I wish Mozilla came up with useful paid services.

For a moment I thought Mozilla Monitor Plus could be such a service, but it turns out they outsourced that to a company that’s owned by a guy that also owns data brokers siphoning people’s data. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/03/mozilla-drops-onerep-after-ceo-admits-to-running-people-search-networks/

There’s also Firefox Relay but their phone protection and VPN services still aren’t available. https://relay.firefox.com/

Given what happened to Monitor Plus they’d need to be very transparent about relay’s management and proove their online services are trustworthy.

Gotta support alternatives such as Peertube, Nebula… so there are nice places to find videos as YouTube becomes worse and worse.

And then Microsoft gets annoyed when people don’t immediately start using Win 10, then Win 11.

Seeing the results, it looks like earlier versions had more QA done before the release, whereas nowaday a bigger part of QA is done by customers after the release.

If you understand the security implications, you probably won’t enable it.

Not surprising. Most Linux OSes are lightweight compared to Windows. And Moores’ Law slowed down in the last 10+ years.

Protecting the identity of members make sense. If that org is fighting bad actors engaged in CSAM and child abuse, they’d want to shield themselves from harrasment and retaliation.

What’s most shady is the tactic, asking third party to block archive.is when they apparently didn’t ask achive.is themselves to remove the content.

The sad thing is you paid to get a car with a TCU, then paid a mechnic to remove it. Assuming you’re not a mechnic/hobbist yourself.

It’s good that Mozilla is shaming car companies and shining a spotlight on the issue. Journalists need to ask about tracking and privacy when a new car model comes out. Buyer should ask sellers the same.

You may be right, but I don’t see how that change the calculus. Should employees and union be complacent with corps’ bad and potentially illegal actions (firing for being in an union is not legal in some areas), refuse to defend colleagues, just to avoid hurting the corporation pride?

Anyway, we’ll probably hear more soon, and will see how this play out.

R* should have thought of that before doing union busting. Now management is left with bad options and have to decide which option is least bad, for instance admitting they were wrong, or let the situation decay further and potentially escalate the fight against their own workforce.

You want AI in your browser?

Well, think again.

The more AI is being pushed into my face, the more it pisses me off.

Mozilla could have made an extension and promote it on their extension store. Rather than adding cruft to their browser and turning it on by default.

The list of things to turn off to get a pleasant experience in Firefox is getting longer by the day. Not as bad as chrome, but still.

if a 100% effective cure (or preventative) for cancer comes around, what will be the next big goal?

Making the cure accessible. Some cancer treatments are more effective AND much more expensive. Companies may be looking for return on investment, or the treatment is tailor-made from the patient’s own cells, and inherently labor intensive and hard to produce.

Either way, curing 100% of the richest 5% who can afford it isn’t the most satifying outcome.

the printing process requires much less energy and produces many fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional TFT manufacturing methods

A carbon tax would make this kind of production process more viable commercially than more polluting processes.

It’s necessary not only to have the technology, but also the right insentives.

“Unfortunately, the National Science Foundation program that we were pursuing funding from to continue working on this, called the Future Manufacturing program, was cut earlier this year. But we’re hoping to find a fit in a different program in the near future.”

It sounds like the US may not even have the technology with cuts to research. Don’t be surprised if another country leapfrog the US again in electronics production.

Now, find an enzyme that can break down fossil fuel & plastic companies.

Contractual obligations and contract terms do not superseed laws. If anyone is doing something unlawful through Google or Amazon’s infrastructure, a NGO or union could sue in order to try to stop it.

mRNA vaccines seem to boost the effectiveness of an immune therapy for skin and lung cancer

It appears they found indications that combining immune therapy with some mRNA vaccines may increase survival time. Hopefully a medical trial can confirm this.

The headline only mention the vaccine which is a bit confusing, because the paper doesn’t make conclusions on the effect of the vaccine alone. But on its combinaison with another therapy.

Anyway, there’s hope for more efficient cancer treatments.

Sure, but it’s still a serious problem even if it’s a side channel attack.

Almost everyone rely on the OS/hardware providing some isolation. People often install shady apps, and browsers automatically execute JS/bytecode from random website they visit. It’s best to have defense in depth, not assume people are perfect at avoiding malicious apps/websites.

Well done noyb!

Meanwhile, Nvidia has promised to pump $100 billion into OpenAI over the next decade, a move that will conveniently help OpenAI pay for Nvidia’s own chips.

OpenAI and NVIDIA’s future are getting tied together more than they already were

Police and government agencies can track phones even when they’re connected to a genuine cell towers, via mobile operators. It’s just slightly more convenient for them to use an ISMI catcher because they collect data without going through a third party.

Assume a mobile phone can be tracked if it’s powered, regardless of iOS or Android version and settings.