When Google stuffs AI into everything, people shrug. Can't expect anything else from big tech.
When Firefox does it, it sparks outrage across the internet, with entire forums filled with people vowing to leave Firefox forever and switching to something like Waterfor or Ilp/Zorp/Floop instead.
As a result, searching for experiences other people had with Firefox makes it sound like hell on earth, while people have little more to say about Chrome other than "Google gonna Google, but it's fast at least".
> When Firefox does it, it sparks outrage across the internet
i.e. when firefox does it, people wonder why they aren't using chrome. That's the entire point. The only thing that makes firefox attractive is if they don't do what google does, and they do almost everything google does.
Even if it results in extended campaigns of complaints and hostility from their most devoted users, and the loss of 95% of their installs. As far as I can tell the only thing they backed down on was destroying ublock, and that's because they recognized that it was an existential threat to firefox. The 3% market share that they have now would have become 0.3%, no matter what google did to prop them up.
I certainly don't recommend firefox any more. The amount of effort I have to go through to get the standard 2010 experience quality is absurd and I can't expect anyone else to think it's worth it. It's not worth it to dodge any of this bad behavior anymore, it's industry standard. Going through the effort of dodging it makes you stand out more, and makes you more trackable and targetable. For me it's just compulsive, and my values don't change when the values of the crowd changes. But I can't expect anyone else to download and maintain a git repo that allows you to have basic control over your UI, or to fill out captchas after every pageload.
If you're going to use plain firefox, you might as well use plain chrome. Both of them have the same degree of respect for you, and both of them are owned by the same company. Using plain firefox for freedom is like using an Android phone for freedom. It's amusing that google gets to play the "bad guy" in one of those stories (browser wars) and gets to play the "good guy" in the other (mobile wars.) It's all keyfabe. None of these companies are competing with each other.
> while people have little more to say about Chrome other than "Google gonna Google, but it's fast at least".
I, being a Firefox user with practically zero Chromium use, would air my grievances when the Mozilla does something I disagree with more than I would when Google does. And I would expect that most Firefox users are of the kind who have strong opinions about how their computers work.
You wouldn’t throw the same fit if [insert dictator you don’t have high expectations of here] shot a hundred random civilians compared to if your government did, no?
> would air my grievances when the Mozilla does something I disagree with more than I would when Google does.
Mozilla doesn't care about your grievances. It collects lots of telemetry about you by default, and has recently officially removed the obligation not to sell your personal data to third parties etc. It also plans to "introduce AI" into its browser.
> And I would expect that most Firefox users are of the kind who have strong opinions about how their computers work.
On the contrary. Those people have moved on, or are in the process of moving on, from Firefox itself to more privacy-minded forks. Like Palemoon, LibreWolf and maybe Mullvard.
Offering something like a local Gemma 4 (though apparently not what we get here) to web apps via a browser API could change UX quite drastically. Possibly for the better. We had a project where it could have been nice.
Having rock-solid security for quietly transferring all of your deeply personal and private data to Google feels like a win for the pedants, but a loss for everyone else.
This is a significant point. To many people security includes privacy, which is a fair assumption: in a non-evil timeline user privacy will be one of the first-class components high on the priority list for being secured. Unfortunately companies and the people high up running them only care about their own privacy¹, everyone else is expected to be grateful that we are being stalked so we can be targetted for sales purposes.
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[1] Follow one of them around the way they track us online, or let out a bit of information about, for example, their tax affairs, and see how fast lawyers or law enforcement arrive on your doorstep…
Google has invested massively into security. On various platforms (non-Chromium Linux excluded), Google Chrome uses advanced defence-in-depth that make Chrome much more secure than Firefox on the same machine. Their origin-based process separation make Chrome a memory hog but protect tab processes from each other in a way Firefox doesn't bother with just yet.
Chrome may be a privacy nightmare, but in terms of security it beats Mozilla.
Not supporting real ad blockers makes it strictly less secure for any threat model that matters for normal people - most importantly less secure against predatory corporations like Google.
Same could be said about Windows vs Linux back in the day, but as another person already pointed out it doesn't make sense when the owner is one of the ones you are trying to protect yourself against.
Also, as it turned out, Windows wasn't much more secure than Linux, and I guess we'll find this with Chrome as well. In fact I wonder if this isn't obvious already now that uBlock Origin doesn't work on Chrome any longer?
