from the random-plugin-included-for-free dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow9228
Mozilla sneaked a browser plugin that promotes Mr. Robot into Firefox—and managed to piss off a bunch of its privacy-conscious users in the process.
The extension, called Looking Glass, is intended to promote an augmented reality game to "further your immersion into the Mr. Robot universe," according to Mozilla. It was automatically added to Firefox users' browsers this week with no explanation except the cryptic message, "MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS," prompting users to worry on Reddit that they'd been hit with spyware.
"I have no idea what it is or where it came from. I freaked out a bit and uninstalled it immediately," one user wrote on Reddit.
Without an explanation included with the extension, users were left digging around in the code for Looking Glass to find answers. Looking Glass was updated for some users today with a description that explains the connection to Mr. Robot and lets users know that the extension won't activate without explicit opt-in.
Mr. Robot is a TV series about hackers airing on USA Network.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/mozilla-slipped-a-mr-robot-promo-plugin-into-firefox-1821332254
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:07PM (11 children)
Seems that Mozilla is trying hard to get rid also of the remaining users …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:19PM (9 children)
I'll take stupid Mozilla over evil Google, Microsoft and Apple anyday.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:01PM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday December 18 2017, @05:36AM (2 children)
Back when I was but a lad software cost money.
Sure there was piracy but even so there were many prosperous software companies.
Many such companies offered free tech support.
There's so much gratis software these days that it must be very difficult for paid software to gain traction.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Monday December 18 2017, @07:56PM (1 child)
And yet the software industry is bigger and richer than ever, expanding at unprecedented rates. Sure, support isn't free any more - that's where many of these companies make the bulk of their income: recurring license fees.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:07AM
I am convinced that the reason ads are so frequent and so unpleasant to look at is that there are too many websites.
For decades now the total amount spent on advertising has been close to 2% of the GDP.
But everyone wants to make money by posting ads on their sites.
When they find that ads don't earn them much money they publish even more ads. When product and service vendors find their ads are ineffective they increase their visibility - that is, they make them more glaringly obvious.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday December 18 2017, @11:18AM
What? With that kind of logic, there can be no way to structure an institution such that it serves the people.
Google and Facebook treat the customer as the product, and therefore exploit their customers rather than putting the customers' interests first, right?
Mozilla treat their browser as the product, and therefore exploit their customers as 'just the disposable fuel' rather than putting the customers' interests first, right?
No pleasing some people.
No, they just make a disappointing number of idiotic decisions. Hanlon's razor.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:15PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday December 18 2017, @03:59AM (1 child)
Why do you assume they are not also evil?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @04:33PM
There are different types of evil in the world.
pick the ones that best suit you.
i can't just create a browser, but I can run old ones. sometimes clinging to the past doesn't work in the present. thus i pick the evils that can work for me, even if I don't like the fact I must do so.
the alternative is to not use the internet in a modernized fashion. i didn't give up electricity simply because I don't like coal ash, but I can at least try to reduce the impact of my actions... likewise, not supporting mozilla google or MS at least reduces their impact on me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @09:05AM
You know who pays Mozilla for all this crap?
Evil Google.
For a while, it was Yahoo (powered by Bing), but they are back to being paid by Google.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:05PM
ftfy
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Justin Case on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:24PM (23 children)
Maybe this tone-deaf misadventure will help people understand that installing -- or updating -- software carries risks.
Whoever writes the code you run controls your digital life.
So modifying your trusted code base should be done rarely, and with care.
Back when professionals ran things, you didn't install code until it had been thoroughly tested on throwaway systems. Then, once you went live, you didn't change anything except in response to a specific bug fix or approved enhancement.
Then came Windows, and later the abomination of portable code (e.g. web sites with scripts) and everyone was trained to eat crap without a care. Security flaws became so ubiquitous that it became good practice to update your software frequently!!! This in turn developed the mentality that if something isn't constantly changing, it is probably dead or at least not cool.
Arrghhh! I need a few billion cretins to GTF off my lawn!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:37PM (17 children)
This is true. I'd love some sort of a software that would lock any program in current state, bypassing all the unambiguous auto-updaters. It get's beyond maddening trying to keep some programs from updating to add "new-features."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Justin Case on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:59PM (15 children)
Again, this
iswas a solved problem. We used to install as root and run without privileges, so nothing could modify your trusted computing base without deliberate steps to enable the change.But that became "too hard".
