This is the problem with browser security and Android security. The target audience isn't the user / owner of the device. It's the advertisers. Google could implement secure systems to prevent userspace applications from getting unique IDs, like the MAC, without overt user consent. Instead they document "security" policies that requires bad actors to cooperate. It'll never work.

In these environments, it's the user that untrusted, not the third party code.

Those aren't the people firefox gets their money from.

My problem is that the browser only seems to be getting more powerful in its ability to circumvent the user's privacy, security and preferences while dominating systems resources as though there were nothing else that runs on the host.

I want the browser to be "my" user agent. Not a beachhead for any company to take over a piece of my machine.

Your 2 comments in sequence need to be flagged informative.

Maybe not. But that's all firefox has left. If Mozilla alienates the rest of us, the company can collapse in the woods without making a sound.

A bit of history. Internet explorer was alienating it's users and web page developers. Mozilla took the remains of firefox and built a browser that was as easy to use as any browser and flexible enough to entice power users. Power users helped their friends and website user switch to firefox of the browsers that came install be default. It was a winning strategy for a while. Now Mozilla is replaying that history, but this time they are playing the role of Microsoft. We all know how this ends.

It happened to me several times in the last year. Firefox creates a new profile and makes it the default. You can go back to your old profile if you like. Firefox used to just pop up a button at the bottom of the window asking if you'd like to "refresh" your profile. At some point, they stopped asking and started just doing it.

So no. He's not just a troll. As another user who's been using firefox since before it was called firefox, it does do this. It's one of many changes that seems hostile to existing users who take advantage for the browser's flexibility. That seems to be a larger trend in UX design, not just Mozilla. But as an organization who's ongoing existence depends on user loyalty, it's a poor strategy for Mozilla.

I call BS. In MN, during the lead up to the 2018 elections they had shows like one asking callers who voted for Obama and then Trump or voted for Obama but didn't vote in 2016, what would the democrats have to do to et them back. They had a the host, several other NPR commentators and panel of a bunch of DNC folks. I've never caught them doing something for the Republicans in the same time block (or ever).

One day over lunch, they had a woman covering Saudi politics and the Khashoggi assassination. She made it clear that the Crown Prince very well could have ordered the assassination, but that were also several other reasonable possibilities that it could have be another Prince trying to give the Crown Prince a black eye, or trying to do the Royal family a favor, or a number of other things. She went into details of how power had rearranged under the Crown Prince and how there were several plausible reason for the assassination. The host seems to act as though they respected the woman. She was not a political shill. In the 24 hours between that show and the next day, Trump made his tweet that the Prince didn't order the hit and had been setup (actually like one of the cases the woman from the prior day said was reasonable.) "Nobody every said anything like that." They were acting like Trump made it up (he may have) and that no sane person considered a possibility. It's like they had no memory of their show the prior day.

Prior to the virus this year, they were having shows asking for callers to explain what the Democrats would have to do to "win back" the religious vote. Here in MN, NPR are a communications arm of the local DNC office.

Back then, then cloud still ran primarily on Linux. Locking out Linux would not have worked on enterprise or server grade software. And the commodity, home market wouldn't be worth the effort to engineer a special lock-in. For Linux, not supporting the Microsoft key would have been a game of Chicken that Microsoft and the vendors who implemented locking out non-MS software would have lost. Instead we validated the plan.

Secure boot should always allow the user a way to select the keys they (dis)Trust. The current, broken implementation allows vendors to just embed the MS key and skimp on implementing user supplied keys, or a usable interface for loading keys, or testing that anything involving user supplied keys securely works as expected.

There a difference between the usual running off at the mouth and someone (state or local officials) following up "OMG, he's actually doing it this time." You'd have to pick someone who hasn't already cried wolf too many times. That rules out a number of federal legislators.

I'm ok with that as long as Twitter take responsibility for everything do choose to publish or not censor. I don't care which way they take it. They can be a private entity publishing what they choose or they can be a common carrier with "safe harbor" protection and the responsibility for what gets published on the authors. I don't think they should be allowed to have it both ways based on what convenient for them (or the politicians who want a lever to change Twitter's behavior.)

I get were you are going here, and there some disincentives for making easy to use software and then leaving it alone when it work with a support business model. But by far, I believe the true "Dark Side" of OSS business is "Open Core". There are too many technologies like Docker and the like that I would rather see being run by eager college students (or grad students) than businesses who are just trying to build in hooks & dependencies for their own servers services.

I guess I'm not certain if Red Hat was involved with the code in questions, but when I heard about the problems with secure boot, the first name I shouted at the sky was "Matthew Garrett" who I believed worked at Red Hat when he was on LWN trying to convince the world that playing along with Microsoft's secure boot plans was a good idea for the Linux world.

It's not Google. Skynet is becoming self aware ... and a narcissist.

They were more deliberate with their bytes. They didn't try to pack so many in a word.

Wait. Previous post said "Most politicians..." are. You disagree and then say a few aren't? Sounds like you do agree.