I would not be surprised if it is for something nefarious like the AI training fad or selling the information. And/or for providing the data to law enforcement at request.

While I generally think Rust (or some other "more secure" language) is better, I do agree very much with the "security guys who happen to like rust" sentiment.

While using Rust can almost inevitably improve a number of other security-related aspects, it does not protect vs. timing and sidechannel attacks that are very important in cryptography. Casual re-implementation of an algorithm might easily reintroduce such issues.

Issues like that might stay buried for a long time, apart from the "three letter agencies" that will most likely do their own private analysis in any case.

The death clock for it is already probably ticking. Gone in a year or few. Investing any time on it would be a waste.

The pessimist in me thinks that if anything is to be learned of past history of Firefox development, the next step after removing a feature from core and into extensions is to deprecate / remove the API(s) this extension relies on to function. Or at least the APIs that enable it to work in a comfortable manner vs. UI experience.

Personally I use RSS feeds of 7 different blogs (wow, blogs still exist?) in order to easily follow when new posts are made. It's not much, but at least I don't have to manually check them out, quick browse through live bookmark menu is enough.

Actually some sources say that it has been in the "North Bridge", e.g. what has been known as "Platform Controller Hub" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) for some time. For example, see ME references in https://www.intel.com/content/...

However, it is stated in the above Wikipedia article: "Beginning with ultra-low-power Broadwells and continuing with mobile Skylake processors, Intel incorporated the clock, PCI controller, and southbridge IO controllers into the CPU package, eliminating the PCH for a system on a chip (SOC) design." This makes it unclear whether also the ME component has been integrated into the CPU package in SoC style in these newer CPUs (assuming that it has been there in the first place.) ... I sure wish Intel themselves would explain all this. And also state their reasons for pushing this crap.

.. case sensitive filenames by default? :D

Just wondering. I know HFS+ can have case-sensitivity, but not sure if it is on by default. And some people seem to be discouraging that, based on quick googling.

I see that you don't realize that randomizing, etc. just makes your "signature" more unique. And if you give less information, it makes you more unique too.

The best way to be less unique would be to be very average, or at least look like the majority - e.g. probably the average Windows installation with basic fonts, etc. and most common version of Firefox/Chrome (which varies as time goes by).

I usually read at +3 or +4, but I give extra +5 score to flamebaits. I started doing it years ago after reading about the idea from somebody else. Those posts are funny/interesting often enough that I haven't reverted it.

Not necessarily. This can be solved by having a standard privileged file open/save dialog that grants the access automatically to apps based on user input. Of course that limits the UI designs in some ways.. I wrote some ideas 11 years ago how something like this could be done. Partially obsolete nowadays though but still could be doable (except for the web browser parts - web security seems to be a lost cause already). Perhaps once these kind of worse malwares start happening people would finally implement a more secure desktop. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to easily run whatever program I want without it breaking my computer.

Sorry for advertising my own product, but pretty much on topic here. :) Buy two (cheap) servers from completely different networks / data center providers, and keep them replicated with http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Replication. You can set up MX records to both of them, and use DNS to switch between the replicas for IMAP/POP3 as needed. Either one of the data centers can die and your mail won't stop working. Or keep one of the replicas in local network and your mail keeps working even if your internet connection dies.

(Then you'll only need to hope that there are no software bugs bringing down everything.)

Dunno how it works in Germany, but I think the people should be able to decide for themselves what kind of education they want, whenever they want (+- a few years). And maybe more importantly: If you decide wrong at some point, you should be able to switch if you're good enough. I think the way it works in Finland is good enough. I dropped out of high school (wanted to code all nights), finished it 7 years later when I had more motivation, had no problem getting into university trying out something new interesting I re-learned at high school (biotech!), then deciding it wasn't really worth the trouble and switching back to computer science and getting a BSc out of it. The high school and college stories I hear from the US are pretty depressing usually.

My laptop comparisons nowadays:

Apple laptop:
MagSafe

Non-Apple laptop:
Non-MagSafe

Until some laptop has MagSafe or similar I won't even consider it. I remember too well when I used to trip over the power cords and drag my laptop on the floor. Or break the power plug because it got twisted when moving the laptop in a bad direction. Or stepping on the power plug and breaking it. (Yeah, I don't treat my laptops all that well.)

I thought it was somehow referring to the "Captain's log" recordings.. Yeah, haven't watched that much star trek.