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Throwthrowbob

Thank you for speaking with your MP!

Call/contact senators is my next step, because the Senators are the next-to-last step for this bill.

Re:Apple Keynote now showing ads in its UI on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @08:38PM (#50097644)
Link is giving "The page you are looking for isn't here." 11 hours after this post went up (per HN values).
I use user.js to disable the suggestions, but this doesn't help on initial install and running of Firefox. It's among a over a hundred or so options user.js sets (and reset every startup) that I use to maintain my Firefox.

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.engines", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.importantDates", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.mdn", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.nonsponsored", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.recentsearches", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.searches", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.sports", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.topsites", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.trending", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.weather", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.yelp", false);

user_pref("browser.urlbar.suggest.yelpRealtime", false);

Updates: there is a policies.js option that allows one to take control of updates.

"DisableAppUpdate": true,

On Linux, placed into /usr/lib/firefox/distribution/policies.json

Re:Nvidia wants to put a watchdog chip next to every AI agent on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @08:48AM (#49892303)
I remember an inhibitor chip being a plot point in Spiderman 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man_2
I remember a friend installing Zoom on a Linux computer through their software manager. Later, they removed it and found that when they visited the page in the software manager for Zoom, it automatically tried to install Zoom without interaction from them (ie, my friend did not click Install, but viewed the page and a password prompt for installing the package appeared).

I'm not sure if this was behaviour that happened with the software manager on other packages, but was a concern for us.

Re:GMails custom domain "send as" discontinues January 2027 on Monday September 07, 2026 @01:27PM (#49600718)
- In their mobile application:

  - They decreased the number of visible digits of unread e-mails from four (untested past four) to three. This is one of the first things the user sees when opening the application.
- After providing feedback, was told "that exceeding the number of 1000 unread messages displays the number of the messages in the counter as 999+. This is expected behaviour."

    - Soon after, a further update (7.7.1 and further) brought this value down to two digits.

  - The mobile application attachment upload has unclear wording and stopped working like it used to.

    - The wording for attachments are:

      - "From your photo library" (does not offer third party application selection)

      - "Take a new photo"

      - "Import from..." (allows third-party application selection)

      - It's unclear how one:

         - Adds a different attachment type

         - Adds a photo in-line, or as an attachment

            - "From your photo library" is in-line

            - "Import from..." is as an attachment

      - This may be Android related but ProtonMail was the system that changed most recently for me.

    - I used to be able to upload attachments using a third-party file picker (stock android file selection is not great); the latest version doesn't seem to offer third-party applications as a choice.
- Application behaviour caused crashes and duplicate drafts on a mobile device, it turned out they had a new version. I don't remember crashes happening until that point, using the same version.

- There is a newer Category view feature to roll out (or is in progress now) on mobile devices. Something had triggered this feature on my device without my consent (I assumed they were going through e-mails and adding categories based on content or sender or subject or something). An update was required to fix this. They said "Kindly note that you just got an early glimpse of what’s coming for a future update.".

In the desktop/web client:

- Their original link to e-mail login (which I had bookmarked) was then turned into a General Proton login (https://account.proton.me/login, now https://account.proton.me/mail)

  - Meaning each time you'd have to log in then select e-mail (basically advertising their other products).

  - I ended up asking them for a corrected link (https://mail.proton.me/login)
- Desktop notification banner; there is no option to disable notifications, this appears set as a cookie. The banner says it needs "Proton Mail needs your permission to enable desktop notifications." It does not need anything; I don't want these.

- In the web client: Fonts are inconsistent, and can change and adjust on you when typing, or when opening drafts. I had it consistently failing this way in Firefox and Chromium browsers; Tor works better but this is not a preferred solution.

Re:Browser De-Slop on Thursday August 20, 2026 @11:08AM (#49375732)
I use user.js to harden the browser settings but this is local to the user's account. It's good that someone is describing using policies.

I ended up a bunch of trial and error while looking at copies of the prefs.js file in the browser profile folder to determine what settings correlate to settings in the browser, when I couldn't search for the feature.

Looks like about 30 MiB with a quick test.
Dave Jones also did some videos on the LMV321 used in his uCurrent Gold project. The AS5X variant caused issues while others worked fine.

