krono

It's caused by a stale plugin cache, which somehow triggers a blocking windows defender scan on application launch.

I only managed to figure that out thanks to this[1] reddit comment, which also includes a solution:

  Noticed this a while back with 3.0.23. Managed to troubleshoot via debug logs.
  
  Basically the plugin cache goes stale and has to rebuild itself every first launch. No clue why.
  
  To fix: go to C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC (or wherever you installed) with a terminal in administrator mode.
  run the command: ./vlc-cache-gen.exe "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins"
  
  That will rebuild the plugins.dat file which should fix it.

No windows defender exclusion required.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/1skofwx/vlc_3023_windo...

I know, that's exactly the point I'm trying to make.

Yesterday I drank a beer out in public - a perfectly legal and culturally/morally acceptable thing to do here in The Netherlands, but deemed wrong to such a degree that it is apparently punishable by death in Iran[1].

I have actively broken Iran's moral stance, societal norms, and laws/jurisprudence against public alcohol consumption from without their jurisdiction, and as being a person unbeholden to their societal norms in any way, shape, or form.

Do I obviously now have no expectation of privacy? Is it now okay for these peoples finding themselves to grievously offended by my actions to collect and publish my private data with damaging intent? Is it then doxxing? Am I really a bad person now? Or maybe it depends on the color of your glasses, maybe there exists an entire world outside of ones own cocoon?

[1]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/29/iran-quash-death-sentenc...

So it is doxxing if the doxxed committed wrongdoings from the perspective of... the doxxer? Ideals, morality, alignment, goals and purpose are and have always been a static constant for all humankind. There is no pineapple pizza, it is a lie, for I don't like it, and therefore nobody else ever did either.

Yes, I see what you mean, but if that's really the intent, then having only this font-family rule isn't sufficient. For that argument/reasoning to hold up, it would have to be accompanied by metrics adjustments to compensate for the massive differences between some of the listed fonts in these stacks.

Oh you flatterer!

My top level comment was not a complaint at all, but rather a heads-up regarding the potentially unexpected or often misunderstood effects of applying these font stacks, accompanied by a practical example, and a personal recommendation with my reasoning.

Now, please, don't be so hostile. It's nasty and makes you come across as a lot more stupid than I believe you really are.

It already works as intended. If the intent is to render a default system font, then let the system handle that by simply applying 'monospace'.

These font stacks don't handle anything at all, they just throw a bunch of common typeface names at the wall and they can't even tell what sticks because it's so random. All the while, the user might have a prefered fallback font set that they prefer over any of the ones in the font stack - and even if that isn't the case, simply using 'monospace' as the only fallback will render the default monospace font anyway.

I disagree with the notion that common browser configuration options available for users to change through the main/general browser settings UI would in any way be esoteric. It is wholly irrelevant anyway.

The setting you mention has no effect in the case I outlined above - Even with "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above." enabled, the same results are observed.

An example of something to keep in mind with this technique is that you might actually end up causing the browser to render a different font than either you or the user intended.

For a practical example:

Environment

  - Latest Firefox on Windows 10.
  - Manually installed fonts 'Cascadia Code' and 'JetBrains Mono NL'.
  - Firefox default 'monospace' font set to 'JetBrains Mono NL'.

Setting `font-family: monospace;` would end up rendering 'JetBrains Mono NL' - the user-configured default monospace font.

Setting `font-family: 'Cascadia Code', monospace;` would also render 'JetBrains Mono NL' - privacy features prevent pages from querying non-standard system fonts and this will also be reflected as a console warning message: 'Request for font "Cascadia Mono" blocked at visibility level 2 (requires 3)".'

Now, if you were to use he "Monospace Code" font stack listed on this page `font-family: ui-monospace, 'Cascadia Code', 'Source Code Pro', Menlo, Consolas, 'DejaVu Sans Mono', monospace;`, you will render... Yup, 'Consolas'!

  1. `ui-monospace` - remains unsupported by Firefox which is lame (would also render 'Consolas').

  2. `Cascadia Code` - see above, access denied because it isn't natively available on Windows 10 (also, coding ligatures... more like illigatures, amirite?).

  3. `Source Code Pro` - skipped due to unavailability.

  4. `Menlo` - skipped due to unavailability.

  5. `Consolas` - next option in line, this one is available and is the one that will be chosen.

  6. `DejaVu Sans Mono`  - skipped, font already determined.

  7. `monospace` - skipped, font already determined.

These modern font stacks suck. Please, if you want to render font and it has to be something specific, then use an actual web font and simply fall back to the default 'monospace' which is controlled by the user.

Just found this[0] implementation roadmap on Mozilla's wiki, recently updated too! At least it's actively being worked on.

Not going to lie, this makes me happy.

[0]: https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebDriver/RemoteProtocol/WebDriver_...

I think it's highly disingenuous of you to claim that the regulators in question are acting without any plan or purpose even if those might not be immediately clear. "If you don't like how the table is set, turn over the table."

