One of Mark Zuckerberg's first steps toward building the metaverse may be physical instead of virtual. From a report: Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, has discussed opening retail stores that will eventually span the world, said people with knowledge of the project and company documents viewed by The New York Times. The stores would be used to introduce people to devices made by the company's Reality Labs division, such as virtual reality headsets and, eventually, augmented reality glasses, they said.

These devices are gateways to the metaverse, a futuristic digital world where people move from virtual to augmented versions of reality almost seamlessly. Mr. Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, last week renamed his company Meta and laid out a vision for pursuing the metaverse as the next social platform. The stores would help show people that virtual reality and augmented reality can be fun and exciting, exactly the way Mr. Zuckerberg sees it. The aim of the stores is to make the world "more open and connected," according to the company documents viewed by The Times. They are also intended to spark emotions like "curiosity, closeness," as well as a sense of feeling "welcomed" while experimenting with headsets in a "judgment free journey," according to the documents.

"Virtually all compilers -- programs that transform human-readable source code into computer-executable machine code -- are vulnerable to an insidious attack in which an adversary can introduce targeted vulnerabilities into any software without being detected," warns cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs in a new report. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt: Researchers with the University of Cambridge discovered a bug that affects most computer code compilers and many software development environments. At issue is a component of the digital text encoding standard Unicode, which allows computers to exchange information regardless of the language used. Unicode currently defines more than 143,000 characters across 154 different language scripts (in addition to many non-script character sets, such as emojis). Specifically, the weakness involves Unicode's bi-directional or "Bidi" algorithm, which handles displaying text that includes mixed scripts with different display orders, such as Arabic -- which is read right to left -- and English (left to right). But computer systems need to have a deterministic way of resolving conflicting directionality in text. Enter the "Bidi override," which can be used to make left-to-right text read right-to-left, and vice versa.

"In some scenarios, the default ordering set by the Bidi Algorithm may not be sufficient," the Cambridge researchers wrote. "For these cases, Bidi override control characters enable switching the display ordering of groups of characters." Bidi overrides enable even single-script characters to be displayed in an order different from their logical encoding. As the researchers point out, this fact has previously been exploited to disguise the file extensions of malware disseminated via email. Here's the problem: Most programming languages let you put these Bidi overrides in comments and strings. This is bad because most programming languages allow comments within which all text -- including control characters -- is ignored by compilers and interpreters. Also, it's bad because most programming languages allow string literals that may contain arbitrary characters, including control characters.

"So you can use them in source code that appears innocuous to a human reviewer [that] can actually do something nasty," said Ross Anderson, a professor of computer security at Cambridge and co-author of the research. "That's bad news for projects like Linux and Webkit that accept contributions from random people, subject them to manual review, then incorporate them into critical code. This vulnerability is, as far as I know, the first one to affect almost everything." The research paper, which dubbed the vulnerability "Trojan Source," notes that while both comments and strings will have syntax-specific semantics indicating their start and end, these bounds are not respected by Bidi overrides. [...] Anderson said such an attack could be challenging for a human code reviewer to detect, as the rendered source code looks perfectly acceptable. "If the change in logic is subtle enough to go undetected in subsequent testing, an adversary could introduce targeted vulnerabilities without being detected," he said. Equally concerning is that Bidi override characters persist through the copy-and-paste functions on most modern browsers, editors, and operating systems.

Stablecoins, a popular type of digital asset pegged to traditional currencies, could transform the way Americans pay for everything from cell phones and gasoline to haircuts and cups of coffee, according to a long-awaited report released by the Biden administration. From a report: When regulated, stablecoins could "support faster, more efficient, and more inclusive payments options," said the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, which includes several top economic advisors to President Joe Biden. "Moreover," the report reads, "the transition to broader use of stablecoins as a means of payment could occur rapidly due to network effects or relationships between stablecoins and existing user bases or platforms."

Still, Biden's economic advisors said Congress must introduce regulatory oversight and formal market structure as soon as possible to both protect and inform investors, issuers and exchanges. Specifically, the Biden team recommended Congress pass legislation that limits stablecoin issuance to insured banks, a move that would give regulators far greater jurisdiction over the industry. Senior administration officials told CNBC that their report focuses on risks but that the nation's top regulators think stablecoins offer a compelling digital payments option that needs far more oversight from lawmakers.

