Firefox users have been complaining about very intrusive full-screen advertisements promoting Mozilla VPN displayed in the web browser when navigating an unrelated page. From a report: The ads popping in Firefox disable the web browser's functionality, denying users access to the interface and graying out everything in the background until they close them. Some users reported on Reddit that the annoying full-screen ads even cause Firefox to become unresponsive for up to 30 seconds, forcing them to terminate the browser's process. [...] BleepingComputer has contacted Mozilla about the matter and received the following statement following the barrage of complaints from Firefox users: "We're continuously working to understand the best ways to communicate with people who use Firefox. Ultimately, we accomplished the exact opposite of what we intended in this experiment and quickly rolled the experience back. We apologize for any confusion or concern."

According to The Information, Microsoft wants to bid to make Bing Firefox's default search engine. Android Police reports: The browser's contract with Google is set to expire this year, at which point Mozilla could either renew it or switch to a different search engine. Microsoft would very much like to take Google's place in Firefox. It's not a guarantee that it will actually help boost Bing's usage -- after all, Firefox users who don't want to use Bing could just switch to a different search engine, as Yahoo found out a few years ago -- but Microsoft sees potential in such a deal.

The report also notes that there's also a potentially more juicy opportunity coming up for Microsoft if it really wants to get serious about pushing Bing. Apple's Safari browser, which is the main web browser on Apple devices, will have its Google contract expire next year. Despite throwing shade constantly, Google really benefits from the deal it currently has with Apple, and Microsoft could sweep in and try to get Bing to become the main browser on iPhones.

An anonymous reader shared this report from BGR: Last year, Microsoft Edge surpassed Safari as the second most popular desktop browser. Now, new data from Statcounter shows that Apple's browser has finally regained second place.

The full ranking shows that Google Chrome remains the most used browser... It's also interesting to note that after Firefox almost surpassed Safari in February of 2022, the browser is still losing its base to Microsoft Edge and Safari... Even the all-mighty Google Chrome has lost a bit of userbase, as it had 66.64% of users last April and now has 66.13%.
The final rankings (with data from April 2023):

• Google Chrome: 66.13%
• Safari: 11.87%
• Microsoft Edge: 11%
• Firefox: 5.65%
• Opera 3.09%
• Internet Explorer: 0.55%

Mozilla announced today that it has acquired Fakespot, a startup that offers a website and browser extension that helps users identify fake or unreliable reviews. From a report: The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fakespot's offerings can be used to spot fake reviews listed on various online marketplaces including Amazon, Yelp, TripAdvisor and more. Founded in 2016, New York-based Fakespot uses an AI and machine learning system to detect patterns and similarities between reviews in order to flag those that are most likely to be deceptive. Fakespot provides a rating or grade for the product's reviews in order to help consumers make more informed decisions when making a purchase. The goal behind the company's website and browser extension is to give users the ability to quickly see where deceptive reviews may be artificially inflating a product's ranking in search engines.

"The fact remains that Google Chrome is the arbiter of web standards," argues FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough (while adding that Firefox, "through ethical distributions like GNU IceCat and Abrowser, can weaken that stranglehold.")

"Google's deprecation of the JPEG-XL image format in February in favor of its own patented AVIF format might not end the web in the grand scheme of things, but it does highlight, once again, the disturbing amount of control it has over the platform generally." Part of Google's official rationale for the deprecation is the following line: "There is not enough interest from the entire ecosystem to continue experimenting with JPEG-XL." Putting aside the problematic aspects of the term "ecosystem," let us remark that it's easy to gauge the response of the "entire ecosystem" when you yourself are by far the largest and most dangerous predator in said "ecosystem." In relation to Google's overwhelming power, the average web user might as well be a microbe. In supposedly gauging what the "ecosystem" wants, all Google is really doing is asking itself what Google wants...

