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Firefox Now Offers a More Private Browsing Experience

303 points by tempestn 11y ago

nacs 11y ago
A "more private browsing experience" that still features the Pocket bundleware and button in the toolbar thats still not un-installable like other extensions and requires about:config edits to disable..
- skrowl 11y ago
  They have to make money somehow. They're not making it by selling all of your data (and giving it to the NSA for free) like Microsoft and Google. How do you suggest they continue to exist, if not partnering with Pocket / Yahoo / etc?
  - mordocai 11y ago
    Obviously this doesn't happen, but they -should- exist solely on donations from both personal and corporate sources that are no-strings-attached. Unfortunately, in the real world they end up doing things like pocket in order to survive.
    - wahsd 11y ago
      The huge problem with today's generation; they want everything and they want it now and they want it free. How dare they make money somehow because the same person complaining about the pocket and hello integration would also not pay anything for the browser.
      - joesmo 11y ago
        How do you possibly imagine a non-free browser competing with all the free browsers out there?
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        We live in an era where entire operating systems are free for end users. Not everything needs to be fucking monetized.
  - dagurp 11y ago
    They could at least have included Pocket and Hello as normal addons.
    - sp332 11y ago
      Parsing and loading an add-on would increase startup time. If you haven't put in your Pocket credentials, it's a single "if" statement that has to be evaluated. Having Pocket installed is the common case and the one that should be optimized for. Are you worried that data will go to Pocket even if you don't log in?
      - kuschku 11y ago
        No, I just want 0 code of it on my system. Even if it’s never executed.
        pjc50 11y ago
        That's a fairly high level of outrage, why?
        stonogo 11y ago
        How is "not installing unused software" considered to be "outrage"?
        pjc50 11y ago
        It's a minor browser feature. Most people will never use e.g. the mozilla developer tools.
        pdkl95 11y ago
        I find it hard to believe that someone with significant karma on HN doesn't understand surveillance-as-a-business-model. Just being a yet another Service As A Software Substitute[1] is bad enough, but in this case these rent-seekers are exploiting user ignorance (it's a "dark pattern"). Firefox has always been a local app, with remote features requiring the user to opt-in to an extension. The distinction between Mozilla "only providing a button" and the actual feature that loads from the remote SaaSS only exists for people that understand these technologies. Mozilla is being especially hypocritical with the integration of these features. During their previous projects (e.g. Australis) Mozilla pushed a lot of previously-integrated features into extensions. This caused problems for a LOT of people, but I reluctantly supported it because a minimal core with most features as plugins is generally a good design. For them to turn around an integrate a plugin that baits people into using spyware is outrageous - and somewhat suspicious. That button needs to be removed because it's an attractive nuisance[2]. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
  - dlandis 11y ago
    But does making this stuff uninstallable and difficult to disable really make them that much additional money? Seems like a poorly negotiated deal if that was really part of it.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      Pocket is disabled by default (the code is only loaded when you click the button), and you can hide the button with right click → hide from toolbar.
      - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
        That's like saying that bookmarks are disabled by default because the bookmark code does nothing until you interact with the browser, eg click the star or type in the "awesomebar". If it's in the default UI it's not disabled, disabled means you have to take steps outside the expected workflow to enable it. Dramatisation follows ... "Oh, this rock I put in the middle of the floor, don't worry it's disabled; if you don't kick it or fall on it then it can't hurt you. Sure, putting it there makes you likely to trip on it; requires you to move it if you don't want to. What's that? The company name on the side, oh that's just the company that asked us to put the rock here. Yeah, we're totally honouring our roots and keeping with minimalism aren't we! No, no, it's not an advert - many of our users like having this rock here. Next week we're going to scatter marbles on the floor, each one says 'drink more Koke', aren't we just being awesome. Ha, do you remember when you had to choose for yourself which junk to clutter your office up with."
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
  - stonogo 11y ago
    How does the linux kernel continue to exist? How does busybox continue to exist? How does FreeBSD continue to exist? Hint: none of them have signed bundling deals.
    - fhd2 11y ago
      Those are all essentially infrastructure projects that (one way or another) add value to end user products that (not always, but quite often) are monetised somehow and in turn contribute or donate back, because they can. Firefox OTOH is an end user product itself, quite a different case. Note that I'm no fan of the Pocket integration at all - to my knowledge there isn't even any sort of bundling deal or other kind of monetisation involved. I don't understand why Mozilla does this.
      - stonogo 11y ago
        I don't agree with you. Firefox is an infrastructure product; it's how end users interact with actual products they care about (e.g., Facebook, Netflix, etc). Few people fire up a web browser without the intention of consuming third-party (non-Mozilla) content, just like few people boot a linux system just to watch the kernel run.
        pcwalton 11y ago
        As a matter of fact, we have empirical data posted just yesterday about who is committing to the mainstream browser engines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10503653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10503653 You are welcome to draw your own conclusions about the viability of constructing a modern browser engine on donated time from a handful of Facebook and Netflix engineers.
        gsnedders 11y ago
        OTOH, there's the counter argument that if search engines and OS vendors are willing to pay for browsers, why should Facebook and/or Netflix spend any money? It seems to be the classic business case problem of, "well everyone else is paying for it already, and as a result we won't have much affect". I do, of course, realise that FB and Netflix very much have an interest in the web platform, and could undoubtedly influence it more if they were willing to contribute code. That said, it's probably worthwhile to point out to those who don't know that both FB and Netflix are W3C members, and have several people who contribute heavily to specs.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    According to Mozilla, the Pocket button doesn't make money.
    - whoopdedo 11y ago
      So Telefonica is just doing this because they're really nice guys and aren't trying to increase the visibility of their products? And the Mozilla Foundation took on the extra code debt only because they were 100% convinced users wanted these extensions and not because they received a sizable donation from their partner to have it installed and on the toolbar by default with no way to completely remove it unlike every other extension.
      - callahad 11y ago
        Pocket (Read It Later, Inc.) has nothing to do with Telefonica.
      - thristian 11y ago
        Telefonica has nothing to do with the Pocket extension, they just (as far as I know) run the rendezvous servers that support the Hello feature. Mozilla wanted to ship a WebRTC implementation, but it's not much use having webcam and microphone input unless you can send them to other people, and in this age of NAT and firewalls, that needs a rendezvous server. Mozilla had already had fruitful business interactions with Telefonica with FirefoxOS, and a telco seems like a reasonable choice for hosting a long-uptime network service... In exchange for donating server hosting, Telefonica gets to display their logo in the Hello UI. I don't know if they also shelled out money in addition to hosting a service, but 80% of Hello's code is Firefox platform stuff (VP8 encoding and decoding, etc.) not Telefonica stuff.
  - muraiki 11y ago
    Mozilla did not receive any monetary compensation for integrating Pocket. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...
    - redml 11y ago
      If true, that makes it even stupider. If they're adding even more unnecessary bloat to the browser they should at least be compensated for it.
      - wlesieutre 11y ago
        Maybe, but all the people who had aneurysms about it would have been even louder.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        In fairness, what amounts to a hyperlink is not "bloat". I wish it wasn't there because it's a thing nobody is ever going to use in the age of Hangouts and Skype, but it's not like impacts the rest of the browser in any way
