Firefox 136 finally brings the features that fans wanted Mozilla's Firefox 136 is out today. Despite recent Mozilla moves, it's still a better choice for the privacy-conscious than Chrome. Firefox 136 is already on Mozilla's FTP server and will start trickling out onto the main webserver later today. This version delivers three important features that will be good news for some …
i took a look at their browser, the Windows version comes as a .msixbundle of ... 1.3 Gigabytes (?!!) ..i unpacked it with 7Zip, found 3 installers inside: x86, x64 and arm64 - each about 460mbyes in size.
I unpacked the x64 one and took a look... it's based on MS Edge WebView2 which is in turn based on Chromium.
The Android one also probably has a similar Chromium base.
https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2
I'll wait for librewolf to sanitize the code and remove the spyware, thank you.
I already didn't trust mozilla since the alsa sound debacle, then seeing how hard it was to disable telemetry, as it still tried to contact the mothership even with all documented changes in about:config, and now, since last week's debacle, I'm even more convinced. Until there is a real alternative, librewolf it is.
> Claws Mail which is faster than TB and has a stable, traditional UI.
Claws is great, but what drove me away from it is the lack of multithreading: when I was in the middle of writing a mail, it would suddenly freeze up while it checked my accounts for anything new.
Claws is a fork of Sylpheed. Both remain in active development. Those are 2 projects that IMHO _really_ need to fix up their differences and merge, so that the combined team can get more done.
Some time ago Brave said it was their intention to stay on Manifest v2. Time will tell how long that lasts, but in the meantime uBlock Origin does run fine on latest stable Brave. I hardly need it -- as beast666 points out, Brave has very good built in tracker blocking, but I happen to like having UBO around to block the rare annoyance that Brave doesn't block.
> Brave doesn't need the uBlock Origin extension to block all adds so is resistant to the manifest version change.
Wrong.
Brave is a wrapper around Chromium and has the same limits as any other Chrome browser.
It also has its own multiple embedded nasties.
Don't.
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
Wrong.
Brave has a github repo where you can audit the code changes they are actively making to chromium.
Simply put it is far more than what you class as a "wrapper" around chromium.
If you don't like or want to use it that's fine but if you're gonna slate it at least be correct and also try to keep your dislike of a browser separate from your dislike of a person.
> try to keep your dislike of a browser separate from your dislike of a person.
Try to recognise what are your own assumptions.
It is true, I dislike some of Brandon Eich's actions in the past, including sponsoring homophobic legislation in the USA. I also dislike what Javascript has done to the web, and he invented it. And he is at the least COVID-19 denier adjacent:
https://archive.ph/SHpcn
But my dislike of and disdain for Brave is based on far more than my dislike of a man I've never met.
In addition to this:
Brave has its own cryptocurrency, BAT.
https://brave.com/brave-rewards/
_And_ it includes a cryptocurrency wallet.
I hate cryptocurrencies and anything and everything to do with them, so that's two major negatives. It facilitates and encourages the gullible to be scammed. That is evil.
Brave rewrites referrer URLs and then pockets the commissions.
https://www.technewsworld.com/story/brave-browser-caught-redirecting-urls-for-cash-86701.html
That is bare theft. I dislike theft and thieves.
And most of all, Brave the company lies. All modern software companies do, more or less, but still.
Chromium is now 45 *million* lines of code:
https://openhub.net/p/chrome/analyses/latest/languages_summary
Anyone who says they've audited that, or de-Googled it, or has comprehensively modified it, is lying. A company with 240 employees (latest estimate I can find)?
Chromium releases are monthly.
That would mean that on average each employee checks 46,875 lines of code every month. 2000 lines of code a day, on top of their other duties.
Does that sound realistic to you?
Hint: it isn't.
Sure, for now, maybe the company can patch back in some disabled code, and keep Manifest v2 working for a bit longer, but the longer they do that, the more their code diverges from upstream Chromium. They will be forced to move back upstream and resync at some point.
Google is an ad company. Google has the biggest browser. Google is crippling ad blocking in its product because it impacts its revenues. It is also damaging its own search engine in order to increase revenues.
Any product downstream of these has no choice but to accept these changes sooner or later.
You are wrong: my biases against Brave are very much wider and greater than my biases against its CEO, serious as those are.
All of those things in Brave browser can be disabled.
The referral thing was stopped as soon as it was noticed.
Good luck on your beliefs on how the code base is run.
Hint: it's open source and on github for a damn reason,
Clue: contributors
Your biases against brave are blinkered and I can respect that, as much as I disagree with all the points you make.
Brave doesn't block all ads. It blocks other people's ads then promotes ones from it's own ad network.
from:
https://www.spacebar.news/stop-using-brave-browser/
"Brave’s plan was to remove most of the third-party advertisements in a page, create its own ad units based on data collected by the web browser itself, and then split the revenue with publishers. "
> Enabled by default, of course?
