In recent news, Google has put forth a proposal known as the "Web Environment Integrity Explainer", authored by four of its engineers. On the surface, it
There are hardly any alternatives for people who don’t have the time to self-host and setup everything.
“Oh but Firefox!” the tools that Mozilla provides are indeed good - but there’s no Mozilla Photos, Mozilla Notes, Mozilla Assistant, and so on.
“Oh but Microsoft!” and why would that be better than Google?
“Oh but mix Firefox with Proton and this specific GitHub project for photo management and this FOSS notes apps with a Docker backend for sync and thi-” I wish I had the time to do that, truly, I actually prefer many of the FOSS alternatives I’ve seen lately. I do not have the time nor hardware to do this correctly.
I wholeheartedly agree. I’m a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don’t have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
Fully automated or fully integrated? And how do you know? Not trying to be confrontational, but whenever I think a tool doesn’t exist, it totally does. It just isn’t popular enough.
There isn’t. Closest there is is NextCloud, but you need to self host it, since it isn’t E2EE so using a provider would just put you back in square one. Proton is a close second but its still miles away, they have a lot of products but their devs seem to be spread thin between then.
I kinda agree with you. Before my exams I had lot of time. I used to self host nextcloud, email and invidious etc. But during exam had no time to manage instances or update my packages, one after than another they kept showing error and they went offline.
I stopped my VPS and started using Google Drive(it was already available on my android) to share my notes temporarily with friends, soon I kept using it. I hope protonmail becomes better so I can start using them instead of other products
What I don’t like about Proton is that I can’t combine Mail Plus and Pass Plus. I don’t need a 500 GB Proton Drive or Proton VPN, but I like their Mail and Password Manager. Now I use Mail for free and Password Manager for €12/year. I would like to pay €3.99/month for the Mail offer, but for that I would have to upgrade to the much more extensive Proton Unlimited.
I would pay 7.99 for Proton Unlimited. But I can’t pay alnost 200 Euros for it all at once. I’m not a big fan of the huge cost difference between monthly, 12m and 24m subscriptions.
It’s a hard fight between all the time maintaining your own stuff takes and the utter resistance by other users who just won’t learn anything new or use any real security.
Microsoft is arguably worse than Google. They make you pay for the software they use to harvest your data for free.
These businesses should be paying for the data, the raw materials, they collect and use to build their products. You can’t assemble a car without paying for the nuts and bolts, but that’s what they do.
I’m sorry but this sentiment is so utterly detached from the technical capabilities and general engagement of the average layman that it bears a response.
Tech savvy people have this awful habit of calling anyone not in our specific field an idiot when they don’t do things our preferred way, and it’s not a good look. Those people aren’t the weird ones, we are. And if you’re the sort of person who thinks you’ve elevated yourself above the commoners because you don’t use Google’s stuff … yeah, that and 5 bucks will get you a latte. There are oceans of professional expertise you’re not privvy to, and unless you really think you’re doing better than everyone at everything, a little humility, temperance, and grace for others is warranted.
I’m basically “the idiot”. Decently tech savvy, but non-IT. Very capable of learning what I need to know, but I haven’t really had the time or mental capacity to learn how to do a lot of the things I need to to get away from corporate overlords.
I’m working on it, and have been for a while, but in the meantime I do use several google services, because that’s what I’ve been using for many many years and change is really hard. Especially when you have to initiate the change yourself, and especially when you know if you switch to a stop-gap solution you’ll loose all impetus to actually keep making the change (which I will).
The biggest challenge is learning what is worth it to self-host, what hard/software to use for the configuration I want, what’s compatible with devices I own (windows, Linux, iOS and android), etc. I’ve been running Plex for like 10 years now (windows then Linux), but it’s a very basic setup on a host pc I don’t use for much else. Beyond that, I need to learn almost everything from the bottom up, and that’s a lot to learn -just- to avoid an existing company and their existing products that I’ve been using for years. Unlike my Plex content, I would actually care if I lost my other self-host data, so not something to fuck around half-ass with.
I can’t blame people for not wanting to/knowing how to do it. I like learning this shit (because of the end result, not because I have interest in it, sorry not sorry) and I still don’t actually want to do it.
Web-browser? I’m using Firefox since the beginning of this year.
