> Access to about:config was disabled in official builds (but forks and custom builds such as some on F-Droid still have it).
From your link, there are problems that are specific to `about:config` only on mobile, due to Android OS and GeckoView API specifics:
- There are preferences that …is reset when the app restarts.
- There are many preferences that …do nothing.
- There are preferences …which breaks interacting with some websites.
- There are platform preferences that …result in startup crashes …and reinstalling results in the deleting of data like bookmarks, passwords, history, etc.
Look, it’s not like we’re insensitive to the desire for configuration; it’s that we know that on Android there are footguns that don’t exist on desktop!
We want to figure out a way to do this in a way that makes it difficult to break GeckoView. I’m sorry that this isn’t good enough for many of you, but with all due respect, you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing!
Kinda reasonable, honestly? It sounds like more than just "page may render funny" types of footguns. Unknown quantities of unlabelled "Lose All My Data" buttons are probably what this site would call an antipattern.
> They're talking about the mobile application, where only a small subset of extensions was available for a few years.
On the above Reddit link, they also explain the extensions thing was because they were "literally not done implementing the APIs yet" and focused on the "highest priority extensions". So, the "big wtf decision" might be why they released it in that state, rather than "getting rid of most extensions".
These seem like bugs that could be fixed, but it also seems like there should be relatively simple ways to work around them without disabling about:config, e.g.:
If some settings can cause a crash (and you don't have a complete list), create a separate launcher that only edits the settings in about:config without ever trying to run other Fenix code, so the user always has a way to revert settings if they're causing a crash on startup.
If some settings can be applied but are reset the next time the app runs, save the setting value itself and then re-apply it on each startup.
Other problems like settings doing nothing or breaking websites are just ordinary bugs. Until they're fixed, the user can just refrain from using those settings, or revert them if they cause problems. These sorts of issues are acceptable for users knowingly mucking around in about:config, it's fine, fix the bugs when you get time. It's no reason to disable access to the other settings that actually work in the meantime.
We may disagree with Mozilla's priorities, but they do have finite resources. E.G. Should the extensions API have been delayed even more than it already was, to first build this separate `about:config` launcher as a kludge?
They're not being wilfully bullheaded in this case, is what I mean. The "P5"/"Enhancement" Bugzilla issue is open, but unassigned.
> They just haven't had anybody to spend engineering time doing so yet.
But this has been the other major criticism of Mozilla. They take the money they get from Google and spend it on not-Firefox when Firefox market share should be their top priority, because if that number goes to zero they're defunct.
>you’re not the ones on the receiving end when somebody breaks their browser because they didn’t know what they were doing!
about:config already has a warning when you first open it that you'll screw up your settings if you don't know what you're doing. So if someone borks their install as a result, it isn't Mozilla engineer's job to apologize or hand hold them through it.
Every software until the 2010s (Windows itself, with its registry) has had this implicit disclaimer that you forfeit all official support if you dick around with the internals in an non standard way. So why is it now at the other extreme of 'fuck all power users, we will only target those who can't walk and chew gum simultaneously' ?
While shooting orcas would obviously …not be a good outcome, might it put your mind at ease to know that there may be many reasons to think the comment you replied to might be correct?
- Bullets don't really work underwater. High-powered rounds get shredded on impact, and low-power rounds get slowed to non-lethal speeds. The bang might scare them though. [1]
- Guns are designed for humans, and whales are big. Just the blubber under their skin adds several inches. [2] The physics of avoiding heat loss further implies that more important organs and blood vessels should have proportionally more blubber over them. With enough armor, penetration isn't really "low probability" but more "physically not possible". [3]
- Vital orca organs seem to be, surprise, well-protected. Their abdominal/thoracic cavity looks like a small volume inside a very large body, with particularly a lot of space on their back. The brain is not only protected by lots of blubber but also thick bone. [4] Based on this diagram, only the melon and eyes really look vulnerable.
- Orcas take care of disabled orcas! [5] If a wound interferes with hunting/feeding, then someone stays back to keep them company/protect them until the rest of the pod can bring them food or call them over to eat. It might suck, but they shouldn't starve. Apparently they do this even for strangers from different pods too? If an orca still starves to death because nobody will do that for them, then I guess they were probably a bit of an asshole…
So guns won't even work on water. Then even if it hits them directly it probably won't/physically can't hurt them. They're protected by water, blubber, size, and thick bone plate, any one of which on its own would be enough to stop most bullets. And even if they do get seriously wounded they have support networks that won't let them starve.
> You could try to spritz them with a water bottle but I suspect they wouldn't notice. Same with the rolled up newspaper trick. It would just dissolve in the water.
Simply adapt your boats to be foul-tasting, like a normal species. Spritz them with capsaicin, denatonium benzoate, skunk secretions, etc.
> But I don't think they're around anymore and have no idea how you could achieve similar functionality with dynamic pages anyway.
Chromium's MHTML "Save as…" and the SingleFile WebExtension should both save copies of the rendered DOM.
Apparently Safari has WebArchive and Mozilla had MAFF for similar use cases.
