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Firefox

Firefox 74 Slams Facebook In Solitary Confinement: Browser Add-On Stops Social Network Stalking Users Across the Web (theregister.co.uk) 49

Tim Anderson reporting via The Register: The first thing users will see after updating to Mozilla's latest browser, Firefox 74, is a prompt to install the Facebook Container add-on. The Facebook Container add-on is not new, but has been enhanced in its latest version, 2.1.0, with the ability to add custom sites to the container so that you can "login with Facebook wherever you need to." The purpose of the Facebook Container is to let you continue to use Facebook but without having the social network site track your browsing elsewhere. "Installing this extension closes your Facebook tabs, deletes your Facebook cookies, and logs you out of Facebook," say the docs.

When you visit Facebook and log in, the cookies it plants are isolated to the container. This prevents Facebook Like buttons and embedded comments from working on other sites. There is also an issue with sites that require or offer a Facebook login, which you can now overcome by adding those sites to the container. Sites are added by clicking a fence icon and selecting "Allow site in Facebook container." The effect is like having two web browsers, one in which you are logged into Facebook and subject to potential tracking on any site which has Facebook content, and another where Facebook has no knowledge of you.

Piracy

EU Study Shows Online Piracy is Complex and Not Easy To Grasp (torrentfreak.com) 44

The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has released a new study which suggests that piracy is dropping in Europe. While the research is limited to site-based piracy, it has some interesting findings. Countries with a lower average income per person visit pirate sites more often, for example. In addition, the study shows that awareness of legal options doesn't always decrease piracy.
Businesses

Udacity Restructures Operations, Lays Off 20 Percent of Its Workforce (techcrunch.com) 30

Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup, has laid off about 20 percent of its workforce and is restructuring its operations as the company's co-founder Sebastian Thrun seeks to bring costs in line with revenue without curbing growth, TechCrunch has learned. From the report: The objective is to do more than simply keep the company afloat, Thrun told TechCrunch in a phone interview. Instead, Thrun says these measures will allow Udacity from a money-losing operation to a "break-even or profitable company by next quarter and then moving forward." The 75 employees, including a handful of people in leadership positions, were laid off earlier today as part of a broader plan to restructure operations at Udacity. The startup now employs 300 full-time equivalent employees. It also employs about 60 contractors.

Udacity, which specializes in "nanodegrees" on a range of technical subjects that include AI, deep learning, digital marketing, VR and computer vision, has been struggling for months now, due in part to runaway costs and other inefficiencies. The company grew in 2017, with revenue increasing 100 percent year-over-year thanks to some popular programs like its self-driving car and deep learning nanodegrees, and the culmination of a previous turnaround plan architected by former CMO Shernaz Daver. New programming was added in 2018, but the volume slowed. Those degrees that were added lacked the popularity of some of its other degrees. Meanwhile, costs expanded and their employee ranks swelled.

Comment User experience and quality first (Score 5, Insightful) 195

I would say they should focus on providing the same quality as pirated material on all markets at the same time.
They can never provide better quality, since what they provide will be copied. But make sure all customers with good enough connections can stream/download as high quality as possible, for a fair price.
Don't geo block. The ones who get blocked will get it some other way.
No need for big investments in DRM. What can be seen & heard can and will be replicated. Accept that. You're just making it annoying for legitimate customers, while the pirates enjoy DRM free versions from torrent sites.

Comment Re:Equivalent of peeking without killing it ?! (Score 1) 210

The point in time in which the universe decides whether the cat died or not is when we test it, not before. If we never test the cat, it is neither alive nor dead.

Uhm.. No? The point in time the cat died is exactly that point in time, whenever we test it? If we never test the cat, it's *either* alive or dead..

Comment Many small things (Score 1) 879

I use XP at home and Win7 at work. I guess many of the things which annoy me in Win7 is possible to fix, but I try to use Win7 and hopefully in the future figure out why it is better, even though I don't see it now. Here are some of the things I don't like with 7 anyway:
- Where is the good old quick launch for the small utils I use all the time?
- When clicking on an app in the menu bar I normally want to open a new instance of it, not hide/show the existing instance.
- When right clicking on an icon in the menu field for an open app the menu window opens far from the mouse cursor (not a few pixels like in XP). In XP I -really- don't need to aim at all for right click -> close app selection.
- When clicking on the calculator button on my keyboard the Win7 brings the open calculator to the front instead of opening a new instance.
- XP feels snappier / faster.
- I like the XP explorer / file manager much more than the one in Win7.

So, what's keeping me on XP? The user experience. I guess Win7 is much more powerful "under the hood" and everything, but so far I haven't experienced anything making me think "Oh, that's good.. Too bad it's not available in XP".

Comment C++ visual studio (Score 1) 1880

I like visual studio with visual assist x as my development platform for C++. I'm also using Eclipse CDT on my Ubuntu box, but I occationally have problems with debugging remote hardware and experience small bugs here and there. Maybe it's stuff hardcore linux ppl easily fix, but for me it's easier to go with windows. I would love to switch though, so do you have any suggestions about what to use for C++ development in Linux?

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