There is chrome://geckoview/content/config.xhtml but many options shown there are nonfunctional. The relevant option is listed but I'm not sure if setting it to false has any effect.

Edit: Just found out that on that link above, you can set general.aboutConfig.enable to true to enable about.config.

It looks like the xml page and the about.config one are the same, as the modifications I made are synced.

Good point, I did conveniently gloss over that one didn't I!

A switch to break the physical wire connection is about the only thing I can come up with out of hand right now. I believe the PinePhones come with physical switches for their antenna's so there's that.

That still doesn't disable all telemetry from being sent. There's a whole slue of settings that you need to change in about:config and then there's still no guarantee.

Even if you follow those steps you listed there and uncheck all those boxes you're shown in the standard settings pages, then Firefox will just continue to send out 'pings' when you interact with certain elements in the browser interface. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Mozilla is like one of those politicians that just won't stop yapping about traditional conservative family values, who is later found to have several extramarital children and numerous affairs with same-sex partners themselves.

You wouldn't know if they're doing a good enough job of it, that's the point of censorship.

Thinkpads come with that, an unspoofable indicator that will tell you with 100% certainty that your image is not being recorded or even recordable unless the physical operator of the machine allows it. Can't beat a physical cover if you really want to be sure!

Say you tell me you want a red sphere. Taken at face value, you show a prejudice for red sphere's and discriminate against all other coloured shapes.

We've all had to dance that dance with ChatGPT by now, where you ask for something perfectly ordinary, but receive a response telling you off for even daring to think like that, until eventually you manage to formulate the prompt in a way that it likes with just the right context and winner vocabulary + grammar, and finally the damned thing gives you the info you want without so much as any gaslighting or snarky insults hiding in the answer!

It doesn't understand racism, it simply evaluates certain combinations of things according to how it was set up to do.

Absolutely, I also replied to the OP's response below that I failed to specify that I was arguing parrots' ability to reason which I do believe exists to a great extend.

Regardless, speech is just another means of communication. In the end it doesn't really matter if I use perfectly articulated Swahili or just scream "aaar" at you for a few seconds as long as I get the cheeseburger with extra cheese I want from you. These parrots, much like children, just push your buttons and are quite good at finding (or negotiating) the right pattern of things to do and sounds to make to get to a certain outcome.

Oh yes I agree on that. I should have specified that I was arguing their ability to reason - which from my own experience these birds do most definitely possess to a surprising extend. They are smart, and they have all day to figure out which buttons to press to get you to do something specific they find funny or other such things.

I believe you are vastly underestimating the capabilities of parrots or similarly intelligent birds.

At least when my pet parrot manages to fool me into whatever it is he wants to get out of me that time, he does it for his own primal benefit and not because it was programmed to adhere to some strict set of ethic and moral boundaries set by legal requirements and someone else's idea of how people should think and behave.

If you're familiar with the sandbox mmo EVE Online you might like Empires of EVE. They're very well put together and very thorough historical accounts of some massive and long term player driven content/conflicts throughout the history of the game. It was so much fun to read about why my side's leadership made certain decisions and about the other sides' perspectives of some of the space wars I was part of when I still played.

https://www.empiresofeve.com/

You'd think opting out of sharing analytics data with app developers would also cover push notification metrics but it doesn't seem to be that way from a quick look over the official docs.

https://developer.apple.com/notifications/push-notifications...

Having some issues with the system I want to use for these tests. Expecting to get this done over the weekend.

If anything we need more settings, and more warning popups to go along with them that list or link to information on some of the breakage users can expect. Inform the user and let them decide.

That's interesting, I'm indeed seeing some differences between browsers on those pages but those aren't exactly baseline setups. I'll have to do a more thorough comparison tomorrow and will reply with my findings.

This is entirely false, you must be blocking the requests on the network level or something.

For one the getfirefox.com redirect includes tracking parameters in the destination URL, then there's Google Tag Manager, there is Sentry, some pages with their first party analytics solutions like Glean and more.

Homepage: "Zero data collection. Quetta does not collect, store or share any data. Your data always belongs to you."

Google Play: "No data shared with third parties", "No data collected", "Zero data collection & sharing"

Privacy Policy: "we do process app launch information, which is used to determine if the software can run properly. This service is provided by the third-party service provider Google Analytics for Firebase."

I wish you all the best, the more competition the better, but you really shouldn't advertise zero data collection & sharing when it simply isn't true.

Just circling back here to say thanks for the correction. The "seemingly" part is what I missed.

The Wiktionary definition I linked to doesn't reflect that, it should probably be updated then.

Also known as "yak shaving"[0] or "bikeshedding"[1]

0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving

1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding

It'd open the website in a new tab, discarding the old one. The new tab has its own isolated history with nothing in it. The back button would work fine but there'd be nothing to go back to :)