I think WARC is supposed to save enough data about network streams for dynamic pages to work. At least on the Wayback Machine, infinite scrolling and "Load More" buttons do kinda work sometimes. You may have to load the archived pages in a browser and try to use each dynamic feature at least once, to trigger requests for needed resources.
When asked about whether this was true, they refused to answer based on confidentiality concerns, then said they had deleted all copies of the dataset, stopped using it, and no longer employed the individuals that compiled it:
Meh. Ten years ago it was going to be the opposite. Unrestricted speech on the Internet was going to be thing took down every autocracy in the world. And for a while, it seemed to be working.
You can't blindly extrapolate in a system made of agents that adapt to what happens around them. It's not like this is the first time the US has been in turmoil.
> To the best of my knowledge the more hinged government of the USSR never actually contemplated nuking anyone.
The Suez Crisis was basically ended by Khruschchev threatening to nuke Britain, France, and Israel. Not a single of those countries could meaningfully retaliate at that point, of course. He bragged about it in his memoirs. [1]
The USSR almost fired a nuclear torpedo in the Cuban crisis. Clearly they had rules of engagement for when to start throwing nukes around, without even requiring direct orders or even a confirmation of war. [2]
Historian Petr Lunak in 2007 found a 17-page Warsaw Pact plan in Prague's archives for basically unrestricted nuclear war against all of Western Europe. Drafted 1964, in use until 1986, possibly nearly executed during 1983 NATO exercises. [3][4] French diplomat Therese Delpech reports the same from seeing Warsaw Pact documents in Germany, notwithstanding Brezhnev's conspicuous 1982 "No First Use" declaration. [5] Vaporize Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark, then conquer all the way into France. [6]
Ah. Kruschchev's famous 1956 "We will bury you" may have been a mistranslation. [7] But it is hard to see how his similar 1957 words could have been anything other than a thinly veiled nuclear death threat: "General Norstad will not be able to rush to Turkey’s aid and will not be able to be present in time for Turkey’s funeral". [8]
I'm sure there are others. The Cold War was crazy, and the Rocket Forces were (and are) held in some veneration. You don't spend an appreciable percentage of your GNP building and maintaining over 40,000 nuclear warheads plus delivery systems without "contemplating" using them.
> The whole Cuban missile crisis thing was over the unhinged US government placing its nukes in Turkey, right next to USSRs heartland
NAID:84786142 [9] in the US National Archives is a declassified CIA map showing the USSR didn't just have thousands of nuclear weapons and delivery systems "right next to" the heartlands of multiple countries like Germany, France, Finland, and Italy (which, again, they fully had prepared plans to nuke).
They also had thousands of nukes directly on the territory of multiple occupied hostile countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, and Poland.
Apparently the Czechs/Slovakians still don't even know how many warheads the USSR saw fit to store in their homeland. [10]
---
And frankly, it's also rather imperialistic that you're just completely ignoring the sovereignty of Turkey and Cuba in that crisis: [11][12]
> …several consecutive Turkish governments, both before and after the coup of 1960, were eager to receive these weapons…
> …Turkey’s citizens regarded the Jupiter missiles as a symbol of the alliance’s determination to use atomic weapons in the case of a Soviet attack on Turkey.
> …Turkish authorities stated on more than one occasion that Jupiter missiles based on Turkish soil represented ‘firm proof of the U.S.’s commitment to Turkey’s security’…
> …aware of their limited defensive value, the missiles continued to be viewed as a symbol of Turkey’s importance within the Western security system, and also as a source of prestige.
> …placing Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, despite the misgivings of the Soviet Ambassador in Havana, Alexandr Ivanovich Alexeyev, who argued that Castro would not accept the deployment of the missiles.
> …Castro did not want the missiles, but Khrushchev pressured Castro to accept them.
> …Castro objected to the missiles' deployment as making him look like a Soviet puppet, but he was persuaded…
And:
> Throughout the crisis, Turkey had repeatedly stated that it would be upset if the Jupiter missiles were removed.
> …when the missiles were withdrawn, Castro was more angry with Khrushchev than with Kennedy because Khrushchev had not consulted Castro…
You know, cooperating with consent, instead of threatening, invading, and coercing both friend and foe alike when they try to tell you "no", then calling your opponent "unhinged" after jointly bringing the world to the brink of annihilation.
Blah blah blah. Bottom line: you don’t get to put nukes next to where majority of Russian population lives. This is why there’s a war in Ukraine and nukes in Belarus now
Yes, that particular incident is good ol' fashioned Russian imperialism to impose their will onto Ukraine and Belarus. I wasn't disputing that, and you weren't talking about it either.
That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a banana. You can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX.”
Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out.
“I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner.
“I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another.
“YES!!!” exclaimed a third.
What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision. It wasn’t a story about how we might use fintech in the future, or crypto, or a new kind of bank. It was a vision about the future of money itself—with a total addressable market of every person on the entire planet.
“I sit ten feet from him, and I walked over, thinking, Oh, shit, that was really good,” remembers Arora. “And it turns out that that fucker was playing League of Legends through the entire meeting.”
“We were incredibly impressed,” Bailhe says. “It was one of those your-hair-is-blown-back type of meetings.”
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