While we can't link to Google's issue tracker directly because of another freedom issue — its use of nonfree JavaScript — we're told that the issue regarding JPEG-XL's removal is the second-most "starred" issue in the history of the Chromium project, the nominally free basis for the Google Chrome browser. Chromium users came out of the woodwork to plead with Google not to make this decision. It made it anyway, not bothering to respond to users' concerns. We're not sure what metric it's using to gauge the interest of the "entire ecosystem," but it seems users have given JPEG-XL a strong show of support. In turn, what users will be given is yet another facet of the web that Google itself controls: the AVIF format.

As the response to JPEG-XL's deprecation has shown, our rallying together and telling Google we want something isn't liable to get it to change its mind. It will keep on wanting what it wants: control; we'll keep on wanting what we want: freedom.

Only, the situation isn't hopeless. At the present moment, not even Google can stop us from creating the web communities that we want to see: pages that don't run huge chunks of malicious, nonfree code on our computers. We have the power to choose what we run or do not run in our browsers. Browsers like GNU IceCat (and extensions like LibreJS and JShelter> ) help with that. Google also can't prevent us from exploring networks beyond the web like Gemini. What our community can do is rally support behind those free browsers that choose to support JPEG-XL and similar formats, letting the big G know that even if we're smaller than it, we won't be bossed around.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Firefox has a reputation of being something of a resource hog, even among modern browsers. But it might not be entirely earned, because it looks like a CPU bug affecting Firefox users on Windows was actually the fault of Windows Defender. The latest update to the ubiquitous security tool addresses the issue, and should result in measurably lower CPU usage for the Windows version of Firefox. According to Mozilla senior software engineer Yannis Juglaret, the culprit was MsMpEng.exe, which you might recognize from your Task Manager. It handles the Real-Time protection feature that monitors web activity for malicious threats.

The bug was causing Firefox to call on the service much more frequently than comparable browsers like Chrome or Edge, resulting in notable CPU spikes. Said CPU spikes could reduce performance in other applications or affect a laptop's battery life. The issue was first reported on Mozilla's bug tracker system way back in 2018 and quickly assigned to the MsMpEng service, but some more recent and diligent documentation on the part of Juglaret resulted in more swift action from Microsoft's developers.

eFile.com, an IRS-authorized e-file software service provider used by many for filing their tax returns, has been caught serving JavaScript malware. BleepingComputer reports: eFile.com was caught serving malware, as spotted by multiple users and researchers. The malicious JavaScript file in question is called 'popper.js'. The development comes at a crucial time when U.S. taxpayers are wrapping up their IRS tax returns before the April 18th due date. BleepingComputer can confirm, the malicious JavaScript file 'popper.js' was being loaded by almost every page of eFile.com, at least up until April 1st. As of today, the file is no longer seen serving the malicious code.

On March 17th, a Reddit thread surfaced where multiple eFile.com users suspected the website was "hijacked." At the time, the website showed an SSL error message that, some suspected, was fake and indicative of a hack. Turns out that's indeed the case. [...] The malicious JavaScript file 'update.js', further attempts to prompt users to download next stage payload, depending on whether they are using Chrome [update.exe - VirusTotal] or Firefox [installer.exe - VirusTotal]. Antivirus products have already started flagging these executables as trojans.

BleepingComputer has independently confirmed these binaries establish a connection to a Tokyo-based IP address, 47.245.6.91, that appears to be hosted with Alibaba. The same IP also hosts the illicit domain, infoamanewonliag[.]online associated with this incident. Security research group, MalwareHunterTeam further analyzed these binaries, and stated that these contain Windows botnets written in PHP -- a fact that the research group mocked. Additionally, the group called out eFile.com for leaving the malicious code on its website for weeks: "So, the website of [efile.com]... got compromised at least around middle of March & still not cleaned," writes MalwareHunterTeam.