        scrollaway 11y ago
        It very, very negatively impacted mozilla's and firefox's PR. Case in point: This entire thread.
        hackuser 11y ago
        It only takes a tiny number of people to make a lot of noise, but I don't think it represents public opinion. Consider the Tea Party: Whether you agree with them or not (please don't answer), based on the noise they generate they might seem to be a majority, but they are a small and shrinking minority.
        scrollaway 11y ago
- Karunamon 11y ago
  And don't forget about the adware- I mean "promoted sites" on the new tab screen.
  - eli 11y ago
    I get that people don't like ads, but is that really a privacy concern?
    - huhtenberg 11y ago
      Of course it is. It compromises Mozilla's claims that they still put users' interests first. Furthermore, they insist that these promoted tiles is something that people want, whereby it absolutely bloody obvious that nobody, except for Mozilla, wants this junk. These tiles basically show that Mozilla can act against users' interests and in a blatantly disingenuous manner. This in turn makes you question the rest of their efforts that are branded as pro-user.
      - eli 11y ago
        I see what you're saying, but I still don't understand why it's a privacy concern.
        forty 11y ago
        Ads on the web want to track that you saw it, clicked on it, on which website you saw it, when, with which browser, which OS, which was the previous page you visited, what site you are used to browsing, what you purchased, where you live, what is your sexual preference, ... and nowadays they can and they do :/ There are many sites that I like and would happily unblock their ads to support them, but I often don't because they use ad systems that want to spy on me. The main problem with ads on the web is not that they are annoying (like on TV for example), it is that they are spying on you.
        lxt 11y ago
        The ads in Tiles specifically don't track you in the way that regular ads do. It's an experiment in ways to do advertising without being creepy. More info: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-tiles-new-tab?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_what-data-is-being-collected-and-why https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-tiles-new-tab?red...
- lgp171188 11y ago
  The "Hello" button automatically came back to the toolbar (I had removed it) after the Firefox 42 upgrade. Thought that it could be accidental and checked on a different machine, the same thing happened.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    I seem to recall some Mozillian saying this wasn't intentional and explaining why, but I don't have the link.
    - whoopdedo 11y ago
      Funny how decisions which financially benefit the developer have a way of "accidentally" being activated by default. The automatic downloading of the Windows 10 update. Or these bundled Telefonica extensions in Firefox.
      - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        Firefox is developed in the open. It's easy to check if there was a deliberate change.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        Of course there was a change, but that does nothing to tell us if the way it was activated was accidental or intentional.
        TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        Well, the commit message would be a clue. If we assume they aren't being deceptive.
        monochromatic 11y ago
        git discern intent
      - 11y ago
- mbrubeck 11y ago
  The Pocket code is being moved to a bundled add-on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694
  - lgp171188 11y ago
    Awesome! This was the only way forward for a user-centric web browser like Firefox. Glad to see that they have listened to user feedback (and uproar) and backed down.
  - zobzu 11y ago
    wow that great news! sort of hoping other similar things like hello do that too. thats how id like firefox to be, as a user. would be even better if default off at install ;-) (albeit id probably enable hello, its just nice to not be forced-in for such features)
    - developer1 11y ago
      I was bouncing between firefox and chrome, using them both more-or-less equally. The day the "hello" thing appeared, I uninstalled firefox. Too many useless and annoying things being added to firefox as core components where they do not belong. The fact that anybody can pay Mozilla to have their crappy addon forced onto all users is a problem.
    - rfk 11y ago
      This thread suggests that Hello is indeed being considered for similar treatment: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/gofaster/2015-November/000195.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/gofaster/2015-November/00...
- 21echoes 11y ago
  I don't see how that has anything to do with privacy... it's a button that is effectively an href. Without clicking it, no data is sent to Pocket.
- JohnTHaller 11y ago
  You mean the open source code that you can examine that's never even loaded let alone executed if you don't click on the button due to lazy loading.
  - drdaeman 11y ago
    In theory, you can examine it, sure. But I fear that in practice, it's so complicated and large, it's unlikely there are many humans who can really tell about themselves that they really know how the thing works. A certain part - sure, given enough time to read and learn. A whole thing - quite unlikely.
    - oberstein 11y ago
      You don't have to understand it in this case, you just have to make sure that code path isn't invoked by anything other than clicking the button. This can be pretty easily verified.
      - revelation 11y ago
        Brilliant, you have just solved the halting problem.
        oberstein 11y ago
        Stick a printf/file write/breakpoint at the root of the code path if you want continuous verification that the code path never executes except by clicking the button. This isn't hard.
        monochromatic 11y ago
        Static analysis is a thing, and it doesn't solve the halting problem.
        skj 11y ago
        It also doesn't solve this problem.
RexRollman 11y ago
I haven't been thrilled with Mozilla's direction for a while now. Bloating Firefox by embedding Pocket and Hello into it, speeding up Firefox's release frequency just because Chrome does it that way, wasting resources on Firefox-OS, and firing an employee just for donating to a political cause. If they are not careful, they are going to run Mozilla into the ground.
- darklajid 11y ago
  I don't quite understand 'bloating' in this context, especially with the example of 'Hello'. My understanding is that this is really merely a link. A bookmark, if you will. To a website/service that will use WebRTC, tech that was meant to be implemented by browsers. What do you consider bloat here? The 'Hello' button/promotion? Or the full WebRTC stack? And how can you decide that efforts spent to build FxOS are 'wasted'?
- toyg 11y ago
  They didn't "fire" Brendan Eich, they just acknowledged that his personal values were at odd with Mozilla's mission and overall sentiment across the organization, basically demoting him from the CEO role. Eich then resigned.
  - wahsd 11y ago
    The liberal mob will have its way. But it's of course not anything like any other tyrannies and controlling mobs. It's different of course. I don't necessarily agree with his donation either, but what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework. You don't just smother dissenting opinions. You are no different than that which you feel yourself superior to.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      > what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework But what a private foundation and/or company promotes or demotes isn't up to its members? Sounds like a double standard to me.
mmastrac 11y ago
Here's a link to the FAQ with more info: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-pbm https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-pbm And links to lists of what is blocked: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tracking_protection#Lists https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tracking_protection#Lists I'm curious to know what the in-the-wild breakage rate for FF's blocking feature is. I use Ghostery myself and I find that maybe 1 in 100 are broken. I feel like that could be 1 in 1000 if blockers implemented a Google Analytics stub -- by far the most commonly required script for things to work.
- Cogito 11y ago
  I've run into the Google Analytics issue multiple times. It may be just because usage is so prevalent, so it's more visible, but it's bad when your website breaks because a third party script doesn't load. In the situations I've seen, the issue was using GA without first checking it loaded correctly. Defensively coding third party requests, let alone all requests, should be second nature. It raises two questions for me: 1. Is there some code out there being copied everywhere which assumes GA will always load? 2. How do I make sure this is never an issue in my projects? I don't think (1) is an actual problem, and I don't know of any options for (2). Bandwidth throttling doesn't directly help, although it may make it obvious which third-party scripts block the render of the page (which often seems related). Ideally you would have good test coverage on the loaded page, and then randomly block requests to see what breaks. Mark resources as either hard or soft dependencies, make sure soft dependencies never break the page/functionality of the app, and make sure loss of a hard dependency degrades nicely. Edit: I should also add, my most memorable run in with this bug was with a very well known application, and they were very quick to fix it once reported. I was surprised none of the internal devs had run into the problem, as I assumed most would run a blocker, but it may have been an early access release...