So enjoy the rapes, kiddies.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:49PM (14 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Informative) by unauthorized on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:15PM (2 children)
Actually, multilevel security is not a new concept, through it's widespread adoption is a fairly recent development. selinux is nearly 20 years old by now.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Monday December 18 2017, @10:59AM
and it is still unusable...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Monday December 18 2017, @11:45AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:30PM
Correct. But AppArmor is available for OpenSUSE and now Debian. Use it. It may save your day.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:41PM (9 children)
It's new to Windows, but it's been part of unix since forever. Root installs software and then users can run it but they have read-only permission on the executables. Each user's home directory has the read-write per-user configuration files. Any software that insists on individual users being able to do updates should be beaten with a bucket of wet squirrels.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:20PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:10AM
At least in that scenario the software you're deliberately installing should be trustworthy enough not to do that. That's still better than allowing any program installed at any time from tinkering with your deliberately installed component.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday December 18 2017, @01:35AM
The installer will be the standard system package manager. That doesn't mean untrusted packages should be installed. As for suid executables, some may actually be necessary for the system to function at all. Otherwise, it's wet squirrel time. All of that is quite distinct from the program updating itself whenever it feels like it without review.
Sure, in some cases the single user and admin may be the same person and may not be that experienced, but in others the admin might be someone more experienced. That applies in home situations as well.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 19 2017, @03:24PM
The average user has passwords saved in their browser and all their online IDs associated to a webmail account that is configured to stay logged in. Who needs root access when you can hijack someone's entire digital life with a single browser plugin?
https://xkcd.com/1200/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:53AM (2 children)
It's new to Windows
Security permissions has been baked in since Win NT 3.5. The coding standards on the other hand could be argued that they should be better. One of the NTs selling points was that it was DoD approved. That was before people starting punching holes through the network protocols they hung off the TCP ports (which was a clone of Novel).
NO one set it up the permissions correctly. I mean no one. Not even MS default setup did it much until 2000. The security permission stack in NT is actually pretty powerful. The posix style permission stack is simplistic by comparison. With many flags doing quadruple duty for different things. The NT permission stack is fairly fine grained. Which in many ways makes it harder and oddly enough more confusing to use. When I first learned about it I was like what the fuck is MS doing. This should be setup this way out of the box with some nice reading for every admin to do so they know about it.
Easiest way to 'secure' most windows computers? Install it. Have 1 admin user that install things. Then run everything else under standard user accounts. With each system process running in its own set of accounts. Pretty much the same way most unix boxes work.
The process sandboxing is new. But at this point is more of a process compile option than a configuration option (which it should be).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @08:45AM (1 child)
And that's exactly what made Windows so insecure.
Yes, it can be secured very tightly, but you need to be Dave Cutler to understand it. Meanwhile, Unix permissions are so simple that they can be understood by anyone capable of handling a root password without nuking the entire system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 19 2017, @01:51AM
You can effectively mimic the posix style of permissions if you want in NT (they had to, to put in the OS/2 and posix subsystems). The permission system is much more powerful. The posix system is very powerful but has some creaky edge cases. I can effectively ban a particular user from seeing something even if they are in the right groups and permissions. Something a bit tougher to do in posix. NT has decent list of permissions both positive and negative. The ACL style is much more powerful. For 99% of everything both work very effectively in their default configurations. But get outside of those and NT's system is a better one.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday December 18 2017, @11:49AM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday December 18 2017, @08:40PM
The data files remain a problem, though selinux and other MAC systems can help a lot there. There is an advantage to software not being able to modify itself, it's far from useless. End of the day, if software can modify itself (possibly as a result of a security flaw, it's game over. Part of your data will necessarily be accessible to some of the software you run. No security system can prevent that and leave you with a usable system
A file system that supports snapshotting can at least help you to recover if something goes wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @03:57PM
Use a VM with a rollback point and always start from the rollback point.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:47PM (2 children)
Mmm... given that, before Windows [wikipedia.org], the computers were either gaming mini-consoles ** or large mainframe irons, I wonder what do you mean by a throw-away computer.
---
** The ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 kind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:23PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:42AM
No no no he wants to blame Bill Gates for what is going on. /sarc Missing the whole point. This shit goes on in open source too.