Email? I’ve an account on ProtonMail for serious stuff, and Gmail for garbage, less serious stuff and spam collector.
Cloud storage? Well, unless anyone can gift me a Raspberry Pi, a hub and an ELI5 Nextcloud manual for dummies, I have to keep using Google Drive.
Videos? That depends. I’m watching videos on Youtube, but I’m uploading my own content on Peertube.
Phone? I need another ELI5 custom rom manual for dummies, and it has to be specific for my device. Otherwise, I’ll keep using Android, but with most minimum usage of Google apps.
Can’t fix everything, but Google drive is easily replaced by proton drive. Google notes/keep or any kind of note taking is easily replaced (and improved) by Obsidian, and on android you can install f-droid as an alternative store.
Downside is that these thinks cost money. But everything has a cost, and at least here the cost is clear, and upfront.
I just wish Firefox would improve their UI and add a few features without needing to rely on extensions (tab groups, vertical tabs, sharing tabs from mobile to desktop, etc.).
I switched back from years with Chrome then new Chromium Edge, haven’t noticed an issue. But everything I do is Ctrl+W, middle-click, and typing into search fields. If I’m using a browser’s UI, it’s for the menu or a bookmark folder.
I can’t really fathom what a browser UI is used for beside this and the less there is of one on-screen, the better.
Yes. Because the UI and UX of a tool that you use everyday matters. The average user will hold ease of use over privacy 9 times out of 10. In my case though I wasn’t able to use FF for a while due to the lack of debugger support for a project I was working on. Now it comes down to me having to work on multiple projects at once so tab groups and organization are key. Now don’t get me wrong, once Chrome totally kills adblockers I’ll drop Chromium browsers like a bad habit, but the point still stands though, FF could use some UI improvements.
Id argue on mobile for instance, firefox is easier to use. One of the LARGEST differences between chrome and firefox from a UI standpoint is bottom search/site box over top one, especially for larger phones.
This of course doesnt consider anything related to addons yet.
Well, super bad breath is not your ordinary bad breath. It would possibly melt your lungs faster than the fire. Bacteria that can thrive in superman’s body is not to be messed with.
Is it possible to use it without syncing all browser tabs? I tried to read about it on their website since I want to know exactly what they collect and how they store it but couldn’t find anuthing other than instructions on how to set it up.
Which ones? Besides sending a tab from mobile to desktop it doesn’t have tab groups or vertical tabs. Those features rely on extensions and/or custom css.
Hey you have genuine wants and needs from a web browser and I respect that.
I’ll say though that this sort of attitude (well Chrome has this little thing I like so I allow them to take control of what was once the independent internet) is what is going to screw us.
I use FF. But I also use Chromium based browsers out of necessity. I understand where you’re coming from but what’s also going to screw us is Mozilla not keeping up with the latest features which is something they’ve struggled with. At the end of the day they have to give people a reason to switch and use FF as their main browser. Simply saying “better privacy features” isn’t enough for the average user.
IMO there are none. They are all janky. Your best bet, (and what I may start doing), is to make separate folders in your bookmarks bar and add any tabs you want in there as a group. Not ideal but it works.
They do. The majority of Mozilla’s funding is from Google. That said, they’re still our best hope. I’m sure Firefox has constant internal conversations about how to handle their relationship with Google, and they probably have standing offers from many others to switch to a different search engine.
Except when it doesn’t. That saying never made sense (far more species have gone extinct than exist today) and it doesn’t apply here.
Piracy will continue, obviously, but what we’re seeing here is the creation of an internet we can’t even fathom yet. This is just where it starts.
Also consider how much more difficult it will be for the average person to participate in piracy. Remember a few months back when Microsoft floated they were basically looking to lock down windows? No unsigned apps, no win32, etc. People will get around that, of course, but fewer people will. Especially if they continue with this trend towards stripping options and de-admin-ing all users unless they pay for an enterprise license.
Then there’s the dangerous trend toward encryption being broken by regulation and possibly even VPNs being rendered useless for anyone but businesses. There goes secure torrenting.
The trends don’t look good, across the board. We can’t just sit here and hope it all works out and the loopholes are found, like it always has before.
