For alternative browser, also consider Vivaldi.

Chromium-based but different UI, very configurable, with option for status bar, separate search box, much of the user-has-control philosophy of old-school Firefox. From the some of the original founders and developers of Opera, with much of its design flexibility but none of the now-Chinese company. No Operas services. Uses the Chrome web store, not the sketchy Opera one.

Win, Mac, Linux. Unlike Chrome still supports 32-bit as well as 64-bit, so there's a fully-enabled Chrome-compatible production-stable browser for things like repurposed XP machines, netbooks, and other low-end PCs that run Linux 32-bit well but can't run 64-bit, which Chrome abandoned. Unlike Chromium it does have the API license keys and code bits for Chromecast and some other "must be Google" services. But otherwise none of the googlybits.

No sync at all, so no passwords, history, form-fill nor bookmarks going up to Google (or Microsoft or Mozilla depending on browser) servers at all. But supports extensions for KeePass, LastPass, Xmarks, etc. so you can roll your own private sync or trust a commercial but non-Google service of your choice, at least for passwords, and if Xmarks then bookmarks. I'm using KeePass 2 with chromeIpass extension, with the KeePass database on my ownCloud on my own VPS. But I could put that anywhere.

Vivaldi is working on their own sync but it's not out yet. Nor is their same-sync-ecosystem proposed Android browser. But with third party sync you can work around that. 3rd-party sync or no sync at all is a privacy upgrade over Chrome (or any browser maker's) built-in sync anyhow.

The House can't vote for whomever they want. The House can only choose between the top three electoral vote recipients. There's no way the House can select Romney unless Romney gets at least one electoral vote, from a faithless elector, and nobody other than Trump and Clinton get electoral votes more than Romney.

But the House doesn't even com into play unless Trump loses 37 of his 306 electors. His *Republican* electors.

All the salty snowflake tears in the world can't make that happen. At most, a few politically-suicidal Trump electors defect - none of them to Clinton. He still has well over the 270 votes needed. She still has far fewer than needed, maybe even less than her supposed 232 because of the promise-to-be-faithless Clinton electors like WA's Satiacum.

Bernie Sanders is more likely to be the 3rd recipient of electoral votes than is Romney, if there even is any 3rd-place electoral recipient at all.

Trump wins. He already won, in the election that matters, the separately summed 51 states & DC elections to choose presidential electors. Nothing is changing that. Go put your efforts to some meaningful if you're progressive, like standing with Standing Rock, placing for the 2018 midterms, state legislator elections because that's where gerrymandering happens. Forward-looking stuff. Not this "Wah somebody better fix this" backward undo-it crying.

I really wish people would RTFM aka Constitution before putting out nonsense.

"online" has a totally different meaning in that context. It does not mean "shopping on the web". It means, "Realtime authorization all the way back to/from the issuing bank".

Believe it or not, "online" has technology definitions that predate not only the web, but also the internet itself. This is one of them.

Wrong. There are some US banks offering Chip+PIN CREDIT cards. And some issuing Chip+Signature DEBIT cards. It all depends on which authentication methods the issuing bank coded into the card's chip, and which priority order they set them.

People saying "PIN is for Debit and signature is for credit" are taking anecdote as if it's industry-wide rule. Or are non-USAians who never knew how it works here.

The "Debit or Credit?" question that US Debit card users often are asked at Point of sale when making a purchase on a Debit card has nothing to do with whether it's a chip card or not, nor even whether it's a credit card or a debit card. It really means, "Process this like an ATM Bank card doing a checking account withdrawal? Which will require your ATM withdrawal PIN. Or, Process this like a credit card charge through the Visa (or MC) network, which will put a credit-card-style authorization on your account but not actually post the charge for hours or days?"

Not, "Is this a Debit card or a Credit Card?"

For the matter, you could always choose "Debit" with a real Credit card too, if you happened to know your "cash advance at ATM" PIN for your magstripe no-PIN credit card. Though most people didn't know that PIN, some Credit cards didn't have one unless you asked, and because at your credit card account it became a usually more-costly cash advance rather than a charge. But fundamentally, "Debit or Credit" is "act as if it's a bank ATM card or act as if it's a credit card", regardless of whether it's really a Credit IRS a Debit card.

"Act as if it's a bank ATM card" always required a PIN, ever since decades ago long before EMV chip cards reached USA.

"Act as if it's a credit card" never required a PIN, in USA.

What is new, and apparently confusing to Muricans, is that with EMV in most of the world, "Act as if it's a credit card" now also requires a PIN.

In USA, if your new EMV chip Credit card is done to world standards, "Act as if it's a credit card" does require a PIN, when in the past, "credit" never did. And too many US banks issued Chip+Signature (only, or Chip+Signature as priority 1 authentication method) cards, so that "credit" still would not require a PIN. Plus they even did the same for Debit Cards, so that when using the Debit card for a purchase as "act like a credit card" it does not use a PIN.

Which leads to confusion by cardholders and merchants alike, and the errors in so many of the posts here too.

