72
Oddly enough I did watch the show, but my first thought on seeing them in your comment was that it might be a US phone number, 481 516 2342.
They're the numbers from Lost
By default they do block quite a bit. The "Standard" tracking protection option in their Settings page says it blocks Social media trackers, Cross-site cookies in all windows, tracking content in private windows, cryptominers, and fingerprinters. They have a strict option with a disclaimer that it may break some sites or content that does a bit more.
So they're already blocking as much as they reasonably can without affecting legitimate functionality, and they have an option to block even more.
As for "Why offer them anything?", my guess is pragmatism. They're a lot more likely to succeed if they propose a system where the users give up nothing but companies can thrive anyways, vs. a system where the users give up nothing and the companies in charge of everything just burn to the ground and die.
I notably don't have a strong opinion on whether or not I think they'll succeed with this feature. I think their intentions are pure, though, and that it legitimately offers no privacy risk to users at all. I think the best chance it has is something like government mandates. Maybe there's also a future where they somehow get Google on board for PR reasons or something. I wish them the best of luck.
I look at it as a pragmatic attempt to work within the system we have to shift the internet away from its current nightmare dystopia of user tracking and information selling, and toward a system where all parties can be reasonably happy, with companies being able to receive aggregate anonymous data that helps them operate efficiently, without compromising even a tiny bit on user privacy.
Editing to actually respond to your question about who Firefox is built for: Definitely the user. But users don't exist in a vacuum. Mozilla can and does consider the entire ecosystem their products and users exist within, and can take steps to make that ecosystem, the internet, a better place for users. The best part is that their actions often make the internet better for everyone - not just Firefox users.
Nothing here is incompatible with the principles of free software. The feature isn't for the "sole benefit" of advertisers - it's beneficial to users specifically because it attempts to shift the paradigm from one where they have essentially no privacy regarding their online activities whatsoever, to one where they give up literally nothing about their privacy.
And they are not selling data - I believe that to be a straight-up lie. I've searched extensively to find out if anything is being sold here. I have no doubt at all that if they were, the headlines would be about Mozilla selling user data, rather than about tracking users.
From their FAQ:
The system is designed so that neither the advertisers, nor the websites with the ads, nor Mozilla can ever tell which specific users had their activity contribute to the data being reported.
The current paradigm is that the vast majority of internet users have their activity tracked across a vast majority of websites. It's that dozens of large companies have access to information about which websites you've been to, when you visited them, and what you did there. That they can and do sell this information to other companies, who usually have as their primary goal using that data to somehow extract money from you to them. Users who block tracking like this are a tiny minority.
The new paradigm would be that the companies in question know none of that, and instead get told information like "approximately 7 out of 487 people who saw your advertisement on [x] went on to purchase your product on [y]".
I would call that pretty paradigm-shifting. The only absurd thing here is that this is somehow being used, loudly and repeatedly, to make it seem like FIrefox is somehow worse for user privacy than its competition.
People feel betrayed because that's the narrative they're being fed - the number of times this same exact story has been posted in the past few days is staggering, as is the number of anti-Firefox stories that have been posted in general over the past few weeks/months. But almost every time one of these anti-Firefox stories comes out, just a small amount of digging shows it's a whole lot of narrative or even outright misinformation piled on top of nothing at all.
The truth is Mozilla did nothing here that harms or has the potential to harm its users or their privacy, and in fact they're actively trying to build a system that, if successful, would be a paradigm-shifting boost to online privacy. Mozilla is a legitimately good tech company that has made and continues to make the internet a better place, which makes the recent coordinated push to demonize them as an enshittified boogeyman all the more bizarre, especially considering who their competitors are.
Cross-posting my comment from the post you cross-posted (and possibly created your account just to post?)
After reading about the actual feature (more), this seems like an absolutely gigantic non-issue. Like most anti-Mozilla stories end up being.
The whole thing is an experimental feature intended to replace the current privacy nightmare that is cross-site tracking cookies. As-implemented it's a way for advertisers to figure out things like "How many people who went to our site and purchased this product saw this ad we placed on another site?", but done in such a way that neither the website with the ad, nor the website with the product, nor Mozilla itself knows what any one specific user was doing.
The only thing I looked for but could not find an answer on one way or the other is if Mozilla is making any sort of profit from this system. I would guess no but actually have no idea.
There are definitely things that can be said about this feature, like that users with pre-existing installs should have been asked to have it turned on (for optics alone, apparently), or that its mission of replacing tracking cookies is unlikely to succeed. But the feature itself has virtually no privacy consequences whatsoever for anybody.