  - scintill76 11y ago
    As a user, I would tend to agree; but as a developer, thinking about "what if the browser decides to kill this one script request but run the rest of the scripts?" is the last thing on my mind. I don't know, maybe I'm a lazy dev[0], but when you consider it's essentially the browser's selective compliance to the standards, how far down that rabbit hole do you want to go? Now, you could argue that requests can legitimately fail at any time, and it's best to handle it. OK, as a lazy/efficient dev willing to entertain that, I'll design my page to put up a modal alert saying "There was an error loading this page. Click OK to refresh." if anything fails to load. Now my error-handling job is done, but privacy-conscious users will still be mad at me, demanding that I gracefully degrade for every combination of request-blocking (or in GP's case, request-tampering!) they can dream up. Again, I'm sympathetic as a user, and I've even experienced broken pages due to Ghostery, but as a developer it's hard to blame them. [0] And AFAIK have no hard dependencies on third-party scripts like GA.
choffee 11y ago
Do they have a html5 version of that flash video?
- icebraining 11y ago
  It's a Youtube video, and it loads the HTML5 player for me. Try going to https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 and see if you can enable it.
- edcastro 11y ago
  if they have, it's probably on 720p, since no mediasource is supported yet.
- ChrisClark 11y ago
  It's the html5 Youtube player for me.
Silhouette 11y ago
Unfortunately they have also yet again changed things internally that break plug-ins, apparently including various popular ones used for privacy and blocking purposes. So in reality, since I don't habitually browse in Private Browsing mode, the more private browsing I've experienced with the recent Firefox updates has involved more ads and trackers than I've seen in years, followed by a lot of frustration searching for replacement extensions that actually work and then still more frustration configuring things manually that used to just work a few months ago. I really wish Mozilla would get back to promoting the add-ons model that once made Firefox so attractive, and prioritising flexibility and stability accordingly. Some of the other features they've added directly might be useful, but the price of the constant change is too high, and in just about every case I can think of the add-ons community already had good, working solutions.
- Osmose 11y ago
  Which add-ons are you referring to? AFAIK the big 3 are AdBlock (Plus? There's so many jeez), uBlock (and Origin), and, in a distant third, Privacy Badger.
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    Adblock Edge was discontinued a little while back but had effectively replaced the not-fully-blocking Adblock Plus of recent months. ABE's UI integration broke in another recent FF update, but the blocking itself continued to work usefully until FF42, at which point apparently it ceased doing anything useful at all. uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative and is OK for blocking most ads, but I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists, and its UI is awful. Ghostery also isn't blocking various trackers effectively now, even though its UI still claims it has detected and blocked them. I can't 100% guarantee that's FF42 if Ghostery also updated its lists at almost exactly the same time, but that's when I saw things like Facebook Connect start hitting FB servers even though it's supposedly blocked. This is almost a brand new machine, BTW, which just happened to update FF and lead to changes in the plug-ins a few days after initial set-up. There's relatively little chance of odd things going on or historical baggage distorting these results. Bottom line: The day I bought the machine and installed FF and my usual set up add-ons, my browsing experience was fine, and then a few days later FF updated to 42, and my browsing experience immediately sucked.
hackuser 11y ago
I wonder about Mozilla's strategies for two key challenges: 1) The greatest challenge for Tracking Protection seems to me to be not technical, but strategic: How do you protect users from tracking without creating a backlash from the tracking industry and their customers (the whole Internet economy built on tracking) that will make the outcome worse or no better, and after an expensive battle. As an extreme example, if the next release of Firefox cut off tracking for all its users then I think there would be a war, including possibly lawsuits and an arms race between trackers and tracking protection. The users would be no better off (or worse off) and it would consume Mozilla's resources. 2) How do they plan to protect the great majority of users who lack the knowledge and skill to understand tracking protection? Remember that most users barely know they are being tracked, much less what that means or how it's done. Many users I deal with don't know the URL field from the search box on their home page; they don't understand what a web browser, web page, or remote server are, much less their components, requests, JavaScript, etc. They lack even the framework to begin understanding tracking. Most other end users I know would be overwhelmed by the concept and extra hassle to load a page. Also, how will most users understand why the webpage is malfunctioning, of all the possible reasons, and what to do about it? Maybe they'll think Firefox is simply broken. Maybe this is why Tracking Protection is available only in Private Browsing right now, and hidden behind a small, somewhat obscure icon (if I understand correctly); maybe that's a way of limiting it to more technically skilled users. Providing tracking protection to technical users has been done, via Ghostery, Disconnect, etc. I'd like to see it become available to everyone else. (That's not a criticism of Mozilla - this is a great, precedent-setting step forward, establishing that major browser vendors might block tracking and act in user interests over industry's, and hopefully creating some competition in that area.) Maybe the first step is to raise awareness of tracking and the idea that users benefit from and should have the option for privacy, which can be done by simply telling users about Tracking Protection when they open Firefox after the update, whether or not they actually use it.
- joesmo 11y ago
  "How do you protect users from tracking without creating a backlash from the tracking industry and their customers?" I don't see this as a concern for Mozilla. Google/Apple/Microsoft and their respective browsers sure, but the point of Firefox is to provide a browser whose goals align with the user. The industry's goals here have never aligned with users and it's about time (many, many years too late) that a major browser vendor ships this as part of the browser rather than an addon.
crucini 11y ago
It's a step in the right direction, but I'm afraid we need more than this. > Since some Web pages may appear broken when elements that track behavior are blocked, we’ve made it easy to turn off Tracking Protection in Private Browsing for a particular site using the Control Center. Whitelisting a whole site because it "appears broken" is a pretty weak approach, and clearly incentivizes "brokenness". I notice the spies (google etc.) are more intelligent and creative than the defenders of privacy. We need a browser that can make such sites work - for the user. Without leaking any cross-site information. This involves rewriting URLs and cookies, or "mixmastering" identifiers across a cloud of users. >Today we’re also releasing new visual editing tools in Firefox Developer Edition including Animation Tools that work the same way animators think. To me this sounds like fiddling while Rome burns. Typical of their track record of wasting energy on irrelevant projects instead of making a great browser.
- c0achmcguirk 11y ago
  > To me this sounds like fiddling while Rome burns. Typical of their track record of wasting energy on irrelevant projects instead of making a great browser. I don't think you're being fair. I'm seeing a lot of improvements from Firefox, outside of their vastly improved developer tools and tracking prevention. * They've been working on multi-process Firefox, enabled in developer edition [1] * They've been beating Chrome's JS Engine in the benchmarks (not to mention IE) [2] * They've been implementing more and more of HTML5, about 81% of the way there according to [3] * Firefox supports more ES6 features than Chrome [4] I guess I'm seeing a lot of good progress coming from the Firefox team. [1] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Fir... [2] - http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/ [3] - https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html [4] - https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/
