Since I've seen a lot of chatter about people switching to #Firefox as Google ramps up the enshitification of #Chrome, let me tell you about a killer feature for people who (a) need multiple accounts on the same websites (eg. devs) or specifically (b) have to use multiple Google accounts.
Firefox has an official addon called Multi Account Containers that lets you trivially set up color coded tabs that have separate sets of cookies. Log into your dev account in one, and your test account in another. Log into your personal #gmail in one and have another tab next to it with your work Gmail. I'm actually not signed in to any Google accounts in most my tabs, I just have containers for the specific tasks I do on Google products.
You need to stop using Chrome NOW. It’s not hyperbole: Google just rolled out a change to Chrome that tracks the sites you visit, builds a profile, and shares that with any page you visit that asks.
Infosec friends are unanimous: if you're using Chrome, you want to visit chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off Ad Topics, Site-Suggested Ads, and Ad Measurement.
IMPORTANT: you must do this for each of your Chrome profiles, since it's not a global setting.
Consent-O-Matic is a browser extension that auto-responds to all the #GDPR and similar consent popups with optimal user preferences.
Unlike the extension "I don't care about cookies" which just accepts all cookies, Consent-O-Matic clicks the prompts on your behalf to reject most of the cookies. You can also choose what to accept/reject in the preferences.
Available for Firefox, Chrome and others.
I've been using this on Firefox :firefox: for quite sometime now and it works great!
We are currently witnessing the fallout from monopolization in the browser space. Back in 2007, Internet Explorer received much criticism for its phishing protection mechanism which transmitted all visited websites to Microsoft servers. Mozilla paired up with Google and designed a different system which performed most checks locally and preserved users’ privacy. That’s what healthy competition looks like.
Fast forward to 2023. Almost all web browsers in use are either Chrome or based on the Chromium browser engine. With the competition pretty much eliminated, Google is now pushing its “Enhanced Safe Browsing” down everyone’s throats – which is a nice sounding name for “every website you visit is sent to our servers.” The Internet Explorer approach from 2007 all over again, only that now it’s Google getting all this data. And they certainly won’t do anything evil with it. Yeah, sure.
Reminder: Firefox and Safari are the only remaining browsers worth noting which are not using Google’s browser engine.
I remember when #Chrome was introduced as a fast, efficient browser. Just look at this screenshot from the Activity Monitor on my #Mac. #Safari is the browser I actually use. Chrome sits in the background for one specific use case. No plugins. Just idling, sucking 4 times the energy out of my machine compared to Safari … I repeat this over and over: If you own a Mac, use Safari. Use Chrome only if you have to. Close it after using.
Assis sur sa position dominante Google Chrome n'évolue plus (ou pas dans le bon sens, voire la tentative de Manifest v3 pour les WebExtensions), alors que Firefox a progressivement regagné le terrain perdu et même consolidé de l'avance.
Honestly, I had no idea DuckDuckGo had its own web browser lol. This article reminded me to try out DuckDuckGo's search engine again, and compare its search results with those of Google Search. I was actually surprised to find out that DuckDuckGo churned out way better search results. I'm definitely gonna use it instead of Google from now on.
Get the browser that protects what’s important. No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers. Just a lightning fast browser that doesn’t sell you out https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
If you’re switching to #Firefox, remember Firefox is not private by default. Consider the #LibreWolf fork, which is. Otherwise, go into your settings and adjust its tracking features (like having #Google as the default search engine), turn off telemetry, “experiments”, etc.
(Also, if you all switch and Google goes bankrupt, #Mozilla will go bankrupt too because they exist thanks to half a billion dollars a year from Google. So remember Google must survive for Mozilla to survive.)
Three days ago, the 4th of November, would've been #KHTML 25 year anniversary. 🥳
Hoorrray!
WTF is KHTML?
Chances are you are kind of using it, because #WebKit and #Blink rendering engines are all forked from this open-source project originally intented for the browser of the KDE window environment.
So, I was thinking about this video on Chrome/Edge accessibility. Basically, it shows that the memory and CPU hog isn't the screen reader, it's the browser/accessibility pipeline. And honestly, it shows how, once again, being disabled is expensive. Not only are we told from a young age that we'll need to work twice as hard as abled people in order to get to the same level as the abled person, and then get a job that pays about $9 an hour for factory type work, or $20 per hour for highly specialized tech knowledge work, we have to buy expensive technology that can allow us to give that 200% of ourselves to our job and lives. Like, you see us buying an iPhone 15 or 14? That's not, for almost all circumstances, as a status symbol. That's because accessibility is so unoptomized that it slows our devices down. Because we have to have modern devices, a good 8 GB RAM (minimum) on a laptop, or a modern A-series chip, or, hell, probably an M-series Mac, just to keep up. I'm not sure about the M-series Mac part as I've not spent enough time with one to see how it compares to my 2019 Intel Mac.
We see this a lot with Android phones. A sighted person may be able to get by with a $250 Samsung phone. But when I worked with one, I felt the lag with TalkBack acutely. We may be able to blame the phones, or the PC's, or Intel Macs. But then why does an Intel PC run just fine with NVDA? No, digital accessibility is all about software. If it can run well for a sighted person, it should run well for a blind person. And that's why I always say that the OS is at the root of all digital accessibility, followed of course by whatever you run above that stack, like the browser. So we have to work 200% more, buy a good 200% more expensive, and we're still slowed down. Do not praise us for overcoming these things. Help us by eliminating the need to overcome them in the first place!!
"As we mentioned last August, in #Firefox 117 the browser gained a new #AutomaticTranslation feature. This is not just playing catch-up with #Chrome, which has offered this for years: Firefox translations are more privacy-aware and happen inside the browser, meaning on your computer rather than some #GoogleServer in the cloud. Version 122 is better at preserving the layout and appearance of translated pages." #Browsers
#Chrome : nous imposons une nouvelle fonctionnalité qui envoie votre adresse personnelle aux annonceurs, avec de petits astérisques sur certaines parties, et nous l'appelons Protection Ultime de la vie Privée.
#Firefox : Nous chiffrons chaque étape du processus de requêtes DNS et HTTP afin que personne sur Terre ne puisse savoir ce que vous faites en ligne, parce que flûte à tous ceux qui voudraient savoir.
Ces deux navigateurs ne sont ni identiques ni égaux…
[wei] Ensure Origin Trial enables full feature · chromium/chromium@6f47a22 (github.com)
Get the browser that protects what’s important. No shady privacy policies or back doors for advertisers. Just a lightning fast browser that doesn’t sell you out https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/