Looking now, a document source suggests the AS5X variant in the parts list... but it's explained in the video around 19:30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VlKoR0ldIE

Re:Stripe launches Link for AI agents on Sunday May 10, 2026 @02:41PM (#48086567)
Looks like the vendor has the option to disable Link: https://support.stripe.com/questions/how-to-turn-off-link
Re:Cartoon Network Flash Games on Saturday May 09, 2026 @01:24PM (#48076597)
Neat, but Ruffle failed to load the first game I tried, with reasoning that there is possibly no file to load.

And then I was blocked by Cloudflare, even though there were no Cloudflare scripts to enable (checking in an alternate browser).

edit: It looks like uBlock origin sees the cloudflare scripts, but NoScript does not (and did not display 3 scripts) initially. I'll have to try again later.

YouTube Meet the Line-Dancing Community Doodle Taking Up Resources

Unsure what page to suggest, but while trying to watch a video, the page was lagging. I found that the tab was taking 40% of my CPU and several hundred MB of RAM according to my system monitor. Using my browser's inspection tool and removing the "Meet The Line-dancing Community" doodle brought things back to normal.

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
Re:Kobalt Tools on Thursday March 12, 2026 @11:50PM (#47360484)
I thought this was entertaining, getting AI generated header images and then discovering the actual tool below. Plus the verbose descriptions.
Re:Simple Sabotage Field Manual [pdf] on Monday January 19, 2026 @08:38PM (#46686841)
It may just be me or my internet, but I tried this specifically to see the effect and it was a very slow escape (seemed delayed starting to load, and then loading the escape page).
Re:Self Sanitizing Door Handle on Monday January 19, 2026 @01:20PM (#46682566)
Alternatively, the back of your knee:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkLfAG0AAzQ

Though this is more for the coughing/sneezing rather than the door opening.

Re:Firefox 144.0 Includes Perplexity AI Search on Friday October 17, 2025 @10:39PM (#45624444)
This occurred without an update to Firefox, and against my explicit wishes in my user.js: user_pref("browser.search.update", false);

Not impressed.

I used https://www.canada.ca/en/services/taxes/income-tax/personal-... (or an equivalent page, in case it's shifted around) to look for options a couple years back. I was glad I had this list to look through. I believe I compared Wealthsimple, EachTax, and UFile.
Re:Ask HN: How to Get Rid of Gemini? on Tuesday June 24, 2025 @11:22PM (#44373388)
How does one get the combined effects of multiple subdomains? For example, no AI, safe browsing, html, lite, as proposed by others?
Re:Ask HN: How to Get Rid of Gemini? on Monday June 23, 2025 @12:40PM (#44357548)
If you don't use Private Browsing (or the equivalent) or otherwise clear your browsing cache, DuckDuckGo's AI assistant can be disabled by:

- clicking the little gear to the right of the search types (near "Assist" and "Duck.ai")

- Click on "Manage" for AI Features

- Setting "Duck.ai" to Off

- Setting "Assist" to Never

To the right of the features above, I saw one can save their settings with a password, to the "cloud". This seems to be that you can enter this password when using DuckDuckGo elsewhere for your settings to be set again (or in Private sessions, though you'd have to re-enter the password on a new session).

Re:A Look at Firefox Forks on Friday March 14, 2025 @08:51PM (#43368925)
I remember being thrown off by this.

A user.js entry may help. user.js runs on startup of Firefox/Librewolf, so keep this in mind for your usage application.

the setting is: "privacy.resistFingerprinting", as in: user_pref("privacy.resistFingerprinting", true);

Re:Waterfox: Fast and Private Web Browser on Friday February 28, 2025 @10:52AM (#43207004)
I had stopped using Waterfox in 2020 because of their association with System1, an advertising company. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338321

I learned today that Waterfox cut ties with System1 in July of 2023, so I'm glad to have an alternative to switch to. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36590056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36606210

Re:Mastercard DNS Error Went Unnoticed for Years on Wednesday January 22, 2025 @07:26PM (#42799085)
Would you please name the bank that had/has this issue?
I found that damage to either my character or the opponent occurs before what looks like the damage animation (red fill) occurs.

This is neat, thank you for sharing!

Seeing some other comments about unfair power dynamics: Parking.

Parking lot fines where you are accused of misusing a lot and fined: https://globalnews.ca/news/10217661/bc-man-private-parking-c...

Or being charged a fine when you were never there (due to someone reporting your number): https://globalnews.ca/news/9668618/bc-woman-fights-parking-v...

Or when trying to find another working machine your vehicle was ticketed even after being explained it would be waived (sorry, video): https://globalnews.ca/video/10283604/fort-langley-parking-ti...

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