Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday July 14 2017, @05:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the replacement-for-my-firefox dept.

After a few months of development, the Pale Moon browser has released its latest iteration. Along with security features, the key release for this version seems to be centered around expanding the browser's media support.

Release notes here.

Offtopic, but somehow relevant: they also published the results of their survey in March. The feedback says a lot about the browser's user base, and highlights the direction the team will take in the future.

[What browser(s) do you use? Do you use a separate browser for certain sites? Same browser for everything you access online? What browser differences lead you to use one browser over another? -Ed.]


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @06:52AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @06:52AM (#538993)

    A couple of days ago it was discovered that certain parts of Firefox comes with Google Analytics, with no way to turn it off, and because it's built in, things like uBlock Origin aren't able to block it.

    Mozillas response was something like "Trust us". Yeah, we tried that. We trusted you to not force Google Analytics upon us. You broke that trust.

    But this is not about trusting Mozilla, it's about trusting Google. Know what we call someone who trusts Google? A Chrome user.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +2  
       Informative=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by NotSanguine on Friday July 14 2017, @07:28AM (7 children)

    A couple of days ago it was discovered that certain parts of Firefox comes with Google Analytics, with no way to turn it off, and because it's built in, things like uBlock Origin aren't able to block it.

    Mozillas response was something like "Trust us". Yeah, we tried that. We trusted you to not force Google Analytics upon us. You broke that trust.

    But this is not about trusting Mozilla, it's about trusting Google. Know what we call someone who trusts Google? A Chrome user.

    This is an issue specific to the About:addons discovery pane which is an iframe loaded from a Mozilla web site that uses Google Analytics.

    However, it's not Google Analytics baked into the Firefox browser.

    It's certainly an issue, and at the moment cannot be disabled. :(

    More details here:
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753546 [ycombinator.com]
    Here:
    https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/1107 [github.com]
    and here:
    https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785 [github.com]
    and what the heck, here too:
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=858839 [mozilla.org]

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by moondrake on Friday July 14 2017, @08:36AM

      by moondrake (2658) on Friday July 14 2017, @08:36AM (#539021)

      From your link [github.com] it seems that the issue has been fixed:

      "You can disable Google Analytics in about:addons by setting your Do Not Track status to on."

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday July 14 2017, @08:37AM (3 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday July 14 2017, @08:37AM (#539023) Homepage
      "We won't be removing analytics entirely as they make it possible to improve our services."

      And because an exception proves a rule, the FF spokesdroid is saying "it is impossible to improve our service without analytics". How did people make things better before analytics? Well, clearly they couldn't have, because spokesdroid says so. Nothing ever improved ever until analytics was introduced. Or maybe people and companies listened to their users and customers, encouraging communities and discussion, and then acted in ways that would be most sensible?

      Nah, that's crazy talk - communities clearly don't work. Case in point - when people raise issues like "Dear Firefox, I've enabled the Do Not Track header - please Do Not Track me" on a community bug-tracker the company completely ignore the request.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @10:32AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @10:32AM (#539050)

        That's crazy talk, friend. That's why we integrated Pocket for you and enabled it by default. And removed tiresome things like the menu - there's addons for that you know? And we change the addon code base every 2.5 years, all for you, friend.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @12:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @12:12PM (#539080)

        They are using it for NHST A/B testing nonsense. It will destroy UI/UX development just as it has destroyed education research, psychology, etc.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:00PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:00PM (#541018)

        Amazingly, one of the Mozilla people commented that in-house analytics would be too much work. From the Github link:

        Hosting our own solution (eg. Piwik) would be a considerable increase in effort and time better spent on improving our own services–additionally I find Google Analytics a superior product to Piwik. While I can't speak for product managers and metrics people on AMO who rely on these analytics, I imagine they feel similarly and decided it was best to use a better tool.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday July 14 2017, @02:26PM (1 child)

      by Arik (4543) on Friday July 14 2017, @02:26PM (#539121) Journal
      Hahahahah!

      Those links are hilarious man, the twisted contorted logic and sheer gibberish that goes into defending defective-by-design is just mindblowing sometimes.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @04:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 14 2017, @04:58PM (#539202)

        Yeah. Incidentally, stuff like that about Firefox is what made me concerned about Brendan Eich's political views. I was no longer certain I was using a gratis product. Otherwise I wouldn't have given a shit. But honestly, Firefox just really started sucking, politics or no. While it's against my religion to use products and services that will fund certain political positions, I can confirm that SJWs are worse. If SJWs ever get a serious lobby for legislating some of their insane shit, that'll "trigger" my religious vows as well.

        I feel kind of bad for Eich. He originally wanted Scheme for web scripting, but higher ups decided that it had to be "java" because marketing. Now he's associated with the abomination that is javascript.

        My view is that most people who lobby for certain political positions that are against my religion are basically good people who will "see the light" eventually once they figure out that the thing they're opposed to (or in favor of/etc) is absolutely no threat to them or their lifestyle choices. Going full SJW retard and shitcanning them does not create an opportunity to "see the light." That makes bitter enemies.