On the eve of its 25th anniversary, Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox browser, is launching an AI-focused startup. From a report: Called Mozilla.ai, the newly forged company's mission isn't to build just any AI -- its mission is to build AI that's open source and "trustworthy," according to Mark Surman, the executive president of Mozilla and the head of Mozilla.ai. "Working on trustworthy AI for almost five years, I've constantly felt a mix of excitement and anxiety," he told TechCrunch in an email interview. "The last month or two of rapid-fire big tech AI announcements has been no different. Really exciting new tech is emerging -- new tools that have immediately sparked artists, founders ... all kinds of people to do new things. The anxiety comes when you realize almost no one is looking at the guardrails."

Surman was referring to the rash of AI models in recent months that, while impressive in their capabilities, have worrisome real-world implications. At release, OpenAI's text-generating ChatGPT could be prompted to write malware, identify exploits in open source code and create phishing websites that looked similar to well-trafficked sites. Text-to-image AI like Stable Diffusion, meanwhile, has been co-opted to create pornographic, nonconsensual deepfakes and ultra-graphic depictions of violence. The creators of these models say that they're taking steps to curb abuse. But Mozilla felt that not enough was being done. "We've been working on trustworthy AI on the public interest research side for about five years, hoping other industry players with more AI expertise would step up to build more trustworthy tech," Surman said. "They haven't. So we decided mid-last year we needed to do it ourselves -- and to find like-minded partners to do it alongside us. We then set out to find someone with the right mix of academic and industry AI experience to lead it." Funded by a $30 million seed investment from the Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla's parent organization, Mozilla.ai is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation -- much like the Mozilla Corporation (the org responsible for developing Firefox) and Mozilla Ventures (the Mozilla Foundation's VC fund). Its managing director is Moez Draief, who previously was the chief scientist at Huawei's Noah's Ark AI lab and the global chief scientist at consulting company Capgemini.

An anonymous reader shares this report from 9to5Linux: After Canonical's announcement that future Ubuntu releases won't include Flatpak support by default, someone already made an unofficial Ubuntu flavor that ships with support for Flatpak apps preinstalled and working out of the box, called Ubuntu Flatpak Remix.

Meet Ubuntu Flatpak Remix, an unofficial Ubuntu derivative that doesn't feature support for Snap apps and comes with support for Flatpak apps working out of the box. Several key apps are preinstalled in the Flatpak format rather than as a Snap app, including the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird email client, and LibreOffice office suite.... Support for the Flathub portal is installed as well, so you'll be able to install more apps with just a few clicks.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: They say "always be learning" — but do podcasts actually help? I've been trying to find podcasts that discuss programming, and I've enjoyed Lex Fridman's interviews with language creators like Guido van Rossum, Chris Lattner, and Brendan Eich (plus his long interviews with Donald Knuth). Then I discovered that GitHub, Red Hat, Stack Overflow, and the Linux Foundation all have their own podcast.

There's a developer podcast called "Corecursive" that I like with the tagline "the stories behind the code," plus a whole slew of (sometimes language-specific) podcasts at Changelog (including an interview with Brian Kernighan). And it seems like there's an entirely different universe of content on YouTube — like the retired Microsoft engineer doing "Dave's Garage," Software Engineering Daily, and the various documentaries by Honeypot.io. Computerphile has also scored various interviews with Brian Kernighan, and if you search YouTube enough you'll find stray interviews with Steve Wozniak.

But I wanted to ask Slashdot's readers: Do you listen to podcasts about computer science? And if so, which ones? (Because I'm always stumbling across new programming podcasts, which makes me worry about what else I've been missing out on.) Maybe I should also ask if you ever watch coding livestreams on Twitch — although that gets into the more general question of just how much content we consume that's related to our profession.
Fascinating discussions, or continuing work-related education? (And do podcasts really help keep your skills fresh? Are coding livestreams on Twitch just a waste of time?) Most importantly, does anyone have a favorite geek podcast that they're listening to? Share your own experience and opinions in the comments...

What's the best podcast about computer science?

Valentine's Day saw Mozilla releasing version 110.0 of its Firefox browser. OMG Ubuntu highlights some of its new features: Firefox already supports importing bookmarks, history, and passwords from Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Chromium, and Safari but once you have the Firefox 110 update you can also import data from Opera, Opera GX, and Vivaldi too — which is handy.

