Be aware that in Firefox, the "Search Bar" is a distinct widget from the "Address Bar" (omnibar/"awesomebar"). If it's missing or you can't find it, here's the docs for that UX flow:
If you do this, you can (of course) revert your change in about:preferences#search; the new search engine will persist there as an alternate choice.
(Tested and confirmed this works with e.g. Yandex in release version 98.0.1. This patch only removed, essentially, Firefox' promoted or sponsored search engines -- not core functionality. (It also erased and reset user preferences, but that's a separate problem)).
I've heard omnibar used to describe the more general UX pattern of providing at a focal point a single freetext input that surfaces items across collections. It's a neat pattern because it's both pretty and can be useful.
I'll take your word for it it came from Chrome's Omnibar, the timeline in my memory lines up.
"We put people in control of their online experience"
The page description for the Firefox main page used to say "Firefox is created by a global non-profit dedicated to putting individuals in control online", and before that, instead of "individuals" it said "users". I've quipped before that the change was because they really meant "people working at Mozilla" by "individuals". Now it's something vague about "respecting your privacy" (just like what Facebook and Google claim to do too...)
It is also misleading because afaik Firefox is developed by Mozilla Corporation instead of the foundation. It has been mentioned before that donations to the foundation can't go into developing firefox.
Slightly related. I changed my default browser just today back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. Today, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off.
I’ve been using yandex as my open-source/public/spam-heavy email provider for a handful of years. Ignoring the current conflict, the yandex product is pretty good. Their search is, IMO, second only to Google, at least for technical queries.
Edit: probably going to just buy a domain and protonmail as a contingency plan, though. Don’t want to lose access.
Sadly, search quality for “the rest of the world” has been neglected for years, and it's a miracle yandex.com still works. Mail is one of the services that is kept up to date, with translations and stuff, and it's nice.
As for the global issues,
a) Iron curtain for the Internet (i. e. absolutely everything not working properly) would be a sure way to get every commoner, currently soothed with entertainment, on the street.
b) This won't last long anyway. I would be more worried about sudden drop of funding and technical issues.
If whatever handful of things are your most used sites/services/etc online were shut down tomorrow would you consider it the end of the internet for you? You'd (I guess, at least I would) immediately move to the next best (maybe even discover it's better!) or wait for a competitor to spring up.
So there's a huge difference between those few platforms blocking Russia but a whole world of alternative ways to spend time online vs. only domestic Russian options.
Definitely consider migrating off Yandex. If (when) it will be required by gov to choose either staying in russia or outside of russia, it will choose the former.
I made the mistake of posting an email address on HN. I get a lot of spam on it now. I know it's because of HN because the email address is hackernews@domain.
Note that is the first ever straightforward announcement of the removal accessible to the end user, and it wasn't even available when release happened (about 12 hours ago). It's like giving a hard hat to a man that has already got to the emergency room.
That seems a bit overdramatic; it's not like people couldn't still access those search engines at all in Firefox; they just would have to go directly to the website instead of using the dropdown menu. I'd imagine that typing the name of one of them into Google or DuckDuckGo would lead to their site pretty easily
In theory, they get it for that reason. In practice, the actual reasons is that if Mozilla went under, Google would potentially have an anti-monopoly case on their hands. Or at least they think it's cheaper to pay Mozilla than to maybe find out if it's the case.
I believe Google knows better than anyone that market dominance is achieved not by “code quality”, or “features”, or “ease of use”, etc., but by attacking the clueless user with ads and press releases, and bundling the browser with crap like Ultimate Super Image Converter 2011, and paying generously for other sources of traffic. (Sorry, Google engineers doing incredible high-tech stuff, you're at most playing the role of exotic animals in the zoo attracting people who then proceed to sad low-tech data swindling.)
It might be less noticeable in the West, where Google hasn't really been challenged, but it was different in Russia. When Yandex had to switch to “defend the user share” mode, it stopped announcing interesting things (it used to please the public with nice stuff here and cool stuff there, and implemented some of that long before Google), and double downed on all that dumb crap (having the browser you fully control, having three ads to install it on a single page, pushing it into everything, and so on).
Yes, when Google Chrome started doing more frequent releases with new major version numbers, there was an impression that Chrome was newer and better while Firefox was still old and lagging with a low (single digit) version number. Then Firefox shifted to doing a release once every six weeks, and over the years, the major version number has closed in on Chrome and will overtake it soon.
On a related note, Firefox does have LTS (long term support) releases for enterprises or users who don’t want to move so fast. As I recall, Chrome was late to the LTS party, and before that it was forcing upgrades (because they happen periodically, behind the scenes) on users.
Firefox’s release cycles switched from six weeks to four weeks a few years ago. Chrome and Firefox are both on four week release cycles, so Firefox’ version number won’t overtake unless Mozilla or Google change something.
They’ll both hit version 100 in just a month or two. If too many websites are broken because they never expected a browser’s User-Agent string to have a version number with more than two digits, Chrome or Firefox might need to freeze the version number advertised in the User-Agent string.
I remember Mozilla were pretty pissed off at Chrome’s inaccurate versioning that induced a feeling of “chrome is 60 but ff is still on 3.5 so chrome has to be better “.
IME non-techy people don't even know the name of their browser (or that it's called a browser, "oh you mean The Internet") nevermind the version number.
I was wondering the same thing. I think over the past months or even years, Mozilla has been trying to get their version to be the same number as Chrome. Maybe if they focused on making a faster browser they wouldn’t need to play silly number games with their versions.
Looking at the diff[1], this seems to remove Yandex-, Odnoklassniki-, and Mail.Ru-related bundled bookmarks and extensions (that apparently exist in some build configurations?), if this removes the search option as well it does not seem obvious.
(The editorialized submission title is obviously against HN guidelines, but it’s unclear what should be done about it if the original page title is purposefully obscure—and it does seem to be, even given what I said above. Wait for independent reporting to use a more straightforward one?..)
Not sure it’s the right patch though. (Does a search engine need an extension to support being used for omnibox search? It might.) In any case, the two ultimate sources of the linked report seem to be:
Grigory Bakunov[1] (ex-Yandex) observes Yandex has been removed (but e.g. OZON is still there): https://t.me/addmeto/4782 (ru, but basically amounts to a screenshot)
Mozilla posts a vague note saying the “default search engine” (NB: omnibox default, not just installation default) may change in Firefox 98, no specific engines are named: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-engine-removal (en)
> Does a search engine need an extension to support being used for omnibox search? It might.
No, IIRC it just needs to have an appropriate OpenSearch xml file to have support for omnibox. I use a third-party engine that isn't bundled in FF and it works fine in omnibox.
Ok, I've done that above. Submitted title was "Firefox removed Yandex search option (and used misleading bug name to hide)".
Submitters: if you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Yes. Firefox removed Yandex Search Option is a fact, what is in the parens is OP's personal opinion. Unfortunately the submission has been flagged already. Not sure why though, I think some users are flagging it.
Basically, Firefox 98.0.1 is a point release only concerned with removing Yandex search for users in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey, and switching them all to Google by default. Some old promotions from mail.ru and ok.ru were blocked, too, but these have been dead as a doornail and irrelevant.
Note the smoking gun: regular Google links were used in configuration file on 11 March, and then were switched to firefox-tagged (sponsored) ones on 13 March (“part 2”). Why couldn't Mozilla switch Yandex search users to regular Yandex links the same way if they reportedly had “troubles” with their agreement, which supposedly would be the best for the users, and best for Mozilla, apparently? Imagine their wet faces when they beg on their knees for more after successful extension of Google's sponsorship agreement onto 4 big countries, and you'll know why.
The changelog for 98.0.1 is currently absent. The changelog for 98 has a vague note about search engines. The relevant code-related bugs have zero explanations. Bug 1748923 is private. The UI that alerts the user about the removed search engine was introduced two weeks ago (and had it text changed to be more vague). There is a specific (and vague) help article about the switch:
As usual with Mozilla, there were bugs. Users of previous version of Firefox that automatically update the list of search engines but have no UI to warn them about the changes got it removed silently.