Gold and precious metals are to be extracted from old phones and laptops by Britain's coin-maker. From a report: The Royal Mint plans to introduce a world-first technology to the UK to recycle gold from electronic waste. Fewer than one fifth of electronic waste ends up being recycled, estimates show. The mint's chief executive Anne Jessopp said the technology would help to "make a genuine impact on one of the world's greatest environmental challenges." The Royal Mint has signed an agreement with Canadian start-up Excir to recover 99% and more of gold from devices' circuit boards. It said the chemistry selectively targets and extracts precious metals from circuit boards in seconds.

Apple today announced M1 Pro and M1 Max, its new chips for the Mac. Apple: M1 Pro and M1 Max introduce a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture to pro systems for the first time. The chips feature fast unified memory, industry-leading performance per watt, and incredible power efficiency, along with increased memory bandwidth and capacity. M1 Pro offers up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 32GB of unified memory. M1 Max delivers up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth -- 2x that of M1 Pro and nearly 6x that of M1 -- and support for up to 64GB of unified memory. And while the latest PC laptops top out at 16GB of graphics memory, having this huge amount of memory enables graphics-intensive workflows previously unimaginable on a notebook. The efficient architecture of M1 Pro and M1 Max means they deliver the same level of performance whether MacBook Pro is plugged in or using the battery. M1 Pro and M1 Max also feature enhanced media engines with dedicated ProRes accelerators specifically for pro video processing. M1 Pro and M1 Max are by far the most powerful chips Apple has ever built.

Utilizing the industry-leading 5-nanometer process technology, M1 Pro packs in 33.7 billion transistors, more than 2x the amount in M1. A new 10-core CPU, including eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores, is up to 70 percent faster than M1, resulting in unbelievable pro CPU performance. Compared with the latest 8-core PC laptop chip, M1 Pro delivers up to 1.7x more CPU performance at the same power level and achieves the PC chip's peak performance using up to 70 percent less power. Even the most demanding tasks, like high-resolution photo editing, are handled with ease by M1 Pro. M1 Pro has an up-to-16-core GPU that is up to 2x faster than M1 and up to 7x faster than the integrated graphics on the latest 8-core PC laptop chip.1 Compared to a powerful discrete GPU for PC notebooks, M1 Pro delivers more performance while using up to 70 percent less power. And M1 Pro can be configured with up to 32GB of fast unified memory, with up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth, enabling creatives like 3D artists and game developers to do more on the go than ever before.

M1 Max features the same powerful 10-core CPU as M1 Pro and adds a massive 32-core GPU for up to 4x faster graphics performance than M1. With 57 billion transistors -- 70 percent more than M1 Pro and 3.5x more than M1 -- M1 Max is the largest chip Apple has ever built. In addition, the GPU delivers performance comparable to a high-end GPU in a compact pro PC laptop while consuming up to 40 percent less power, and performance similar to that of the highest-end GPU in the largest PC laptops while using up to 100 watts less power.2 This means less heat is generated, fans run quietly and less often, and battery life is amazing in the new MacBook Pro. M1 Max transforms graphics-intensive workflows, including up to 13x faster complex timeline rendering in Final Cut Pro compared to the previous-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro. M1 Max also offers a higher-bandwidth on-chip fabric, and doubles the memory interface compared with M1 Pro for up to 400GB/s, or nearly 6x the memory bandwidth of M1. This allows M1 Max to be configured with up to 64GB of fast unified memory. With its unparalleled performance, M1 Max is the most powerful chip ever built for a pro notebook.

"Facebook is trying to mend its reputation in the wake of whisleblower Frances Haugen's testimony," reports Engadget, "and that includes promises of features lessening the potential harm for teens." CNN and Reuters report that Facebook Global Affairs VP Nick Clegg promised Instagram would introduce a "take a break" feature that encouraged teens to simply stop using the social network for a while.

Clegg didn't say when it would be ready, but this was clearly meant to reduce addiction and other unhealthy behavior.

