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1318 points xvector | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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Wowfunhappy ◴[] No.19823890[source]
This is why users need to be in control of their own computers. Why can't I tell my copy of Firefox to ignore the certificate? Why can't I sign my own extensions?

Mistakes happen, it's okay. But users should be empowered to work around them.

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ehsankia ◴[] No.19823919[source]
> Why can't I tell my copy of Firefox to ignore the certificate? Why can't I sign my own extensions?

The issue is that if you leave any sort of lever that reduces security, it will be abused by bad actors. This is why browsers are having ever decreasing ways to bypass security and have full access. It is annoying, but at the end of the day, protecting 99.999% of the users trumps what us power users want.

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userbinator ◴[] No.19823956[source]
protecting 99.999% of the users

It is horribly paternalistic to advocate for keeping users ignorant, unlearning, and --- dare I say it --- easily manipulated.

I will refrain from mentioning again that infamous Franklin quote. I am frankly very fucking pissed off by this authoritarian walled-garden trend, and vehemently oppose anyone who helps this industry put the nooses around the necks of others as well as their own.

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macintux ◴[] No.19823984[source]
I’ve been in software development and operations for 25 years.

I still don’t want to have to understand everything I ever touch, even if I could.

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mrob ◴[] No.19824143{3}[source]
>I still don’t want to have to understand everything I ever touch

If you don't understand it, don't touch it. The default settings should work for most users. There can even be a warning against touching without understanding, like with Firefox's about:config. The offensive thing is preventing users from touching even if they do understand.

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1. sfink ◴[] No.19827332{4}[source]
The difficulty is in how to keep them available to end users while keeping them unavailable to malware and bad actors who post "helpful" advice or publish temporarily useful addons that get updated to malware.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but the right mechanism is not straightforward to figure out, and you'll always be in a game of cat and mouse. One that sucks resources from whatever other useful stuff you might be spending your (or Mozilla's) time on.