j_s

Battle-tested multiplatform support (and thus reliability) is definitely a key selling point. This is further reinforced by its impressively extensive test suite.

Long ago I lost my first Android smartphone's SMS database since they used to delete + re-create even barely corrupted databases, but by now most of the kinks have been worked out.

Back in the dark ages as everyone upgraded from 32-bit to 64-bit environments, shipping two versions of native dependencies caused extra hassle. However, this may not be much of an issue these days.

Is it possible to pre-allocate a fixed-size file with sqlite to then use as a local cache evicting old data? Supporting this may offer a chance to differentiate a bit.

Closest I could find was a workaround that is probably close enough (disable auto_vacuum and delete a giant blob) https://stackoverflow.com/a/4821318.

I appreciate your willingness to share your perspective here. The problem is that marketing/PR is a profession dedicated to finding whatever just-barely-technically-true weasel wording is required to make what they're getting paid for sound at least "ok" and preferrably "great!"

If you have time (definitely not expected) I would like to hear more specifics regarding this aspect of your statement:

> We don't do cross-domain tracking, or aggregate behavioral information across customers

vs. https://heapanalytics.com/terms

> We may also use data in an aggregated form for our own purposes

Thanks! I am looking to attach just an older monochrome monitor to a current-day PC rather than a full-blown terminal. I was unable to find any obvious solutions with a quick search.

I believe the constraints of the older technology may offer some advantages like reducing eye strain, nostalgia (as you mentioned), and maybe even making the interface obtuse enough to reduce my interest in staying online. Your suggestion sounds doable today and would accomplish my intended goal.

When I said course-correct I didn't mean complete reversal, it's usually been just enough to satiate temporary outrage in early-adopter/tech circles before it goes mainstream.

Thanks for taking the time to document the details of this particular situation which I've never heard about before. I wonder how many other mildly upsetting (?? - per "nonplussed at best") decisions are currently accumulating under the radar. Each time another pops up I'm amazed at how much Mozilla has successfully swept under the rug.

The two I knew of are including Paper by default for some time (after taking heat for this, then acquiring it a year later... though I didn't see it when I just checked) and sticking with opt-_out_ for Google Analytics on the add-ins page. After digging recently thanks to the Mr. Robot stuff I discovered the opt-out Cliqz add-on for Germany and now your anecdote.

Thanks, I hadn't heard about this. Per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1406647 where Firefox is tying in with Cliqz:

> Cliqz is a well-known Adware from Germany[1] and it was a plague

Not sure what data Ghostery is collecting now, or how opt-in vs. opt-out has changed (if at all), but it looks like based on the reputation of the new owners I will no longer be using it.

Edit: the small HN discussion seems to cover this a bit more evenhandedly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13652126

It looks like it collects payment info via Paypal but it does leak personal info (name, address, email) via HTTP.

Are there any hardware options connecting old monochrome screens (such as MDA or Hercules) via modern technologies like USB?

& MongoDB

> sold and donated [emphasis added]

Wild guess: nothing.

Project Common Voice https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14794654

No doubt Google Maps is A/B testing towards maximizing their key metrics; the decline in usability is a reflection of how poorly this aligns with the best interests of the end users!

> For me, using Firefox is the personal conscious choice you refer to.

Firefox marketing is effective but to be clear they have begun changing direction, pursuing a more practical "attracting the masses" approach (a la Signal) rather than paranoid/hyper-vigilant/engineer-style idealism (something some misinterpret Firefox marketing as still claiming), and as a result Firefox has been forced to course-correct several times due to public outcry.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144

A recent eye-opener for me personally was discovering telemetry's switch from opt-in to opt-out as of September.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#firefox-by-de... (3 months ago) vs. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Telemetry/FAQ#Is_Telemetry_enabled_... (3 years ago)

Most recently: November Workshop: Running the Pi-hole Network-wide Ad-blocker, and more | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15608052

Related discussions (click the 'comments' links): https://hn.algolia.com/?query=netguard&sort=byDate&type=comm...

Yes, since new ToS have always been retroactively applied to all previously collected data they offer zero privacy protection over the long term.

Google Has Dropped Ban on Personally Identifiable Web Tracking | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12760003 (October 2016)

An effective opt-out may help most of the vigilant, but it is in the best interest of those changing the ToS to keep it as confusing/hush-hush as possible.

(Reply after actually double-checking, also heavily edited)

I just went to getfirefox.com, ran the download, and this URL was displayed within tab 2 next to the 'Welcome to Firefox' tab (unfortunately I didn't record which tab was given initial focus) when Firefox started for the first time:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/#firefox-by-de...

Effective September 28, 2017 [...] Firefox by default shares [...] Interaction data [...] Technical data

Since the page you linked was "Last edited 3 years ago" I'm going to specifically contradict what you re-emphasized as fact by stating: telemetry, the feature, has been changed to currently (Sep 2017-present [as of Dec 2017]) be _opt-out_, unless the development of ancient feature capital-T Telemetry somehow still exists separately from contemporary lowercase-t telemetry (per this link also referencing the telemetry documentation).

This conversation/investigation/out-of-date documentation reinforces what I see as a very recent trend where Mozilla/Firefox is heading in the wrong direction, basically spending/burning the political capital/trust they've earned while (perhaps unintentionally) deceiving even their most technically adept defenders. I would love to investigate how this approach took root; how it was finally given the official green light; and how its ongoing escalation has affected rank-and-file Mozilla developers, supporters, and the various categories of users. In my opinion, the "spirit of Mozilla" is changing ever so slightly (eerily similar to Google's pro-marketing turn away from "don't be evil" culminating in merging of all collected data). My biggest beef with this is that Mozilla has pushed its public branding further laying claim to protecting privacy, but this could be tempered somewhat with a comparison to Signal's inclination toward practicality rather than perfection.