Other changes in Firefox 110 include the ability to clear date, time, and datetime-local input fields using using ctrl + backspace and ctrl + delete on Linux (and Windows) — no, can't say I ever noticed I couldn't do that, either.

Additionally, Mozilla say GPU-accelerated Canvas2D is now enabled by default on Linux, and we can all expect to benefit from a miscellaneous clutch of WebGL performance improvements.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Why does Thunderbird look so old?" That's one of the most frequently asked questions about Thunderbird, according to Thunderbird Project Design Manager Alessandro Castellani (along with "Is Thunderbird dead?"). And it's one he seeks to answer definitively in a new blog post about Thunderbird's planned 2023 release, codenamed Supernova.

The Supernova release will include an overhaul of Thunderbird's user interface. Castellani didn't share screenshots, but he indicated that the new UI would be "simple and clean" and targeted mostly at new users. For "veteran users," the interface will also be "flexible and adaptable" so that people who prefer the way Thunderbird looks now can "maintain that familiarity they love." Supernova will also include several other big changes, including a redesigned calendar and support for Firefox Sync.

Mozilla is planning for the day when Apple will no longer require its competitors to use the WebKit browser engine in iOS. From a report: Mozilla conducted similar experiments that never went anywhere years ago but in October 2022 posted an issue in the GitHub repository housing the code for the iOS version of Firefox that includes a reference to GeckoView, a wrapper for Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. Under the current Apple App Store Guidelines, iOS browser apps must use WebKit. So a Firefox build incorporating Gecko rather than WebKit currently cannot be distributed through the iOS App Store.

As we reported last week, Mozilla is not alone in anticipating an iOS App Store regime that tolerates browser competition. Google has begun work on a Blink-based version of Chrome for iOS. The major browser makers -- Apple, Google, and Mozilla -- each have their own browser rendering engines. Apple's Safari is based on WebKit; Google's Chrome and its open source Chromium foundation is based on Blink (forked from WebKit a decade ago); and Mozilla's Firefox is based on Gecko. Microsoft developed its own Trident rendering engine in the outdated Internet Explorer and a Trident fork called EdgeHTML in legacy versions of Edge but has relied on Blink since rebasing its Edge browser on Chromium code.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Jack Wallen: PikaOS is very similar to that of Nobara Linux, which opts for a Fedora base. But what are these two Linux distributions? Simply put, they are Linux for gamers. [...] So, what does PikaOS do that so many other distributions do not? The most obvious thing is that it makes it considerably easier to install the tools needed to play games. Upon first logging in, you're greeted with a Welcome app. In the First Steps tab, you have quick access to tools for updating the system, installing patented codecs and libraries, installing propriety Nvidia drivers, installing apps from the Software Manager, and installing WebApps.

Next comes the Recommended Additions, where you can install the likes of: PikaOS Game Utilities is a meta package that installs Steam, Lutris, GOverlay, MangoHud, Wine, Winetricks, vkBasalt, and other gaming-centric tools; Microsoft TrueType fonts for better Windows font emulation; Blender for creating 3D images; OBS Studio for streaming; Kdenlive for non-linear video editing; Krita for painting; and LibreOffice for productivity. In the Optional Steps tab, you can add AMD proprietary drivers, ROCm drivers, Xone drivers, and Proton GE (for Steam and Wine compatibility). Finally, the Look And Feel tab allows you to customize themes, layouts, and extensions. The layouts section is pretty nifty, as it allows you to configure the GNOME desktop to look and feel like a more traditional desktop, a MacOS-like desktop, a Windows 11 layout, a throwback GNOME 2 desktop, and even a Ubuntu Unity-like desktop.

