Notices by 🐈‍⬛David Sommerseth (dazo@infosec.exchange)

This is a follow-up post on the sad state of Mozilla

First, notice the date of the commit identified (as highlighted in a few posts below that toot referenced above).

Secondly, Mozilla has done further changes to their Privacy policy since this initial change. I am not fully convinced about them - since the Privacy FAQ at the same time is not aligned. The reason for my continued mistrust to Mozilla is that they have gradually, over many years, moved in a direction I do find privacy unfriendly. And they have ties/agreements/contracts/partnerships to companies who does not have a good track record on privacy topics. I generally trust people and organisations actions more than their words of what they want to do.

Thirdly, it should be fairly clear to most that AI/LLM is not preserving privacy well when data is sent to a remote server to be processed there. And even running parts of the LLM engines locally does not fully disentangle the privacy aspects fully - data is still being exchanged with a remote server (otherwise there would not need to be "AI service provider URLs" in about:cofig). Mozilla did force AI/LLM unto users, enabled by default with the only way to disable that in the beginning via about:config. And it took several releases before more user friendly approaches to disable it arrived. Due to this delay, I really wonder "does these new knobs really fully disable AI/LLM?". I have that doubt, because of how Mozilla has behaved over many years.

On top of this, the Mozilla leadership is extremely well paid while they have reduced their engineering teams working on Firefox and other products. That is a too strong indication for me to ignore, that profit and leadership compensation seem to be way more important than the core mission of making Internet a better place.

I have little trust in Mozilla for the time being. And I doubt I'm alone, due to the traction this toot thread triggered. Currently, I believe trust can be built up again. But it will take a lot of efforts now to repair what has been broken. For that to improve for me, I will need to see a lot of actions from Mozilla, where they clearly does changes in the whole organisation and communicates them clearly and that the communication is aligned across all aspects - including policy documents, FAQs, source code. Until that happens, I will use some of the Firefox forks. And leadership compensation need to be completely transparent and come down to a level which is not in an astronomic level comparable to large for-profit enterprise companies who generally cares little for anything than their own egoistic wealth.

If a person taking a leadership role in an organisation claiming working for a better Internet and fighting for its users is getting uninteresting unless there is a million dollar yearly compensation when the people doing the grunt work, delivering code resulting in a real product, has a 5th or 10th of that compensation, then I do question the values this person holds. And I will especially highly question the leadership when they need to reduce cost and choses to cut among the engineers doing the grunt work while the leadership not considering their own compensation.

So basically, I find the Mozilla organisation fairly rotten currently. It preaches the nice words but ends up doing something completely different.

#mozilla #firefox #privacy #foss #opensource

Just read @zackwhittaker's experience over a longer time span with how the government in #USA, through #FBI are attacking press freedom deliberately. It makes me angry how #Trump reverted protections the Biden administration put in place after the the first Trump administration.

The press freedom must be fought for by all means everywhere. There are no chance to have an honest government without a free and independent press. And what happens in the #US now is just terrifying.

#press #pressfreedom #politics #uspol

https://this.weekinsecurity.com/fbi-agents-visited-my-home-about-an-article-i-wrote-and-now-i-cannot-go-to-mexico/

#Mozilla has lost their ground and is now in a free fall into a sinkhole. I doubt they'll ever get out if this again unless they do a 180-turn within the coming days. Mozilla has lost a lot of trust and credibility over the last couple of years. This accelerates that distrust even more.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/

It looks promising, until you hit the last paragraph (my highlight)

In order to make Firefox commercially viable, there are a number of places where we collect and share some data with our partners, including our optional ads on New Tab and providing sponsored suggestions in the search bar. We set all of this out in our privacy notice. Whenever we share data with our partners, we put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share is stripped of potentially identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).

In my book, that's indirectly selling data.

Goodbye, #Firefox.

#privacy #ads #foss #opensource #web

The discussions are heated ...

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/information-about-the-new-terms-of-use-and-updated-privacy/m-p/87735

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/an-update-on-our-terms-of-use/m-p/88320

This is sad 😢

https://github.com/mozilla/bedrock/commit/d459addab846d8144b61939b7f4310eb80c5470e#diff-a24e74e4595fa85440a2f4e7e5dcfe68aba6e1e593aef05a2d35581a91423847

#firefox #privacy #mozilla #foss #opensource #web

@kaia @bagder

Seen this one? Seems accurate ...

https://infosec.exchange/@thomasareed/115707970885487725

@dagb

*sukk* Ja.

Norgespris er den klassiske X-Y problemløsningen. Vi har problem X og løser den med en annen løsning Y. Som til syvende og sist ikke løser noen ting. Bare skyver problem X foran seg.

Norgespris vil bli dyrt for Norge. Og løser ikke utfordringen med kraftfordelingen som er for svak i Norge. Og den regninga som kommer etterhvert blir enda dyrere.

Hadde politikerne med bidratt til å bedre strømfordeling i landet - ja, så vil også prisforskjellene også fordele seg. Baksiden er at man får høyere priser der de er lave i dag (fordi det er for mye kraft tilgjengelig i regionen) - og derfor blir dette en død plan for politikerne, spesielt i et valgår.

Men samtidig vil prisen vil gå ned i regionene som får tilgang til mer kraft (fordi underskuddet av kraft blir bedre dekket opp fra regioner med overskudd).

Hva får vi for denne "dyrere" strømmen ... Jevnere priser mellom regionene og et mer robust strømnett. Dette er åpenbart for dyrt for politikerne, som i stedet løser dette med å bruke penger på betale forbrukerne for den dyre strømmen de ellers må betale for. Og det er alt vi får igjen for den statlige pengebruken.

