As a non-federated system, the fact that it is "open source" is almost meaningless. Creator Matthew Rosenfeld (AKA "Moxie Marlinespike") has frequently argued in favor of centralized systems to enable faster iteration, conveniently ignoring the fact that they also centralize power and are antithetical to the principles upon which the Internet was built. The MobileCoin fiasco should have eliminated any doubts about his conflicts of interest.

Are a thing. Storage device labels include barcodes for the model and serial number. Scripts used to wipe storage devices could log the model and serial of the block device to a central database. Storage devices being removed from the datacenter could then be forced to pass through a conveyorized scanning tunnel that would reject any devices not listed as wiped. Only failed storage devices would have to go to the shredder.

Even if the storage devices are deemed to be obsolete or worn out, storage devices that are intact are probably much easier to recover useful raw materials from than those that have gone through a shredder.

lol at the company that once supported federated messaging (in the form of XMPP) but eventually got greedy and used "because mobile" as a BS pretext for turning its messaging service into a walled garden:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/...

I miss the days of "don't be evil".

The fact that one of the top exchanges is using SMS 2FA reveals a lot about the kind of intellect (or, rather, the lack thereof) that is drawn to cryptocurrency, blockchain, etc.

In my experience as a user who often has hundreds of tabs open at any given time, Firefox Quantum vastly outperforms Chrome, as long as you're not trying to access Google products like Gmail, Drive, etc.

Not only are Google products dog-slow in Firefox, but a lot of the time, particularly with Drive, one finds that many features are completely broken. One basically needs to have Chrome running in parallel for the exclusive purpose of accessing Google web applications.

On the surface, it might appear that Google doesn't bother to test their products in Firefox, but it's actually a bit more sinister:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/...

Microsoft hasn't been helping either. Firefox users on Windows 7 who took advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10 found Firefox disabled, despite the W10 upgrade tool promising that W7 users would retain access to all of their installed applications. This took a huge chunk of Mozilla's market share almost overnight. Lately Microsoft has been engaged in this kind of crap:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.c...

I will readily admit that Firefox used to be slow, and that the transition to WebExtensions wasn't initially easy, but Mozilla has been an innovation leader in recent years, and I personally prefer to use a FOSS browser that isn't controlled by a major web property or proprietary OS vendor. In my view, the FTC & DoJ have been asleep when it comes to the anti-competitive and deceptive tactics employed by Google and Microsoft.

In the olden days, you had to talk to a human to buy advertising. Publications couldn't shrug off responsibility for the content of the ads that they ran, and the identities of the ad buyers were well known. This is still generally true for print publications. Greed is the main reason why we don't see this in the case of major Internet platforms.

Signal's centralized approach is, at best, lazy engineering. I miss the days when federated protocols were the default approach on the Internet.

Google loves to pat itself on the back for supposedly having some of the worlds the greenest data centers, but apparently thinks it's perfectly fine to generate a mountain of e-waste by forcing its users to throw away perfectly functional hardware after 2-4 years. If pressed for an explanation, they'll try to blame Qualcomm for proprietary BSP issues, but does anyone with a brain believe that a company with as much buying power as Google has to put up with such BS from a chip vendor?

The latest Linux kernel can still be run on hardware from the early 90s.

How much good does this do for me as an if the PC is still made in China or of Chinese components? Tamper-evident packaging is nice, but I am far more concerned about where my computer is being manufactured than I am about it being tampered with in transit, which is something that can only be done on a selective basis for high value targets.

I take it as a given that the NSA probably has a backdoor into my hardware no matter where it gets manufactured. I do what I can to mitigate this, but at the end of the day, at least the United States is ostensibly a democracy and a nation of laws. The NSA might take interest in my communications if I start making a lot of calls to Moscow, but it is not going to steal my intellectual property and hand it over to my competitors. The same cannot be said of China, so if there's a choice, I'd prefer to not have Xi Jinping's spooks bugging my next laptop.

I'm willing to pay considerably more money for a PC that's been manufactured entirely within the confines of the United States or some other friendly democratic nation.

At least gold has industrial uses.

Thanks for the brilliant satire.

Three Issues:
1.) Monocultures Suck: Experienced web developers know that no browser is without its deviations from W3C specifications. One of the ways that this becomes evident is when the developer observes inconsistent behavior from one browser to another. Bug reports get filed, and hopefully, just hopefully, if the browser vendor is not overrun with arrogant "WONTFIX" jerks, the behavior is corrected to conform with the standards document. In a monoculture, this doesn't happen as often, and gradually, the sole-surviving implementation displaces the documented standard, creating a significant barrier to the creation of alternative implementations in the event that people start to crave competition again. Instead of implementing the standard, an alternative browser now has to reverse engineer and mimic all of the bugs in the dominant rendering engine, so as to be compatible with the same web content.

2.) Mozilla happens to be a "Protector of the Web", and the "Narrative" is Appropriate: One of the great virtues of Mozilla is that, in addition to being a non-proffit organization, they aren't an operator of any major web properties. As such, they aren't subject to the conflicts of interest that you often see with companies like Google and Microsoft, who are often tempted to tailor their browsers to their commercial interests: interests that may be at odds those of the user.

3.) As of early 2019, Firefox Significantly Outperforms Chromium: Has Auchenberg even tried Firefox in the past year? Ever since the release of Firefox Quantum, Firefox has been blowing the pants off Chrome. Better yet, its Servo rendering engine is written in Rust, a modern language with safety guarantees that aren't achievable in C++. Mozila's leadership with Rust points to the possibility that we will one day be able to have some confidence in the security of our computing environments. Sticking with C++ is not the path forward if we hope to ever fully trust complex software like browsers.

I don't know about the rest of slashdot readers, but from my point of view, Chrome is a great browser for apathetic users who don't have very sophisticated expectations in terms of extensibility and privacy features. With Firefox you have a much richer selection of add-ons and other niceties like, for instance, the ability to synchronize your data to your own server, rather than being entirely dependent on someone's so-called "cloud". Whereas Mozilla remains committed to a decentralized web, Google has managed to progressively blur the lines between browser and web property.

I suppose Chrome is not as horrific as whatever Facebook might come up with if they ever decided to make a browser, but that's not saying much for Chrome. I'm a user of many Google products, but when it comes to browsers I'll be sticking with the content-neutral product that prioritizes my freedom and privacy - Firefox!