I seem to recall trying Firefox on HaikuOS circa ~2011, though searching around now it seems it was based on an outdated version at the time. Kudos for a modern port project.
2,552 karma · joined November 8, 2013
So could be their account system is a bit primitive in that regard (given that official replies for this news makes it sound like they're utilizing the existing system for restoring content to new usernames, rather than reverting directly via backups). I don't doubt there will be some official clarification though.
Tbh as a consumer I'd rather a company not just give self-appraisals of security in the form of overt marketing lines but let pen tests, post-mortem analyses and such speak to their robustness/lessons they've learned. Marketing is virtually always that security is top notch regardless of realities so it's hard not to be skeptical of ordinary spiels.
It's like third-party VPN services. It's all well and good to market security but when they get breached/raided/etc and it turns out they don't hold up to the claims then it just increases one's cynicism. At least those like Mullvad from everything I've seen match their statements (no affiliation, nor do I even use it, just useful for this example).
Ed Catmull of Pixar once brought up in a talk, referring to cliched lines like "Story is the most important thing" despite various productions' output being mediocre in that regard, that once an important idea can be encapsulated into a concise statement that the statement per se can be used without fear of changing behavior. Could be said for a lot of marketing.
A separate use case is when there's a free download that's email-gated, rather than account-gated. Examples would be Gumroad, certain 3D print platforms and such. I'd rather not wind up having my email just be added to some marketing list.
Looking at Adobe multiple versions have phased out online activation support over the years, with a not uncommon complaint being trouble installing and using purchases subsequently. As with anything tied to server checks one has to trust it will either continue working or workarounds be provided.
IIRC Clip Studio Paint switched their activation method in the last few years as well.
While the programs from this thread (at least those I'm familiar with) score results by relevancy.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20240208004519im_/https://ladybi...
The implication by users who frequently bring this up is that there's some unique influence on Mozilla. Yet if we're going by reminders Mozilla had a deal with Yahoo for three years in-between for it to instead be the default search engine and they were still paying hundreds of millions for the privilege (it's been estimated they were even paying $100m more than Google at the time, though by 2017 Mozilla reportedly felt they should have been making more and ended the deal prematurely after Yahoo was bought by Verizon).
Ie: I haven't seen evidence it's been unique partnership with Google in that regard. If there are more concrete examples of influence though I'd be interested (and it has to be understood I'm not a Google apologist either, I just seek more accurate critique as it's more robust).
However it's easy to preserve the date created timestamp during a copy using the native Robocopy utility, among many other methods. It's simply treated as date modified is: modifiable and arbitrary.
This makes restoring from backups sensible. Have a drive that has died? Can do a file-based restore without the need for images and preserve such metadata. Individual file unexpectedly deleted? Restore it and regain the timestamps. The benefit is one has a transferable reference for when files were originally made, even if they lack internal metadata that stores this (such as eg: EXIF for images).
Under Linux, even with its now kernel-based NTFS support, it just adds NTFS-specific data like date creation timestamps as peripheral extended attributes, which Linux file managers broadly don't expose or handle well. While native filesystems like EXT4 which support creation time are impractically limited to unmodifiable date creation timestamps based on their first creation on that particular instance of the filesystem, without hacky and fragile workarounds.
That is despite `touch` being ubiquitous on Linux for modifying date modified timestamps (showing that in practical terms, it's considered similarly arbitrary metadata) which from what I've seen Linux users appear to have no disagreements with about its utility.
As a Windows user who would like to migrate to Linux this aspect makes it frustratingly a non-starter, as even if one uses SMB to access the files (adding its own layer for such compatible metadata, regardless of the underlying filesystem) Linux file managers still don't handle well extended attributes so management for such files under Linux isn't at parity.
While even now with the filesystems that support them they're tied to that instance of the filesystem (ie: non-modifiable, unlike Windows), which has always puzzled me given the need to variously restore from backups (or just have an identical copy in a destination) where one would desire such info*.
* When I last looked into this I saw some quite creative workarounds, such as a script loop where for each file to be copied it changed the system clock to the date of the timestamp, so it was recreated in the destination.
These were sealed shut onto the test equipment using wax (ie: perfect fitment, so best case scenario). They found a much higher penetration through the materials per se for cloth coverings and procedure masks.
> Particle penetration through the surgical mask ranged from 2% to 17%. Procedure masks were most variable and ranged from 1% to 85%
> For the six cloth face coverings, the submicron particle penetration ranged from 24% to 92%. For the two types of fabric from cotton t-shirts, submicron particle penetration ranged from 45% to 91%. Although this sample size was small, these penetration percentages for the cloth face coverings and fabric from cotton t-shirts are comparable to the 40% to 90% penetration found by previous NIOSH testing of cloth face coverings and fabrics.