ni46 11y ago
Quack
mesozoic 11y ago
Do any of the browsers privacy modes make an active attempt to stop fingerprint based tracking yet?
- jamoes 11y ago
  Not to my knowledge. That's why I use the CanvasBlocker extension [1], which prevents websites from abusing canvas tags to fingerprint me. I'd like to see a comprehensive effort to prevent fingerprinting without having to resort to simply blocking the canvas element altogether. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker...
  - IshKebab 11y ago
    There are many other ways to fingerprint you. Blocking the canvas alone doesn't really achieve anything.
Scarbutt 11y ago
Will this interfere with Privacy Badge and uBlock Origin? Unlike Chrome, Firefox doesn't have the option to disable addons for private mode.
- pwnna 11y ago
  No. I've been using this under nightly for a bit now and there's no problem coexisting afaict.
unicornporn 11y ago
This is the first time I've had to downgrade after upgrading. For avid users of Tree Style Tab I can report that it is completely unusable in Firefox 42.
- windsurfer 11y ago
  The fork I use works for me: https://github.com/windsurfer/treestyletab https://github.com/windsurfer/treestyletab
- mbudde 11y ago
  A new version (0.15.20150902901) of TreeStyleTabs has been released that works with Firefox 42, but it will not automatically update so you need to install it from [1]. See also [2]. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/versions/?page=1#version-0.15.20150902901 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... [2] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/973 https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/973
- reitanqild 11y ago
  I'm reading this from PaleMoon. Between firing the CEO over someone making noise in social media and planning to make Tree Style Tabs etc impossible by breaking the API and not replacing it with a usable one I'm, if not out, at least looking for good alternatives. Edit: the sad thing being that I have been a Firefox user since the first time I got my hands on it and never looked back after the two first addon competitions where brilliant stuff like Scrapbook was created. Basically it is another league than any other browsers addons for now.
Snesker 11y ago
'Private browsing' is a fucking scam. These people are fooling non-technical people and the elderly into thinking what they do online is private, when it is not. They make a big hoorah about shit like this - things they shouldn't have permitted to happen in their browser in the first place, congratulating themselves while they lull the less intelligent into becoming victim of dragnet surveillance. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRIVATE BROWSING. FUCK FIREFOX. Fuck its cocksucking faggot developers and the furry and inept gnu-tards who're the only people who made usable forks. 'usable' in the case of shit moon. That said, I still use it because it's the only option re: prebuilt tor versions, extensibility and competently displaying the html on pages properly. Audacious fucking pieces of shit like this make me sit here and scream like a frog.
mrmondo 11y ago
I truly appreciate how much time and effort Mozilla puts into Firefox privacy. I do wish however that some more effort was spent on stability and performance. It seems like every day I hear coworkers growling that Firefox has crashed on them and while I'm sure that plugins are a huge part of this it's not exactly easy for the end user to pinpoint where the issue is occurring.
- mmastrac 11y ago
  I'm anxiously awaiting the landing of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis for years. That will be a major component of any improvement.
  - mconley 11y ago
    Electrolysis ("e10s") has been enabled by default on the Nightly and Developer Edition* channels, if you'd like to help test it. * Although we're currently running an A/B test to measure performance differences with e10s enabled and disabled, so you might fall into the disabled cohort when you run Dev Edition. This experiment is scheduled to end in a few days.
    - brbsix 11y ago
      The last time I tried Electrolysis I had issues with plugins. Some of the plugins are fairly essential to me (e.g. NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere) so I wasn't able to use it as a daily driver. The fault for that may rest at the plugin developers, but I wonder if it has been resolved?
      - ronjouch 11y ago
        It's still imperfect; expect some breakage, depending on your addons. I myself faced problems in HighlightAll (fixed in recently-released 1.8), and VimFx (still broken, which leads me to disable e10s for now). Nit: you mean (js-based) addons/extensions, not (binary) plugins.
- 11y ago
devit 11y ago
Note that you should be using Tor Browser instead unless you specifically want the 3rd party sites to see your real IP address, or need to use a browser that is more compatible with standard browsers.
skarap 11y ago
I love how the page fails to provide any explanation of how it works or what it does at all. Maybe there is something in the video, but I'm not going to watch it.
- jhchen 11y ago
  Uh right below the video... "We first added Private Browsing to Firefox to give you control over your privacy locally by not saving your browser history and cookies when you close a private window. However, when you browse the Web, you can unknowingly share information about yourself with third parties that are separate from the site you’re actually visiting, even in Private Browsing mode on any browser. Until today. Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux actively blocks content like ads, analytics trackers and social share buttons that may record your behavior without your knowledge across sites."
mucker 11y ago
Switch to Pale Moon.
mangeletti 11y ago
Firefox, as of this update, is completely unstable on Mountain Lion. I have two notebooks running Mountain Lion, and both have the same issues. Opening new tabs results in this weird bug where the current page is changed to the about:blank page, sort of, and the new tab doesn't actually appear. I've used Firefox since 2.1, and this organization is now falling apart, in terms of producing a functioning product. How is it possible to make a worse browser in 2015 than they made in 2007 or so?
- muizelaar 11y ago
  Can you find a regression window using http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/? That will help us figure out what broke and fix it.
- glandium 11y ago
  Did you try the safe mode? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-is...
- hollerith 11y ago
  I'm on Mountain Lion, and my Firefox (42.0) doesn't do anything like that.
tenfingers 11y ago
Seems like "Tracking protection" should be the default, not an opt-on. Like disabling "beacon.enabled" by default, for instance. If you're using a general purpose blocker (uBlock, uMatrix, PoliceMan, AdBlock, etc, even NoScript), it makes sense to actually disable the internal blocker (less hooks/rules to parse), as FF's list is not even remotely comparable to what you get by subscribing to a couple of community-maintained ones, plus there's no convenient way to tweak the rules (something that other addons excel at). FF internal tracking protection is somewhat nice for the casual user, and it's going to stir some extra polemics about content blocking (which I consider a positive thing), but it's nowhere as effective as the others. I fear it's also going to be circumvented more quickly, promoting more inline JS, supercookies and fingerprinting techniques. Overall, it's not something that I would have included in FF from a purely pragmatical perspective. It's just opening Mozilla to direct liability, while not providing anything for the privacy conscious person.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > It's just opening Mozilla to direct liability, while not providing anything for the privacy conscious person. I would guess that there are many people who use Private Browsing mode that don't understand or use security addons. This change may not help many Hacker News users, almost all of whom do understand and can easily use the addons, but we are only a tiny fraction of the Internet.
- slvrspoon 11y ago
  being in the business of privacy and tracker blocking, I reject somewhat this notion that a "Bigger badder list" is the only sophisticated way to get privacy. Unlike A/V where the most dangerous viruses are the lesser knowns, in trackers, the biggest most prevalent are the must privacy-violating. do "privacy conscious" sophisticated HN readers think otherwise?
oneJob 11y ago
So if someone starts following me on the street and gets close enough to put their hand in one of my pockets and just continues on that way every morning I leave my house, for weeks or longer, I don't say, "Hey stranger, I'd like to make an argument why you should afford me some privacy tomorrow." I'd likely say, "Wtf person, you're being the kind of weird that gets the police called on people. Step back. Or better yet, go away to somewhere that I can't see you." But hey, this is the Internet, so let's just all stop thinking as though this all has anything to do with real life.
Steko 11y ago
I'd be happy if I could shut off the reminder to upgrade Sync that pops up every day.
awqrre 11y ago
Why is this not available in standard mode (vs private mode)?