I am by no means saying we should passively hope that things will work out. What I am saying is that we have no reason to be defeatist. In the same time that we’ve seen aggressive pushes for a more locked down internet, we’ve seen dozens of open source projects to fight back.
It’s my right to have my personal computer display what I want it to display. It’s my right set my device to reject internet traffic I don’t want to receive. It’s my right to instruct my machine to download the data I want, and refuse to download the data I don’t want. If you make something publicly available online, then the public can consume that or refuse that, in part or in whole, as and when they wish. If a company or a browser wants to try and interfere with that, then they’ve chosen their fate.
Life finds a way
Yarr
I hope **chrome **fails terribly. Just like Internet Explorer(IE). Firefox all the way
Anyone still using Google products is a fuckin idiot, IMO
There are hardly any alternatives for people who don’t have the time to self-host and setup everything.
“Oh but Firefox!” the tools that Mozilla provides are indeed good - but there’s no Mozilla Photos, Mozilla Notes, Mozilla Assistant, and so on.
“Oh but Microsoft!” and why would that be better than Google?
“Oh but mix Firefox with Proton and this specific GitHub project for photo management and this FOSS notes apps with a Docker backend for sync and thi-” I wish I had the time to do that, truly, I actually prefer many of the FOSS alternatives I’ve seen lately. I do not have the time nor hardware to do this correctly.
I wholeheartedly agree. I’m a technical person, I run Linux as my primary OS and use FOSS software. But I also have a full time job and 2 small kids, and frankly I just don’t have the time or patience to be a full time sysadmin. Proton has come a long way in providing alternatives to Gmail, GCalendar, GDrive, etc., but like you said if you want to replace ALL of Google you practically have to self host a gazillion Nextcloud instances or whatever.
Why does it have to be Mozilla everything? I want Mozilla to continue doing what it does best: build browsers and (maybe) mail clients.
Not everything has to be unified. I’d be quite content with Teehee Photos, Hoho Notes and Huehuehue Assistant as long as they’re decent tools.
deleted by creator
Fully automated or fully integrated? And how do you know? Not trying to be confrontational, but whenever I think a tool doesn’t exist, it totally does. It just isn’t popular enough.
There isn’t. Closest there is is NextCloud, but you need to self host it, since it isn’t E2EE so using a provider would just put you back in square one. Proton is a close second but its still miles away, they have a lot of products but their devs seem to be spread thin between then.
there are hosted nextcloud servers available. the nextcloud website has some listed on their website.
I kinda agree with you. Before my exams I had lot of time. I used to self host nextcloud, email and invidious etc. But during exam had no time to manage instances or update my packages, one after than another they kept showing error and they went offline.
I stopped my VPS and started using Google Drive(it was already available on my android) to share my notes temporarily with friends, soon I kept using it. I hope protonmail becomes better so I can start using them instead of other products
This is how they do it. They wedge themselves in via convenience with the hopes that we’ll stay on their ecosystem eventually.
I hope you’ll soon find the time to regain your independence from them. Best of luck.
What I don’t like about Proton is that I can’t combine Mail Plus and Pass Plus. I don’t need a 500 GB Proton Drive or Proton VPN, but I like their Mail and Password Manager. Now I use Mail for free and Password Manager for €12/year. I would like to pay €3.99/month for the Mail offer, but for that I would have to upgrade to the much more extensive Proton Unlimited.
I’m in the exact same position. The pass manager for €12/year is awesome and I want the Mail Plus but the 500GB drive is overkill for me.
I would pay 7.99 for Proton Unlimited. But I can’t pay alnost 200 Euros for it all at once. I’m not a big fan of the huge cost difference between monthly, 12m and 24m subscriptions.
It’s a hard fight between all the time maintaining your own stuff takes and the utter resistance by other users who just won’t learn anything new or use any real security.
Microsoft is arguably worse than Google. They make you pay for the software they use to harvest your data for free.
These businesses should be paying for the data, the raw materials, they collect and use to build their products. You can’t assemble a car without paying for the nuts and bolts, but that’s what they do.
I’m sorry but this sentiment is so utterly detached from the technical capabilities and general engagement of the average layman that it bears a response.