I personally don't use Yandex, its results for IT-related English language queries have been quite shitty, in all honesty, for many years, most likely because of the supposed full-on focus on keeping the existing (mostly non-English-speaking) users. However, it's another nice example of treating people like swine by those who have even a tiny bit of power over them. Oh, we're used to that, thank you very much.
It wouldn't be a problem if there was a clear statement from Mozilla, or from Yandex. However, both declined to comment (as of now) because, obviously, the talk might give the users the revelation they have been sold and resold like cattle. So because of the corporate handling of the matter now we have a shitstorm among common computer users because something has seriously changed with their “internet”.
I've been installing Firefox with useful extensions on all computers of friends and relatives (if only because it's not fucking Google Chrome Cage), and now they got a shovelful of shit straight from Mozilla.
It also affected Firefox ESR (unless, I guess, there is a custom policy for search engines). Because, you know, system administrators simply love self-destructing software.
Tomorrow they will disable mouse input, and tell everyone that those who need it should've had a specific rule.
I've found niche uses for Yandex; translation specifically, which can do OCR on images you upload to it. Google translate won't do that, last I checked. If anybody knows of an alternative, I'd like to hear about it.
Their reverse image search is also often more useful than anyone else. Google in particular has gone downhill as of late, not entirely sure why. My gut says that their indexes were purged at some point.
Google Lens may be accessible via the web-version of Google Photos.
I know that has OCR functionality with at least easily-accessible translations (iirc not overlayed on the image, though).
Not sure if Google Lens is accessible outside of the app, though.
>My submission was flagged because of the phrase “golden shower”,
In 99.9% of cases HN dont accept editorialised headline. Although I have no idea why this current post is also flagged as well. Firefox removed Yandex is a perfectly valid description. May be it should get rid of the latter part.
Notice, the worse they become the more they will indulge in politics, censorship, emotional blackmail instead of doing their jobs: building a better browser.
Browsers today are massive projects to maintain. They're basically entire OSes and software suites at this point. The days of a browser that can be maintained by 2 guys and updated once every 16 months and still be decent are long gone.
That said, I can recognize that developing and maintaining a browser is a massive undertaking while also acknowledging a project taken a turn for the worse. A lot of software these days has weird priorities (most involving cramming more ads in).
Open source is mostly an empty slogan in Firefox's case - it was a code dump from Netscape and it's never really been able to attract outside contributions. If you want a browser that was actually built as open source, Konqueror has been right there for decades, but users don't care about that.
I have contributed to both Firefox and chrome, and the amount of legacy code in Firefox makes it so arcane & recondite. They haven't even upgraded jsm, xpcom etc..
And if you apply your logic to chromium. It is being forked and there are many browser like Vivaldi, Brave, Edge etc.. Open Source is definitely not an empty slogan. If there is product A and B, people will choose A if A is better, easier to maintain and popular.
I wonder if the decision was due to legal issues, or perhaps pressure from sponsors. After all, they just very recently decided to spam everyone with a very clearly sponsored advert: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30665493
I bet this is another move that won't gain them any marketshare either.
It's sad that "at least we're better than Chrome" seems to have become the only real redeeming praise of Firefox/Mozilla, and I think that's exactly what the management at Mozilla and Google realises --- both browsers are heading in the same hostile direction, but as long as FF stays a little behind Chrome, Google can say it's not a monopoly. At this point "browser choice" is clearly more of an illusion than reality. They're all slowly shoving everyone down the same funnel.
It's a shame that Yandex is getting this treatment...
It's translation service is by my opinion far better, since I have been able to use it very effectively to converse with anyone around the world in their native tongue. Google... ...
I learned the hard way that google is not that great at translating. It seems good, to those who haven't found out why it's bad.
P.S. I can basically copy and paste a yandex translation for any language. Doing the same with a google translation has gotten me some very confused messages back. Many times.
I guess I should be clearer about that.
Yandex has been promoting Russian propaganda/censoring Navalny/etc. for years and you complain about inconvenience of using a different translation service?
Annndddd our own media conglomerates will shill propaganda and censor people who they disagree with all the time as well. Not saying that this exonerates Russia or Yandex, but if you think we shouldn't be able to use Yandex's translation service because of the other things it has done; then you best get ready to stop using google, facebook, reddit and twitter too; along with all the services attached to them. They all have been just as bad in their own ways.
Look. I just said it was a shame that this all means that we won't be able to use a superior auto-translation product. How is that a problem. It just means someone who can do better than Google would be wise to step up, because someone like me is saying there is a market for a better product than what Google is offering.
That's the thing about sanctions and such. When you take away some things, you gotta try to replace them somehow with something as good or better. And all I am saying is Google ain't it.
Here, look. Now yes, that is about the watchdog being sued over not doing their job correctly; but look at who the culprit is and what they were doing. Google. Being naughty, once again.
> That's the thing about sanctions and such. When you take away some things, you gotta try to replace them somehow with something as good or better.
What do you feel when you see things like https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/te6k7b/could_you_a...? (safe to watch; there is no NSF stuff). Do you really believe sanctioning companies that aide the government that does this and worse are not justified or need "replacement"?
Look, I'm not here for a moral lecture from you. I'm part Ukrainian, okay. But I like the service that the Yandex translator provided. Firefox removing it from their defaults is just the beginning. I can see the rest of the internet moving in to remove it all together somehow if they could, since Firefox just removed it from their defaults. It's a first start.
Now, for the love of all that is good; stop trying to lecture people on morals when you have no right to.
Just for the record, what is it that Google is paying them $500M/yr to do? I haven't installed Firefox for while, is Google the default search engine or something?
edit: Upon more searching, I find passages like this:
>in 2020, Mozilla Corporation’s revenue was $466 million from its search partnerships (largely driven by its search deal with Google), subscriptions and advertising revenue. [0]
Google pays Mozilla to exist. I wouldn't be surprised if other browsers get either checks or favors for existing. All of this is to make Google not seem like the monopoly it is.
You're considering "contender" when the word you should be using is "competitor".
It's not Google's fault people prefer chrome over safari. The fact that people _can_ choose Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Chromium, Brave, etc. is what matters. As long as Google isn't doing anything anti-competitive, it's absolutely okay to dominate the market with a superior product.
Well, yes. It’s almost all of their annual revenue and Mozilla already had huge layoffs[0], so presumably they’re not exactly on amazing footing financially. Duckduckgo could not provide anything near that much - ddg has 100m in annual revenue and Google is giving 500m to Mozilla. 5x their entire company’s annual revenue.
If an organisation can be in financial trouble with an annual income of half a billion then it's poorly run. That's ample resources even for something as complex as a browser.
Who wants to let go of free money?
Mozilla is way overpaid, they probably lost focus other than paying $100m for browser development and MDN and probably the rest wasted.
For some searches, half the ‘results’ I get are ads. Not to mention how they track people. I’m still using Gmail as a throwaway email address, but for everything else, I’m done with Google.
Search results aren't that good anymore and Google consistently shovels woke crap down my throat anytime I search for anything more controversial than pizza toppings.
Is it necessary to boycott private firms that didn't necessarily support the government decision? Or is there any proof that they actually played a role in current ukraine situation?
My understanding is that results from Yandex were spreading propaganda from Russia, backing up the false narrative that they hadn't done anything, or that everyone in Ukraine is a nazi, etc.
Would love to hear more if anyone has information, I'm possibly misremembering.
Also, private companies are an important part of a nation's economy. Restricting them surely impacts that nation, so the idea seems sound?
Yandex News are definitely in line with Russian government propaganda. It's a news aggregator, so it might look like propaganda because all popular news outlets are propaganda. Not sure if they filter anything themselves. But I think it still makes sense to put a pressure on the company anyway.
> ...Russian government propaganda. It's a news aggregator, so it might look like propaganda because all popular news outlets are propaganda. Not sure if they filter anything themselves. But I think it still makes sense to put a pressure on the company anyway.
As opposed to what Western News Media coverage on the war has turned into, aka, more Propaganda?
The middle ground is not promoting our own Propaganda instead, which is what pushing everyone to Western Search Engines (Agitprop search really).
What propaganda? I'm sure there's bias in reporting, no question. But bias, say in support of Ukraine, is very different from saying that there's no conflict at all.
The narrative of the war in the West is "Putin just invaded the innocent Ukrainians, killed lots of people, rah rah rah". Here are the pics of Zelensky in fatigues ready to confront the invader.