Besides, isn't Chrome approaching 20 years now and I still cannot have tree style tabs on it so it is still a toy browser meant for causual browsing, not work ;-)
The more time goes on the more I feel like I live on a different planet. Even things like "shouldn't you be able to decide what software you run on the stuff you own?" gets blank stares.
I still remember "oh my friend's iphone has a nice camera, how can I send myself that picture he took with bluetooth?" and being... a bit surprised that it wasn't really possible.
I’ve been using Firefox for 20+ years and continue to do so, but let’s not pretend that Firefox hasn’t been an embarrassing shit show for most of the past 15.
I’ve been a Safari user for over 20 years. Every year or so I go on a journey to switch to something else. I’ve use Firefox (LibreWolf, IceWeasle, etc), Chrome (Edge, Arc, etc), Camino, OmniWeb, Orion, Opera (I was primarily an Opera user before Safari), and more. At work I use Edge for weird corporate reasons that I’m not thrilled about.
I always end up coming back to Safari for personal use. It seems to do the best job getting out of my way. I am annoyed by how Safari now handles browser extensions. I’d like them to take a page out of Orion’s book and support both Firefox and Chrome extensions. However, I generally have very few extensions, as they tend to slow things down, so this has been a relatively minor issue. The main things I’ve wanted extensions for in other browsers (like word lookup) have come out of the box in Safari (or Apple platforms as a whole) for quite a long time.
You can likely run Firefox Portable from PortableApps.com on your corporate Windows machine. Just make sure you're not running afoul of IT policies. Disclosure: I make it
Safari is better than Chrome and FF in enough ways I'd argue it can be considered the best of the three, even to people in tech. The dev tools are just way behind.
i really feel like trying this out as a quasi-firefox user, but i've really started to love and appreciate Zen for its UI :( wonder if there's a Waterfox X Zen alternative.
EDIT: whoops, should've scrolled down a bit on the website, looks like Waterfox has vertical tabs as well. damn, probably going to try to migrate to it sometime soon...
EDIT2: of course supports firefox extensions as well, perfect.
People keep saying this like it's just conventional wisdom we all supposedly agree with. I think it's a string of tech articles and spiraling comment sections searching for drama that's kind of been a self-perpetuating phenomenon over the past 3 or 4 years the majority of which I think has been extremely unfair and mostly just based on vibes. If you actually scroll through HN and read the criticisms, they tend to trail off into vague phrases like "all the stuff they've been doing".
If people read the release notes instead of the comment sections, not only would they have a lot more specific knowledge of the work going into the browser but they wouldn't be locked in this cycle of outrage and escalation that normally you only see in YouTube comment sections.
If Mozilla fired its CEO for a private political donation from 10 years earlier, it will not hesitate to do much worse to its users. Mozilla isn’t on the good side here.
Not quite. We had a couple domains that—when typed into the address bar—would offer a referral-option in the browser UI. If you quickly hit the enter key, you might mistakenly have selected one of those unintentionally. This was a UX bug on our end as the feature wasn't intended to match complete URLs.
The goal was to offer folks a means of supporting the development of a privacy-preserving browser, at no cost to them. We blogged about the feature at https://brave.com/blog/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/, and ultimately disabled it by default. But there was never any "hijacking of links," or "swapping of affiliate codes".
At that time, it was 10 years ago, which is what I was responding to.
Is bigotry always a permanent condition?
Yes, people famously change more as they get older. Eich was already a man in his 40s at that point in time. He also doubled-down instead of acknowledging any wrongdoing.
I wouldn't want to use anything that earn them money, if I could avoid it. That it was half the population doesn't change my view.
I understand that it is difficult for me to shun (which is basically what I'm talking about) so many people, or to even know if they should be shunned, but it would definitely be my preference.
Your perspective only confirms that it’s popular within the Mozilla audience to ban people for their political opinion when it’s slightly out of currently-approved opinions. TODAY. Not 18 years ago. Today.
Making Mozilla a politically-extremist organization intolerant to other opinions than theirs, and thus incompatible with being a steward of the global web.
I mean ... frankly, and I say this as a guy who's used solely Firefox since before it was Firefox all the way until 2025 when I finally got sick & tired of their shit... (now on WaterFox because I refuse to submit to the Google browser monopoly)
... Mozilla absolutely did this to themselves. Come think of it, they really remind me of what Microsift's been doing with Windows.
I still don't understand what problem you guys have with Firefox. I really don't, and comments like yours are always very vague and seem to assume that it's obvious.