Most of our infrastructure is run by a small handful of people who can if they like do some pretty nasty things. One project I use (open source) just dropped ads into their project. He is doing it to pay the bills because he can not get a job. But guess what no one forked and no one really cared. I went out of my way to remove the ad system. It was the typical ad network dreck (your computer may be infected click here, install chrome today, etc etc etc). He did not mean to put a virus back door mechanism into his code but he did. I had very little control over it until I audited the code and removed it. Yet I up until that point basically trusted him. Now that trust is gone. Now I have to continuously audit his code. I have better things to do and my own projects to work on. I also have the luxury of doing so, as I have the skills to do it. Yet most people do not and would just have to deal with it. Open source or not.
Windows was what it was because we as an industry basically made them the defacto standard. MS most certainly had shenanigans going on at the time. Yet no one really could compete on their prices at their scale. The thing worked 'good enough' and most importantly didnt cost stupid amounts of money. I remember calling up IBM to find out what they wanted for a TCP/IP stack for OS/2. They wanted 20,000 dollars in 1993 for a single install. MS inside outed the whole business stack with its cheap prices and 'good enough' software with decent backward compatibility. I could in 1995 outfit a productive dev for less than 3k. That was hardware and full regiment of software on a MS box, plus 2-3k more if there was some specialized software needed. The same thing on pretty much any other platform of the time started around 20k. MS missed this lesson and this is why open source ate their lunch in the past few years.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Monday December 18 2017, @04:01AM
The BSDs seem to be the last bastion of sanity and respect for the user.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 21 2017, @07:22AM
This certainly is correct and what other kind of life is there today?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @04:26PM (15 children)
You'll never see the Pale Moon browser people do stupid shit like this. Pale Moon: What Firefox is SUPPOSED to be.
Fuck Mozilla.
(Score: 1, Informative) by dwilson on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:22PM (8 children)
You also won't see Pale Moon compile and run reliably with >=gcc-5
(Disclaimer: I actually had very good luck with gcc5, absolutely no luck with gcc6. ymmv)
It's been an ongoing problem for years, but the developers haven't given it much of a priority. They prefer people use their supplied binary builds.
I futzed with it off and on for three days, and then shrugged and compiled chromium instead. Life goes on.
Maybe not to that degree. But stupid shit? Oh yes you will. [palemoon.org]
- D
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:30PM (1 child)
>You also won't see Pale Moon compile and run reliably with >=gcc-5
using Pale Moon compiled with gcc 6.3.0 for monthes. zero crashes. what am i doing wrong? (except not buying your lies, of course)
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:19AM
Very good! You've countered one instance of personally-experienced-behaviour with another! Well done, clearly I'm lying.
...or software on a modern personal computer is bloody complicated, and doesn't always provide the same result from the same input, due to the literally thousands of variables that can differ from one users computer to another's.
...why am I replying to an AC.
- D
(Score: 3, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:48PM (3 children)
That has NOT been my experience for sure. On my Gentoo system (on a rather archaic x86 system actually) I just compiled the most recent stable palemoon (27.6.2) from this overlay [github.com] with gcc 6.4.0. Took a while but went without a hitch and works perfectly.
On that whole thing with the AdNauseam extension, while I tend to agree they shouldn't have blocked it, I think the whole thing was way overblown.
I'll sure take it over all other available options at the moment especially the self-important asshats in charge of firefox now.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:16AM (2 children)
I'm also on a Gentoo system. I upgraded to GCC 6.4.0 from 5.whateveritwas when it was marked stable, and I use(d) the same overlay for Pale Moon.
Compiled fine, but segfaults on startup, roughly 7 times out of 10.
Like I said, your mileage may vary. I'm glad it works for you, and sad it doesn't for me. What more do you want?
- D
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:04PM (1 child)
Point taken. I shouldn't have implied you were somehow wrong. Really does suck that that's happening. As I said for me this is x86. Also note that I've overridden the default behavior of the new 17.0 profile so as to not use pie for gcc 6.4 (which is how it defaulted in the 13.0 profile). I suppose that could be a factor.
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Sunday December 31 2017, @09:01PM
That is probably exactly the reason. I'm on an AMD64 system, and using a hardened profile as well. It's quite possible that GCC's pie stuff changed a bit between 5.4 and 6.4.
If chromium ever irks me enough, I may give that solution a try.
- D
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:27PM (1 child)
If that's the worst thing you can think of about the browser, you should probably like it more than any other software ever.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by dwilson on Tuesday December 19 2017, @12:21AM
I'm unhappy that the creator enforced what was essentially a political decision on his userbase. Overridable or no, that's not cool.