The other side narrative is, "There has been an active war going on for 5+ years now following a US coup in Ukraine, and many innocent Eastern Ukrainians and ethnic Russians have been killed already. Now, Putin is invading to protect Russia's borders from broken promises over NATO spreading, and the threat of a hostile NATO near Moscow"
Both sides are biased, and both sides are producing agitprop, but we're only limiting one side's access to distribute their worldview.
Really? It seems like a foregone conclusion. These censorious tyrants have been chipping away at the pillars of Western civilization for quite a while now.
They'll hand-wave criticism by bringing up things like the "slippery slope fallacy." Don't be fooled. Give them an inch and they'll take a mile.
Honestly, I’m grateful that it’s happening out in the open. It’s been illuminating for me who really stands by Liberal Democracy, and the ideals of Free Speech and Freedom of Expression, and who are the posers. If you can’t advocate for the rights of people you disagree with you never really stood for anything in the first place.
It's worth remembering any discussion you see about Russian tech topics right now is almost certainly influenced by paid Russian propaganda agents. Here's two news articles that may provide more carefully edited context.
Do you mean that the discussion here could be paid Russian propaganda, or that this post is? I’m not sure how a link to the Mozilla bug tracker could be taken out of context.
I mean some of the comments here, and in the Bugzilla discussions, and in any other discussion you read online. I am not trying to call out any specific comment here, nor the original post, which is barely about Yandex at all.
It’s also worth remembering that any Russian tech topics are influenced by paid American propaganda agents. What is the point exactly? Argument should be made on their merits not based on who is making them.
tell me why we should not think you are an American propaganda created by weapon lobby who wants war to last longer and supply NATO with everything they need and make huge profits?
I know Russia started war, but it is very difficult to make conclusions at this point, everyone will tell other side "propaganda", "brainwashed"
Never before was the open internet challenged this hard, and never before has it failed so hard. Under pressure, every single thing is subject to politics and cancellation: browsers, search engines, search results, social media, cloud infrastructure, payment systems and even money itself.
None pass the test of being open or neutral.
At this rate, your much hated crypto folks may actually start to have a point. Kind of like a lunatic sometimes being accidentally right.
Note the downvotes, for my sin of even mentioning the word "crypto".
A neutral web browser is not one that only lets me access politically neutral websites (all five of them), but one that doesn't care what I look at.
In fact, the few times that I've used Yandex were because it is not politically neutral. I was curious whether the results for some queries look different when they're not being filtered through the lens of the American empire. That use case should make Yandex more relevant these days, not less.
(Although, to be honest, the search results were quite boring and normal.)
It's the Russian-language news service that was crippled. First, they were forced to only use officially licensed media sources, then they were forced to add lots of junk “newspapers” chain-posting the propaganda, and so on, and so on. So the headlines on top of the search page have been total crap for years.
The search results are mostly affected by the usual blacklists: DMCA notices for pirate sites, right-to-be-forgotten requests, government blocked pages (supposedly based on client location). Note that this list is not complete. For example, western services silently ban sites presumably “used to share child porn, based on informed opinion” of this or that group that might not even have a legal right to force anyone to do anything. How informed is that opinion? If you look at what Russian censorship agency does in the same regard, you can only call them utterly mad. You can be sure it's not the only case when someone has a backdoor that lets them hide stuff “for the public good”. Remember those stories about third world grunts cleaning Facebook from “NSFW content”, and making first world users feel comfy there? The results of their work are probably shared between corporations, too, and applied in some way.
Virtually nothing in "user land" is politically neutral but I would think/hope that the underlying technology and protocols have a large degree of neutrality.
Case in point, I'd see something like AWS as a neutral utility, kind of like electricity. You can do lots of bad stuff with electricity but your electricity provider doesn't care.
That idea of separation of concerns is now completely broken down, the entire stack, top to bottom, is political.
We used to be able to say AP, Reuters, NYTimes aren't partisan, and we used to be able to joke about RU news being Pravda-style propaganda. Unfortunately, we can no longer really mock the Russians this way with a straight face, as we have now started to look more like Soviet Russia.
Please. Let me know when people start getting sent to gulags - or simply killed - for publicly rejecting the official (single) party line of the United States. The false equivalence is getting out of control.
> Police chief: “Last night we began to take additional actions towards implementing our operation. We moved officers and equipment into key positions throughout the city and took up 100 checkpoints around the downtown core. We began making arrests of key individuals who were responsible for organizing these unlawful activities. (flash) As of 3pm today we’ve arrested 70 people. They’ve been charged with multiple various offenses including mischief.”
Here is a story about accounts of protestors being frozen, preventing them from paying bail to get out of jail.
> But for one protest organizer who was arrested last week, the effect was more immediate. The organizer, Tamara Lich, said she had been frozen out of all of her accounts and could come up with only 5,000 Canadian dollars for bail.
> We used to be able to say AP, Reuters, NYTimes aren't partisan, and we used to be able to joke about RU news being Pravda-style propaganda.
Who is this "we"? I'm Canadian now, but understanding media bias was something I was taught in American public school, with example from historical American media, and discussions on how bias can be engineered by selective reporting, etc.
> Unfortunately, we can no longer really mock the Russians this way with a straight face, as we have now started to look more like Soviet Russia.
Please feel free to inform the appropriate western authorities that I am guilty of visiting the RT website just now. I'll await the consequences.
So why can't we just build our own infrastructure? It's not as though you need spectacular sums of money to run a search engine or a social media platform. You need a few decent engineers for sure and you probably won't get rich from it, but most of this is demonstrably doable even without clouds.
Well Parler tried to start their own social media and that didn't turn out to them. Three of the largest tech companies kicked them out. How do you compete when you aren't allowed to compete?
You pretty much have to deal with big tech to have an app and no social media site can really be big without it. (I know side loading exists on android).
Parler hosting on Amazon was an incredibly dumb decision though.
The problem with a website is your cookies get deleted every once in a while. This is is inconvenient since you have to re login. Also, push notifications for a regular website isn't great (pwas might be better?)
Cookies get deleted when you explicitly delete them (most users don't know how to do that), or when you've set them to expire (which can decades into the future), or when you break your own code (which should be never).
Cookies should be set to session not a date. Many sites like HN don't do that presumably for convenience. I assume most social media sites set a date though.
go work for few years for a facilities-based last mile and middle mile ISP that runs things at the OSI layer 1 and 2 level of the internet and then tell me if you think your statement is accurate.
I don't mean we should build a parallel internet, I mean we should build enough redundancy into the Internet's public services that they become effectively impossible to exert control over.
Barring a complete shut-down of the Internet, simply making these applications cheap enough to operate would make them virtually impossible to control or stamp out.
They've been trying to shut down BitTorrent almost two decades, without much failures. They nailed the TPB guys to a cross, but that did all of nothing to actually shut bit-torrent itself down.
How does crypto fix this? The problem is not with their claim that this is a vulnerability - people have been shouting about this vulnerability long before crypto was invented - the problem is the claim that they will somehow fix this with tokens or DAOs
> The problem is that the downsides so far make it not worth it, usually.
How so?
Could you please elaborate? We already know that Bitcoin and Ethereum are not the only cryptocurrencies that exist for payments and there are better ones that are used for payments.
The deal is simple: when Russia stops slaughtering Ukrainian civilians, the rest of the world will stop isolating their economy. It's much like the shipping blockades that were used against the European Axis countries in WWII.
Russian civilians should consider themselves lucky that the war is only economic for them.
They will disappear as soon as Russia ends its cyberwars and returns to democracy. We saw it happen in Russia in the 90s and we've seen it in other countries.
I do not think that it is that easy. It is more like Russia does not respect international law so they will be cut from world economy as soon as it is possible.
Sanctions cannot stop this war unless they will lead to coup or state collapse (both are unlikely in near future). Sanctions put pressure on Russian elites and together with foreign aid also probably will prevent Russian victory in Ukraine.
I hope that no one is so stupid to resume business with Russia if they end the war quickly. They need to completely change their mindset from imperialism first. Otherwise it is similar to doing business with North Korea.
