a system-critical process that all software depends on because it makes both developer and user lives easier. Maybe you should learn to live with it instead of listening to vocal minority of screaming idiots who hate their OS to be of any use. Anti-systemd fags seem to be under the delusion that Linux is Unix. It's a Unix-like OS, pretty much just as Unix-like as Windows is now.

And I don't get the Silverlight anology? Silverlight was fine if not for the fact that it was Windows-only. Chrome is cross-platform.

hint: how does google actually make money?

Ads.

And Google makes open source software.

How does Intel make money? They sell processors.

They also make open source software.

Lots of companies make money and then they also make open source software.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

What the fuck was Silverlight anyway? I just remember getting into some niche websites that demanded it to get into the actual content and I was like "nah fuck it" since it looked like some fancy bloatware from the already annoying "MSN LIVE" suite (the messenger was dying by then) that needed to be installed so that a picture album loaded outside the browser in an "applet" or some shit like that.

 

[The Fool]

What the fuck was Silverlight anyway? I just remember getting into some niche websites that demanded it to get into the actual content and I was like "nah fuck it" since it looked like some fancy bloatware from the already annoying "MSN LIVE" suite (the messenger was dying by then) that needed to be installed so that a picture album loaded outside the browser in an "applet" or some shit like that.

Silverlight and Java applets are like Flash, they're ways to programming a web browser with technologies besides HTML/JS. All of them are dogshit and it's why HTML5 and WASM was invented so we could never make any more ever again.
Specifically, Silverlight was a way to use .NET/C# on the web browser. They actually sort of re-invented that today with something called Blazor, except now it's WASM so you download it like a normal web page in any browser in any OS instead of needing a shitty applet.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Yeah, Linux doesn't work without systemd. Most OSes don't work when you remove a system-critical process that all software depends on because it makes both developer and user lives easier. Maybe you should learn to live with it instead of listening to vocal minority of screaming idiots who hate their OS to be of any use. Anti-systemd fags seem to be under the delusion that Linux is Unix. It's a Unix-like OS, pretty much just as Unix-like as Windows is now.

Counterpoint: Lennart Poettering is a cancer upon Linux, a cancer on the world, and he deserves to die a slow lingering death from cancer.

What the fuck was Silverlight anyway? I just remember getting into some niche websites that demanded it to get into the actual content and I was like "nah fuck it" since it looked like some fancy bloatware from the already annoying "MSN LIVE" suite (the messenger was dying by then) that needed to be installed so that a picture album loaded outside the browser in an "applet" or some shit like that.

An attempt to deliver a worthwhile platform for business programming in the browser, instead of Javascript or Javascript + cancer (Flash).

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

A third shit like Flash and Java? Goddamn, I still have PTSD from "LOADING SHOCKWAVE, LOADING FLASH" garbage 20 years ago in IE4, and until now I was still getting UPDATE FLASH UPDATE FLASH popups that did not update, just sent me to the website to manually redownload it and get McAfee bundles shoved in my face. And also god, that Java Runtime Environment garbage, having to install it, and that system tray coffee icon were the bane of my existence, worse than Windows Update and so clunky and intrusive, until now I still get a knee-jerk cringe reaction when I wanna download some niche utility and the readme says "written in Java", even a biotech 3D data analysis software I had to use at college was a fucking JAR file and I had to live with it just to get that damn A+. At least Flash let you play some cute games.

Anyways, despite the Blink engine becoming the de facto standard or "monopoly" as the Trident engine was during the IE6 days, there's the difference it's open source and that gives it some transparency, hell it's a descendant of KDE. At least the Chrome browser itself is not the only option.

 

[The Fool]

Counterpoint: Lennart Poettering is a cancer upon Linux, a cancer on the world, and he deserves to die a slow lingering death from cancer.

That's not a counterpoint, that's the kind of knee-jerk response people bring up when they want to point out that anti-systemd people are insane lunatics that have no counterpoints other than wishing death on a developer as if this was some kind of cult.

A third shit like Flash and Java? Goddamn, I still have PTSD from "LOADING SHOCKWAVE, LOADING FLASH" garbage 20 years ago in IE4, and until now I was still getting UPDATE FLASH UPDATE FLASH popups that did not update, just sent me to the website to manually redownload it and get McAfee bundles shoved in my face. And also god, that Java Runtime Environment garbage, having to install it, and that system tray coffee icon were the bane of my existence, worse than Windows Update and so clunky and intrusive, until now I still get a knee-jerk cringe reaction when I wanna download some niche utility and the readme says "written in Java", even a biotech 3D data analysis software I had to use at college was a fucking JAR file and I had to live with it just to get that damn A+. At least Flash let you play some cute games.

I still get PTSD from Java shit too, fortunately nothing modern outside of Android is written in it now, and even that's inevitably going to stop.
But at least Silverlight had the benefit of being a part of Windows so it never nagged you to update it, same with .NET Framework post-7 SP1

Anyways, despite the Blink engine becoming the de facto standard or "monopoly" as the Trident engine was during the IE6 days, there's the difference it's open source and that gives it some transparency, hell it's a descendant of KDE. At least the Chrome browser itself is not the only option.

Yeah, there are tons of Chromium forks. The only real concern anyone could ever have is Google's constant attempts at breaking the web through it so ads become unblockable. But I'd argue that's not entirely an issue with Chromium. Forks like Brave can always just integrate their own adblocker.