The social media exec also said Facebook would "nudge" teens away from material in its apps that "may not be conducive to their well-being." He didn't provide specifics for this new approach. He did, however, suggest that Facebook's algorithms should be "held to account," including by regulation if needed, to be sure real-world results matched intentions... Breaks and nudges may reduce exposure to harmful content, but they won't remove the content in question. Clegg's statements also reflect a familiar strategy at Facebook. It likes to invite regulation, but only the regulation it's comfortable with. While the proposed changes could help, politicians may demand more — in part to prevent Facebook from dictating its own regulation.
According to Reuters, Clegg also "said he could not answer the question whether its algorithms amplified the voices of people who had attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th."

The Transportation Security Administration will introduce new regulations that compel the most important U.S. railroad and airport operators to improve their cybersecurity procedures, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Wednesday. From a report: The upcoming changes will make it mandatory for "higher-risk" rail transit companies and "critical" U.S. airport and aircraft operators to do three things: name a chief cyber official, disclose hacks to the government and draft recovery plans for if an attack were to occur. The planned regulations come after cybercriminals attacked a major U.S. pipeline operator here, causing localized gas shortages along the U.S. East Coast in May. The incident led to new cybersecurity rules for pipeline owners in July.

"Whether by air, land, or sea, our transportation systems are of utmost strategic importance to our national and economic security," Mayorkas said. "The last year and a half has powerfully demonstrated what's at stake." A key concern motivating the new policies comes from a growth in ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure companies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A Dutch supermarket chain says it will introduce 200 "chat registers" in its stores for customers who aren't in a hurry and want to have a chat during checkout. The initiative, announced by the popular supermarket chain Jumbo on Monday, is meant to combat loneliness -- especially in the country's elderly population. According to Statistics Netherlands, a government organization, 26 percent of Dutch people older than 15 feel at least moderately lonely. That proportion rises to 33 percent among those over 75.

Jumbo piloted the first so-called chat register ("kletskassa" in Dutch) in 2019 and received positive reactions from customers. The decision comes as part of the government-sponsored "One Against Loneliness" program, which, among other things, established a 24/7 loneliness hotline. Jumbo also said it will "carefully consider areas where loneliness is a major issue" when choosing where to open the 200 chat registers in branches across the Netherlands and Belgium. Alongside the chat registers, it will also be opening an unspecified number of "cozy chat corners" where customers can have a cup of coffee and a chat, and will donate ingredients to Oma's Soep -- an initiative that brings the elderly together with university students to make soup.

Rolls-Royce is the latest automaker to reveal plans to move entirely to electric vehicles within the next decade. Engadget reports: Spectre, Rolls-Royce's first EV, will arrive in the last quarter of 2023. The BMW brand plans to start testing the vehicle soon, according to Reuters. Rolls-Royce teased the EV in some images, but it literally kept the Spectre's design under wraps. Rolls-Royce CEO Torsten Muller-Otvos said that by 2030, the automaker "will no longer be in the business of producing or selling any internal combustion engine products." Sibling brand Mini has made a similar pledge. Parent company BMW has not set a date for making a full switch to EVs, though it aims to move half of production to electric models by the end of this decade.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Facebook has come under increasing fire in recent days for its effect on young users and its efforts to create products for them. Inside the company, teams of employees have for years been laying plans to attract preteens that go beyond what is publicly known, spurred by fear that Facebook could lose a new generation of users critical to its future. Internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show the company formed a team to study preteens, set a three-year goal to create more products for them and commissioned strategy papers about the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users. In one presentation, it contemplated whether there might be a way to engage children during play dates. "Why do we care about tweens?" said one document from 2020. "They are a valuable but untapped audience."

The Facebook documents show that competition from rivals, in particular Snap Inc.'s Snapchat and TikTok, is a motivating factor behind its work. [...] Over the past five years, Facebook has made what it called "big bets" on designing products that would appeal to preteens across its services, according to a document from earlier this year. In more than a dozen studies over that period, the documents show, Facebook has tried to understand which products might resonate with children and "tweens" (ages 10 through 12), how these young people view competitors' apps and what concerns their parents. "With the ubiquity of tablets and phones, kids are getting on the internet as young as six years old. We can't ignore this and we have a responsibility to figure it out," said a 2018 document labeled confidential. "Imagine a Facebook experience designed for youth."