What is actually happening is that Russia has moved onto the Chinese alternative to SWIFT, India&China&Iran&Syria etc are forming an alternative block, and Russia is put into a close relationship with China. This is not a good idea because Russia&Ukrain&Belarus produce 1/3 of all corn, a huge chunk of fertilizer production, and a huge chunk of many commodities essential for the little industry we have left.
What will happen if a significant portion of oil is no longer traded in dollars? The dollars value is supported by the large amount of oil trades, and without it the US can't run the deficits its gotten used to. The US has transferred much of the industrial base to China which makes it hard to recover from that.
> Russian civilians should consider themselves lucky that the war is only economic for them.
Russia is the largest nuclear force in the world, and as Afghanistan and Ukraine shows a conventional war is very resource demanding. If the US went to direct war against russia that would be WWIII, and considering that there are nuclear stakes here that is not a good idea.
So, by your moral standard, the entire Earth should have isolated the US economy when the US government/military was killing Iraqi and Afghani civilians and destroying non-military targets, right? The entire planet should also be isolating Saudi Arabia for its genocidal war in Yemen? These things are done without the consent of the governed, and these things are often done without even the knowledge of the general public. Economic warfare kills people just as much as bullets and bombs. Poverty is associated with higher death rates and economic warfare creates and worsens poverty.
>So, by your moral standard, the entire Earth should have isolated the US economy when the US government/military was killing Iraqi and Afghani civilians and destroying non-military targets, right? The entire planet should also be isolating Saudi Arabia for its genocidal war in Yemen?
Probably, yes. That never would have happened, but that would indeed be the logical conclusion. And I'm fine with that.
That's good of you to admit, it means you have a moral consistency here. Interestingly, most of the US politicians supported by the MSM (right and left) were all for the Iraq War and its dubious justifications (Yellowcake), republican or democrat. With a few exceptions such as POTUS 45
> So, by your moral standard, the entire Earth should have isolated the US economy when the US government/military was killing Iraqi and Afghani civilians and destroying non-military targets, right?
It is not hard to convince me that yes, that should have happened. Where does that lead us? Should I feel different now about this particular agression because there were agressions we did not respond appropriately?
The US continues to occupy Iraq against the wishes of the Iraqi legislature. As such, we shouldn’t support replacing a Russian search engine with an American one.
Not OP, but yes to all those sanctions. I was out protesting those wars in the early 2000s (and often in the years after) and called for sanctions that would have hurt me economically. I still believe it should be done and our leaders involved in those wars should be made to answer for warcrimes.
Economic warfare does kill people, but it's kind of foolish to say "just as much" as bullets and bombs. I highly doubt the number of dead Russians from these sanctions is anywhere near the number of dead Ukrainian civilians - will need some serious data to back your claim.
> when the US government/military was killing Iraqi and Afghani civilians and destroying non-military targets
The US should not have invaded Iraq for any reason. I would have supported sanctions against the US for those crimes if any country could afford them.
That said, Saddam Hussein's government is not Zelenskyy's government. They're apples and oranges. Ukraine was a functioning democracy that never antagonized Russia.
The war in Afghanistan is a lot more complicated because it was arguably provoked by 9/11 and they didn't (and don't) really have a functioning central state.
> The entire planet should also be isolating Saudi Arabia for its genocidal war in Yemen?
Yes, absolutely.
> Economic warfare kills people just as much as bullets and bombs.
Speaking only about Russia and Ukraine for the last few weeks: bullshit. Russians aren't having pieces of their loved ones sprayed on them by bombs, watching their cities be destroyed, or leaving their lives behind.
Every death, whether in Russia or out, is the fault of its dictator, Vladimir Putin. He is very popular and probably genuinely won his last few elections. It is perfectly fair to blame the Russian people, even though many are brainwashed.
But even if they were all innocent Putin-haters, this lopsided war (economic on one side, violent on the other) is preferable to an all-out war that would kill far more people.
> Ukraine was a functioning democracy that never antagonized Russia
In no way, shape or form should my following comment be construed as support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and just in case let me clearly state I think the invasion is not right and that I think it will be Putin's downfall, and deservedly so.
That said, that Ukraine was a "functioning democracy" and that it never antagonized Russia are very debatable assertions, to say the least.
As a brown person I keep asking myself this everyday, it doesn't seem fair at all. If you raise the point you're making you'll be drowned out with "don't bring me your whataboutism, lives are being lost as we speak". Brown lives have been lost for quite a while now ...
But can you bet on what will actually happen though? Because I can. Western democracies are pretty selective on which dictatorships and failing democracies they decide to pay attention to.
Yeah, there are certainly a potential issues there,
but I'm coming at this from the recent feelings of shame from realizing that what I'm feeling now about my friends and family in Ukraine - while I didn't do anything except speaking out against it when (for instance) the war in Libya broke out - so what moral standing do I have now in asking even those Russians that do NOT have friends and family in Ukraine to potentially wreck their own lives to stop this war ?
Hence (I hope) I'll act more about these issues in the future, and hopefully I'm not the only one.
It’s not Russian policy to terror bomb civilians. But as with America’s wars, civilians get killed in large numbers because that’s the nature of high intensity warfare, at least when you’re not trying engage in a surgical coup as Russia comically attempted during the first few days of this war.
Whataboutism. I did not agree with the Iraq war but it doesn't justify the current conflict.
The US political system did also make an eventual course correction on Iraq. Eg. Republicans lost the congress in 2006 mostly as a result of that. George W. Bush was term limited out of office. The next proposed unnecessary invasions will probably be greeted by politicians not wanting to repeat Iraq. That is slow progress but it's more than I expect from Putin, with his wars in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Ukraine again, who knows what is next? Not to mention his disrespect of term limits.
So if there are Russians who don't agree with the war (there are) and if Russia eventually makes a course correction (it will) then they're off the hook, right?
And I know lots of Russians against this war. I've been to Russia. My kids are half Russian. I am optimistic for future Russian opportunities to "course correct".
> The deal is simple: when Russia stops slaughtering Ukrainian civilians, the rest of the world will stop isolating their economy.
The world will not stop isolating Russia while Putin is still in power. And even after he's gone (death from natural causes in 10 to 15 years), it will take another 5 years to partially recover our relationship with the world. The full recovery will never happen.
> ... a fullscale Russian invasion to decapitate their government.
> ... encircle China and force them into peaceful deescalation.
While you have used the word "peaceful" I suspect a Chinese planner, if by some strange path they read your comment, would start preparing for wild escalations. Because it looks like the strategy is to wait for a moment of weakness then invade.
Invading China will likely never be a good idea. I'm for peaceful coexistence of nations unless there's a renegade actor like Putin. I think peace comes from democratic systems. Even the USSR was intended to be democratic. There's almost nothing to stop Putin.
This nuclear hostage holding he's doing has generated a lot of ire. It just can't be tolerated and I don't think it will.
Although I occasionally commit the cardinal sin of entertaining political discourse on HN, I think such disturbing statements aren't appropriate for HN.
As a fellow American, I encourage you to reassess your comment and consider if it may be guilty of American exceptionalism. I'm particularly confused by the grouping of "Greco-Roman ideals" since Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece were quite different in political structure and philosophy. For the former, Rome definitely wasn't a democracy at times [1], [2], [3]. Even during the Republic, I'm not sure it resembled a democracy as we know it today, but I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable to answer [4].
Under the assumption, however, that "western civilization" is some unified blob of Enlightenment era thought, you must agree that there has been resistance to such ideas in the US [5].
Such arguments by vagueness remind me of Bezos's management style, which purportedly penalizes such communication approaches: "PowerPoint had become a tool for disguising fuzzy thinking" [6].
Clearly you haven’t interacted with many Indians (particularly regarding the Ukrainian conflict) if you think they’d be on board with your Western Imperialist fantasy.
An invasion of Russia would risk the destruction of the entire globe by nuclear weaponry. Ousting Putin and destabilizing Russia would increase the risk of nuclear weaponry making its way to more violent regimes. I do not think either of those is particularly wise.
I understand that you have language barrier and can't, for example, watch Ukrainian TV. Have you ever seen President Poroshenko bragging on national TV about how he will make Donetsk children hide in basement?
Have you ever seen Arestovich, current aide to President Zelensky, two years ago, saying on national TV that large scale war with Russia is only possible way for Ukraine?