303 points by tempestn 11y ago

nacs 11y ago

A "more private browsing experience" that still features the Pocket bundleware and button in the toolbar thats still not un-installable like other extensions and requires about:config edits to disable..

skrowl 11y ago
They have to make money somehow. They're not making it by selling all of your data (and giving it to the NSA for free) like Microsoft and Google. How do you suggest they continue to exist, if not partnering with Pocket / Yahoo / etc?
- mordocai 11y ago
  Obviously this doesn't happen, but they -should- exist solely on donations from both personal and corporate sources that are no-strings-attached. Unfortunately, in the real world they end up doing things like pocket in order to survive.
  - wahsd 11y ago
    The huge problem with today's generation; they want everything and they want it now and they want it free. How dare they make money somehow because the same person complaining about the pocket and hello integration would also not pay anything for the browser.
    - joesmo 11y ago
      How do you possibly imagine a non-free browser competing with all the free browsers out there?
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      We live in an era where entire operating systems are free for end users. Not everything needs to be fucking monetized.
- dagurp 11y ago
  They could at least have included Pocket and Hello as normal addons.
  - sp332 11y ago
    Parsing and loading an add-on would increase startup time. If you haven't put in your Pocket credentials, it's a single "if" statement that has to be evaluated. Having Pocket installed is the common case and the one that should be optimized for. Are you worried that data will go to Pocket even if you don't log in?
    - kuschku 11y ago
      No, I just want 0 code of it on my system. Even if it’s never executed.
      - pjc50 11y ago
        That's a fairly high level of outrage, why?
        stonogo 11y ago
        How is "not installing unused software" considered to be "outrage"?
        pjc50 11y ago
        It's a minor browser feature. Most people will never use e.g. the mozilla developer tools.
        pdkl95 11y ago
        I find it hard to believe that someone with significant karma on HN doesn't understand surveillance-as-a-business-model. Just being a yet another Service As A Software Substitute[1] is bad enough, but in this case these rent-seekers are exploiting user ignorance (it's a "dark pattern"). Firefox has always been a local app, with remote features requiring the user to opt-in to an extension. The distinction between Mozilla "only providing a button" and the actual feature that loads from the remote SaaSS only exists for people that understand these technologies. Mozilla is being especially hypocritical with the integration of these features. During their previous projects (e.g. Australis) Mozilla pushed a lot of previously-integrated features into extensions. This caused problems for a LOT of people, but I reluctantly supported it because a minimal core with most features as plugins is generally a good design. For them to turn around an integrate a plugin that baits people into using spyware is outrageous - and somewhat suspicious. That button needs to be removed because it's an attractive nuisance[2]. [1] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
- dlandis 11y ago
  But does making this stuff uninstallable and difficult to disable really make them that much additional money? Seems like a poorly negotiated deal if that was really part of it.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Pocket is disabled by default (the code is only loaded when you click the button), and you can hide the button with right click → hide from toolbar.
    - pbhjpbhj 11y ago
      That's like saying that bookmarks are disabled by default because the bookmark code does nothing until you interact with the browser, eg click the star or type in the "awesomebar". If it's in the default UI it's not disabled, disabled means you have to take steps outside the expected workflow to enable it. Dramatisation follows ... "Oh, this rock I put in the middle of the floor, don't worry it's disabled; if you don't kick it or fall on it then it can't hurt you. Sure, putting it there makes you likely to trip on it; requires you to move it if you don't want to. What's that? The company name on the side, oh that's just the company that asked us to put the rock here. Yeah, we're totally honouring our roots and keeping with minimalism aren't we! No, no, it's not an advert - many of our users like having this rock here. Next week we're going to scatter marbles on the floor, each one says 'drink more Koke', aren't we just being awesome. Ha, do you remember when you had to choose for yourself which junk to clutter your office up with."
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
- stonogo 11y ago
  How does the linux kernel continue to exist? How does busybox continue to exist? How does FreeBSD continue to exist? Hint: none of them have signed bundling deals.
  - fhd2 11y ago
    Those are all essentially infrastructure projects that (one way or another) add value to end user products that (not always, but quite often) are monetised somehow and in turn contribute or donate back, because they can. Firefox OTOH is an end user product itself, quite a different case. Note that I'm no fan of the Pocket integration at all - to my knowledge there isn't even any sort of bundling deal or other kind of monetisation involved. I don't understand why Mozilla does this.
    - stonogo 11y ago
      I don't agree with you. Firefox is an infrastructure product; it's how end users interact with actual products they care about (e.g., Facebook, Netflix, etc). Few people fire up a web browser without the intention of consuming third-party (non-Mozilla) content, just like few people boot a linux system just to watch the kernel run.
      - pcwalton 11y ago
        As a matter of fact, we have empirical data posted just yesterday about who is committing to the mainstream browser engines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10503653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10503653 You are welcome to draw your own conclusions about the viability of constructing a modern browser engine on donated time from a handful of Facebook and Netflix engineers.
        gsnedders 11y ago
        OTOH, there's the counter argument that if search engines and OS vendors are willing to pay for browsers, why should Facebook and/or Netflix spend any money? It seems to be the classic business case problem of, "well everyone else is paying for it already, and as a result we won't have much affect". I do, of course, realise that FB and Netflix very much have an interest in the web platform, and could undoubtedly influence it more if they were willing to contribute code. That said, it's probably worthwhile to point out to those who don't know that both FB and Netflix are W3C members, and have several people who contribute heavily to specs.
- icebraining 11y ago
  According to Mozilla, the Pocket button doesn't make money.
  - whoopdedo 11y ago
    So Telefonica is just doing this because they're really nice guys and aren't trying to increase the visibility of their products? And the Mozilla Foundation took on the extra code debt only because they were 100% convinced users wanted these extensions and not because they received a sizable donation from their partner to have it installed and on the toolbar by default with no way to completely remove it unlike every other extension.
    - callahad 11y ago
      Pocket (Read It Later, Inc.) has nothing to do with Telefonica.
    - thristian 11y ago
      Telefonica has nothing to do with the Pocket extension, they just (as far as I know) run the rendezvous servers that support the Hello feature. Mozilla wanted to ship a WebRTC implementation, but it's not much use having webcam and microphone input unless you can send them to other people, and in this age of NAT and firewalls, that needs a rendezvous server. Mozilla had already had fruitful business interactions with Telefonica with FirefoxOS, and a telco seems like a reasonable choice for hosting a long-uptime network service... In exchange for donating server hosting, Telefonica gets to display their logo in the Hello UI. I don't know if they also shelled out money in addition to hosting a service, but 80% of Hello's code is Firefox platform stuff (VP8 encoding and decoding, etc.) not Telefonica stuff.
- muraiki 11y ago
  Mozilla did not receive any monetary compensation for integrating Pocket. https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...
  - redml 11y ago
    If true, that makes it even stupider. If they're adding even more unnecessary bloat to the browser they should at least be compensated for it.
    - wlesieutre 11y ago
      Maybe, but all the people who had aneurysms about it would have been even louder.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      In fairness, what amounts to a hyperlink is not "bloat". I wish it wasn't there because it's a thing nobody is ever going to use in the age of Hangouts and Skype, but it's not like impacts the rest of the browser in any way
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        It very, very negatively impacted mozilla's and firefox's PR. Case in point: This entire thread.
        hackuser 11y ago
        It only takes a tiny number of people to make a lot of noise, but I don't think it represents public opinion. Consider the Tea Party: Whether you agree with them or not (please don't answer), based on the noise they generate they might seem to be a majority, but they are a small and shrinking minority.
        scrollaway 11y ago
Karunamon 11y ago
And don't forget about the adware- I mean "promoted sites" on the new tab screen.
- eli 11y ago
  I get that people don't like ads, but is that really a privacy concern?
  - huhtenberg 11y ago
    Of course it is. It compromises Mozilla's claims that they still put users' interests first. Furthermore, they insist that these promoted tiles is something that people want, whereby it absolutely bloody obvious that nobody, except for Mozilla, wants this junk. These tiles basically show that Mozilla can act against users' interests and in a blatantly disingenuous manner. This in turn makes you question the rest of their efforts that are branded as pro-user.
    - eli 11y ago
      I see what you're saying, but I still don't understand why it's a privacy concern.
      - forty 11y ago
        Ads on the web want to track that you saw it, clicked on it, on which website you saw it, when, with which browser, which OS, which was the previous page you visited, what site you are used to browsing, what you purchased, where you live, what is your sexual preference, ... and nowadays they can and they do :/ There are many sites that I like and would happily unblock their ads to support them, but I often don't because they use ad systems that want to spy on me. The main problem with ads on the web is not that they are annoying (like on TV for example), it is that they are spying on you.
        lxt 11y ago
        The ads in Tiles specifically don't track you in the way that regular ads do. It's an experiment in ways to do advertising without being creepy. More info: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-tiles-new-tab?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=how-do-tiles-work-firefox#w_what-data-is-being-collected-and-why https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-tiles-new-tab?red...
lgp171188 11y ago
The "Hello" button automatically came back to the toolbar (I had removed it) after the Firefox 42 upgrade. Thought that it could be accidental and checked on a different machine, the same thing happened.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  I seem to recall some Mozillian saying this wasn't intentional and explaining why, but I don't have the link.
  - whoopdedo 11y ago
    Funny how decisions which financially benefit the developer have a way of "accidentally" being activated by default. The automatic downloading of the Windows 10 update. Or these bundled Telefonica extensions in Firefox.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      Firefox is developed in the open. It's easy to check if there was a deliberate change.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        Of course there was a change, but that does nothing to tell us if the way it was activated was accidental or intentional.
        TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        Well, the commit message would be a clue. If we assume they aren't being deceptive.
      - monochromatic 11y ago
        git discern intent
    - 11y ago
mbrubeck 11y ago
The Pocket code is being moved to a bundled add-on: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694
- lgp171188 11y ago
  Awesome! This was the only way forward for a user-centric web browser like Firefox. Glad to see that they have listened to user feedback (and uproar) and backed down.
- zobzu 11y ago
  wow that great news! sort of hoping other similar things like hello do that too. thats how id like firefox to be, as a user. would be even better if default off at install ;-) (albeit id probably enable hello, its just nice to not be forced-in for such features)
  - developer1 11y ago
    I was bouncing between firefox and chrome, using them both more-or-less equally. The day the "hello" thing appeared, I uninstalled firefox. Too many useless and annoying things being added to firefox as core components where they do not belong. The fact that anybody can pay Mozilla to have their crappy addon forced onto all users is a problem.
  - rfk 11y ago
    This thread suggests that Hello is indeed being considered for similar treatment: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/gofaster/2015-November/000195.html https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/gofaster/2015-November/00...
21echoes 11y ago
I don't see how that has anything to do with privacy... it's a button that is effectively an href. Without clicking it, no data is sent to Pocket.
JohnTHaller 11y ago
You mean the open source code that you can examine that's never even loaded let alone executed if you don't click on the button due to lazy loading.
- drdaeman 11y ago
  In theory, you can examine it, sure. But I fear that in practice, it's so complicated and large, it's unlikely there are many humans who can really tell about themselves that they really know how the thing works. A certain part - sure, given enough time to read and learn. A whole thing - quite unlikely.
  - oberstein 11y ago
    You don't have to understand it in this case, you just have to make sure that code path isn't invoked by anything other than clicking the button. This can be pretty easily verified.
    - revelation 11y ago
      Brilliant, you have just solved the halting problem.
      - oberstein 11y ago
        Stick a printf/file write/breakpoint at the root of the code path if you want continuous verification that the code path never executes except by clicking the button. This isn't hard.
      - monochromatic 11y ago
        Static analysis is a thing, and it doesn't solve the halting problem.
        skj 11y ago
        It also doesn't solve this problem.