It also didn't stop me from using the software, as I had never heard of that specific addon, never used it, and probably never will. But as the length of the linked forum thread shows, there were a significant number of people that took issue with the decision.
Related: Why do you assume I think badly of the browser? I love Pale Moon. It's the best Mozilla-derived browser out there, hands down.
- D
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:10PM (3 children)
I'm sure people said the same thing about the original Mozilla, the current one has different people running it now.
Give Pale Moon 15+ years and I bet they will be doing stupid stuff like this as well. And people will be talking about how you'll never see $NEW_BROWSER people do stupid shit like this. $NEW_BROWSER, what Pale Moon was supposed to be.
Things change. Not always for the better.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:38PM (2 children)
Mozilla has been run this way since it was still Netscape! Mozilla would have died within the first four years if it wasn't for the initial aol funding, followed by google (I forget if that was before or after phoenix/firefox), and only has survived as long as it did, not due to its own competence, but due to the competence of the guy who was pissed off by how bloated the Mozilla/Netscape suite was, and chose to write a gtk wrapper around the bare gecko engine, initially with almost no preferences, then with the session restore feature because of how crash prone it was, finally becoming a solid browser on its own before Mozilla offered him a job, made him a flunky under someone else as the project manager, ignored all the suggestions/patches from non-Mozilla devs, kicked the original guy off the team, then redid the interface using XUL, only minus all the non-browser components, which, combined with jit and some other features they didn't have years earlier made it finally a tolerable browser base that could compete against the bloated and buggy ie5/6 which microsoft had been resting on its laurels about for the past few years, leading to Firefox outpacing it, becoming popular with average people and getting Mozilla even larger sums of money, first from Google until chrome ate enough marketshare, then from yahoo in the most ridiculous deal of the century.
I really wish Mozilla hadn't gotten that windfall from Yahoo, because it might have lead to the tightening of belts needed to right the Mozilla ship. But instead I think forking with a new foundation is the only chance of making things right.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @12:22AM
It happened when they went through their SJW purge.
Those who can not tolerate other ideas of other people are going to be blind to bad ideas. Especially when those bad ideas are their own.
Watch for the same things to happen to google. They will both be around for a long time. They have the money to do it. But neither can tolerate the idea that someone disagrees with them.
To any mozilla guys reading here is a message. If you are trying to push privacy and control the last thing you want to do is put in extra things that the end user has no clue what it is. Then act all shocked when someone says 'what the hell is this shit'. It may be 100% benign but it shows a lack of concern about your core mission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @04:00PM
I wonder why people say ie5/6 were bloated. They were more responsive than netscape, by far on a decent machine. The only thing that can really be said about them was that they had utterly moronic default settings which rendered them a hotbed for driveby malware installs.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:44PM (1 child)
They put spaces in directory names, a bigger sin in my book. They may have a place in the windows world but they really aren't unix natives. Not going to start having to use print0 everywhere just because of one browser pusher.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Monday December 18 2017, @05:23AM
Put put slashes in my directory names.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:06PM (5 children)
https://github.com/mozilla/addon-wr [github.com]
Yeah, I know, Godzilla - I mean, Mozilla screwed the pooch. Still, I want to see what the fuss is about. I like Mr. Robot, it's cooler than most of the inane bullshit that the entertainment world has offered recently. So, I want to try the add-on and see if it's worth messing with.
And, it appears that I have to actually *install* Firefox. I have Pale Moon, Ice Weasel, and Cyber Fox, but don't have Mozilla's actual Firefox on my system. Ho-hum - apt-get install firefox -
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:14PM (2 children)
Mozilla are homos, Kikes, and Beaners; and they are not to be trusted.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:17PM
We trust Ethanol-fueled despite being a homo, a kike, and a beaner.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:24PM
Not reversing this one. It qualifies pretty soundly as pointless noise. Where's the creativity of trolling we've come to expect out of you, EF? You not get enough sleep last night or something?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:18PM
If modzilla left it to their users to install the plugin for themselves instead of "helpfully" and cryptically installing it during an update (even if it's turned off by default) then I'm sure nobody would have had any problems with the plugin either.
I'd consider it more of a breach of trust than anything however. When I update a program I expect that program to be updated. Not have it download a bunch of advertising.
(Score: 1) by petecox on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:22PM
I'm using Ubuntu with no robot extension.