Have you ever seen Ukrainian pupils chanting Moscalaku na gilyaku? Don't take my words for granted, translate this words yourself.
I suggest you'll Google that videos before saying Ukrainian government is peaceful next time
Your comment equates to a mass-murderer pointing out that some of his victims had traffic-tickets.
And while you are busy doing that, your country is killing civilians by the thousands, turning cities into rubble, explicitly and undeniably targeting civilians, to get Ukraine to stop fighting the invasion.
Your glorius leader is Vladimir Putin - and from the looks of it - you have the leader you want and deserve.
I do my part fighting elections rigging in Russia for years, while you are lecturing me with words that you have heard on TV.
I visited Denmark multiple times. I visited Crimea.
Have you been in Russia?
Friend of mine was independent observer on the referendum of Crimea. My friend's grandmother in Gorlovka now. Gorlovka. Do you know Gorlovka? You know, 8 years near frontline, regularly shelled by Ukrainian forces? My uncle have to leave Mariupol 5 years ago. My father's ex girlfriend is reporting from Donetsk.
We are enjoying consequences. Thank you very much.
Have you read my post about Ukrainian official saying that large scale war is inevitable? Two years ago?
Friends of mine in Mariupol now. They wrote that they was rescued by Russian army. Do you have any ideas why they have written this?
In west you are accusing Russian people of being victims of propaganda, brain washed and controlled by Putin. I have access to media that represents either points of view on conflict. Have you?
Xi and Kim have killed far more people than Putin has (so far). There may be up to 2 million Uyghurs in camps, and it's not a stretch to assume that at least 10% are going to die of natural causes.
Oh!! no.. We will only invade far-off countries who cannot retaliate. Who wants to invade a neighbour, esp. if the refugees come running into our country?? We want our war games played without any consequence to us.
I'm sorry but comments that harken back to ye old Rome are infuriating and it leaves a sour taste in ones mouth. I know this war is bad, but man people need to just own up, otherwise none of us can more forward. Pax Americana is fine, but you don't get to kill people and then turn back and tell me to wave a flag because grand old Europe is having it's "freedom" threatened.
"The Iraq Body Count project documents 185,000–208,000 violent civilian deaths through February 2020 in their table. All estimates of Iraq War casualties are disputed."
The official civilian casualties count in Ukraine so far is 600, according to the UN. Both wars are horrible.
> Comparing what Russia is doing in Ukraine to anything the US has done in the last 100 years is an exercise in false equivalence. One so blatant that it defies any attempt to interpret in good faith.
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you completely ignorant of history? What about Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Iraq?
(Hopefully we'll be careful this time about what is being embargoed, the Russian population is now the best shot of getting rid of Putin, once the horror of what is happening in Ukraine to their friends and family filters through Putin's propaganda.)
It might also help, if it makes a politician think twice next time before calling to invade, sorry "bringing democracy" to a country... (USA, thank you for giving democracy a bad name by the way.)
I don't think it's controversial that Putin deserves to be ousted by a foreign military as much as anyone. He's certainly much more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler because he can unilaterally end human life on earth at any moment of any day.
> Install anyone else that's not insane, say Navalny.
Well, we definitely couldn't install anyone. We'd have to administrate an open election.
> I read they have 50% of their total combat brigades in Ukraine now.
This is a pretty antiquated assessment of military power. Boots on the ground show only that Russia wants to take Ukraine rather than completely destroy it. They can level the entire country with tactical nukes if they want.
> Installing a leader that is open to integrating with the west, along with India, we could encircle China and force them into peaceful deescalation.
I think it's more likely that we'd make China very dangerous and hostile, and we'd also re-open the world to the possibility of foreign regime change.
If we can decapitate Russia, why couldn't someone say, "Hey, this Biden guy stole the election, we should murder him for the good of the American people!"
Biden didn't steal the election, but I think you see where I'm going with it.
from my understanding of the development of the international oil trade in the 20th century, one of the key advancements by multinational oil in the West was to learn lessons from the British, and do two important things on foreign soil: always back a leader that can hold on with local support; always pay the Nationalist/Military oil interests very well, in addition to making trade rights built-in.
Unfortunately, it seems that the "wild west" behavior of the USA in South America, in the wake of the brutal Spanish conquest long ago, made some enemies (that have oil) that are not easy to talk to now.
>So what? What does that have to do with anything?
Because my reply was to:
>much more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler because
Note the "because", the exact same argument stands for Biden, but we wouldn't argue he's more powerful and dangerous than Stalin or Hitler. I was pointing out the weakness in the "because".
Biden frequently misspeaks or gets confused, and refuses to take dementia tests, so if he really can unilaterally launch then I'd actually be pretty worried about that.
(I think there are other people in the loop in the case of the US president though? Personally I've always been most worried about the Royal Navy's submarine captains, who really do have the ability to launch unilaterally in a very direct way)
True, it's an extremely dangerous situation for nuclear weapons to exist at all.
Biden, however, has not threatened to use them. Nor does he rule over his subordinates on pain of extrajudicial murder, so there's a few checks and balances there. Alas the same cannot be said for Putin.
You probably won’t take this advice, but you should really start making peace with the fact that the US is completely incapable of accomplishing any of these warped fantasies of yours.
The vast majority of the world is celebrating the self-evident decline of US-centric unipolarity. But those of us who live here have some hard years ahead.
That's the thing. Even if we were to suggest that the parent's ideas had merit (big "if"), it's pretty laughable to think that the US is capable of doing this properly. Looking back, it's hard to find American successes in this sort of meddling, all the way back to WWII.
True, and the US didn’t even properly defeat the Nazis (see, for instance: Adolf Heusinger, Operation Paperclip, and the many Nazis who happened to find themselves in positions of power in West Germany).
I don't believe in liberating anyone from authoritarianism that doesn't want to have a free and democratic system. That's why mideast liberation hasn't worked. No one was asking. The Russians want a better life, just ask the ones that come here to study, find mates, and never go back. I know plenty of them from my university, happily married to whoever from wherever, and residing in the US or Canada, working and living peacefully as contributors to society. Russians are quite intelligent people too.
The Russians are probably the least likely to want liberating from what I've seen of all Europeans, but I do think a plurality of Russians would want this. Which justifies it. That said, without this invasion of Ukraine and the danger I feel it presents to my homeland (the US), I wouldn't even be bringing this up. The Russian Federation would be on their own. It's just that the leadership over there is now a danger to everyone else.
Well I think in an ideal world "liberating" would not involve mass murder of the "liberated" population. I am aware that this is a historical weak spot.
Even still - I don't see a problem with countries rescuing other countries from despotism, in principle. I eagerly include my own country in this - if a Putin-like figure arose and I was not permitted to speak out or face death, it would comfort me to know that help was coming. The terror of an oppressive regime is its inescapability.
The ideas have to be out there or they'll never get traction. We have major influence recently. The path of the world was changed dramatically with the election of Biden over Trump. I can't imagine how emboldened Putin would be had Trump won. I realize others say everyone was scared of the rich man's son, but I don't see it. He withheld 400 million in military aid from Ukraine, says it all as far as the path we'd be down.
I’m sure Putin is really afraid of the guy who can barely get a coherent sentence out. Trump reportedly wanted to exit NATO, which would have avoided this conflict altogether.
That's correct. And we can't draw false equivalences either; we should consider the scale of the wrong. For example, I would consider loss of life to be quite a bit worse than loss of Yandex.
Even if that were true (it’s not - high collateral damage is not the same as not making a distinction), that doesn’t justify us deciding to also treat Russian civilians as military.
People might say: look how West is behaving, when America invaded other countries or when NATO bombed Yugoslavia no one sanctioned them, but they are doing it to us, they hate us
At the end of the day Ukraine will be in ruins, so sanctions don't help
Not sanctions, but ironically Ukraine is a place where popular uprisings worked. In 2005 and 2014. (Though if you buy the Russian line, it was all Nazis or something.)
Nobody has done anything after the fake bombings before the Cechnya intervention in 1999, which at least is in their own territory.
But then again silence in 2008 after the Georgia invasion, and again in Crimea in 2014. They are using their nuclear arsenal as a free pass to invade everyone and break every treaty.
