GenderNeutralBro

What part of this is misinformation, exactly? Seems pretty well-supported.

I keep seeing this claim, but never with any independent verification or technical explanation.

What exactly is listening to you? How? When?

Android and iOS both make it visible to the user when an app accesses the microphone, and they require that the user grant microphone permission to the app. It's not supposed to be possible for apps to surreptitiously record you. This would require exploiting an unpatched security vulnerability and would surely violate the App Store and Play Store policies.

If you can prove this is happening, then please do so. Both Apple and Google have a vested interest in stopping this; they do not want their competitors to have this data, and they would be happy to smack down a clear violation of policy.

I agree completely.

I understand the motivation here — apps that lack location permission shouldn't be able to get backdoor access to your location via your camera roll. That makes sense, because you know damn well every ~~spyware~~ social media company would be doing that if they could.

But the reverse is also true: apps that legitimately need to read photos and access all their metadata shouldn't need to be granted full location access.

F-Droid link for the lazy: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/

Definitely going to check this out. I've been using yt-dlp via command line in Termux but that experience is less than ideal.

It was bought out and cleaned up a few years ago. It's legit again now, though I don't think it'll ever really recover from that fiasco.

For sure. It'll never be enforced completely, but it gives teeth to go after some big offenders.

The linked article focuses on Mastodon. I'd be interested to hear more about how this relates to Lemmy in your experience.

Looking over the Fastfox.js config, it looks like most settings fall into one of three categories:

1. Subjective appearance of speed or responsiveness (perhaps at the expense of objectively-measurable load times)
2. Experimental options that don't apply to all hardware or OSes (e.g. GPU acceleration)
3. Settings that optimize performance at the expense of memory, CPU, or network usage (e.g. cache sizes and connection limits)

I don't see anything that makes me think Mozilla's defaults are unreasonable. It's not like Mozilla is leaving performance on the table, but rather that they chose a different compromise here and there, and use highly-compatible defaults. That said, it does seem like there is room for individual users to improve on the defaults — particularly if they have fast internet connections and lots of RAM.

For example:

// [NOTE] Lowering the interval will increase responsiveness
// but also increase the total load time.
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 100000); // (.10s); default=120000 (.12s)

This seems very much like a judgment call and I guess Firefox's defaults would actually have better objective load times and better benchmark scores. That doesn't mean it's objectively better, but it seems reasonable, at least.

// PREF: GPU-accelerated Canvas2D
// Use gpu-canvas instead of to skia-canvas.
// [WARNING] May cause issues on some Windows machines using integrated GPUs [2] [3]

// [NOTE] Higher values will use more memory.

Again, the defaults seem to make sense. Perhaps Mozilla could add an optimization wizard to detect appropriate settings for your hardware, and let the user select options like "maximize speed" vs "maximize memory efficiency". These are not one-size-fits-all settings.

Fastfox also disables a lot of prefetching options, which...seems counter to the goal of improving speed. Not really sure what to make of that.

Yes. Homomorphic encryption is for data processing, not data storage.

Are there any that are cloud-hosted, secure, and private? My experience is limited, but I've never found an easy way in. I can't imagine anyone who's not tech-savvy getting started without walking through a minefield of scams.

Every now and then I look at options for how I might actually use crypto, and everything looks either outrageously scammy or way too much trouble. Pretty much every exchange I've looked at holds the keys to your account, and several have gone under or outright stolen their users' funds.

The question is, when Proton embraces bitcoin, should it make me trust bitcoin more, or trust Proton less? I don't know. I'm still skeptical. Their blog post is interesting, but also doesn't answer a lot of questions. https://proton.me/blog/proton-wallet-launch

I mean, look at this:

Buy Bitcoin securely in 150+ countries

If you are new to Bitcoin, Proton Wallet also has integrations that make it easy to buy Bitcoin in 150+ countries, and we have also put together a comprehensive Bitcoin guide for newcomers.

That "comprehensive" guide spends three paragraphs talking about the "Blocksize War", and makes absolutely no mention of how a user can actually buy bitcoin using Proton Wallet. WTF, Proton? Who is your target audience here exactly?

OpenSesame

Or just Sesame.

Its gimmick was that it was compatible with Windows apps, and an easy transition for Windows users. It didn't really live up to that promise. Wine was not nearly as mature then as it is today, and even today it would be pretty bold to present any Linux distro as being Windows-compatible.