My primary credit union's Visa Debit/ATM card requires the PIN for purchases even as "credit" if the POS terminal hardware, software, and merchant account are capable of following the card's EMV commands. Yet my other credit union issued Chip+Signature Debit MasterCard ATM cards. My bank issued a Chip+PIN priority Visa Debit, and the "checking alternative" account at my brokerage issued a Chip+Signature Visa Debit.

Of course all require a PIN when doing an actual ATM cash withdrawal. Or when doing a purchase through the "debit" ATM network.

I will stop now, before explaining how the Dodd-Frank Bill makes US-ussued chip Debit cards even more screwed up and globally non-standard even if they are true Chip+PIN. But it's all kinds of hilarity ensuing.

Pretty much every single smartphone is made in China. Regardless of brand, major or minor, "Western" (Apple, Microsoft/Nokia, rump-Nokia, Alcatel, or low-ends like Blu, etc.), "Developed World Asian"(Samsung, LG, HTC, etc.), or Chinese (Huawei, Oppo, OnePlus, etc.) as the "manufacturer".

Many by the same contract manufacturers in China. And no, that "Designed by Apple in California" or "Google Nexus" branding and supposed oversight does not guarantee that spying firmware and hardware can't get into some subset of phones.

It's pathetically hilarious when legislators or "patriotic citizen" low information types rant about evil Chinese companies making the products and demand only 'Murrican brands.

I have no idea why you're praising "Aurora" as somehow better than "Firefox", when it is simply a rolling alpha test version of what will BE Firefox in 2 releases (12 weeks). Firefox Developer Edition, which is what the Aurora channel of Firefox is called for Windows, Mac, Linux, has the same dumbed-down UI, the same Pocket and Hello RTC, as Firefox. You still need Classic Theme Restorer and/or Status-4-Evar to make it a sensible and full-featured UI. I normally install both extensions.

If you are a developer, some of the dev tools are nice. The responsive view simulator is great. But otherwise it's the same damn thing, or what will be the same damn thing in a couple or so months.

The only real benefit otherwise is that you can still install unsigned extensions, if you set the proper about:config flag.

Yes, the manual or automatic updates are nice, but basically the same as Firefox release and beta, except daily. For Firefox Mobile Aurora, it is convenient that it's a non-appstore direct install and update. I had one old tablet that never supported Chrome decently and official Google Play Firefox Release and Beta refused to show as compatible. Installing Aurora manually both worked fine and kept it getting browser updates. But that's an edge case.

I do have Firefox Developer Edition installed and in use as my browser default on both of all my Windows and Linux systems. But that's because I do use some of the dev tools and a couple of unsigned extensions. Not because it's somehow better.

Posted from Mobile Firefox Aurora.

Look into Chocolatey for installing most Windows Open Source and many free-as-in-beer but not open-source software. Conceptually very much like apt-get.

Even for software still hosted on now-evil sourceforge like FileZilla, it bypasses all the crapware wrappers.

Once chocolatey is installed, you do everything through an elevated command prompt, much like "sudo apt-get install filezilla" but literally "choco install filezilla" and upgrade as "choco upgrade filezilla".

Not everything has a chocolatey package but you'd be surprised how many programs do.

https://chocolatey.org/

I'm obviously totally writing off any possibility of Mozilla itself ever coming to their senses. Too far gone. It ain't happening within that broken organization.

Nope, haven't missed the point at all. I made it clear I like what Pale Moon was, and still is, but that Pale Moon's policies make it near-impossible for PM to thrive on its own.

I did so in a reply to someone saying they were switching to PM on all their PCs, as a warning to why that wasn't going to be a long-term successful strategy.

I agree there is a great browser still somewhere inside Mozilla-originated Firefox, even though that greatness is not within Mozilla itself anymore. But Pale Moon, as good a Firefox-variant as it is, maybe the best right now, has its own organizational and cultural fatal flaws.

Like I suggested, if core oldschool Firefox devs, not the ones who are ruining it, came over to Pale Moon the way OO.o devs did to The Document Foundation and made LibreOffice the real successor, that'd be great. But they might have to step on Moonchild's toes to do that.

Until it diverges even further from Firefox, making it less accepted on the web, have fewer and fewer extensions, and die entirely in any practical sense.

I used to love Pale Moon. On a philosophical level I still do. But it's just Moonchild and a few others. The real heavy lifting has been the Firefox code base, with Moonchild et al just extending, tweaking, reverting, and removing some of it.

No, it's not just a clone of Firefox, but it's nowhere near the complete standalone project that PM fans seem to believe it is. Yes, he's now doing his own not-Gecko Gecko replacement Goanna, but seriously, do you think it's all new code? That a tiny team can keep up with new security fixes and HTML5 / CSS / ECMAscript features once they are so diverged from Firefox that they can't pull in that code?

Never mind the QA and multi-platform build issues. PM can barely keep their forked-away sync server running. I agree with the reason for that divergence (Mozilla stupidly and decreased security in order to hawk "Firefox Accounts") but PM has not adequately replaced that part of the ecosystem. Not for "normals" it hasn't. Nor is there anything on Mac, and only an essentially abandoned and rough-edged fork if Firefox for Android as PM Mobile.