I think it just became unsustainable at this point. And honestly this is the best we can do to help without making things worse.
The difference is that hundreds of thousands or even millions of civilians aren't dead. Which is what would happen have happened if they truly made no distinction between civilians and military.
Why this even relevant?
I want to talk about Mozilla Firefox removing control from the user, which was their promise for years.
I don't see difference between them doing it for political message, or Google doing it for profit.
It was not “just not included”, it was removed for everyone, no matter whether they wanted to use it or not. Maybe lizardmen from Mozilla are so detached they consider that all users just suck up and eat what's on the plate today, but some regular people use Yandex search because they have mail there, keep themselves logged in, have configured other services, need something for their work daily, yada yada. So they open the browser and see a tiny panel stating “FUCK YOU”. And it's not tech-savvy users (responding with “fuck you too” and fixing the problem) who get bitten and poached, it's the regular people.
There is a reason to think the actual goal of all that radio silence was preventing people from trivially switching to Yandex manually in advance of the change.
OpenSearch is a standard. Visit Yandex in Firefox today, and you'll see Firefox happily offer to add Yandex to your search dropdown. The green plus shows you that it's an option.
I know that. The whole thing started for me today when I advised a user on some web forum this exact way of bringing it back. Then, out of interest, I dug into the code and the bug tracker, only to find that absolutely nothing was stated about the changes, even though they have been cooking for a month¹. My first real browser was steel-gray Mozilla Suite, back then I opened as many forum topics in tabs as it was possible during a free promotional 5 minute modem connection.
The problem is not inclusion by default, the problem is unwarranted unconditional removal, whether it is default or not, and whether it is needed or not. Mozilla has decided the pretend it happened “by itself”, but it was their decision, and they had an option to switch people to non-sponsored Yandex search.
You would need to have some skills for that. My grandma wouldn’t be able to do that and this change would disrupt her workflow. Not the end of the world, but this is user hostile change. I’m fine with removal of this engine for new installs, but pulling the rag under existing users is wrong. This anti-Russian madness gone completely out of control. I bet this change alone will drive a significant chunk of Russian Firefox users to Yandex Browser. Unlikely the intention of Firefox developers but here we go.
Are they? Do you know about their contract with yandex? You are emotional about something that is 100% financial in nature. If it wouldn’t be you can bet that with the Mozilla Foundation being the way they are in the last years would ponder themselves with a blog post or at least a tweet. Money talks or in this case it doesn’t anymore.
I frankly don't care. I don't use Yandex, but if I did, I'd be really pissed off at this move. Firefox shouldn't be including only search engines that pay a fee; they should be including all search engines that their users might find useful.
The browser is provided for free. Selling search defaults/inclusions is by far the least intrusive way to make money to fund the development of the browser.
I suspect that if Firefox got most of its funding from Hollywood, it would be even more susceptible to the politics-du-jour. Why do you think high-profile fundraising would make Firefox more independent?
I doesn't matter why, what and how are damning enough on their own.
A legit change in some deal does not explain several aspects of this update.
When something doesn't add up, you are supposed to scrutinize it, not just assume it's fine. If it was fine, then why wasn't there an honest explanation?
Mozilla did a bad thing. If our speculations about the why are wrong, it doesn't change anything about what is wrong with this update.
But even the speculation is fair game in this case because the update lacks all the normal and expected justification and explaination of any other merge request. Feel free to explain the above-board reason they made quite this nature of update in quite this peculiar way.
What other updates to your browser should be ok to just take blindly with no explanation? The immagination staggers.
It’s their browser not yours if you don’t trust them use something else. I keep away from defaults especially search because they are usually paid for and not in good faith. They also dropped yandex two times already and you guessed it right… because of monetary reasons. This is not the smoking gun you want it to be.
> It’s their browser not yours if you don’t trust them use something else.
That's... not how things work. If you're not happy about something, you should complain about it. That's the only way that people's preferences become known, and changes can be made. If we all constantly hopped from product to product when the product we're currently using does something we didn't like, we'd very quickly run out of options.
I vaguely recall that Yandex is based in the Netherlands for tax reasons (like many Russian companies and oligarchs) but Russian money is no longer good.
All contracts signed with Russians are up for review and likely annulment.
“Their” browser is useless pile of code when it's not being run on someone's computer. My own computer, for example. Which is not their computer at all.
You people seem to be totally brainwashed by corporate bullshit.
That statement was not Firefox-specific. Marketing bullshit about saints above blessing lowly ignorant masses incapable of independent action with fad-of-the-year software (with a not so nice user agreement) should not be tolerated.
We can all laugh at people who can't change a search engine, and call them dumb, but when something like Mozilla decides “these users are dumb, they get used to it”, it's a tad different story.
Back in the days of sane version numbers, localized bookmarks and other stuff relied on local community input. Promotions were solitary and visible, just from their URL parameters. It changed when browser started to be seen as only a muzzle that sucks the meat source into data processing pipeline.
Have been a strong(!) advocate for Firefox for years.
Now it is time to switch. Not sure where to yet, Chrome is not any better, Palemoon is not exactly well supported. Maybe Brave, Vivaldi, or Opera, though they are all Chrome-based as well.
Difficult decision and not very happy about it, as I do think we need more than just one browser engine, but I can't support Mozilla any more.
What's the status on allowing all addons and devtools on Brave for Android? I switched away from brave to another browser because those features were stripped out.
Google stripped out extension support, and we haven't been able to bear the cost of adding it back — lots of forked files. If you are using KiwiBrowser, check what the chromium version is vs. latest, and check secbugfix back-porting.
I moved to brave when they made that blog post [1]. I’m very happy although I agree it’s better to have competition in the browser space.
I’ve also moved to brave search recently after DuckDuckGo announced they were downgrading Russian sites. I might try Yandex too as I don’t like the brave search layout.
It will be difficult because I have been using Firefox for years and tried to avoid anything Chrome-based and I am not very happy with Google's Manifest v3 approach, but Mozilla just crossed a red line for me.
Did it really cross a red line for you? I feel like Firefox is judged much more harshly than Chrome and it's unfair.
Mozilla the company has made some terrible decisions that I strongly disagree with (update page featuring a movie ad, pocket integration, removing a search engine from the defaults, nerfing android addons for no reason)
But compared to every other browser, I don't understand how people think it's even a comparison. Chrome (user history tracking, targeted advertising, FLOC, manifest v3, strong-arming due to market share, etc etc), Edge (same as chrome but replace G with M), and Brave (referral link injection, cryptocoin adware).
To me, no single thing on FF's list is worse than any single thing in the other list. And together it's out of the question which is better.
I don't think it's useful to tell regular people not to use Firefox either unless you tell them they really shouldn't be using the other three (which I doubt many are doing). Am I missing something? Honest question - do you really think the negatives of having someone use not-firefox outweigh the negatives of Firefox?
> I feel like Firefox is judged much more harshly than Chrome and it's unfair.
Mozilla claimed that their mission was to empower users. Some people are more upset by hypocrisy than the actual actions. If they want to change https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/ from "More power to you." to, say, "More power to us." then I'd personally be a lot less irritated at them.
(This isn't specifically a comment on the current subject, BTW; I've been increasingly irritated by Mozilla's hypocrisy for years now.)
I do understand the frustration with things like that but I just think people forget the big picture. Totaling all annoyances and negatives about Mozilla (which are a lot) against the competition makes me seriously glad I don't use them.
This hypocracy+everything I listed about FF+everything else Mozilla has done is a drop in the bucket compared to the user-hostile world that is Edge/Brave/Chrome.
To be clear: I agree with you. I harden Firefox because their defaults do not make me happy. But it's going to take a whole lot more bad decisions before they're worse than their competition.
I think we agree, then; I'm writing this from Firefox:) It's just that being the least-bad option seems a more hollow victory with every incident, and if a genuinely good option ever showed up I'd jump happily.
Not OP (and not yet uninstalling firefox, but it feels ever closer), but it feels like mozilla have done something sneaky and questionable every quarter now for the past 2 years. For OP, this is possibly the straw that broke the camel's back
As far as I know, Firefox is the easiest browser to add this back in. Right click on basically any search box and Add A Search Shortcut and you can bind it to "ya" or something.