For the respirators with exhalation valves their finding was the particle penetration was <1% to 55% without any additional mitigation and under 5% when using the ECG pad mitigation strategy tested. Relevant since a common earlier critique (perhaps assumption) of valved respirators was they weren't as decent as even common masks for non-wearers.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2021-107/pdfs/2021-107.pdf
Eg: was reading recently in WSJ how various insurers are using satellite and drone imagery of customer's roof conditions and using it to deny them coverage. However this has been abused where even brand new roofs have been marked as bad even despite evidence provided and push-back. The insurers were collecting imagery and making decisions but not providing evidence on their end. According to someone working for an insurer they're expecting soon to take images daily for such purposes.
Here various incorrectly affected parties have done nothing illegal/bad/wrong but they're losing control and insight into processes that are affecting them in real ways. These aspects are part of what Daniel Solove outlined in their privacy taxonomy, where they broke down privacy into different things that comprise it (where information collection is distinguished from processing, etc).
> much of the data gathered in computer databases is not particularly sensitive [...] Frequently, though not always, people’s activities would not be inhibited if others knew this information. I suggested a different metaphor to capture the problems – Franz Kafka’s The Trial, which depicts a bureaucracy with inscrutable purposes that uses people’s information to make important decisions about them, yet denies the people the ability to participate in how their information is used.
About 10 years ago I searched and found a webarchive to MHTML converter from someone's small site. I recall there was one caveat, something like it didn't include the date in the metadata of the output MHTML.
Sorry I don't have the link on-hand, it'd be on the HDD I pulled from my old Macbook.
Edit: found an alternative script from my notes: https://blog.iefdev.se/2016/01/converting-webarchive-to-mht/
Edit 2: pretty sure this is the original converter, since I noted a caveat that it outputs the timestamp of the conversion not the time the file was originally saved (the script above handles this correctly otoh). https://langui.net/webarchive-to-mht/
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/voaicx/10_error_ra...
I'm not familiar with indexability outside Mastodon instances, though can't really recall coming across them naturally in search.
[1] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/elasticsearch/
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/yv1cl4/global_sea...
Edit: updated with links from my prior research.
The quite liberal free file attachment limits (25MB each), ease of communication and ironically the fact Discord is closed off in nature means it's quite attractive for people to more easily share things that would require a separate file host normally (it's an almost universal experience that forums usually have meager attachment caps).
I'd be quite interested in an article that understands Discord's benefits and use cases and then approaches a critique and alternative solutions to address it in a more open web friendly way.
I still no longer use Firefox as a main desktop browser due to the features I loved no longer being possible and never getting equivalents, despite using Firefox as a mobile browser and every other day on desktop for other purposes.
However due to the Manifest v2 phase out some of the more useful extensibility on the Chromium side is being removed (outside of say backporting like Brave but we'll see how long that will last), so one may have to consider alternatives if need be.
Honestly until actually looking at it earlier this year I assumed the Lite version was just a somewhat pared down version but people should really look at the screenshots[1]. It's painfully mocking of the change with an intentionally kids-drawing-like UI and seemingly zero configurable settings outside of three sliders.
Edit: typos
It's interesting since for those familiar with the claims of SpinRite and how 'it'll keep working as long as it takes to read a bad sector' (a key part of its promotion) ddrescue can do the same thing (and resume where it left off) but unlike SpinRite it's simultaneously making an image of the drive as it does so.
Mp3Tag has a timestamp preservation setting. There's also the ability to run an external script/program on all selected files (via the Tools sub-menu of the context menu) or by configuring File>Export with a script.
For those wanting to preserve original timestamps I'd suggest storing them into custom tags in the files themselves as a backup. Mp3Tag can be set up to do this automatically using an Action (its scripting syntax). That way one can always restore them back using a script.
I use Fennec, which afaict is Android only. It's my understanding it removed various Mozilla analytics though some is said to remain. It's compiled independently from source by F-Droid, which supports reproducible builds.
Primary reasons I use it is for enabling about:config editing out of the box and third party addons (either Mozilla-approved ones like uBlock Origin or any arbitrary addons so long as they're in an addon 'collection', following the same procedure like Firefox Nightly until Mozilla fulfils their goal of easier addon support).
The context of the news was a security researcher conducting an audit of the app. If DDG were, as the GP claimed, performing tracking on behalf of MS then it would be more concerning since there is a difference between performing tracking on behalf of a third-party company and merely excluding them from being blocked via a content blocker that most mobile browsers lack anyway.
A mobile app has much more freedom to do what it likes so if this was the worst that occurred in an audit I'm not of the opinion this mark against them is enough to change my use of them. Many things carry some compromise so one has to weigh if an alternative is better. Use of Firefox by default has Mozilla tracking (hence why some mobile forks exists, including one I use), analytics for sponsored links, non-disableable domain name auto-completion by partners, while use of Kagi search is directly tied to an IRL identity via payment.
For me, I'm comfortable using uBlock Origin on both Desktop and Mobile (via a Firefox fork) unless more egregious facts present themselves.
Or put another way, if their browser had no content blocker (like the stock browsers of any mobile OS), their browser would be behaving like all the others. The scrutiny came from the conspicuous exclusion, given their arrangement with Bing (much like the controversy of Adblock Plus many years ago).