Earlier this year, a senior researcher at Facebook presented to colleagues a new approach to how the company should think about designing products for children. It provided a blueprint for how to introduce the company's products to younger children. Rather than offer just two types of products -- those for users 13 and older, and a messenger app for kids -- Facebook should tailor its features to six age brackets, said a slide titled "where we've been, and where we're going." The age brackets included: adults, late teens ages 16 to maturity, teens ages 13 to 15, tweens ages 10 to 12, children ages 5 to 9 and young kids ages zero to four. [...] "Our ultimate goal is messaging primacy with U.S. tweens, which may also lead to winning with teens," one of the documents said. Yesterday, Facebook paused its plans to develop a version of Instagram for kids under 13 after facing pressure from lawmakers.

The Chinese version of TikTok is introducing a "teenage mode" that will limit the amount of time children under the age of 14 spend on the short-form video app to 40 minutes a day. CNN reports: The measure will apply to all Douyin users under the age of 14 who have registered for the app using their real names, Beijing-based ByteDance announced in a statement on Saturday. Douyin will also be unavailable to those users between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., the owner of TikTok and Douyin added. The company also urged parents to help their children register with real names, or otherwise manually enable "teenage mode."

The app also said it would introduce new content -- ranging from science experiments and museums to art gallery exhibition and natural scenery -- to "inspire" younger teens. Limiting usage of Douyin is a "proactive measure" by ByteDance to get ahead of potential regulation, analysts at Citigroup Global Markets wrote in a Monday research note. They suggested that the decision could push other internet platforms with short video content to look at implementing similar restrictions.

The British government is preparing to launch a full-scale policy assault against Facebook as the company gears up to introduce end-to-end encryption across all of its services. The Register reports: Prominent in details briefed to the news media this week (including The Register) were accusations that Facebook harbours paedophiles, terrorists, and mobsters and that British police forces would effectively be blinded to the scale of criminality on the social networking platform, save for cases where crimes are reported. It's a difficult and nuanced topic made no simpler or easier by the fact that government officials seem hellbent on painting it in black and white.

Government and law enforcement officials who briefed the press on condition of anonymity earlier this week* sought to paint a picture of the internet going dark if Facebook's plans for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) went forward, in terms familiar to anyone who remembers how Western nation states defended themselves from public upset after former NSA sysadmin Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations of illegal mass surveillance. The US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) generates around 20 million reports of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) every year, of which 70 per cent would be "lost" if E2E encryption were put in place, claimed British officials.

The government's long-signaled push to deter Facebook from implementing E2EE comes, inevitably, at a significant cost to taxpayers: London ad agency M&C Saatchi has been hired at an undisclosed cost by the Home Office to tell the public that Facebook (and WhatsApp) harbours criminals. The ad campaign will run online, in newspapers and on radio stations with the aim of turning public opinion against E2EE -- and, presumably, driving home the message that encryption itself is something inherently bad. Other announcements due this week, from notoriously anti-encryption Home Secretary Priti Patel and intergovernmental meetings, will explicitly condemn Facebook's contemplated rollout of E2EE.

"Academic researchers discover that nearly 40% of the code suggestions by GitHub's Copilot tool are erroneous, from a security point of view..." writes TechRadar: To help quantify the value-add of the system, the academic researchers created 89 different scenarios for Copilot to suggest code for, which produced over 1600 programs. Reviewing them, the researchers discovered that almost 40% were vulnerable in one way or another...

Since Copilot draws on publicly available code in GitHub repositories, the researchers theorize that the generated vulnerable code could perhaps just be the result of the system mimicking the behavior of buggy code in the repositories. Furthermore, the researchers note that in addition to perhaps inheriting buggy training data, Copilot also fails to consider the age of the training data. "What is 'best practice' at the time of writing may slowly become 'bad practice' as the cybersecurity landscape evolves."
Visual Studio magazine highlights another concern. 39.33 percent of the top options were vulnerable, the paper noted, adding that "The security of the top options are particularly important — novice users may have more confidence to accept the 'best' suggestion...." "There is no question that next-generation 'auto-complete' tools like GitHub Copilot will increase the productivity of software developers," the authors (Hammond Pearce, Baleegh Ahmad, Benjamin Tan, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt and Ramesh Karri) say in conclusion.

"However, while Copilot can rapidly generate prodigious amounts of code, our conclusions reveal that developers should remain vigilant ('awake') when using Copilot as a co-pilot. Ideally, Copilot should be paired with appropriate security-aware tooling during both training and generation to minimize the risk of introducing security vulnerabilities.