RexRollman 11y ago

I haven't been thrilled with Mozilla's direction for a while now. Bloating Firefox by embedding Pocket and Hello into it, speeding up Firefox's release frequency just because Chrome does it that way, wasting resources on Firefox-OS, and firing an employee just for donating to a political cause. If they are not careful, they are going to run Mozilla into the ground.

darklajid 11y ago
I don't quite understand 'bloating' in this context, especially with the example of 'Hello'. My understanding is that this is really merely a link. A bookmark, if you will. To a website/service that will use WebRTC, tech that was meant to be implemented by browsers. What do you consider bloat here? The 'Hello' button/promotion? Or the full WebRTC stack? And how can you decide that efforts spent to build FxOS are 'wasted'?
toyg 11y ago
They didn't "fire" Brendan Eich, they just acknowledged that his personal values were at odd with Mozilla's mission and overall sentiment across the organization, basically demoting him from the CEO role. Eich then resigned.
- wahsd 11y ago
  The liberal mob will have its way. But it's of course not anything like any other tyrannies and controlling mobs. It's different of course. I don't necessarily agree with his donation either, but what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework. You don't just smother dissenting opinions. You are no different than that which you feel yourself superior to.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    > what he does with his own money should be up to him within the realm of the legal framework But what a private foundation and/or company promotes or demotes isn't up to its members? Sounds like a double standard to me.

mmastrac 11y ago

Here's a link to the FAQ with more info: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-pbm https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection-pbm And links to lists of what is blocked: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tracking_protection#Lists https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Tracking_protection#Lists I'm curious to know what the in-the-wild breakage rate for FF's blocking feature is. I use Ghostery myself and I find that maybe 1 in 100 are broken. I feel like that could be 1 in 1000 if blockers implemented a Google Analytics stub -- by far the most commonly required script for things to work.