Norgespris er mer som om politikerne roper ut ut: «Oj, SEEEE! En rosa elefant!"» når landet skriker etter bedre fordeling av kraften i landet.

Man kaster penger ut av vinduet uten få noen ting igjen for det. Bokstavelig talt pisser i buksa for å holde seg varm en vinternatt.

Det er så idiotisk.

Men nå har vi Norgespris - og for mange så er det like greit å ta den avtalen og få litt penger igjen fra staten. De kaster jo bokstavelig talt de pengene mot oss forbrukere, så hvorfor ikke ta dem imot?

@kaia if you're lucky, you might still be able get an extended warranty on used/refurbished thinkpads ... And if really lucky, it won't be too expensive. But it depends a lot on the model. Worth checking out to see if it fits the budget.

@kaia ThinkPad Yoga are nice ones ... I set one up 6-7 years ago, and felt like a good one back then.

But it might be Lenovo also has some non-ThinkPad Yoga models these days too ... The non-ThinkPad models are more for the mass-consumer market. It often feels like overall poorer quality compared to ThinkPad, with less warranty/service options. Beware of that.

I generally can recommend upgrading to 4 year service/warranty if available and if the price is somewhat reasonable. The on-site technicians do a pretty good job and they usually come the 1-2 days after reporting an issue, depending on the severity and if the report was done late in the evening or early in the morning.

@joakimfors @grillchen @kaia I contacted Lenovo during the warranty period and they sent a technician to me and replaced the motherboard free of charge. I've also replaced the screen on another TP machine like that. Keyboards as well.

That said, I've had more services on the machines bought after 2023 than those before that. The overall quality seems to have degraded over the years. The X1C Gen11 (bought approx 14 months ago) is probably the one I've had longest without any service requirements. The X1C Gen8 had 3 services in 4 years - all keyboard/trackpoint related.

@kaia ThinkPad T series are quite good. Usually bigger screens (14-16”), keyboard key travel is a bit better. Weight is reasonable. Good materials.

X series are smaller and lighter. E series are cheapest, IIRC, with mostly plastic and heavier. I believe L series is one level up from E. P series are more kinda portable workstations, with powerful CPUs and quite heavy.

X1 is the flagship models, lighter and quite thinner than T series, but mostly same screen sizes. These have good specs, but keyboard key travel is short - gen 8 was cruel, gen 10 is worse.

The best price is around from blackfriday times until January-ish on the Lenovo online shop - around the time new upgraded models hit the market. Last years models often get quite nice discounts.

I only stay with ThinkPad because of the TrackPointer (the "red dot" in the middle of the keyboard). I find that being the best, most efficient and ergonomic mouse alternative available.

If @frameworkcomputer would have trackpointer and deliver to my region, I'd give them a shot.

@kaia I've used APC both at home and at work. Mostly due to reasonable Linux support via apcupsd

My UPSes are getting quite old now, so I would need to do a new evaluation next time. I can still get replacement batteries for the ones I have, so I'm not in a rush. Might use this list as a kind of guide ... https://networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html

@forteller

Ikke uenig i målet her. Det ville vært vakkert og flott. Og ja, vi ville ikke angret om 50 år. Tvert i mot.

Men hvor skal vi ta de pengene som trengs fra? Joda, klart vi har masse penger i Norge - med "oljepengene". Men hva skjer med den norske makroøkonomien da? Slike grep har ofte en stor negativ konsekvens som dukker opp litt senere.

Det er jo nettopp derfor økonomer er svært bekymret for "budsjettpulsen" i statsbudsjettene. Hvis vi bruker for mye penger i forhold til inntektene (skattene, i praksis), så påvirker dette alt fra inflasjon til kronekurs - og mere til.

Det sies at "å være rik er en like stor forbannelse som å være fattig, om ikke større". Fordi bruken av midlene vi har gir store ringvirkninger - som oppleves senere.

Siden ingen av oss besitter evner til å spå inn i fremtiden ... så blir slike store og kostbare grep ganske risikable - også i et 50 års perspektiv.

@hellomiakoda I would suggest reaching out to the Akonadi community ... f.ex on IRC; then you'll hopefully have a better chance of success to succeed.

irc://irc.libera.chat/#akonadi

If you don't have an IRC client, you can try the web-based one here: https://web.libera.chat/ and use #akonadi as the channel name to join.

@hellomiakoda

This is most likely the cause of this issue. I would try to do ps faxuw | grep akon and see if there are any akonadi like processes running. The use kill -TERM with their respective PID numbers.

That said, I'm not an akonadi user ... This is just my normal way to debug odd issues like this.

@hellomiakoda Does akonadictl status give more clues?

Most likely, there's a stray akonadi process lingering behind - or a "lock file" somewhere which was not removed for some odd reasons. Which results in this "unknown middle state"

@hellomiakoda

Well, to be frank ... this is more a akonadi problem than a Linux problem 😉

@forteller

Ellers kan det kanskje være bedre om MDG snakket mer om politikk enn at de må komme seg over sperregrensa ... at det mer føles som at en stemme går til politikken og ikke å "redde" partiet.

Skjønner veldig godt at sperregrensa er et stort og stygt monster MDG som parti vil holde seg unna ... men det er mindre motiverende for velgerne.

https://www.nrk.no/ytring/stadig-mer-skamlos-velgerjakt-1.17531044

@vegard_berget Det funker iallefall ikke for meg. Så da er jeg nok ikke i målgruppen til MDG.

@forteller

@zyx @BrodieOnLinux ahh, sorry ... I missed the needle in the haystack of other self-promoting URLs.