For me Firefox is (slightly) better than is used to be, not by a wide margin but it's not gotten worse either.
I've been running it since it was Phoenix so I think my experience is at least somewhat valid, which is why I'm so confused by these comments.
I apologize; my comment is vague because I wrote it on my phone, and didn't feel like writing super-long text there. I hate typing on a phone.
Anyway, for a browser that keeps touting how it's privacy-centered, they sure as hell love doing horrible things.
Cliqz is a great example; here's a direct quote from Mozilla (emphasis mine):
> "Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit."
This was not opt-in. It was automatically enabled for a percentage of users in (I believe) Germany. Not only is it a blatant breach of the privacy promise, it's such a massive breach it's almost on the cartoon villainy level.
But for me personally, the final straw was the yet-another-pointless-UI-change at or around v103 (or thereabouts, I don't recall the exact version). When they removed icons from a bunch of menus and went with the rounded style. That version's UI redesign worsened accessibility in so many ways, and complaints by visually-impaired users were simply ignored. All for the sake of a UI redesign yet again.
I consider myself an advanced user, and even I get annoyed by the changes. Now imagine someone not tech savvy, e.g. my mother, trying to use Firefox, when the UI suddenly changes between versions. I can adapt to changes far more easily than them (not that I want to, but Mozilla keeps wanting to force it), but for some, it's going to be a struggle. For that reason alone, I can no longer recommend Firefox to non-tech-savvy people (and I used to!).
Meanwhile, Chrome, although I dislike its UI, has kept it relatively stable throughout. People get used to it, and it stays that way. They don't have to learn new things or change their habits. Now, there are a myriad of issues with Chrome, but constant UI rug-pulls aren't one of them.
That's why I'm comparing Mozilla to Microsoft. They ignore users, and shove changes nobody asked for down their throats --- even if it makes things worse for everyone. The UI change, for example, is kind of like the new context menu in Windows Explorer. On top of that, they tout being privacy-focused everywhere in the marketing, but then their actions show the exact opposite.
Are you referring to technical implementation or the poor anti-privacy decisions they keep making when you say 'slightly better'? I have not given up, but I am profoundly disappointed and for somebody who says they have used FF for so long, it feels like I am being gaslit when you say they are peachy.
People have problems with what they choose to program, not the quality of their code. I too have used FF since the beginning, but switched to Waterfox last year (it took me about two years to make that decision - I didn't make it lightly). I chose WF in large part because its profile remains compatible with FF so I can switch back if they calm the F down and start acting normal again for long enough to rebuild some trust.
Cargo cult represent! How good are they, aye. I bought one 2 months ago, had it for 2 weeks and already done 200+kms on it, and that has saved me $60 in fuel so far. It is great for getting around and grabbing shopping last minute, going to work and just feeling more connected and happy.
They're awesome! If you live somewhere where you have safe infrastructure for any trip you'd like to make it's life changing. And I love carrying my kids in it :-)
So far I have seen slate position itself as stripped down, but the thing I haven't seen is that they will be privacy aware. These are two totally different things. I want a simple but functional vehicle which does mean a comfortable vehicle that has reasonable features, but the honest truth is most features I don't want are purely because I want to be privacy aware. I don't want built in maps because I know they will connect and sell my location. I don't want and 'on-star' like feature because I know (for a fact with on-star) they will sell my data to insurance companies (actual harm to me will happen in other words). I don't want anything connectable to an app because I know that means their servers are constantly in control of my vehicle. I have 0 trust so I want a vehicle with one critical feature: no sim. If you can build a car without a sim I will buy it. If it has a sim I will avoid it until I have no actual other choice.
I can't speak for other makes/models/years with certainty, but my 2024 Ford Maverick has a "Telemetry Control Unit" that is easily accessible through a hatch by the front passenger seat. Unplugging it disables all communication with Ford servers and I can confirm the app no longer works.
The infotainment center also has no built-in maps as it relies on Android Auto/Apple CarPlay for everything except climate control and the AM/FM radio.
Again, not having a feature doesn't mean they don't send telemetry back. They can be stripped down AND steal my privacy. In fact, I expect them to considering the backers.
This seems to be a dual concern: do they collect driver data during vehicular usage, and/or during web browsing?