With FF itself down to single digits, the idea that website owners, site developers, and extension developers are going to do anything special for working in PM, is ludicrous. That was enough of a challenge back in 2002 forward, trying to get sites to support slowly growing "Mozilla Suite" and then Firefox. A decade and a half later expecting even the simplest changes for a miniscule share spinoff of a rapidly dying browser is insane.

No matter how nice that would be.

Now, if Moonchild took the approach that PM would continue to be Gecko and continue to identify as the latest FF or at least the latest FF ESR, and build CTR into it the same way he did with Status-4-Evar, instead of "We're not Firefox, and if we are we're long-insecure FF 25, and we have our own GUID so tough luck extensions", then PM might have a future.

But in his own way, MC made decisions as dumb as did Mozilla.

Enjoy PM for now? Sure. Don't expect it to survive. Unless a whole crapload of Firefox devs jump ship to it, the way that LibreOffice got the disaffected OpenOffice.org device community. But Moonchild would need a wakeup call on opening his process more and being more true to Free/Libre software principles than he seems to be, as well. (Many non-open tools from him and major snits about who as BS where he allows his baby to be distributed.)

In what universe is the Red Cross still respected or respectable? At least, when considering the despicably greedy American Red Cross?

  (Do your own research, no I'm not providing links, but start with ProPublica or Hurricane Sandy as search terms to use with Red Cross.)

Block their ads. And give your donation dollars to groups that actually deliver services, not fundraising hype, empty promises, and bloated executive salaries.

But yes, LifeLock should die in a fire.

(LifeLock the company, and a "virtual fire"; not advocating violence!)

As much as I hate the whole Credit Bureau system and concept, at least if you deal directly with TransUnion, Equifax, Experian, ChexSystems, you're dealing with the companies that actually hold and control your credit files. Why the hell would anyone pay a third party service and turn over so much person sensitive information control to an unnecessary service like LifeLock?

Rhetorical question. Answers are "Stupid Muricans" and "Ads on rightwing talk radio".

You obviously don't know that there is no such thing as "Obamacare" in terms of it being either a policy you can buy or an entity (never mind not a monopoly) that sells it.

Or you do know and you're then obviously a deliberate liar.

The PP&ACA, AKA the ACA, AKA Obamacare, is a set of laws and regulations about privately-run non-government health insurance policies, with a requirement that most people have to purchase something from their choice of competing (mostly for-profit) companies.

There are lots of flaws, excessive regulations, and overly indirect carrots & sticks in the Affordable Care Act. Yes with a net improvement in the US systems of health care accessibility, but barely so considering the number of moving parts and degree of pandering to the existing inefficient private industry rent-seeking middleman companies that still have their private bureaucrats in between you and your doctor, and are perversely incented not to pay for what you need. It barely fixed things, except for a few people.

But a "monopoly"? GMAFB

That same seven year old page explains how every single one of those features can be disabled. Directly in the Chrome options or by using a non-Google search engine.

Hell, just create your own query string as your Google.com[.localcountry] and you can use Google for your default search while still not sending the RLZ string.

That's all before adding any privacy/content blockers.

So the question still stands, where's the proof that Chrome tracks you and reports what you do back to Google?

Rational people who don't have an agenda know it doesn't, if set up properly, even before adding extensions. As one of them, I'm not afraid that Chrome does secret "conspiracy theory" stuff. With uBlock Origin added using additional blacklists, Ghostery (yes, I know they're part of the advice industry, they're honest about it and their tracking is ethically opt-in), Referrer Control, and one of IxQuick, StartPage, or DuckDuckGo as my default search, I am quite satisfied that Chrome doesn't "track me around the web".

There are reasons I still prefer and use Firefox or Firefox-derived browsers as my "daily driver", a switch back to that browser family I made about 2 years ago after a half-decade of Chrome preferences. But some loony "Chrome spies on everything you do" conspiracy nonsense isn't any part of my reasons. And I still do use Chrome too, at least several times weekly, for certain things sites it does better.

Maybe when the crazed Mozillians finish screwing up FF beyond the ability of CTR and Status-4-Evar, I'll go back to Chrome, Chromium, ironically a Chromium-based non-sleazy (rules out Iron and Dragon/Chromodo) browser. By then, Moonchild may also have screwed up Pale Moon enough in his quixotic attempt to remove all Firefox compatibility, so that the Chrome family is the only viable choice.

But until then, while I'm using a Mozilla-based browser, I'm still not giving in to nor spreading the unsubstantiated nonsense that Chrome spies on everything you do.

By the way, out of the box, Firefox reports back all the same types of things as does Chrome without turning off its defaults. And neither browser is necessarily "being evil" - Many people like search suggestions, typo correction, Safe Search, predictive page load, and/or localized search.

I don't, many technologists and sophisticated users don't like and use them, but those are valuable services for the "typical web user". Which services obviously need "what is the user doing" data sent to the browser maker and/or partner service providers, in order to do such things.

Make the browser choice for reasons, not FUD.

Posted from Mobile Aurora (Android equivalent to Firefox Developer Edition).

Insurance Panda. Farking autocorrect. Though instantiating a panda would be nice. Avoid all those "will they or won't they" panda zoo sex concerns.