I guess it's only the direct download and not if you build from source.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Crash on Sunday December 17 2017, @05:27PM (9 children)
The Mr.Robot addon is only installed if you've opted into Pioneer Telemetry (which I have), and is only activated if you purposely enable it (which I haven't).
Some things to actually be "pissed" about:
-- The death of Opera in 2013 and being "forced to use Firefox in general"
-- The time wasted getting Aurora configured because Opera devs are fucking wankers.
-- The time wasted fucking around with Firefox x64/Nightly and trying to track down Addon conflicts.
-- The time wasted getting Firefox 57 re-configured because "Webextensions"
-- The stupidification of software.
-- The utter dreck that is mobile.
Almost no-one knew about this nothing-burger until we saw the news in various places.
The same people that will bitch about Firefox's UI and Australis will raise their voice on this one. Tired of hearing from them.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:55PM (5 children)
Hi Friend. Would you like to try Pocket? Sure you would. That's why we installed it. Bye.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:01PM
"I-i-it's a f-f-feature!"
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Funny) by coolgopher on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:02PM
It looks like you're not installing enough add-ons. Would you like help with that?</clippy>
(Score: 4, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Monday December 18 2017, @12:03AM (1 child)
Everybody has to make a living. Some are builders. Some work in factories. Some pick vegetables. Some mine coal. Some rent out their vaginas. And some sell cyber.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Monday December 18 2017, @06:03PM
And some sell out their country.
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 1) by Crash on Monday December 18 2017, @04:49PM
It's now owned by Firefox, and I did try it. If it actually did what it claims it wouldn't completely suck.
Instead it's a "cloudy-opera-speed-dial-clone" that claims to save the page, but all it saves is a paragraph of text and a thumbnail.
Fucking Useless.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @07:24PM (2 children)
I said "Fuck the snowflakes!" Then, I went out and fucked them. Now my dick is wet and cold. Damned snowflakes.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 17 2017, @09:20PM (1 child)
And that is why you shouldn't eat yellow snow. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:43PM
Red Pillar trails in the snow. Read Jack London's "To Build a Fire". Maybe someone could update? "To Build a Fire-fox". And then you die, in the cold, even the dog runs away. But really, freezing is not the worst way to go. You just kind of go to sleep, and then become crystalline.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday December 17 2017, @06:00PM (2 children)
Thank you for explaining what "Mr. Robot" is, now a few shovels of articles from the last couple of years makes sense - and can be safely ignored and phased out of my memory.
Seriously, I had no idea what Mr Robot was until that, and due to all the marketing with just using a weird phrase I have no intention of searching for new phrases tossed at random at newssites.
So - again, Thank you.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:05PM
You're welcome beep boop
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Monday December 18 2017, @05:04PM
I thought the old Commodore 64 platformer was making a comeback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNK3ph4ZXfE [youtube.com]
(Especially since my first exposure was when one of their ARGs was based around a C64-themed website or Flash file or something and someone asked me to look at this "Mr. Robot Commodore program" because several people were trying to figure it out.)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 17 2017, @10:51PM (3 children)
This sounds like a non-issue. Very much similar to the annual handful of people that freak out when the VLC traffic cone wears a Santa hat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @11:54PM
Some see a security hole combined with unauthorized installation (proof of concept) other see it as jolly good fun and great social experience.
One of these groups has things of value they like to preserve, the others loose everything so often they just don't care any more, if the ever had something work maintaining in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @07:16AM
i didn't even realize they did that, but now that i know...
OMFGWTFBBQ!?!?!?!
*runs around house naked in protest*
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @08:55AM
Unauthorized software getting installed without the users permission sounds like a non-issue to you? I don't know where you are from, but here on Earth, we usually label software like that "malware".
(Score: 1) by Zal42 on Monday December 18 2017, @04:56PM (1 child)
This has pretty much confirmed what has already seemed to be the trend with many of Firefox's recent changes (making telemetry opt-out, etc.)
The old Mozilla ethic with regard to Firefox is... well, not dead, exactly, but certainly dangerously ill. The days when Mozilla and Firefox could be seen unambiguously as good guys looking out for us are over and done. Now we have to be cautious about them, just as we have to be cautious about the entities they keep claiming they're against.
I'm not pissed, I'm saddened to see an outfit that used to be a clear ally fall so far.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 18 2017, @05:30PM
Mozilla is currently being ran by marketers that writes blog post about them "using Chrome" as their default browser.