For the first, my argument is they simply cannot, even if they wanted to, in the same way I can't track my friend if I supply him with a toothpick. There simply isn't sufficient technology in a toothpick by itself for me to violate their privacy, so I would need other methods, like agreements with businesses or a backdoor to his phone.
Regarding web usage, their privacy policy says
> To contractors, service providers, and other third parties we use to support our business.
> If you do not wish to have your email address or phone number used by Slate to promote our own or third parties' products or services, you can opt out by changing your communication preferences in your Slate account.
I have read a lot of privacy policies, and this verbiage suggests that they don't sell your data (even in aggregated form), but they do sell access to a customer base. This is similar to youtubers getting sponsored - only assumptions of the customers can be made based on the youtubers content, and no YouTube telemetry itself, since that it owned and processed by YouTube, not the youtuber. Otherwise the policy would have mention of selling data. This is further confirmed by the language that you are opting out of emails to not receive third party stuff, not opting out of selling of data. Since data being sold is required to have an opt out method (in most US states), it is further safe to infer no data is sold. Just access to the reader base.
I hope this answers your questions on whether they are worthwhile to use. Personally, I think this is honorable and I'd be confident to say that these cars don't have the problem being discussed in this forum.
>How does growing crops work when it's dark 6 months a year?
Just fine. If the temperature would cooperate.
The land of the midnight sun actually has great yields for the few crops that tolerate the cool temperatures (low ground greens and vegetables basically, not staple grains or fruit). But because the season is so short temperature wise nobody really farms that stuff commercially up there.
> How does growing crops work when it's dark 6 months a year?
Have you noticed that all broadleaved trees and shrubs lose their leaves for half the year in temperate zones already?
Did you not wonder why that is?
They'll be fine. Annual crops are fine. Wildlife is fine if it's got somewhere to migrate to.
Tough for wildlife when there's nowhere to migrate to, though. But what's burning desert in summer might be just about tolerable hot tropics in winter.
The problem is that current tropical species can't handle the alternation of the seasons. You don't get seasons at the equator. Spring/summer/autumn/winter is a temperate-zones thing. Near the equator the sun rises and sets at the same time every day, and there are at best 2 seasons: the dry season, when it never rains, and the wet season, when it rains a lot all the time.
It doesn't. Watts were a mistake by whatever committee it was that standardized unit names. Power should not have been given a unit; it should have been left as ∆energy/time just as velocity is distance/time.
Joule is a derived unit, it is kg*m^2/s^2. There are lots of derived units, like hertz and newton, because they useful than writing out the whole thing. Electronics would be really annoying if had to write out volt, ohm, and watts (ampere is base unit, coulomb is derived).
Don’t put words in my mouth. I only said that power should be J/s instead of watts. The “per second” part of that is what is most important thing about power. It’s the rate at which energy is accumulating or being used up.
I regard that as a downstream effect of giving power a unit in the first place, but yes. We should have just stuck to J and J/s. It would have prevented the kWh and also abominations like the mAh “capacity” ratings you see on batteries.
Using watts is fine for anyone who deals with energy and power all the time. The problem comes when the lay person tries to reason about power. If power were written as J/s then they could use the same reasoning that they are already familiar with from dealing with speed and position, or with flow rate and volume.
Full size bikes on public transport doesn’t work well when crowded though. I briefly took a bikee recumbent (really small) on BART and it was great for me but pretty annoying for others for 1 stop (sorry if you went between Ashby and Oakland in 2011!)
Even in the Netherlands you need to pay €8.50 to bring your bike on, perhaps so the trains aren’t overrun.
I think that is a very valid criticism. Equally, in the UK there is a sense of providers having tried nothing and then given up concluding that it hasn't worked. Some services that ban bikes legitimately cannot accommodate them safely, some can. Some services legitimately are too busy at peak times to accommodate bikes, and some ban them anyway because making granular policy is hard. In a similar vein, some of those same services that ban bikes due to how busy they are running eight of a possible 10 carriages because they claim not to need the space.
I think a lot of the rules turn out to be reasonable but the rulemakers should be less gung-ho about restricting bikes when they don't really need to
Yeah, among other things I thought it was odd I've only seen bike racks on buses in the US, but not in Europe (having looked for them in Ireland, the UK, and the Netherlands)
It folds the rear wheel “triangle” (red in the picture) underneath to make it shorter to fit in a car trunk, and quick-releases the seat IIRC. Also has squishy rubber-lump suspension because the rear wheel pivots.
(ICE being Inspired Cycle Engineering in this context).
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