I would be interested to hear how you feel after doubling down on this, since it appears to have indeed changed from opt-out to opt-in without your knowledge. Further, if you did not originally opt-in on install long ago I would be curious to hear what the current value of the setting is now. (Was a previous non-opt-in "default" updated to the new non-opt-out "default" at any point? I hope not!) It goes without saying that you should feel no obligation to invest the time to respond, especially to these last unnecessarily detailed and specific interests.

(Original reply, heavily edited)

My intention was to warn that Mozilla's use of the term 'Telemetry' as a feature does not cover all of their data collection, and to point to official examples demonstrating the mindset of the Mozilla developers for a higher-level perspective. As you have repeated, the one (primary) aspect of of Firefox's data collection that you mentioned (dubbed Telemetry, which I initially confused in context of OP's comment as intending to include all data collection) is documented on your link as opt-in. Props for that, but there are other aspects. (I am also going to verify it must indeed be enabled manually during a default install.)

Per OP: The last thing I want is my browser to 'phone home' when it feels like it.

I may be wrong, but my understading is that "Google Analytics in the add-on settings" has been improved only to _opt-out_ rather than being required in the past.

Also, per their website SHIELD Studies seem to have a global opt-in followed by a per-study opt-in/out setting. Unfortunately the wording seems a bit wishy-washy and there are anecdotes on this discussion claiming this specific "study"/marketing opportunity did install and run something (at the very least: to skip enabling itself) without purposeful opt-in. There is a lot of confusion here. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/shield

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956568

>Manishearth: What was enabled was a small piece of code[1] that would enable the full addon when a pref was flipped

(Note: the Github link 404's since the add-on has been updated after this story broke.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15958466

>tosssh: Shield Studies are opt-out by default

Hour of Code includes options that use JavaScript and Python (and a handful of less mainstream options). If you are allowed to choose, you can use the filter on the side to select 'Language: Typing'.

Hour of Code Activities | https://code.org/learn

My pet peeve is progress bars that increment based on the units of work, rather than extrapolating to an estimated time remaining. When there is no real correlation between how long different segments of the progress bar will take to complete, it basically becomes useless to me.

My general perception is that most commercial software is putting in the effort to calculate time remaining these days. Are there any open-source tools that help with this? It would be awesome to collect analytics during development (opt-in in production) and apply it to calculate more and more accurate time estimates.

Maybe an old CueCat could work as a cheap barcode scanner?

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=cuecat&_udhi=15

From the conclusion: cases where it performs well and poorly— both in traditional desktop environments but also in mobile and proxy scenarios not previously tested

Example: its benefits diminish or entirely disappear compared to unproxied TCP in low loss/latency cases, and when there is 1% loss. In the case of high delay links, QUIC still outperforms TCP [...]. Thus, proxies can help TCP to recover many of the benefits of QUIC, but primarily in lossy scenarios, and when the proxy is equidistant from the client and server

These discussions with responses from Mozilla employees demonstrate that hasn't always been the case (I'm not 100% sure the add-on settings tracking is opt-in at this point, it appears to have been fixed to follow the 'Do Not Track' setting) and show a bit more of the mindset of the company. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

"Firefox tracks users with Google Analytics in the add-on settings" | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14753546

kannanvijayan: we can't build a better browser without good information on how it's behaving in the wild

"Studying how Firefox can collect additional data in a privacy-preserving way" | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15071492

potch: negotiated a special contract with Google to only collect a subset of data and that that data is only used for statistical purposes

Thanks for another example, and the specifics of this one.

From what you've said it doesn't sound like anyone at Mozilla (specifically the Chief Marketing Officer representing the company) apologized for doing anything wrong. "letting down" comes closest for sure and may be enough for most.

Found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11379475

swanson: My hobby: role-playing how I would respond as the CEO if my company was getting skewered on HN. Here is my version!

Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3523763

abbasmehdi: Proper apologies have three parts: 1) What I did was wrong. 2) I’m sorry that I hurt you. 3) How do I make it better? It’s the third part that people tend to forget…. Apologize when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself.

(Couldn't find the exact YouTube timecode; https://teamrich.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/pausch-last-lectur... )

>anon808: The most import part of that apology formula is missing, actually meaning it. Also if the answer to #3 is obvious (ie stop doing what your apologizing for) then one shouldn't have to ask.

Thanks. Do you have time to expand on why this counts as a genuine apology to you (or not?).

Interesting to me that all it takes to count as an apology to some is the words 'we're sorry'.

I hope to find similar discussion(s) where an HN user practiced his hobby of rewriting corporate apologies. Also nice to have another example where initial response can be completely tone deaf with little consequence.

Thanks. Sounds like their apology feels genuine to you; appreciate the feedback.

I read some other news story on this today. Is there an actual apology yet? And if not, does it matter?

In my mind, no apology is better than a 'sorry you were upset' non-apology, but there are apologies that manage to seem genuine as well. As I write this I am reminded of the show 'The Orville's "apology tour"... I don't necessarily think an apology is needed or helpful.

Always interested in examples of corporate PR, whether negative, neutral-ish, or positive.

Edit: obviously I don't care enough(?) about the specifics of this instance... Hopefully it's also obvious that I appreciate the chance to evaluate the community's response to a favored company. Mozilla seems to be allowed quite a bit of leeway.

Not a dupe but this was linked on both of these discussions five days ago:

Ethernet over barbed wire | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15910263

ADSL over wet string | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15908107

Bitcoin Paper Wallets (2015) | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15302500