I'm absolutely convinced there's a coordinated anti-Firefox astroturfing campaign going on lately.
Or a terrible one!
Their acquisition of Anonym was all about acquiring the feature this article is about, PPA. Anonym created PPA. In fact Anonym seems to have been created for the explicit purpose of creating this privacy-respecting system as an alternative to cross-site tracking cookies. I see no reason to doubt Mozilla's intentions here.
Copy/pasting my comment from the earlier thread on this that got deleted for misinformation
After reading about the actual feature (more), this seems like an absolutely gigantic non-issue. Like most anti-Mozilla stories end up being.
The whole thing is an experimental feature intended to replace the current privacy nightmare that is cross-site tracking cookies. As-implemented it's a way for advertisers to figure out things like "How many people who went to our site and purchased this product saw this ad we placed on another site?", but done in such a way that neither the website with the ad, nor the website with the product, nor Mozilla itself knows what any one specific user was doing.
The only thing I looked for but could not find an answer on one way or the other is if Mozilla is making any sort of profit from this system. I would guess no but actually have no idea.
There are definitely things that can be said about this feature, like "Fuck ad companies, it should be off by default" (my personal take), or "It's a pointless feature that's doomed to failure because it'll never provide ad companies with information as valuable as tracking cookies, so it'll never succeed in its goal to replace tracking cookies" (also my take). But the feature itself has virtually no privacy consequences whatsoever for anybody.
I'm absolutely convinced there's a coordinated anti-Firefox astroturfing campaign going on lately.
136
Can I replace my shower controls?
(i.imgur.com)
It seems like every shower has its own unique way of controlling water temperature and pressure. Of all the showers I've ever used, no two of which have ever been alike, I like my controls the least. Plus the faucet has started dripping lately.
Is this likely to be something I can replace on my own, without a plumber? To me, that means: Can I likely do this without damaging the wall, without having to mess with pipes, and without needing to do anything involving words like "hacksaw", "weld", or "plumbing torch"?
Basically I believe in my ability to buy a faucet and control thingie from Home Depot; to use screwdrivers, allen wrenches, pliers, and regular wrenches; to use things like plumbing tape, lubricants, and caulk; and to remember to turn the water off to the house.
Would a project like this likely require anything more complex than that? I tend to prefer shower controls that have separate knobs for hot and cold, but I figure going from a one-knob setup to a two-knob setup is definitely going to require reconfiguring the plumbing. Should sticking with a one-knob solution be okay?
I don't know if it matters but I live in Florida in the US, and this place was built in the 1980s. I doubt this matters, but my current controls work by turning the larger knob left or right for temperature, and the smaller knob for pressure.
My place does have some annoyances - like the front door is an uncommon size that's difficult to find replacements for at places like Home Depot. Is there any chance of me running into issues like that when it comes to things like the size of the pipe openings?
Thanks for any insight.
Edit: Thanks for all the replies. It's pretty clear now that this is something that could very easily end up a lot more involved and time consuming and property damaging than I'm comfortable with.
49
What is this cat?
(lemmy.world)
What kind of cat is this? It was taken behind a Chinese food restaurant in southwest Florida.
The person who took the picture said it's a Bobcat, but other people who've seen it have said it doesn't really look like one, and is probably something non-native. Anyone know for certain?
3
I've had this cactus for a few years, and for a while it's had a problem where it grows so tall that it can't stand up. You can see in the photo that I have it tied to some stakes to keep it upright - if not for those it would literally uproot itself in under a day.
Why might this be? I don't know all that much about houseplants. I water this cactus (and my other cactuses, which are not the same species) once every two weeks, about 1 to 1.5 cups of water. I use some cactus fertilizer like twice a year, pretty inconsistently. It lives perpetually indoors with those three light rods visible in the picture as its sole light source (On for 12 hours a day).
Given how little I know about proper plant care, I'm sure none of that is ideal - but is any of it the obvious culprit for why this happens? What should I be doing better?
Thanks for any help.
P.S. Those two nodules just above the lower string are brand new, and it's never branched out like that before - what should I expect them to become? Round bulbs? Branches? Flowers? Nothing at all? The tip top of the cactus being white is also very recent.
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zkfcfbzr
joined 1 year ago
Regardless of their motivations this seems like a big positive. Forced arbitration clauses should be illegal and unenforceable in any context where it isn't customary for both parties to have legal counsel reading over the contract. And it's appalling that waivers for class action lawsuits are legal at all.