Cogito 11y ago
I've run into the Google Analytics issue multiple times. It may be just because usage is so prevalent, so it's more visible, but it's bad when your website breaks because a third party script doesn't load. In the situations I've seen, the issue was using GA without first checking it loaded correctly. Defensively coding third party requests, let alone all requests, should be second nature. It raises two questions for me: 1. Is there some code out there being copied everywhere which assumes GA will always load? 2. How do I make sure this is never an issue in my projects? I don't think (1) is an actual problem, and I don't know of any options for (2). Bandwidth throttling doesn't directly help, although it may make it obvious which third-party scripts block the render of the page (which often seems related). Ideally you would have good test coverage on the loaded page, and then randomly block requests to see what breaks. Mark resources as either hard or soft dependencies, make sure soft dependencies never break the page/functionality of the app, and make sure loss of a hard dependency degrades nicely. Edit: I should also add, my most memorable run in with this bug was with a very well known application, and they were very quick to fix it once reported. I was surprised none of the internal devs had run into the problem, as I assumed most would run a blocker, but it may have been an early access release...
- scintill76 11y ago
  As a user, I would tend to agree; but as a developer, thinking about "what if the browser decides to kill this one script request but run the rest of the scripts?" is the last thing on my mind. I don't know, maybe I'm a lazy dev[0], but when you consider it's essentially the browser's selective compliance to the standards, how far down that rabbit hole do you want to go? Now, you could argue that requests can legitimately fail at any time, and it's best to handle it. OK, as a lazy/efficient dev willing to entertain that, I'll design my page to put up a modal alert saying "There was an error loading this page. Click OK to refresh." if anything fails to load. Now my error-handling job is done, but privacy-conscious users will still be mad at me, demanding that I gracefully degrade for every combination of request-blocking (or in GP's case, request-tampering!) they can dream up. Again, I'm sympathetic as a user, and I've even experienced broken pages due to Ghostery, but as a developer it's hard to blame them. [0] And AFAIK have no hard dependencies on third-party scripts like GA.

choffee 11y ago

Do they have a html5 version of that flash video?

icebraining 11y ago
It's a Youtube video, and it loads the HTML5 player for me. Try going to https://www.youtube.com/html5 https://www.youtube.com/html5 and see if you can enable it.
edcastro 11y ago
if they have, it's probably on 720p, since no mediasource is supported yet.
ChrisClark 11y ago
It's the html5 Youtube player for me.

Silhouette 11y ago

Unfortunately they have also yet again changed things internally that break plug-ins, apparently including various popular ones used for privacy and blocking purposes. So in reality, since I don't habitually browse in Private Browsing mode, the more private browsing I've experienced with the recent Firefox updates has involved more ads and trackers than I've seen in years, followed by a lot of frustration searching for replacement extensions that actually work and then still more frustration configuring things manually that used to just work a few months ago. I really wish Mozilla would get back to promoting the add-ons model that once made Firefox so attractive, and prioritising flexibility and stability accordingly. Some of the other features they've added directly might be useful, but the price of the constant change is too high, and in just about every case I can think of the add-ons community already had good, working solutions.

Osmose 11y ago
Which add-ons are you referring to? AFAIK the big 3 are AdBlock (Plus? There's so many jeez), uBlock (and Origin), and, in a distant third, Privacy Badger.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Adblock Edge was discontinued a little while back but had effectively replaced the not-fully-blocking Adblock Plus of recent months. ABE's UI integration broke in another recent FF update, but the blocking itself continued to work usefully until FF42, at which point apparently it ceased doing anything useful at all. uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative and is OK for blocking most ads, but I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists, and its UI is awful. Ghostery also isn't blocking various trackers effectively now, even though its UI still claims it has detected and blocked them. I can't 100% guarantee that's FF42 if Ghostery also updated its lists at almost exactly the same time, but that's when I saw things like Facebook Connect start hitting FB servers even though it's supposedly blocked. This is almost a brand new machine, BTW, which just happened to update FF and lead to changes in the plug-ins a few days after initial set-up. There's relatively little chance of odd things going on or historical baggage distorting these results. Bottom line: The day I bought the machine and installed FF and my usual set up add-ons, my browsing experience was fine, and then a few days later FF updated to 42, and my browsing experience immediately sucked.

hackuser 11y ago

I wonder about Mozilla's strategies for two key challenges: 1) The greatest challenge for Tracking Protection seems to me to be not technical, but strategic: How do you protect users from tracking without creating a backlash from the tracking industry and their customers (the whole Internet economy built on tracking) that will make the outcome worse or no better, and after an expensive battle. As an extreme example, if the next release of Firefox cut off tracking for all its users then I think there would be a war, including possibly lawsuits and an arms race between trackers and tracking protection. The users would be no better off (or worse off) and it would consume Mozilla's resources. 2) How do they plan to protect the great majority of users who lack the knowledge and skill to understand tracking protection? Remember that most users barely know they are being tracked, much less what that means or how it's done. Many users I deal with don't know the URL field from the search box on their home page; they don't understand what a web browser, web page, or remote server are, much less their components, requests, JavaScript, etc. They lack even the framework to begin understanding tracking. Most other end users I know would be overwhelmed by the concept and extra hassle to load a page. Also, how will most users understand why the webpage is malfunctioning, of all the possible reasons, and what to do about it? Maybe they'll think Firefox is simply broken. Maybe this is why Tracking Protection is available only in Private Browsing right now, and hidden behind a small, somewhat obscure icon (if I understand correctly); maybe that's a way of limiting it to more technically skilled users. Providing tracking protection to technical users has been done, via Ghostery, Disconnect, etc. I'd like to see it become available to everyone else. (That's not a criticism of Mozilla - this is a great, precedent-setting step forward, establishing that major browser vendors might block tracking and act in user interests over industry's, and hopefully creating some competition in that area.) Maybe the first step is to raise awareness of tracking and the idea that users benefit from and should have the option for privacy, which can be done by simply telling users about Tracking Protection when they open Firefox after the update, whether or not they actually use it.

joesmo 11y ago
"How do you protect users from tracking without creating a backlash from the tracking industry and their customers?" I don't see this as a concern for Mozilla. Google/Apple/Microsoft and their respective browsers sure, but the point of Firefox is to provide a browser whose goals align with the user. The industry's goals here have never aligned with users and it's about time (many, many years too late) that a major browser vendor ships this as part of the browser rather than an addon.

crucini 11y ago

It's a step in the right direction, but I'm afraid we need more than this. > Since some Web pages may appear broken when elements that track behavior are blocked, we’ve made it easy to turn off Tracking Protection in Private Browsing for a particular site using the Control Center. Whitelisting a whole site because it "appears broken" is a pretty weak approach, and clearly incentivizes "brokenness". I notice the spies (google etc.) are more intelligent and creative than the defenders of privacy. We need a browser that can make such sites work - for the user. Without leaking any cross-site information. This involves rewriting URLs and cookies, or "mixmastering" identifiers across a cloud of users. >Today we’re also releasing new visual editing tools in Firefox Developer Edition including Animation Tools that work the same way animators think. To me this sounds like fiddling while Rome burns. Typical of their track record of wasting energy on irrelevant projects instead of making a great browser.

c0achmcguirk 11y ago
> To me this sounds like fiddling while Rome burns. Typical of their track record of wasting energy on irrelevant projects instead of making a great browser. I don't think you're being fair. I'm seeing a lot of improvements from Firefox, outside of their vastly improved developer tools and tracking prevention. * They've been working on multi-process Firefox, enabled in developer edition [1] * They've been beating Chrome's JS Engine in the benchmarks (not to mention IE) [2] * They've been implementing more and more of HTML5, about 81% of the way there according to [3] * Firefox supports more ES6 features than Chrome [4] I guess I'm seeing a lot of good progress coming from the Firefox team. [1] - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Fir... [2] - http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/ [3] - https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html [4] - https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ https://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/

ni46 11y ago

Quack

mesozoic 11y ago

Do any of the browsers privacy modes make an active attempt to stop fingerprint based tracking yet?

jamoes 11y ago
Not to my knowledge. That's why I use the CanvasBlocker extension [1], which prevents websites from abusing canvas tags to fingerprint me. I'd like to see a comprehensive effort to prevent fingerprinting without having to resort to simply blocking the canvas element altogether. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker...
- IshKebab 11y ago
  There are many other ways to fingerprint you. Blocking the canvas alone doesn't really achieve anything.

