Bound on Earth

Swearing to god that most tech users online got the reading comprehension of a horny teenager. Or, as my German used to say in year 9, "all of you are stuck at the skills of a 12 year old".

I only wanted to set my theme to something static but this fucking porn blog radiates the same energy as this random Ubuntu Studio user on the Fediverse that saw me complaining about Arch not having properly tested a dev build of GRUB they claimed to be stable and accused me of being "too dumb for Arch".

Firefox doesn‘t need to track your damn browser habits to "improve loading speed and rendering of most-visited sites" or whatever they claim to be "improving", which, after years of using it myself, is a damn lie that makes all of my devices overheat whenever I use a non-customized Firefox to access obese websites that are NOT Facebook or Twitter/X but my fucking bank and my health insurance. It‘s even worse on mobile devices, where you can‘t even customize it or even add extensions. (Remember when Bonzi Buddy caused a huge outcry because of it being "spyware" users voluntarily downloaded? People aren‘t even trying to have a bare minimum of "privacy" anymore.)

I‘m teaching everything IT- and hardware-related myself and have given free tech support and a little tech insight to anybody asking for it (or just to scream into the void), simplifying stuff and whatnot without ever charging a buck or pushing anyone to use some specific soft- or hardware (minus M in one case but he’s just as privacy conscious as I am and agreed to it after I explained everything to him) but out of more than a hundred instances I‘ve received more insults, the wildest accusations (and even one doxx threat but I wasn‘t entirely innocent in this case) than a simple "thank you" or "hey, at least you tried". I did it because I like tech and knowing how shit works so I can share whatever I know with a bunch of other people. But it‘s getting frustrating and tiring how needlessly hostile few vocal users get whenever someone criticizes their favourite brand as if I attacked them personally. While I‘m glad that I‘m not doing this professionally, it‘s ruining a hobby of mine.

Anybody still wanting me to support them tech-wise is free to message me privately but I‘ll no longer talk about tech or give any general advice (which no one but some easily offended people seem to read anyway) in on the public HTML-based web. I‘m done.

I've seen a lot of people on here finally realizing that Google Chrome is bad and thus started to recommend Firefox, not knowing that Firefox's barely any safer than Chrome and Mozilla's being sponsored by Google.

In fact, Firefox collects telemetry by default and most users are completely unaware of it. While it can be turned off by navigating to Settings, the same thing has to be done for sponsored links which will turn itself back on after a random amount of updates. But even then it barely protects from tracking, even when uBlock Origin is installed.

But even then Firefox leaks all kinds of data, most notably user device data. In many cases device data is enough to conduct traffic analysis to figure out who you are.

Keep in mind, though, that LibreWolf, a fork of Firefox, is more secure not only because it's been stripped off telemetry and sponsored links but also due to its default privacy settings already automatically being set to delete cookies after every session and block canvas, just to name a few of those strict settings, and also ships with uBlock Origin pre-installed. Another perk especially for Linux users is LibreWolf obfuscating the user agent to always display "Windows", instead of "Linux". The downside of LW is that some strict settings may break a bunch of sites, especially online banking and sites such as iCloud, which demand fingerprinting and canvas access.

To circumvent this issue, I personally use LibreWolf for sites like Tumblr, whereas Firefox is my main browser for online banking and iCloud.

This is infuriatingly misguided.

First of all, you use "safer" when you mean more private. Those are different words that mean entirely different things. Firefox is pretty much on par in regards to safety as all other browsers. As for privacy it is much, much, much more private than chrome. The privacy concerns don't stem from chrome not being fingerprint proof. They stem from chrome calling home about literally everything with little ways to turn it off. Firefox telemetry on the other hand doesn't really do much. Firefox isn't interested in your data for ad purposes, they use it to improve their browser.

Second, Google pays Firefox to include their search engine as the default. That's it. The fearmongering about this is so unjustified.

You literally did nothing but address semantics (wich is complete BS within this context because I was talking about being safe from user tracking) while ignoring the link that cites the screenshot and also completely disregarded that Google being the default search engine is a privacy risks especially to those with no tech skills. You didn‘t point out that the average user doesn‘t turn telemetry off while other Firefox users merely go on Hacker News to tell other techies how to turn it off and block Mozilla‘s domain, which is the first thing that gets called when starting Firefox.

Are you working for Firefox?

Nahhh this is so sad. Everything is a privacy risk to people with no tech skill. The way to make it better for them is through stuff like GDPR, not by spreading fearmongering bullshit about a non profit. Tell me how Firefox uses the telemetry data maliciously. You can read their TOS, their privacy agreements, etc. I swear, "privacy enthusiasts" treat telemetry as if it's giving the ceo of Mozilla direct access into your brain or some shit. It's all anonymized and doesn't contain anything that can be used to find you.

