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I agree. It's fucking ridiculous that someone at Mozilla forgetting to renew a cert resulted in the simultaneous disabling of every single Firefox extension on

I agree. It's fucking ridiculous that someone at Mozilla forgetting to renew a cert resulted in the simultaneous disabling of every single Firefox extension on earth. I wouldn't be surprised if someone (an activist, a gay person, etc) in an oppressive country died as a result of suddenly losing their VPN/privacy extensions.

411111111111111 5y ago
I sure hope that none of the people that are in danger trust in the obscurity provided by in browser vpns. If they do then it always was just a question of time for them to be found out, as just adding a webrtc session to the website makes their ip transparent again. Same with unique dns queries etc
- Karunamon 5y ago
  This also happened to Tor Browser, the whole point of which is that you can trust it.
Borealid 5y ago
Is there a phrase that describes the process of taking something one thinks is bad - here, Firefox extensions being disabled - and searching for the most egregious possible negative consequence that might have occurred (here, someone being murdered), and then using that as a hypothetical? The goal is obviously to try to increase the emotional weight of the argument against... whatever... but I'm seeing this demilogical construction used more and more in the wild and would like to know its name.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  its mainly because saying "someone could have gotten a slap on the wrist because of this mistake" isnt really worth mentioning
- klysm 5y ago
  Is it not useful to consider the envelop of possibilities from a widespread outage like that?
- djbusby 5y ago
  Might be this one? "Reductio ad absurdum" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Or "Logical Extreme" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_extreme https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_extreme
- avar 5y ago
  In a word: hyperbole or adynaton.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > searching for the most egregious possible negative consequence that might have occurred On the one hand, stretching consequences is bad. On the other hand, thinking about a "one in a million" consequence isn't stretching when something affects a million people. Maybe that example is closer to "one in a billion" or higher? We can hope so.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Hyperbole? I agree with your sentiment, but it's been the 'Internet rant' rhetoric for decades IME. Find a HN thread, with a moderate number of comments, without it. IMHO, such comments are so tired, poisonous, and add so little that if I were king of HN, I would ban them. They may be hard to define, but 'no hyperole' is a start.
  - jeltz 5y ago
    > Find a HN thread, with a moderate number of comments, without it. That is quite the hyperbole and under your own rules you would be banned.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      I don't think it is an exaggeration.
simondotau 5y ago
It's also not beyond the realm of possibility that the person responsible for monitoring this cert read your post just now, contemplated the potential gravity of their mistake, and decided that they couldn't live knowing those potential consequences. There is no limit to what can disgusting thoughts could be posited in a hypothetical.
- causality0 5y ago
  The person responsible for monitoring the cert was the proximal cause but not the ultimate cause. The ultimate cause was the colossal fool who decided a cert check failure should cause an immediate and nonconsensual disabling of all extensions instead of a pop-up box warning the user their extensions may be untrustworthy. That's like a car's ECU slamming on brakes because it failed to read the tire pressure.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    My comment was a response to your singling out the "someone at Mozilla forgetting to renew a cert" which you referred to earlier. You are correct in acknowledging that you had only identified a proximal cause in your grandparent post. I agree that the underlying problem is that extensions were disabled without user notification. The correct behaviour is simple enough: if any extension gets disabled for ANY reason other than manually by the user, the browser should lock out ALL network connections until the user has acknowledged this change of state. Someone should submit this to bugzilla as a high priority fix, if it hasn't already been done.
    - causality0 5y ago
      Someone should submit this to bugzilla as a high priority fix, if it hasn't already been done. Not gonna happen. These days Mozilla doesn't even pretend to give a damn about user control. "We know better than you" has been the watchword for a while now.
      - simondotau 5y ago

411111111111111 5y ago

I sure hope that none of the people that are in danger trust in the obscurity provided by in browser vpns. If they do then it always was just a question of time for them to be found out, as just adding a webrtc session to the website makes their ip transparent again. Same with unique dns queries etc

Karunamon 5y ago
This also happened to Tor Browser, the whole point of which is that you can trust it.

Borealid 5y ago

Is there a phrase that describes the process of taking something one thinks is bad - here, Firefox extensions being disabled - and searching for the most egregious possible negative consequence that might have occurred (here, someone being murdered), and then using that as a hypothetical? The goal is obviously to try to increase the emotional weight of the argument against... whatever... but I'm seeing this demilogical construction used more and more in the wild and would like to know its name.

mackrevinack 5y ago
its mainly because saying "someone could have gotten a slap on the wrist because of this mistake" isnt really worth mentioning
klysm 5y ago
Is it not useful to consider the envelop of possibilities from a widespread outage like that?
djbusby 5y ago
Might be this one? "Reductio ad absurdum" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Or "Logical Extreme" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_extreme https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_extreme
avar 5y ago
In a word: hyperbole or adynaton.
Dylan16807 5y ago
> searching for the most egregious possible negative consequence that might have occurred On the one hand, stretching consequences is bad. On the other hand, thinking about a "one in a million" consequence isn't stretching when something affects a million people. Maybe that example is closer to "one in a billion" or higher? We can hope so.
wolverine876 5y ago
Hyperbole? I agree with your sentiment, but it's been the 'Internet rant' rhetoric for decades IME. Find a HN thread, with a moderate number of comments, without it. IMHO, such comments are so tired, poisonous, and add so little that if I were king of HN, I would ban them. They may be hard to define, but 'no hyperole' is a start.
- jeltz 5y ago
  > Find a HN thread, with a moderate number of comments, without it. That is quite the hyperbole and under your own rules you would be banned.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    I don't think it is an exaggeration.

simondotau 5y ago

It's also not beyond the realm of possibility that the person responsible for monitoring this cert read your post just now, contemplated the potential gravity of their mistake, and decided that they couldn't live knowing those potential consequences. There is no limit to what can disgusting thoughts could be posited in a hypothetical.

causality0 5y ago
The person responsible for monitoring the cert was the proximal cause but not the ultimate cause. The ultimate cause was the colossal fool who decided a cert check failure should cause an immediate and nonconsensual disabling of all extensions instead of a pop-up box warning the user their extensions may be untrustworthy. That's like a car's ECU slamming on brakes because it failed to read the tire pressure.
- simondotau 5y ago
  My comment was a response to your singling out the "someone at Mozilla forgetting to renew a cert" which you referred to earlier. You are correct in acknowledging that you had only identified a proximal cause in your grandparent post. I agree that the underlying problem is that extensions were disabled without user notification. The correct behaviour is simple enough: if any extension gets disabled for ANY reason other than manually by the user, the browser should lock out ALL network connections until the user has acknowledged this change of state. Someone should submit this to bugzilla as a high priority fix, if it hasn't already been done.
  - causality0 5y ago
    Someone should submit this to bugzilla as a high priority fix, if it hasn't already been done. Not gonna happen. These days Mozilla doesn't even pretend to give a damn about user control. "We know better than you" has been the watchword for a while now.
    - simondotau 5y ago