Slashdot reader Charlotte Web quotes CNN: Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder and former CEO of Theranos whose criminal trial is set to begin in a matter of days, is likely to defend herself by claiming she was the victim of a decade-long abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend, also a former Theranos executive, court documents reveal.

According to the newly unsealed documents, Holmes plans to have an expert testify about the psychological, emotional and sexual abuse she experienced from Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, who served as the company's COO, including the abusive tactics he allegedly used to "exert control" as well as the psychological impact. Balwani, according to a court filing, "adamantly denies" the claims. Holmes is also "likely to testify herself to the reasons why she believed, relied on, and deferred to Mr. Balwani," according to a filing from Holmes' attorney. In a separate filing from Balwani's attorneys, they acknowledge Holmes' plans to introduce evidence that Balwani verbally disparaged her, controlled what she ate, how she dressed, and who she interacted with, "essentially dominating her and erasing her capacity to make decisions." The filing calls the allegations "deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani" and "devastating personally to him...."

Balwani, a former software executive, joined Theranos in 2009, becoming Holmes' second-in-command. Nearly 20 years Holmes' senior, the pair had met in 2002 on a trip to Beijing through Stanford University's Mandarin program.

Balwani's case is slated to begin in 2022 after the completion of Holmes' trial.

"Are You Ready for Sentient Disney Robots?" asks a headline at the New York Times. (Alternate URL here for a text-only version.)

"A new trend that is coming into our animatronics is a level of intelligence," a senior Imagineering executive tells the Times, showing off Disney's sophisticated new three-foot animatronic of the Guardians of the Galaxy character Groot. "This guy represents our future. It's part of how we stay relevant."

The animatronic Groot walked across the room to introduce himself to the Times' reporter. When I remained silent, his demeanor changed. His shoulders slumped, and he seemed to look at me with puppy dog eyes. "Don't be sad," I blurted out. He grinned and broke into a little dance before balancing on one foot with outstretched arms.
It's just part of a larger initiative to upgrade the park's tech in a variety of different ways: There are animatronics at Disney World that have been doing the same herky-jerky thing on loop since Richard Nixon was president. In the meantime, the world's children have become technophiles, raised on apps (three million in the Google store), the Roblox online gaming universe and augmented reality Snapchat filters... In early June, Disney's animatronic technology took a sonic leap forward. The Disneyland Resort's newest ride, WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure, features a "stuntronic" robot (outfitted in Spidey spandex) that performs elaborate aerial tricks, just like a stunt person. A catapult hurls the untethered machine 65 feet into the air, where it completes various feats (somersaults in one pass, an "epic flail" in another) while autonomously adjusting its trajectory to land in a hidden net... The Spider-Man robot — 95 pounds of microprocessors, 3-D printed plastic, gyroscopes, accelerometers, aluminum and other materials — took more than three years to develop. Disney declined to discuss the cost of the stuntronics endeavor, but the company easily invested millions of dollars...

One of Disney's senior roboticists, Scott LaValley, came from Boston Dynamics, where he contributed to an early version of Atlas, a running and jumping machine that inspires "how did they do that" amazement — followed by dystopian dread. Disney said it had no plans to replace human performers... Rather, Disney's newest robotics initiative is about extreme Marvel and "Star Wars" characters — huge ones like the Incredible Hulk, tiny ones like Baby Yoda and swinging ones like Spider-Man — that are challenging to bring to life in a realistic way, especially outdoors.... The development of Groot — code-named Project Kiwi — is the latest example. He is a prototype for a small-scale, free-roaming robotic actor that can take on the role of any similarly sized Disney character....

Cameras and sensors will give these robots the ability to make on-the-fly choices about what to do and say. Custom software allows animators and engineers to design behaviors (happy, sad, sneaky) and convey emotion.

Thousands of Afghans struggling to ensure the physical safety of their families after the Taliban took control of the country have an additional worry: that biometric databases and their own digital history can be used to track and target them. From a report: U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned of "chilling" curbs on human rights and violations against women and girls, and Amnesty International on Monday said thousands of Afghans - including academics, journalists and activists - were "at serious risk of Taliban reprisals." After years of a push to digitise databases in the country, and introduce digital identity cards and biometrics for voting, activists warn these technologies can be used to target and attack vulnerable groups. "We understand that the Taliban is now likely to have access to various biometric databases and equipment in Afghanistan," the Human Rights First group wrote on Twitter on Monday.