I'm sorry but your fancy fingerprinting protections don't matter a single bit when the average user just signs in with Google and Facebook in all services. Fingerprinting is a spook for people who avoid everything related to FAANG like a plague.

I can see how the default search engine being Google might be problematic, but you didn't frame it that way. You intentionally omitted that and instead stated that "Mozilla is sponsored by Google". While that's objectively correct it makes it sound way worse than it actually is. Capitalism is the current world economic system. Mozilla would simply not survive without Google funding. I'd much rather we have a nonprofit focusing on making the internet free, rather than Google completely dominating everything ever.

And Firefox is likely violating the GPDR and the Digital Services Act by only masking the last part of an IPv4 address using a tool developed by Google and relying on Google Analytics. You blindly believe what they claim, even though they repeatedly go caught violating their own principles and only did some backtracking after huge user outcry in some cases. Telemetry still took built-in JS blocking and gave us Pocket, which hardly anybody uses, and the giant Mozilla VPN popup instead but more on that later.

And Mozilla is so non-profit that back in 2020, they fired 200 employees whilst granting their CEO, already making a million per year, a huge pay rise, which she complained about for not being high enough. Mozilla‘s revenue has been increasing for years, despite continiously losing users, all while Firefox has begun to rely on fullscreen popups to promote their damn VPN (even worse is that it‘s supposed to only gets triggered after a certain amount of inactivity, which is a bloody dark pattern you just don‘t rely on if you‘re trying to convince others that your product boosts your privacy).

You‘re a softcore pornography blog, sit the fuck down and stop relativizing everything I said and claim "fearmongering" when you literally fall for "source: trust me bro". Google once also claimed to "not be evil" and putting all the blame on "capitalism" while even damn text-based browsers like Lynx still are being maintained today and Wikipedia still lists a considerable amount of actively maintained web browsers neither based on Chromium nor Gecko makes you sound like you know no piece of software that isn‘t used by the majority of online users.

I've seen a lot of people on here finally realizing that Google Chrome is bad and thus started to recommend Firefox, not knowing that Firefox's barely any safer than Chrome and Mozilla's being sponsored by Google.

In fact, Firefox collects telemetry by default and most users are completely unaware of it. While it can be turned off by navigating to Settings, the same thing has to be done for sponsored links which will turn itself back on after a random amount of updates. But even then it barely protects from tracking, even when uBlock Origin is installed.

But even then Firefox leaks all kinds of data, most notably user device data. In many cases device data is enough to conduct traffic analysis to figure out who you are.

Keep in mind, though, that LibreWolf, a fork of Firefox, is more secure not only because it's been stripped off telemetry and sponsored links but also due to its default privacy settings already automatically being set to delete cookies after every session and block canvas, just to name a few of those strict settings, and also ships with uBlock Origin pre-installed. Another perk especially for Linux users is LibreWolf obfuscating the user agent to always display "Windows", instead of "Linux". The downside of LW is that some strict settings may break a bunch of sites, especially online banking and sites such as iCloud, which demand fingerprinting and canvas access.

To circumvent this issue, I personally use LibreWolf for sites like Tumblr, whereas Firefox is my main browser for online banking and iCloud.

This is infuriatingly misguided.

First of all, you use "safer" when you mean more private. Those are different words that mean entirely different things. Firefox is pretty much on par in regards to safety as all other browsers. As for privacy it is much, much, much more private than chrome. The privacy concerns don't stem from chrome not being fingerprint proof. They stem from chrome calling home about literally everything with little ways to turn it off. Firefox telemetry on the other hand doesn't really do much. Firefox isn't interested in your data for ad purposes, they use it to improve their browser.

Second, Google pays Firefox to include their search engine as the default. That's it. The fearmongering about this is so unjustified.

You literally did nothing but address semantics (wich is complete BS within this context because I was talking about being safe from user tracking) while ignoring the link that cites the screenshot and also completely disregarded that Google being the default search engine is a privacy risks especially to those with no tech skills. You didn‘t point out that the average user doesn‘t turn telemetry off while other Firefox users merely go on Hacker News to tell other techies how to turn it off and block Mozilla‘s domain, which is the first thing that gets called when starting Firefox.

Are you working for Firefox?

no way in hell

hey stop being funnier than me on my own post

Yayoi Kusama, Infinity Mirrored Room - Filled with the Brilliance of Life (2011)

quick what is everyone doing right now

going to work 😌

the extremely ominous part in the middle where he picked up a hammer and just held it for a minute like he was threatening the car into compliance

@identifying-cars-in-posts

2008-2017 Wuling Rongguang/Chevrolet N300

Why would you hide this in the tags?

clicker training but its just a single piano key that makes you sad

Ain’t this what MCR did to a bunch of 2010s emos