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Submission + - Firefox 153 was released today (firefox.com)

williamyf writes: FireFox 153 was released today. The most important user Facing Changes are changes in the Handling of PDFs (you can now merge PDF's and add images to them), and HDR video playback (on Windows, subjected to HDR being active system wide). Other changes under the hood include browser wide containers, and QWAC support. The full list is in the chage notes.

But the most important feature is that this version is an ESR, and therefore, defines the feature set of ESR for the next year. Why is being an ESR so important you ask?

1.) ESR, and not "normal (a.k.a. Rapid Release)" FireFox is the OotB browser for many important distros, like Debian, RHEL, Kali, TAILS, Suse Leap, Slackware and such.

2.) Many organizations large and small standarize on FireFox ESR as their default browser, regardless of the default browser that comes with their OS.

3.) FireFox ESR is the basis for many projects downstram, like WaterFox or KaiOS. All these projects will inherit for a year whatever ESR brings to the table today.

4.) Many ISVs and SaaS providers, if they certify their wares for FireFox at all, certify for the ESR version only.

Please notice that ESR 153 will NOT be offered as an automatic update until 2 months from now (ESR 140 will still be supported), If you want it now, you need to do a manual download and install.

Also of note, ESR 115 will be supported until march 2027. If you have unsupported versions of MacOS or Windows (like 7 or 8.x) this is the version to get, but even Mozilla themselves cautions about running a supported browser on top oh an unsupported OS:

"Note that Microsoft ended official support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 in January 2023. Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates and have known vulnerabilities. Without official support from Microsoft, maintaining Firefox for outdated operating systems becomes costly for Mozilla and risky for users. "


Submission + - Longtime web weirdness site Fark faces ad pinch (bsky.app)

sandbagger writes: Fark.Com is ancient in internet terms. It's not social media. It's not quite a news site. It's a holdover of the dotcom era and invisible to Google, which makes its community great, but has necessitated begging.

Comment Re:Why only boys? (Score 1) 58

Here's a little more detail.

Researchers a few years back ran tests. ADHDers and neurotypicals were asked to harvest berries and edible plants.

Neurotypicals tended to over-harvest and damage bushes to the point where recovery would be slow if possible at all, and tended to pick areas clean, wiping out local populations of edible plants.

ADHDers tended to move relatively quickly from area to area, harvesting a decent amount from each area but not excessively. The quantities tended to be at the sort of level that have long been established as a good balance, such that plants and populations would tend to actually do better the following year. Not only that, but they tended to gather more.

https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Crofts and small farms rapidly went to three-stage and four-stage crop rotation, but different fields would be with different crops. This meant that the failure of a single crop would be much less of a survival thing.

You'd see fields with a mutitude of diverse crops, because diversity was critical. Failure was highly likely, so you localised it. Failure in one area had no meaningful impact overall. Things like the Irish potato famine and the parsnip failures across France in the 1700s were relatively rare in history. Likewise, when industrialisation wiped out cottage industries, farms that had been very successful suddenly went bankrupt and mass starvation was common. The ability to task-switch and have a large number of small projects going was essential to life at the edges.

You're absolutely right, more ADHD would have indeed curbed the excesses. The industrial revolution caused huge problems by trying to do too much with too little diversity. Which eventually destroyed the economies built around the early mills, because the markets were too easy to undermine. There was no capacity to switch. But during the IR, the obsession with coal meant nobody really looked at alternative fuels or alternative activities. Economies became tightly constricted, which was devastating when it came to global warming, but equally devastating when it came to distributing metal-devouring bacteria (which did enormous damage to infrastructure) and radioactive particles (old mill areas are still unusually radioactive).

More ADHD wouldn't have eliminated the problem, but it would have diversified the solutions and would have diversified the markets, resulting in a much more robust, much healthier marketplace and a much more robust, much healthier population.

Comment Re:Why only boys? (Score 1) 58

Uh, no. As in, 100% of gatherers would be ADHD. IF they weren't, you'd be extinct within the year. 20% of the hunters would also be ADHD, because over-harvesting was also going to wipe out your food source. 100% of your explorers would be ADHD, 100% of your experimenters would be AuDHD.

ADHD was essential to survival. If you didn't want to die out, you stuck the neurotypical outside so that the wolves and other nasties actually hunting (tigers wouldn't be present) would get them. Neurotypicals were the main threat to survival.

Comment Re:Why only boys? (Score 1) 58

No, it's more likely that girls and women learned to mask symptoms early for survival reasons.

If you look at hunter-gatherer societies, ADHD is paramount to survival because it avoids over-harvesting. Too little ADHD produces cultures prone to driving plants and/or animals extinct. ADHD is a critical stop-gap that prevents this. Studies show ADHD gatherers will not only collect more, they will do so in ways that cause far less damage, resulting in a far better second harvest and far better sustainability.

Into more modern times, ADHD was a valuable survival trait. Too little and you became vulnerable to diseases, pests, crop blight, etc. If you wanted a stable population, right the way through to the industrial era, you needed a high level of ADHD in the population.

It is only when neurotypical bosses decided that they had to micromanage everything and decided who lived and who died on the streets that you see ADHD symptoms suddenly and massively suppressed. But masking changes nothing. The levels will still be the same, they're just hidden.

Comment Re:Why only boys? (Score 1) 58

It isn't. The under-diagnosis of girls is astronomical.

You are assuming ADHD is a new thing. No, it isn't. It is a survival thing. ADHD was critical in a very large percentage of the population for the bulk of the last 350,000 years. Without it, humanity would have gone extinct. It's merely not appropriate in a world in which neurotypicals make neurodiverse solutions a "bad thing".

Comment Re:No shit, Sherlock! (Score 2) 58

I never got myself into the whole "masculinity" obsession, even back in the 70s and 80s. The result of this was a discovery that computers launched me head-first through far fewer windows and pelted me with far fewer rocks. So, yeah, I was definitely seen as disposable though my childhood and teen years by pretty much everyone. (It's one reason anyone looking back at those as "golden years" is unlikely to win me over.)

Escapism is pretty much all I had at the time, and these days remains pretty much all I have - reality has grown far worse over the years and knowledge by the neurotypicals has not come with empathy but ammunition. There is guilt and shame in playing with creative writing or inventing, and the demons have got really bad on occasion, but you're right, it's not doing anyone any harm.

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