No I did not say that. Do you recommend people to use their browser on default settings?
Mozilla gets paid for having it be the default, regardless of whether the user switches it. They get to make money from it because of the number of users alone being already something interesting to target for their partners. So just you using the browser is beneficial for Mozilla, even if you turn all the sponsored features off.
And do you think that most Firefox users donate to Mozilla?
No, most don’t donate directly, but some do use some of the features that indirectly do provide funds. Like for example, would a search engine be willing to pay Mozilla to have them be a default search engine if it had no users?
I feel the weight of Firefox being a popular browser has allowed them to have some partnerships and carry on some strategies that are likely to have been a source of funds. I expect many people do not turn off sponsored links and other features that are likely to help them support the browser and that are likely not available in the forks.
The thing is that it’s not very common for people who use a fork of Firefox to donate or encourage contributions to Mozilla… most of the people who go for forks do it because they do not trust Mozilla in the first place or don’t agree with the decisions they take. They are not willing to let Mozilla make profit out of their use of the browser, even when done through an option that can be turned off in the browser, they don’t like it even existing.
So if enough people did that, I don’t think Mozilla would keep developing Firefox, at least not at the level that they are now. In fact, I think even today Mozilla is not seeing much gain, since they keep starting side projects to raise funds in other ways.
If there were a separate foundation that was started by all these forks to maintain a base from which to build on (sort of the Chromium-equivalent but in Firefox world) that isn’t connected to Mozilla and that can fully sustain itself… then that would be good in my book. But as things stand, those projects don’t look like they would survive without Mozilla.
I feel like it makes more sense to support an alternative project entirely, like Ladybird or so.
The biggest part of people use Chrome-based browsers.
Also… the point is that it’s thanks to those people who use stock Firefox that the codebase stays maintained. So admitting that having those people is a good thing is kind of against the idea of encouraging people to move away from stock Firefox.
It’s ironic that GTK actually used to stand for GIMP ToolKit.
They were the first ones to use Gtk ever… and it’s looking like they will be the last ones to migrate to the newer major versions :P
Just because it entered RC phase doesn’t mean it won’t take long to release. It’s not unlikely that a lot of bugs and problems could have been reported in the RC phase, specially for such a big changelog in a popular program that many people are likely to be interested to test during the RC phase.
To be honest, I expected it would take at least 4 months (specially given how it took them years to reach this far). I’m pleasantly surprised that it was this fast.
But in there the virus and Megaman was part of the same software system/universe. What I’m arguing is that it would have been possible to set up 2 separate systems/universes, one is the one where Megaman is plugged, and the other one is one that has read/write access to all inputs/outputs of the first, without the first being able to detect that in any way.
So… Megaman would be sent to the first and see no problem (or worse, see enemies that aren’t real to keep him distracted) while the other alternate OS would have no Megaman in it, but still it would be able to analyze all Megaman is doing in the first system/universe (sort of like in Matrix), and possibly even transmit/translate his actions in a modified way so that it serves a different purpose.
But it’s not something the plugged OS can do anything about, because the malware is not running on it. It’s an attack that uses hardware, you can’t use antivirus against that, you’d need a person to physically manipulate the circuitry in the keyboard/monitor or whatever peripheral that is being manipulated.
Wouldn’t it be kind of insecure to be plugging your private data into public places?
In theory, the publicly available terminals could very well have their own system under the hood, wired into the hardware, just so they can run some keylogging or recording of everything that goes through the peripherals, including the screen, without the plugged OS being able to know, right?
The bad guys in those shows/games could have hijacked the terminals so they can take remote control of the inputs when an OS is inserted and wreak havoc. Dr. Wily could have messed with some terminals so that when Megaman saves its progress on them parts of his brain are saved with different data, so when it’s restored you’ll get a different/evil Megaman.
Bluetooth works great in Android for me though… once the devices have been paired, they connect the moment they are available and it just works.
However, for some reason on PC it’s often quirky (Windows or Linux). My PC bluetooth works through a dongle so I wonder if an integrated card would do better.