Tech savvy people have this awful habit of calling anyone not in our specific field an idiot when they don’t do things our preferred way, and it’s not a good look. Those people aren’t the weird ones, we are. And if you’re the sort of person who thinks you’ve elevated yourself above the commoners because you don’t use Google’s stuff … yeah, that and 5 bucks will get you a latte. There are oceans of professional expertise you’re not privvy to, and unless you really think you’re doing better than everyone at everything, a little humility, temperance, and grace for others is warranted.
I have to agree with this.
I’m basically “the idiot”. Decently tech savvy, but non-IT. Very capable of learning what I need to know, but I haven’t really had the time or mental capacity to learn how to do a lot of the things I need to to get away from corporate overlords.
I’m working on it, and have been for a while, but in the meantime I do use several google services, because that’s what I’ve been using for many many years and change is really hard. Especially when you have to initiate the change yourself, and especially when you know if you switch to a stop-gap solution you’ll loose all impetus to actually keep making the change (which I will).
The biggest challenge is learning what is worth it to self-host, what hard/software to use for the configuration I want, what’s compatible with devices I own (windows, Linux, iOS and android), etc. I’ve been running Plex for like 10 years now (windows then Linux), but it’s a very basic setup on a host pc I don’t use for much else. Beyond that, I need to learn almost everything from the bottom up, and that’s a lot to learn -just- to avoid an existing company and their existing products that I’ve been using for years. Unlike my Plex content, I would actually care if I lost my other self-host data, so not something to fuck around half-ass with.
I can’t blame people for not wanting to/knowing how to do it. I like learning this shit (because of the end result, not because I have interest in it, sorry not sorry) and I still don’t actually want to do it.
OK, then let’s check my idiocy.
Web-browser? I’m using Firefox since the beginning of this year.
Email? I’ve an account on ProtonMail for serious stuff, and Gmail for garbage, less serious stuff and spam collector.
Cloud storage? Well, unless anyone can gift me a Raspberry Pi, a hub and an ELI5 Nextcloud manual for dummies, I have to keep using Google Drive.
Videos? That depends. I’m watching videos on Youtube, but I’m uploading my own content on Peertube.
Phone? I need another ELI5 custom rom manual for dummies, and it has to be specific for my device. Otherwise, I’ll keep using Android, but with most minimum usage of Google apps.
I think that’s all.
Can’t fix everything, but Google drive is easily replaced by proton drive. Google notes/keep or any kind of note taking is easily replaced (and improved) by Obsidian, and on android you can install f-droid as an alternative store.
Downside is that these thinks cost money. But everything has a cost, and at least here the cost is clear, and upfront.
So basically every software/front-end web dev? Lol ok.
I agree, as I reply on my pixel6 pro
So you don’t have an android phone I suppose?
Pixel phones.
I just wish Firefox would improve their UI and add a few features without needing to rely on extensions (tab groups, vertical tabs, sharing tabs from mobile to desktop, etc.).
Are we seriously sitting here, in the shadow of the open internet’s apocalypse, complaining yet again about Firefox’s UI?
It’s like Superman trying to rescue you from a fire and you complaining about his breath.
There’s no UI in the world that will make the internet bareable without functional ad blockers.
Hey, I switched to Firefox because I liked its UI better (after Quantum though)
I switched back from years with Chrome then new Chromium Edge, haven’t noticed an issue. But everything I do is Ctrl+W, middle-click, and typing into search fields. If I’m using a browser’s UI, it’s for the menu or a bookmark folder.
I can’t really fathom what a browser UI is used for beside this and the less there is of one on-screen, the better.
I left it because their “new” UI, but that was just thelast straw (after 20 years) Won’t go back.
Yes. Because the UI and UX of a tool that you use everyday matters. The average user will hold ease of use over privacy 9 times out of 10. In my case though I wasn’t able to use FF for a while due to the lack of debugger support for a project I was working on. Now it comes down to me having to work on multiple projects at once so tab groups and organization are key. Now don’t get me wrong, once Chrome totally kills adblockers I’ll drop Chromium browsers like a bad habit, but the point still stands though, FF could use some UI improvements.
Id argue on mobile for instance, firefox is easier to use. One of the LARGEST differences between chrome and firefox from a UI standpoint is bottom search/site box over top one, especially for larger phones.