 

[ZMOT]

Yeah, Linux doesn't work without systemd. Most OSes don't work when you remove a system-critical process that all software depends on because it makes both developer and user lives easier. Maybe you should learn to live with it instead of listening to vocal minority of screaming idiots who hate their OS to be of any use. Anti-systemd fags seem to be under the delusion that Linux is Unix. It's a Unix-like OS, pretty much just as Unix-like as Windows is now.

And I don't get the Silverlight anology? Silverlight was fine if not for the fact that it was Windows-only. Chrome is cross-platform.

ah yes, poettering sure made developer and user lives easier by being a documented shit dev with a project that scope-creeped harder than star citizen with a codebase so big it re-defines unmaintainable and was only really used by red hat but made it into every big distro for some reason, and can't be removed or even reigned in without jumping through a lot of hoops and gets worse by the day (for the dimwitted: means at some point it simply becomes unfeasible to do so). open source sure is great.
protip: you can still like system-d in concept but hate how it tries to become it's own userspace kernel, generalizing everyone as "anti-systemd fags" for any criticism (and assuming they have no merit) just proves you're retarded.

also
>silverlight was fine

But at least Silverlight had the benefit of being a part of Windows so it never nagged you to update it, same with .NET Framework post-7 SP1

except like most of what microshit calls "software", it's all fine and dandy when it works. till it doesn't and you're in an extra circle of hell to get that shit working again. bonus points for not even being officially supported anymore. good luck!

Ads.

Yeah, there are tons of Chromium forks. The only real concern anyone could ever have is Google's constant attempts at breaking the web through it so ads become unblockable. But I'd argue that's not entirely an issue with Chromium. Forks like Brave can always just integrate their own adblocker.

emphasis mine. interesting you actually get the point but still miss it.
here's a question for you: if users have the choice between a browser that lets them block the ads they want or work with google & youtube and a growing number of other sides, which chromium fork do you think they gonna chose? the google one that works everywhere or the the ones that don't and will get worse over time because websites like pushing ads?

 

[teriyakiburns]

Yeah, Linux doesn't work without systemd.

Linux works just fine without systemd. The reason it's "system-critical" is because poettering and his cronies captured and integrated a bunch of formerly independent subsystems (like udev and DBus), whilst redhat used their influence over Gnome's development to create an unecessary dependency on systemd.

It's a bloated, unstable mess that solves problems nobody actually cared about, written largely because poettering got butthurt at Linus for calling his shit code shit and decided to make the kernel irrelevant by wrapping it in a blanket of impenetrable, over-connected, terribly-engineered, badly specced, badly written, crash-prone, mission-creeping, fundamentally broken bullshit.

I have no systemd on my systems at home. They work just fine, just like they have for the last twenty years.

Oh, and as for Firefox: they re-wrote their mobile browser recently. It's shit. I've got my phone pinned on the last good version, until they bring back about: config and support extensions properly again.

Chrome, meanwhile, is becoming a monoculture across the web. Edge is chrome. Opera is chrome. Brave is chrome. Everything is fucking chrome. Google is using that leverage to reshape the internet to their liking. Fuck that.

 

[Dread First]

Well, I've been putting off making the Brave switch permanent for a while but it looks like now I have no choice. Such a shame too because I've got 10+ years of settings configured exactly the way I want them and there's no easy way to do it natively in Brave without resorting to using extensions.

So much for hoping that Servo would become a thing, or that Firefox Quantum would've been a meaningful update.

 

[Pinochet Was Right]

redhat used their influence over Gnome's development to create an unecessary dependency on systemd.

While I'm not anti systemd per se, this is yet another reason why gnome is bullshit.

 

[whogoesthere]

lmao even if you use ungoogled-chromium or some shit you're still complacent to Google. It's their fucking code, and even if it has "backdoors to Google removed" I legit consider Google to be a spawn of Satan and prefer to be paranoid about that shit.

Legit, just look at DuckDuckGo and Brave. Even the "privacy friendly" guys fuck you over. Privacy online is a myth, especially with NSA backdoors. Unless you're doing some fucking Tor psyop shit, you've got no privacy

I think you need to stop looking at privacy as an all or nothing venture for most users. The difference between some scumbag tracker and the NSA is pretty large. You can protect yourself from the worst offenders quite easliy, and some of the bigger name corps take alittle more work but to be fair, if you cared about privacy enough to think facebook tracking you is an issue then you shouldn't be using their platform. Ditto the rest.

Most privacy is down to the user. I have said this for years, even back when I used reddit on the privacy sub that would answer any question with "use linux, because I am a complete fucking faggot" rather than looking at the users themselves.

I could install the anti-tracking shit on my cousins laptop, but she insists on uploading pictures, talking about her fanny, and posting about each aspect of her day all the same. Nothing to be done about that gobshite, she clearly gives no fucks. If you put your home address into any chink website offering cut priced iphones you deserve to have your privacy invaded. And your arsehole, get that invaded as well.

But yeah, people can do a great deal, and depending on their level of involvement they can get pretty close to perfect. Taking on the fucking intelligence networks of some of the most powerful nations on earth is a different matter, but it can and has been done. Plus, just don't use the web as much, go oldschool, take that shit offline.