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This is a FAQ. http://hystry.com/faq.html http://hystry.com/faq.html Firefox extensions are restricted to javascript. Consider an extension that is about compa
by akkartik 20y ago
This is a FAQ. http://hystry.com/faq.html http://hystry.com/faq.html
Firefox extensions are restricted to javascript. Consider an extension that is about comparable in terms of computing resources: searching in scrapbook (http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook http://amb.vis.ne.jp/mozilla/scrapbook ). On any reasonable set of pages saved, searching is dog slow. hystry's workflow - saving the state of every page you visit, and then performing diffs when you ask for them - is equally non-trivial. Also, scrapbook gradually makes firefox unresponsive as we keep adding pages to it. I have scrapbook setup to save every page I read, and need to save elsewhere the gigabyte of data it generates every month. This kind of computation and storage is what the website is for.
hystry.com is pretty slow as well so far, but at least it doesn't keep popping up a dialog asking if you should let the javascript thread continue. And it will become faster over time.
- staunch 20y agoFor me the FAQ's answer is unsatisfactory. The claim that "The information cannot be connected with you" is a misleading falsehood. You can and so could any bad guy that has penetrated your system. No one who cares cares about their security or privacy could use your application in its current form. Thankfully there's lots of people who don't, so you should be fine. Good luck.
- akkartik 20y agoThanks. If you have any suggestions on how to make it work locally I'd be interested to hear them. Moving from a desktop to a web service will always involve some loss of privacy. The trend seems to be to deemphasize privacy.
- ralph 20y agoA proxy server running on the user's machine? It gets to see everywhere the user goes. A Javascript or plugin can communicate with the proxy for better browser integration.
- akkartik 20y agoHmm, I'll think about this one. Proxies are so far complex to install, perhaps this can be streamlined. I end up backing up an ever-growing scrapbook archive out of my PC every month. Perhaps most people don't care about backups. With hard disk capacities growing as they are, 100MB/month compressed may be a reasonable rate of disk usage.
- ralph 20y agoBe like Google and don't cache rich media in the proxy, just text/html, etc. An upstream proxy can be a full caching one, e.g. like Squid, perhaps the one at their ISP.
- akkartik 20y ago100MB/mo compressed is just the text/html.
- staunch 20y agoPerhaps you could only track specific sites? My digg/reddit/slashdot/blog traffic is already quite public, so thats the kind of stuff I wouldn't worry about. I'm not totally sure if that kind of approach would limit you too much. I'm thinking something like the way ad blocking software has large lists of ad servers, etc.
- akkartik 20y agoYeah, the FAQ answer sort of hinted at this: "You will soon be able to control in the firefox extension what pages we are aware of." http://hystry.com/faq.html http://hystry.com/faq.html I visualize it as allowing either a whitelist of sites to send out or a blacklist of sites to avoid sending out. I'll bump this idea up my todo list.
- akkartik 20y agoI've reworded the first sentence to "The information will not be connected with you." Is that less misleading? It seems to me that kind of statement of intent is the best I can provide.
- staunch 20y agoYeah I looked at your FAQ and I personally like that language a lot more. Sorry if I came off harsh about it. Nothing about what you're doing or you seems dishonest or untrustworthy.