Scarbutt 11y ago

Will this interfere with Privacy Badge and uBlock Origin? Unlike Chrome, Firefox doesn't have the option to disable addons for private mode.

pwnna 11y ago
No. I've been using this under nightly for a bit now and there's no problem coexisting afaict.

unicornporn 11y ago

This is the first time I've had to downgrade after upgrading. For avid users of Tree Style Tab I can report that it is completely unusable in Firefox 42.

windsurfer 11y ago
The fork I use works for me: https://github.com/windsurfer/treestyletab https://github.com/windsurfer/treestyletab
mbudde 11y ago
A new version (0.15.20150902901) of TreeStyleTabs has been released that works with Firefox 42, but it will not automatically update so you need to install it from [1]. See also [2]. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/versions/?page=1#version-0.15.20150902901 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... [2] https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/973 https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab/issues/973
reitanqild 11y ago
I'm reading this from PaleMoon. Between firing the CEO over someone making noise in social media and planning to make Tree Style Tabs etc impossible by breaking the API and not replacing it with a usable one I'm, if not out, at least looking for good alternatives. Edit: the sad thing being that I have been a Firefox user since the first time I got my hands on it and never looked back after the two first addon competitions where brilliant stuff like Scrapbook was created. Basically it is another league than any other browsers addons for now.

Snesker 11y ago

'Private browsing' is a fucking scam. These people are fooling non-technical people and the elderly into thinking what they do online is private, when it is not. They make a big hoorah about shit like this - things they shouldn't have permitted to happen in their browser in the first place, congratulating themselves while they lull the less intelligent into becoming victim of dragnet surveillance. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PRIVATE BROWSING. FUCK FIREFOX. Fuck its cocksucking faggot developers and the furry and inept gnu-tards who're the only people who made usable forks. 'usable' in the case of shit moon. That said, I still use it because it's the only option re: prebuilt tor versions, extensibility and competently displaying the html on pages properly. Audacious fucking pieces of shit like this make me sit here and scream like a frog.

mrmondo 11y ago

I truly appreciate how much time and effort Mozilla puts into Firefox privacy. I do wish however that some more effort was spent on stability and performance. It seems like every day I hear coworkers growling that Firefox has crashed on them and while I'm sure that plugins are a huge part of this it's not exactly easy for the end user to pinpoint where the issue is occurring.

mmastrac 11y ago
I'm anxiously awaiting the landing of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis https://wiki.mozilla.org/Electrolysis for years. That will be a major component of any improvement.
- mconley 11y ago
  Electrolysis ("e10s") has been enabled by default on the Nightly and Developer Edition* channels, if you'd like to help test it. * Although we're currently running an A/B test to measure performance differences with e10s enabled and disabled, so you might fall into the disabled cohort when you run Dev Edition. This experiment is scheduled to end in a few days.
  - brbsix 11y ago
    The last time I tried Electrolysis I had issues with plugins. Some of the plugins are fairly essential to me (e.g. NoScript, HTTPS Everywhere) so I wasn't able to use it as a daily driver. The fault for that may rest at the plugin developers, but I wonder if it has been resolved?
    - ronjouch 11y ago
      It's still imperfect; expect some breakage, depending on your addons. I myself faced problems in HighlightAll (fixed in recently-released 1.8), and VimFx (still broken, which leads me to disable e10s for now). Nit: you mean (js-based) addons/extensions, not (binary) plugins.
11y ago

devit 11y ago

Note that you should be using Tor Browser instead unless you specifically want the 3rd party sites to see your real IP address, or need to use a browser that is more compatible with standard browsers.

skarap 11y ago

I love how the page fails to provide any explanation of how it works or what it does at all. Maybe there is something in the video, but I'm not going to watch it.

jhchen 11y ago
Uh right below the video... "We first added Private Browsing to Firefox to give you control over your privacy locally by not saving your browser history and cookies when you close a private window. However, when you browse the Web, you can unknowingly share information about yourself with third parties that are separate from the site you’re actually visiting, even in Private Browsing mode on any browser. Until today. Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux actively blocks content like ads, analytics trackers and social share buttons that may record your behavior without your knowledge across sites."

mucker 11y ago

Switch to Pale Moon.

mangeletti 11y ago

Firefox, as of this update, is completely unstable on Mountain Lion. I have two notebooks running Mountain Lion, and both have the same issues. Opening new tabs results in this weird bug where the current page is changed to the about:blank page, sort of, and the new tab doesn't actually appear. I've used Firefox since 2.1, and this organization is now falling apart, in terms of producing a functioning product. How is it possible to make a worse browser in 2015 than they made in 2007 or so?

muizelaar 11y ago
Can you find a regression window using http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/ http://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/? That will help us figure out what broke and fix it.
glandium 11y ago
Did you try the safe mode? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-is...
hollerith 11y ago
I'm on Mountain Lion, and my Firefox (42.0) doesn't do anything like that.

tenfingers 11y ago

Seems like "Tracking protection" should be the default, not an opt-on. Like disabling "beacon.enabled" by default, for instance. If you're using a general purpose blocker (uBlock, uMatrix, PoliceMan, AdBlock, etc, even NoScript), it makes sense to actually disable the internal blocker (less hooks/rules to parse), as FF's list is not even remotely comparable to what you get by subscribing to a couple of community-maintained ones, plus there's no convenient way to tweak the rules (something that other addons excel at). FF internal tracking protection is somewhat nice for the casual user, and it's going to stir some extra polemics about content blocking (which I consider a positive thing), but it's nowhere as effective as the others. I fear it's also going to be circumvented more quickly, promoting more inline JS, supercookies and fingerprinting techniques. Overall, it's not something that I would have included in FF from a purely pragmatical perspective. It's just opening Mozilla to direct liability, while not providing anything for the privacy conscious person.

hackuser 11y ago
> It's just opening Mozilla to direct liability, while not providing anything for the privacy conscious person. I would guess that there are many people who use Private Browsing mode that don't understand or use security addons. This change may not help many Hacker News users, almost all of whom do understand and can easily use the addons, but we are only a tiny fraction of the Internet.
slvrspoon 11y ago
being in the business of privacy and tracker blocking, I reject somewhat this notion that a "Bigger badder list" is the only sophisticated way to get privacy. Unlike A/V where the most dangerous viruses are the lesser knowns, in trackers, the biggest most prevalent are the must privacy-violating. do "privacy conscious" sophisticated HN readers think otherwise?

oneJob 11y ago

So if someone starts following me on the street and gets close enough to put their hand in one of my pockets and just continues on that way every morning I leave my house, for weeks or longer, I don't say, "Hey stranger, I'd like to make an argument why you should afford me some privacy tomorrow." I'd likely say, "Wtf person, you're being the kind of weird that gets the police called on people. Step back. Or better yet, go away to somewhere that I can't see you." But hey, this is the Internet, so let's just all stop thinking as though this all has anything to do with real life.

Steko 11y ago

I'd be happy if I could shut off the reminder to upgrade Sync that pops up every day.

awqrre 11y ago

Why is this not available in standard mode (vs private mode)?