Similar to duck duck go bangs but it has to be a prefix and ! Isn't required. w => wipedia, y => youtube
I feel like this is a weird attitude to have toward an open-source software project. "Sure, developers added 900 performance improvements / new features / bug fixes this quarter to a browser I get to use for free, but they also did 2 non-critical things I don't really care for so now I oppose this software."
I do think it would have been _better_ if Firefox made the set of included-by-default search providers something that gets merged into your profile, so that future removals only affect new installations / new profiles (and existing users who happen to use that engine don't have to go out of their way to re-add them after an update). I don't really care _which_ search engine definitions come with a browser out-of-the-box, as long as they're easy to customize.
I fancy myself a fairly technically aware person, and I have no idea what improvements, features or bug fixes Firefox added this quarter that would outweigh all the little and big bad things. In terms of performance, a recent patch made Electrolysis or what it is they called their per-domain process thing the default, immediately making CPU and especially RAM usage shoot up massively (as well as introducing some new bugs pertaining to dead IPC pipes). I tried to put up with it for maybe a week and then switched it off by an about:config switch, which I'm entirely sure they will remove in another 10 versions at the latest. The only way in which I see them adding features takes the form of supporting the latest of the stream of under-the-hood changes that keep coming out of Google's web standard printer, which generally seem to add no user-visible functionality or benefits but are inevitably relied on by some random subset of important websites resulting in the internet gradually breaking if I don't want to update my browser.
I would much rather they use their dwindling influence on standards bodies to block and sabotage the changes that necessitate the constant updating (and attendant maintenance burden which takes smaller browser projects out of the running) at every turn; and if it so happens that this results in their influence disappearing even faster and/or them getting booted, then at least this may pave the way for the long-overdue antitrust suit against Google that many have been saying Mozilla's existence serves to prevent.
(It's not like Firefox is developed by unpaid volunteers. Am I using the browser "for free" if Google sees it as advantageous to pay them money for, among others, my continued existence as a user of the browser?)
I agree with the grandparent comment. And it is because of separation of concerns. You can put it in the same basket as freedom of speech, but it's a bit different.
A browser is a browser. It does not have to promote a moral view. In fact it has to provide ways to find information. Not to limit purposefully ways to find information.
It sounds like your issue is not that the browser is promoting a moral view but rather that it’s promoting one in conflict with the moral view you think it should be promoting.
Making a reply to say you won’t make a reply because a reply you make could be downvoted does not really follow. Can folk who disagree with you not just now downvote this reply, both for political disagreements but also wasting everyone’s time?
I switched back to Safari. In Firefox, I would usually click the first two items on the home page which would be photopea or reddit. Today, they put 2 sponsored items for Amazon and Trivago instead and I accidentally clicked the amazon one without realizing because that first item was supposed to be Photopea. That was enough to piss me off.
I've been on vivaldi for awhile, and I've found it to be fairly suitable for my needs. It's more or less chrome with added features, and at least a little less google spyware, and at most none.
Though, you are forced to either manually install extensions, or use the chrome store, which will require you to use some google features, but there's no real way around that.
Hope you made the right one and stuck with FF. Using a Webkit browser is actively contributing to a disgusting monopoly that doesn't give a fuck about the end users.
As I mentioned, I can't support Mozilla any more and hence am migrating away. I am not entirely happy supporting the Chrome universe at this point, but this is the only way if Mozilla is not an option any more.
That got me curious, so I fired up some old versions of Mozilla Phoenix and checked that out. Turns out already Mozilla Phoenix 0.2 (https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/phoenix/releases/0.2/), released on October 1, 2002, which was the version which originally introduced the search bar, offered the ability to select different search providers.
What you're looking for is not "free", it is still free software even if they change the default search engines that come pre-configured in their software. You are looking for software aligned with your politics (which is fine!)
This is hypocrisy of Western democracy. I can't recall when Google was removed after US invaded so many countries. Why do Western companies oppress free speech when it doesn't match their narrative (Julian Assange, now Russian media)?
Why not give Russian "propaganda" tell its narratives and let people decide? Are you afraid of their truth/"truth" or are you afraid people will follow them? If you think people are stupid to decide, why do you allow them to even vote for a President of a country?
Why US thinks it is ok to expand NATO to the borders of Russia, but didn't think Soviet military in Cuba is ok?
Where are all liberals fighting for human rights and free speech?
* US invasion - good guys killing bad guys
* Russian invasion - bad guys killing good guys
* China human right violations - "west" only condemns, because we are too much dependent on cheap products.
* US tells Iraq has biological weapons - yeah let's start the war.
* Russia tells Ukraine has biological weapons - yeah, propaganda as usual.
I have so many questions, but pretty sure no one is going to answer them constructively thanks to cancel culture (and the reason for throw away account) where "liberals" cancel you if they don't agree with you, responses I might get "whataboutism"
I am anti-war in all countries, because at the end of the day ordinary people suffer. But why people are demanding protests from Russian people to overthrow Putin (which I doubt they can, unless their military people decide to support) when they weren't able to stop war in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other US invaded country by protesting? Do you think you have moral rights to ask Russian people to do something when you were silent, when you couldn't even save Julian Assange? (by the way I am not Russian)
The people who are suffering are the Ukrainians so it's just thing to apply as much non-lethal suffering back on to the country causing it as is possible. Every little bit helps.
How is Mozilla choosing which search engines to show in their browser oppressing of free speech?
"Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Are they blocking users from going to those sites? No.
Are they preventing those sites from loading in the browser? No.
Are they stopping anyone from creating a website and saying whatever they want? No.
Just because you don't agree with Mozilla on this action doesn't make it oppression of free speech. This is simply one organization deciding not to have a relationship with another organization. Not everything is an attack on free speech or expression.
> How is Mozilla choosing which search engines to show in their browser oppressing of free speech?
> "Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
This is explicitly Mozilla retaliating against Yandex for things they've said.
> Are they blocking users from going to those sites? No. Are they preventing those sites from loading in the browser? No. Are they stopping anyone from creating a website and saying whatever they want? No.
This is disingenuous. They're very deliberately making it less convenient for users to access Yandex.
> How is Mozilla choosing which search engines to show in their browser oppressing of free speech?
Because similar action wasn't taken against Google when US invaded so many countries!
> Just because you don't agree with Mozilla on this action doesn't make it oppression of free speech. This is simply one organization deciding not to have a relationship with another organization.
In this case taking away choice from Russians not from organization. Of course they are going to use just website, but still there is clear signal to selectively support one side, even though action of other parties were equally bad. Why open source software is making decisions based on politics happening around.
In general, it sounds like you're suggesting that if everyone can't be punished for doing something bad, no one should be. I'm not sure that logic would really fly with other situations. Ex. A murderer was able to flee to a country without an extradition treaty, so punishing Jeffrey Dahmer would be hypocritical.
The US being less likely to do things like, you know, lie about biological weapons as a pretense for an invasion of a country that murders tens to hundreds of thousands of innocents and destabilizes an already not-so-stable part of the world would be a good thing. That the rest of the world wasn't able to rally together at the time to say "Yo, not cool" doesn't mean that they wouldn't have been right to. That it didn't happen then doesn't mean it shouldn't happen next time. Or now, in the case of Russia re: Ukraine.
> In general, it sounds like you're suggesting that if everyone can't be punished for doing something bad, no one should be
I am not saying this, I am saying we shouldn't be politicizing software and punish ordinary people. I know Ukrainians are suffering and suffering of Russians at this moment is very small compared to them, but this doesn't mean we should make them suffer even more. Do you think Russians will like these actions? No, I think their hate will increase and they would support Putin even more.
> That it didn't happen then doesn't mean it shouldn't happen next time. Or now, in the case of Russia re: Ukraine.
Somehow I am pretty sure if US invades any other country now, there would be another excuse and no sanctions at all. I don't hold knowledge of the future, but past events are super clear what would happen. Iraq, Libya, ....
Also why not same support for Palestinian people? do you think they are terrorists? I mean 100% of them? Do you think Palestine has power to withstand Israeli attacks or similar military capacity? Why West not sanctioning Israel, which is happening now?