As far as pre-installed software goes, it's pretty bare bones (until you start adding titles from the Recommended Additions tab in the Welcome App). You'll find Firefox (web browser), Geary (email), Pidgin (messaging), Weather, Calculator, Cheese (web camera software), Rhythmbox, Contacts, a few utilities, and basic games. However, installing new apps is quite simple via the Software Manager app. Of course, the focus of PikaOS is games. When you install the PikaOS Game Utilities, you'll get Steam installed, which makes it easy to play an endless array of games on the Linux desktop. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that when you launch the PikaOS Game Utilities installation, it opens a terminal window to run the installation. Give this plenty of time to complete and, in the end, you can launch Steam, log in to your Steam account, and start playing. Just remember, the first time you launch the Steam app, it will take a moment to update and configure. But once it's up and running... let the games begin.

When you share your email, "you're sharing a lot more," warns the New York Times' lead consumer technology writer: [I]t can be linked to other data, including where you went to school, the make and model of the car you drive, and your ethnicity....

For many years, the digital ad industry has compiled a profile on you based on the sites you visit on the web.... An email could contain your first and last name, and assuming you've used it for some time, data brokers have already compiled a comprehensive profile on your interests based on your browsing activity. A website or an app can upload your email address into an ad broker's database to match your identity with a profile containing enough insights to serve you targeted ads.
The article recommends creating several email addresses to "make it hard for ad tech companies to compile a profile based on your email handle... Apple and Mozilla offer tools that automatically create email aliases for logging in to an app or a site; emails sent to the aliases are forwarded to your real email address." Apple's Hide My Email tool, which is part of its iCloud+ subscription service that costs 99 cents a month, will create aliases, but using it will make it more difficult to log in to the accounts from a non-Apple device. Mozilla's Firefox Relay will generate five email aliases at no cost; beyond that, the program charges 99 cents a month for additional aliases.

For sites using the UID 2.0 framework for ad targeting, you can opt out by entering your email address [or phone number] at https://transparentadvertising.org.

Last summer GNOME invited people to voluntarily run the tool gnome-info-collect on their systems to send back (non-sensitive/non-identifiable) data about their system configurations. 2,560 people ran the tool, and they're now releasing the data.

Here's the distribution of distros for all 2,560 respondents:

Fedora: 1,376 (54.69%)
Arch: 469 (18.64%)
Ubuntu: 267 (10.61%)
Manjaro: 140 (5.56%)
EndeavourOS: 66 (2.62%)
Debian: 44 (1.75%)
openSUSE: 38 (1.51%)
Pop! 38 (1.51%)
Other: 78 (3.10%)


And the breakdown of hardware manufacturers (top four):

Lenovo: 516 (23.54%)
Dell: 329 (15.01%)
ASUS: 261 (11.91%)
HP: 223 (10.17%)


The site OMG! Linux pointed out that 90% of systems had Flatpak installed — (though it's enabled by default on Fedora, which was 54.69% of all the respondents). Some other interesting stats they noticed: - Most common default browser: Firefox (73.14%), Chrome (11.64%), Brave (4.76%). [Microsoft Edge was the default browser on 37 systems (1.51%) ]

- 83% of users have at least one (non-default) GNOME extension installed
- 'App Indicator' is the most popular extension (by 43% of those using extensions)

- GSConnect, User Themes, and Dash to Panel/Dock also widely used

- Most popular desktop apps: GIMP (58.48%), VLC (53.71%), Steam (53.40%)


[...] The popularity of GNOME extensions will surprise no-one. It is a solid indicator that the existing GNOME extension system is good at doing what it's there to: let users augment and extend their system in the ways they want.
GNOME's report adds that "it's exciting to see the popularity of new GNOME apps like Flatseal, To Do, Bottles, and Fragments."

One other interesting stat from their report: 55% of the participants were using Online Accounts, with Google the most common one added, followed by Nextcloud and Microsoft. But "Some of the account types had very little usage at all, with Foursquare, Facebook, Media Server, Flickr and Last.fm all being active on less than 1% of systems."

Phoronix compares the performance of Firefox and Chrome on the Linux desktop. They used recent releases (at default settings) for both browsers on an Intel Core i9 13900K "Raptor Lake" system with Radeon RX 6700XT graphics, concluding "out-of-the-box Google Chrome continues performing much better overall than Mozilla Firefox."