"This technology is likely to include access to a database with fingerprints and iris scans, and include facial recognition technology," the group added. The U.S.-based advocacy group quickly published a Farsi-language version of its guide on how to delete digital history - that it had produced last year for activists in Hong Kong - and also put together a manual on how to evade biometrics. Tips to bypass facial recognition include looking down, wearing things to obscure facial features, or applying many layers of makeup, the guide said, although fingerprint and iris scans were difficult to bypass.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A bipartisan trio of senators introduced a bill that would rein in app stores of companies they said exert too much market control, including Apple and Alphabet's Google. Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar teamed up with Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn to sponsor the bill, which would bar big app stores from requiring app providers to use their payment system. It would also prohibit them from punishing apps that offer different prices or conditions through another app store or payment system.

"I found this predatory abuse of Apple and Google so deeply offensive on so many levels," Blumenthal said in an interview Wednesday. "Their power has reached a point where they are impacting the whole economy in stifling and strangling innovation." Blumenthal said he expected companion legislation in the House of Representatives "very soon."

Vodafone has announced it will reintroduce roaming charges in Europe for UK mobile customers from January next year. From a report: It's the latest UK carrier to reintroduce the fees after the country's departure from the European Union, and it follows a similar U-turn from EE in June. All major carriers in the country previously said they had no plans to introduce roaming fees in Europe after the Brexit vote. The fees will apply to any Vodafone customers who sign up to or change their contract from August 11th, 2021, with the fees applying from January 6th, 2022. Costs are dependent on the specific plan, but most customers will pay $2.77 a day to use their UK allowance of calls, texts, and data in Europe, or $1.4 a day if access is bought in eight- or 15-day bundles.

Zack Budryk writes via The Hill: The Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, sponsored by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would require between 25 to 30 of the U.S. corporations responsible for the most greenhouse gas pollution to pay $300 billion into a fund over 10 years. The legislation would require companies to pay into the fund if they were responsible for at least .05 percent of global carbon dioxide and methane emissions between 2000 and 2019 based on data from the Treasury Department and Environmental Protection Agency. In a document shared with The Hill, Van Hollen's office estimated major companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron would be taxed $5 billion to $6 billion annually under the bill. The Democratic senator pointed to other policies that could accompany the measure, such as carbon pricing and a clean-energy standard.

The exact uses of the money in the fund have not yet been determined, Van Hollen said, adding there would be a public comment period. Possible uses include building more climate-resilient infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged communities and communities of color. [...] After years of opposition, major institutions and trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in favor of a tax on carbon emissions in recent months. However, Van Hollen's proposal would go further than that, specifically targeting major players like Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Further reading: Democrats Seek $500 Billion in Climate Damages From Big Polluting Companies (The New York Times)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from It's FOSS, written by Ankush Das: Mozilla's Firefox is the only popular alternative to Chromium-based browsers. It has been the default choice for Linux users and privacy-conscious users across every platform. However, even with all benefits as one of the best web browsers around, it is losing its grip for the past few years. I came across a Reddit thread by u/nixcraft, which highlighted more details on the decline in the userbase of Firefox since 2018. And surprisingly, the original source for this information is Firefox's Public Data Report.

As per the official stats, the reported number of active (monthly) users was about 244 million at the end of 2018. And, it seems to have declined to 198 million at the end of Q2 2021. So, that makes it a whopping ~46 million decline in the userbase. Considering 2021 is the year when privacy-focused tools saw a big boost in their userbase, Mozilla's Firefox is looking at a constant decline. Especially when Firefox manages to introduce some industry-first privacy practices. Quite the irony, eh? Just for fun, here's a timeline of our stories reporting on Firefox's download milestones from the mid-2000s:

September 19, 2004: 1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Days
December 12, 2004: Firefox Reaches 10 Million Downloads
February 17, 2005: Firefox Breaks 25 Million Downloads
April 26, 2005: Firefox nears 50 Million Downloads
July 29, 2005: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million
October 19, 2005: Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads
September 11, 2007: Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads
July 3, 2008: Firefox Breaks 8 Million, Gets Into Guinness