Not saying we shouldn't support Ukraine, what I am saying is we should equally support everyone who is suffering. And we shouldn't make people suffer even more.
Well said. We here in the west have to stop pretending we are at the absolute center of truth and justice, and stop silencing all the sensible voices that try to bring attention to our own hypocrisy.
Doesn’t anybody else see how the massive fist waving censorship of Russian businesses (which by the way may not endorse the war in Ukraine) is hypocritical to the entire point of the internet and free speech?
I’ve been saying it, and I’ll repeat it again. Since when did liberals lose the ideology of free thinking and speech and go on a quest of cancel everything that may not fit squarely and neatly in their world. It wreaks of elitism.
While I appreciated the comparison (lol’d), turns out that California condors are on the rise and nearly 25x (estimate) as many now then at the lowest point.
Liberals never embraced free thought and free speech. Now, they are actively censoring anything, anyone, or whatever they don't like. I don't need to be told what to think by a group of people unable to think at all.
I am consistently disappointed by any thread involving Mozilla on Hacker News. Somehow Mozilla is held to an impossible standard. For the one company out there holding the internet away from a WebKit monoculture, they sure get the short end of the stick by people here.
I do honestly wonder if there is some sort of campaign against Mozilla and Firefox at this point. It might not be a paid thing or some sort of conspiracy, but just an echo chamber effect that keeps getting more intense over time.
In every single thread it's the same stuff rehashed over and over, and dramatic takes about absolutely trivial changes or people being mad over Mozilla political stuff like them canning a former CEO (which was totally deserved). Very rarely do I ever see a positive comment or thread title, and most of the problems people bring up are basically non-issues for 99% of users or completely made up. There are of course some legitimate issues here and there, but they are the exception.
Every time I open these threads it's pretty confusing, I don't know if I am living in a different reality or what's up. I have had zero issues with Firefox in any way and have no complaints about the direction it's moving in. It has the best Wayland support, has great performance, now isolates each site in an OS level process (which further improves performance on modern machines), gets rapid security updates and builds in 1/4th the time and space that chromium takes. I don't notice anything missing compared to using chromium either.
Them removing Yandex from the default search engine options is barely news worthy. Users who want to use it still can, users who don't will continue not to, there is no real issue here.
It's not like this is unique to Mozilla though. Once you get big enough, you end up attracting a critical mass of people who like to rehash the same old grievances. Take any HN thread about Google, for example.
Except with Google, Google keeps committing the sins, and when even informed that they are doing it, executives at Google just respond "working as intended, WONTFIX".
I don't have much else to add because your post perfectly sums it up. To me it seems it started when Brandon Eich was outed, a segment of the tech community never let it go and views everything they do with extreme scrutiny. I don't feel like it's deserved at all. Mozilla has new leadership and Brandon has moved on to other great things like the browser Brave. Mozilla and the work they've done for open source is irreplaceable. I still use Firefox and filezilla all the time and Rust has been such a massive success that even Microsoft is using it in Windows.
I believe some of the Chromium folks are partly responsible for this. Though it's probably not a planned "campaign" of any sort, I've seen some prominent figures constantly direct hatred toward other browser vendors online, and countless webdevs piling on. I'm not posting links because many of them are highly toxic, but browser developers on the receiving end has expressed their frustrations more than once.
Because people want to see them spend their efforts on holding the Internet back from a WebKit monoculture, and donate to that cause, but they keep wasting resources on political activism, pointless bs like time-limited themes, etc. while downsizing their engineering team. Not doing those isn’t “impossible”, in fact they go out of their way to disappoint people with those distractions.
Yes, I’m aware of that. People would like to donate specifically to Firefox development though, and some donate to Mozilla Foundation under the impression that it would help. I’ve certainly done that in the past.
I'm also confused by the reaction here. Firefox isn't censoring anything. Yandex is no longer listed as a default search engine but, as others have pointed out, you can add it back if you want it.
Firefox, at least where I am in the US, also doesn't list Baidu as a possible search engine. If Firefox had decided to remove Google from this list because of privacy issues, HN would be cheering loudest.
The CEO raised her own wage repeatedly while the Firefox market share tanked, during which she directed spending to useless projects that were all eventually shelved and proceeded to plaster Firefox in ads (full page after update) when it became obvious her strategy was an abject failure.
Firefox development itself has been rudderless and lethargic for a long time. WebKit introduced backdrop filters 7 years ago and Firefox is still working on implementing them. [1]
I don't think that's a particularly high standard. The CEO is a failure and the board is incompetent for not firing her years ago.
Baker became provisional CEO in December 2019, and formally took the job in 2020. We only have salary information for one year she held the position, if that. I'm not sure if 2019 or 2020 is the last available.
And when executive salaries were rising and user share dropping, revenues were way up. From $120 million in 2010 to $520 million in 2016. Of course some of that will go to the people in charge.
The extra cash is not because Firefox is more successful, it's an additional bribe from Google so they can point to an alternative browser when governments come after them for browser anti-trust.
Most of their non-Firefox pet projects have been failures.
Implying she joined in December 2019 is seriously underplaying her role before then. [1]
Her accomplishments as CEO are tanking growth, a slew of failed projects, massive layoffs and the expansion of obnoxious full-page banner ads baked into the browser.
>extra cash is not because Firefox is more successful, it's an additional bribe from Google so they can point to an alternative browser when governments come after them for browser anti-trust.
Except yknow, 2016 where the majority of their money came from Yahoo. Because that money is buying something of value, Google is just the company that most wants the product.
>Implying she joined in December 2019 is seriously underplaying her role before then.
She became provisional CEO in 2019, like I said. And I'd have to guess she was officially hired as nobody better wanted the job for the salary.
The list goes on of conservative woman CEOs, but you probably should do some personal introspection on why the concept of such a person makes you upset.
Mozilla is just another corporation and they continuously work on things other than their primary product. It's not an impossible standard -- it's just what Hacker News wants from Mozilla and what Mozilla wants from Mozilla are two different things.
As a user of Firefox, I just want them to make a better browser both on the desktop and mobile. Mozilla wants to find ways to make more revenue.
I'm fine with this move but Mozilla has sunk well below an acceptable bar. The company sucks and has failed us all. The CEO is a joke and should have never been in the position.
They are in the business of building a web browser, and Firefox is a good web browser (I would say an excellent web browser). Their direction and trajectory is concerning, but they have clearly not sunk below an ‘acceptable bar’.
My "hate" is for the executives, not Mozilla. Firing a ton of engineers "because covid" from promising projects while taking huge, ever increasing bonuses as the browser's market share falls, is inexcusable. I'd criticize any executive for the same thing.
I applaud this decision. My friends are killed by russian forces in Ukraine and majority of russian public is kept in dark about this war thanks to support by Yandex to spread the official propaganda.
Most in the West are in the dark about the historical Eastern Ukrainian vs Western Ukrainian War, the constant shelling, the human right abuses, and the wanton execution of civilians in East Ukraine.
If we are going to permit US govt Agitprop, maybe we should permit historicals, and their Agitprop as well.
Who pressurized Mozilla this time for this virtue signaling move?
Surely they should have removed Google search by now and replaced it with a privacy friendly alternative since Google has been known to be involved with mass surveillance and having contracts and actively working with the three-letter agencies and simply handing over your data to them? Once again, they still can’t move on from Google nor can they get rid of them since they are on life support with their money.
Firefox is compromised, even with DuckDuckGo. Might as well switch to Brave Browser and use Brave Search.
Might as well use elinks honestly. I can't remember the last site I went to that really needed a modern browser and wasn't just a replacement for an "app." Firefox is there for my bank account, my brokerage, and Discord. Everything else is either handled by open source tools or elinks.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/add-or-remove-search-en...
Be aware that in Firefox, the "Search Bar" is a distinct widget from the "Address Bar" (omnibar/"awesomebar"). If it's missing or you can't find it, here's the docs for that UX flow:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/customize-firefox-contr...
If you do this, you can (of course) revert your change in about:preferences#search; the new search engine will persist there as an alternate choice.
(Tested and confirmed this works with e.g. Yandex in release version 98.0.1. This patch only removed, essentially, Firefox' promoted or sponsored search engines -- not core functionality. (It also erased and reset user preferences, but that's a separate problem)).