Hacker News Reader

Comment by a5aAqU | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the anger about the VPN. I think it's a good idea. Reader mode is useful, especially if you block a lot of CSS and JavaScript by default with uMatrix.

I don't know why people use DOH anyway. It bypasses your hosts file, so you can't block things as easily.

View on HN

Fully agree with reader mode, it's an integral part of the browser. VPN not so much IMO.

Many people wouldn't otherwise sign up for a VPN, and there are a lot of shady VPNs out there. Mozilla can use the feature to help reduce dependence on a company that has been trying to destroy them for years (Google), and help non-tech people get set up with a VPN.

Google is the largest financial supporters in Firefox, they buy Firefox search bar. If they wanted to destroy Firefox, they’d already do it by simply cutting that revenue stream.

They can't do it like that directly, but they have been undercutting Firefox for years. For a long time when you searched Google from Firefox it would tell you to download Chrome.

> They can't do it like that directly

Why?

Or some other search engine would become their revenue stream, like when Yahoo was the default search. Without Google bidding their revenue would likely drop, but it wouldn't disappear.

True. But revenue would be significantly smaller (other engines cannot afford pay high per click, and lack of competition drives the price per click down), and revenue is already barely enough to cover Mozilla needs (see recent staff cuts).

They are the amd to my intel, their inability to overthrow me, completes monopoly-me.

There's enough Chrome alternatives to be considered "amd to my intel": Chrome based browsers like Brave, and Safari.

> Reader mode

Pretty sure they meant Pocket when referring to a “bookmark reader”.

Pocket lacks some important features I want it to have so I decided negative when considering a paid subscription. Nevertheless I still like it and am glad it exists. It (pocket-based home page) also is my secondary major source of news about the world and curious facts (HN being the primary).

I’m sure it is useful to some people, heck I used it for a year or two before Mozilla had anything to do with it. That said I fail to see any reason Firefox should acquire it and make it first party. Might as well acquire a webmail, a feed aggregator and a video host while they were at it.

> I fail to see any reason Firefox should acquire it

Because it was profitable perhaps? Why not acquire a relevant profitable business (many already like) just for sake of profits? And pre-installing it by default seems the next obvious step to make it even more profitable.

> Might as well acquire a webmail, a feed aggregator and a video host while they were at it.

It's way harder to make these profitable without too much investment and without using severe user-annoying techniques.

Nevertheless it's already been suggested here a number of times that Mozilla should perhaps also re-invent e-mail.

It literally takes only two clicks to remove Pocket from the toolbar. People need to stop complaining about little things like that.

It nags me all the time when opening a new container. I couldn't care less if it was a feature that I had to click away once, but it is really pushing and in your face.

So people should push Mozilla to add an about:config flag to turn it off, if it doesn't already exist. The solution is much simpler than demanding that Mozilla completely stop trying to find a way to reduce dependence on Google.

One thing though, most of these new features are mitigations of annoyances (popups, crazy formatting, too much js, lack of privacy). It's odd how devs are spending time to fight against something rather than the opposite.

>It bypasses your hosts file

It doesn't bypass my hosts file... I have a couple of locally hosted websites that I have rules in /etc/hosts for, and Firefox resolves them correctly even with DOH enabled.

It might be falling back to hosts for them or if they're ending with .local or .home, it's hitting hosts file first for them.

It's not, Firefox will still check your hosts file to see if it can resolve that way. DoH is used only if using a local-only resolver doesn't work to my knowledge. Otherwise stuff like SMBIOS, Avahi/ZC or mDNS would break too.

You can locally host .com aswell

Yes, but I'm talking about this: https://serverfault.com/a/937808

When DOH was first enabled, it bypassed all the blocked domains my hosts file (Ubuntu). I don't know if it has changed.

> I don't know why people use DOH anyway.

To make it slightly less visible what websites do you visit.

To bypass DNS-based censoring some ISPs deploy as some governments require them.

That's what the VPN is for. People keep saying that they want to donate money to Mozilla. You can sign up for Firefox Private Network or Mozilla VPN for much better results than DOH, and give them a little money at the same time.

https://fpn.firefox.com/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com