The button is. You are free to choose _which_ automated plagiarism engine you want!
> Is there any way to permanently disable it?
I am investigating. It is possible to write a bit of custom Javascript and bury it in a config file, but since I have just eliminated one of those in order to hide the horizontal tabs, I didn't really want to introduce another.
OTOH I suspect that someone will come along and make it simpler soon.
"AI" is feeling more and more like evangelistic religion. There are those of us who just blanket don't believe.
(I don't care which gods you worship or how you worship them; they aren't real, because no gods are real.)
But the evangelists are always hurt and sad you won't listen to _their_ claims about _their_ imaginary sky friends.
Every mate of mine who is into "AI" tells me about their unique special use case, which is entirely valid and productive and saves them time.
I don't care. I don't want those uses, or any uses, or anything to do with the things in any way at all ever.
And they're hurt and sad that I won't listen to _their_ special claims about _their_ preferred stochastic parrot.
I wish the was a middle button between the up and down arrows here that I could click. Like, I agree with parts and disagree with parts, so can't up vote or down vote, but I want to thank you for writing the comment. A middle button that looks like a yin & yang icon would be something I would click on in this case.
On Firefox 135 the hotkey will re-enable the chatbot if it's disabled in settings or about:config and make the sidebar appear which is annoying if you hit it accidentally, as you might do if you switch between PC and Mac keyboard layouts but your brain still hasn't caught up yet, thankfully on Firefox 136 this doesn't happen.
Well there is Vivaldi as well which offers its own ad and tracker blocking functionality. It allows you to use uBO blocking lists and seems to function as well as uBO on Vivaldi for Android. I will use uBO until it stops working on Vivaldi for Linux, at which point I will turn on Vivaldi's native ad and tracker blocking.
FF is my daily driver on desktop since before it was called Firefox, Vivaldi as a backup (just because I'm using FF, no hard feelings)
On mobile Vivaldi is very good, much lighter than FF last time (years ago) I've tried it, and the built-in blocker works as expected.
I'm trying to have my work PC double up as a light home computer for evening use at it's sat here on the desk and connected to my main monitor. I set up a personal Firefox profile, very nice. But it won't play nicely with Zscaler, the reason being that rather then pass on proxy certificates that are needed for any part of a page, it unpredictably hangs. Zscaler is due to become permanently on so I'll need to ditch FF for personal browsing. Chrome and Edge meanwhile work as normal with Zscaler turned on. While it's commendable to have this extra privacy with FF, it was confusing behaviour until I found out why. I need a simple option in FF to make it work like Chrome.
The best thing to do would be to avoid personal browsing on a PC which is running corporate spyware like Zscaler as if you go to the "wrong" website it's going to be used against you. If you can't then the answer is here. Answer 2 is probably better for a corporate environment than answer 1.
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Librewolf has some quirks, as it is set up by default to protect your privacy. One thing I disable is the "delete all site data and cookies at exit" - I get a little tired of having to login everywhere again every time I close the browser. It also doesn't allow setting a global (applied to all sites) dark theme, amongst a few anti-fingerprinting measures.
But I am linking the approach, and even when I risked using my laptop without VPN/PiHole, I didn't see ads, so I'd say it is working.
Ah, and it doesn't show all the dumb "welcome to" screens when you start from fresh! That is for me a huge reason to use librewolf!
Is it only me that has to use a pair of pi-holes? I set up one but after a week or so it locked up and so took down my home network. A router expects a primary and a secondary DNS anyway so I just bought a second pi to make up the pair. That has worked perfectly for many years, including a couple of years where I forgot to do any maintenance or updates at all.
When I last looked at the logs, one of the pi-holes would do all the heavy lifting for a number of days then things would flip-flop to the other one for a while, I assume because the first one had had a lockup. Running on a pair of 3b's.
It seems as if Windows devices only use the primary dns if it works. If it doesn't work, they switch to the secondary dns until that doesn't work. Stupid, but this is Windows.
I used to run two piholes, but now the primary is Adguard Home, backed by a pihole secondary. Not yet sure if that's better, though.
... Oh, so now I can have my tabs back on the bottom, next to the page, instead of having to have them up at the top which has been an inherently stupid idea EVEN BEFORE anyone thought of it, without having to use extensions or custom CSS to put them back where they belong as I have had to do for the last twenty years, right?
... RIGHT, MOZILLA?
... No? ... Anyone? ... Bueller?
And you've taken out all the tracking telemetry? Restored "Do Not Track"? And provided a way forward to restore the vast add-on ecosystem that was one of Firefox's most popular features, before you nuked it from orbit TWICE?
No?
Then don't tell me Firefox 136 gives me the features I want.
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