This of course doesnt consider anything related to addons yet.
deleted by creator
Or Mr. Incredible being sued for saving a guy commuting suicide…
Well, super bad breath is not your ordinary bad breath. It would possibly melt your lungs faster than the fire. Bacteria that can thrive in superman’s body is not to be messed with.
Removed by mod
I’m glad to see that even when we’re about to get robbed, there’ll still be humor about it. Grim, but I like it.
I literally swore off Firefox for half a decade because they removed and broke Panorama with their engine rewrite, so yes.
I can send a tab from my mobile Firefox to my desktop Firefox by default, so that’s at least one of those that doesn’t need an extension.
Yeah I thought it had that feature already but I wasn’t seeing it. I’ll have to look again.
On mobile: Hit the three line menu button -> “Send link to device”
On desktop: Right click on a tab -> “Send tab to device”
Kind of odd that they’re not the same language, actually. For what it’s worth I’m on iOS so it might be different for FF on Android.
You can also send either direction via the share menu, so long as you have your Firefox account signed in to them.
Is it possible to use it without syncing all browser tabs? I tried to read about it on their website since I want to know exactly what they collect and how they store it but couldn’t find anuthing other than instructions on how to set it up.
I don’t know anything about tab syncing, so I don’t know. Sorry!
They do have the send tab to device feature. I send tabs to my son, who lives with his mom all the time.
As long as the devices are connected to the overall Mozilla account. Same between my phone Firefox and PC.
I don’t have too many tabs that I would group together, but I can see how nice of a feature that would be.
I’ve used Firefox from the beginning and never trusted Google and Chrome. It has gotten better, but at a slower route.
Firefox already natively supports most of the features you listed.
Which ones? Besides sending a tab from mobile to desktop it doesn’t have tab groups or vertical tabs. Those features rely on extensions and/or custom css.
Hey you have genuine wants and needs from a web browser and I respect that.
I’ll say though that this sort of attitude (well Chrome has this little thing I like so I allow them to take control of what was once the independent internet) is what is going to screw us.
I use FF. But I also use Chromium based browsers out of necessity. I understand where you’re coming from but what’s also going to screw us is Mozilla not keeping up with the latest features which is something they’ve struggled with. At the end of the day they have to give people a reason to switch and use FF as their main browser. Simply saying “better privacy features” isn’t enough for the average user.
Any tab group extension recommendations? Having issues finding good ones
IMO there are none. They are all janky. Your best bet, (and what I may start doing), is to make separate folders in your bookmarks bar and add any tabs you want in there as a group. Not ideal but it works.
Mozilla I think gets millions from google. At least they did at one point in a deal to set google as a default engine.
They do. The majority of Mozilla’s funding is from Google. That said, they’re still our best hope. I’m sure Firefox has constant internal conversations about how to handle their relationship with Google, and they probably have standing offers from many others to switch to a different search engine.
Except when it doesn’t. That saying never made sense (far more species have gone extinct than exist today) and it doesn’t apply here.
Piracy will continue, obviously, but what we’re seeing here is the creation of an internet we can’t even fathom yet. This is just where it starts.
Also consider how much more difficult it will be for the average person to participate in piracy. Remember a few months back when Microsoft floated they were basically looking to lock down windows? No unsigned apps, no win32, etc. People will get around that, of course, but fewer people will. Especially if they continue with this trend towards stripping options and de-admin-ing all users unless they pay for an enterprise license.
Then there’s the dangerous trend toward encryption being broken by regulation and possibly even VPNs being rendered useless for anyone but businesses. There goes secure torrenting.
The trends don’t look good, across the board. We can’t just sit here and hope it all works out and the loopholes are found, like it always has before.
I am by no means saying we should passively hope that things will work out. What I am saying is that we have no reason to be defeatist. In the same time that we’ve seen aggressive pushes for a more locked down internet, we’ve seen dozens of open source projects to fight back.
It’s my right to have my personal computer display what I want it to display. It’s my right set my device to reject internet traffic I don’t want to receive. It’s my right to instruct my machine to download the data I want, and refuse to download the data I don’t want. If you make something publicly available online, then the public can consume that or refuse that, in part or in whole, as and when they wish. If a company or a browser wants to try and interfere with that, then they’ve chosen their fate.
Monzo? Hmm