One area where Firefox does better out-of-the-box is around the HTML5 Canvas such as measured via the CanvasMark test case. For the demanding JetStream 2 benchmark as one of the most demanding browser tests currently, Chrome on Linux was 67% faster than Firefox on this same Intel Raptor Lake desktop.

Firefox did have a small win in the rather basic JavaScript Maze solver benchmark. Firefox at least was in a competitive space for the WebAssembly (WASM) benchmarks, but aside from that Google Chrome continues holding strong on Linux in the performance department.

2022 was the year that Microsoft retired its Internet Explorer web browser (to concentrate on its Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser).

Yet Ghacks reports that Internet Explorer "is still haunting some from its grave." Some websites and apps use code to determine the user agent. The user agent informs the site about several parameters, including the used web browser (engine) and operating system. When done correctly, it may reveal the used browser and that may then lead to a custom user experience.

When done incorrectly, it may lead to false identification; this is exactly what is happening on some sites currently regarding Internet Explorer user agent sniffing and the Firefox web browser. Some sites identify Firefox as Internet Explorer because of inaccurate user agent sniffing..
Internet Explorer 11's user agent ends by identifying its release version as rv:11.0, the article points out. So when a Firefox user visits a website using Firefox 110 (or any other version up to Firefox 119), "The site in question checks for rv:11 in the user agent [and] Firefox's rv:110 value is identified wrongly as Internet Explorer."

Instead of risking problems with functionality, compatibility, or other display issues for Firefox versions 110 through 119, Mozilla has "decided to freeze part of Firefox's version." Instead of echoing rv:110, rv:111 and so on up to rv:119, Firefox returns rv:109 instead. The end of the user agent string displays the actual version of Firefox still. Mozilla plans to restore the original user agent of Firefox with the release of Firefox 120. The organization plans to release Firefox 120 on November 21, 2023.

Mozilla recently fixed a bug that was first reported 18 years ago in Firebox 1.0, reports How-to Geek: Bug 290125 was first reported on April 12, 2005, only a few days before the release of Firefox 1.0.3, and outlined an issue with how Firefox rendered text with the ::first-letter CSS pseudo-element. The author said, "when floating left a :first-letter (to produce a dropcap), Gecko ignores any declared line-height and inherits the line-height of the parent box. [...] Both Opera 7.5+ and Safari 1.0+ correctly handle this."

The initial problem was that the Mac version of Firefox handled line heights differently than Firefox on other platforms, which was fixed in time for Firefox 3.0 in 2007. The issue was then re-opened in 2014, when it was decided in a CSS Working Group meeting that Firefox's special handling of line heights didn't meet CSS specifications and was causing compatibility problems. It led to some sites with a large first letter in blocks of text, like The Verge and The Guardian, render incorrectly in Firefox compared to other browsers.

The issue was still marked as low priority, so progress continued slowly, until it was finally marked as fixed on December 20, 2022. Firefox 110 should include the updated code, which is expected to roll out to everyone in February 2023.

Speedometer 3 will be a "cross-industry collaborative effort" from the Chrome, Safari and Firefox makers to create a new model that balances the companies' visions for measuring responsiveness. Engadget reports: Three companies making a tool that will rate the effectiveness of their competing products sounds like a recipe for disaster. However, Speedometer's governance policy includes a consent system that differs based on potential ramifications. For example, significant changes will require approval from the other two companies, while "non-trivial changes" will need consent from one of the other two parties. Meanwhile, "trivial changes" can be green-lit by a reviewer from any of the three browser makers. The policy's aim is that "the working team should be able to move quickly for most changes, with a higher level of process and consensus expected based on the impact of the change."

The project will follow Speedometer 2, the current de facto benchmark developed by Apple's WebKit team. The Speedometer 3 project is still in its infancy, and its GitHub page warns that it is "in active development and is unstable." The groups recommend using Speedometer 2.1 until development is further along, though we don't yet know when Speedometer 3 will be ready.