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Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

(support.mozilla.org)
757 points shak77 | 4 comments | 15 Dec 17 13:47 UTC | HN request time: 0.978s | source
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blauditore ◴[15 Dec 17 16:23 UTC] No.15932880[source]▶
Many people seem to be shocked because Mozilla installed an add-on automatically. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter since the code is coming from Mozilla - they're building the whole browser, so they could introduce functionality anywhere. If someone distrusts their add-ons, why trust their browser at all?

The main question is what behavior is being introduced. I haven't researched deeply, but apparently the add-on does nothing until the user opts-in on studies.

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vorpalhex ◴[15 Dec 17 16:37 UTC] No.15933001[source]▶
This is being added to the browser, outside the realm of security updates, through what is supposed to be a UX improvement program, for commercial purposes. It's written by a commercial company that produces advertisement content. It's not clear this code is audited.

Sorry, but I'm uninstalling firefox. They have broken the basic trust I have in them as a user to not push arbitrary code to my machine against my interests.

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benbenolson ◴[15 Dec 17 16:55 UTC] No.15933127[source]▶
What browser are you going to use instead?
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rnhmjoj ◴[15 Dec 17 17:48 UTC] No.15933561[source]▶
If you like Firefox but don't trust Mozilla anymore there are plenty of forks to choose from: Waterfox, Pale Moon, Basilisk, GNU IceCat.

Personally I build Firefox from source and maintain a set of patches largely based on these: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-esr-privacy/

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1. Grollicus ◴[15 Dec 17 19:16 UTC] No.15934256[source]▶
I think about doing this as well but heard a lot of bad things about the firefox build process. How long does it take to build for you?
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2. rnhmjoj ◴[15 Dec 17 19:43 UTC] No.15934431[source]▶
They are probably true. Using an i5 @4.3GHz it takes 2.5/3 hours to build. To test changes you must set up a compiler cache or it's going to take forever.
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3. notanote ◴[15 Dec 17 22:02 UTC] No.15935605[source]▶
That seems a little slow. I compile nightly for my own use and it takes around 20 minutes on a haswell i5, using tmpfs for the build directory.
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4. rnhmjoj ◴[15 Dec 17 23:53 UTC] No.15936336{3}[source]▶
20 minutes sound like a dream, I don't know why it's so slow for me. Maybe because I'm using Nix to build it and the source is on an SSD. I can't use tmpfs because it doesn't fit in memory without adding swap.