Also, most devices will not keep more than 1 pairing, so it will be annoying if you plan to be jumping around between computers. But that’s not the fault of the protocol, in theory remembering multiple pairings can be supported if the devices wanted to implement that.
They didn’t have the right frame of reference.
lol… it does make it sound like they are trying to hide things from him, but I don’t think that’s the intention… it probably means “before the branch with the breakage has to be reviewed / tested / checked by the main person merging branches from each subsystem into mainline (Linus)”
I think the argument is that those alternatives already existed before. Twitter was not being prioritized, it was essentially mirroring the content already available in RSS, mastodon, etc. So effectively, there’s now one less place where the news will be visible.
However, I do agree with the move, but only because Debian being a FOSS initiative should stay away from proprietary platforms and promote FOSS, even if it means effectively “shutting off” a portion of users who don’t wanna leave the twitter bubble.
Were they using Twitter to provide exclusive updates not available anywhere else?
My impression from the post is that they are publishing the exact same updates in multiple locations, including mastodon at https://framapiaf.org/@debian …so just because they were publishing in that one extra site to make it accessible to a particular subset of people does not mean all other people were being shut off from receiving updates.
However, I do agree with the move, but only because Debian being a FOSS initiative should stay away from proprietary platforms and promote FOSS.
I don’t know enough detail about ATproto, but I wonder if it’s technically possible to block access to posts without also blocking federation. From what I’ve heard the functionality is more modular than Activitypub (content indexing being a separate service from content hosting) so I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t possible.
I think there are situations that fsync does not cover very efficiently, to the point that it can cause timing issues that lead to some bugs / incompatibilities. The timing issues might be rare, but that doesn’t mean the overall efficiency is the same. It would be interesting to see benchmarks of fsync vs ntsync.
It’ll probably release on March, since there’s a release every 2 months and 6.13 was on Jan 20th.
They will release the first RC at the end of this week, so maybe someone will make an AUR package already (but no idea if current Wine can already take advantage of it, though).
But those are small fries, not “the provider of games”
They have less to loose, then. That’s just as dangerous, if not more.
I’m a small fry too, would you run a binary I send you without any form of sandboxing?
we don’t run games as root
No, we typically run them with the same user that stores all our useful private data and that we typically type our passwords with.
Also, why are you OK with that level of sandboxing? don’t you want more “control”? You say containers are bad, but using user roles to protect parts of the system is ok? why are you not running all as root if you want “control”?
we are speaking about Wine, so what they see is limited to WINEPREFIX
Not really, by default you have access to other drives (Z:\ being /, the fs root), wine is not a perfect sandbox, it’s not designed for that… and if you actually did want it to become one (which ultimately would also lead to a need for memory separation to fight memory-leak attacks) then it would not be that different from what’s being pursued. You’d be essentially building the container in a custom version of wine shipped by Valve on Steam, it does not make any difference in terms of “control”.
Currently, in order for Android app to appear in the official Store, developer has to allow Google to repackage their app and sign it with Google key. So while we can inspect what is there in the code of the app in git, we don’t really know what lands on our phones if installed via Google Play
You can still open an APK and decompile it… it being signed with a specific key is no different than the digital signatures some attach to their emails, it’s a way to prove authenticity, not a way to encrypt the message… you can open the email without having to even care about the signature.
No, it’s not the same. Firedragon users have a different default. I’ll repeat the question that you didn’t answer yet:
“would a search engine be willing to pay Mozilla to have them be a default search engine if it (upstream Firefox) had no users?”
And this is just an example. There are many other forms of partnership possible beyond search engines… the point is that the number of users that actually are exposed to the default browser settings (ie. the users of upstream Firefox, whether they change the settings or not) does give some leverage for making funds out of, while still giving options/freedom to the users who can freely change the setting.
When you watch a video article with sponsored content, even if you skip the sponsor, the creator still benefits because it builds up the numbers and that’s what attracts sponsors… but if someone starts re-posting the videos with the sponsor bits cut out and the re-posting channel becomes MORE popular than the original to the point that the original gets much less views… do you think companies are gonna want to still have as many sponsor deals with that creator who now gets very few views on their sponsored content?