Clearly, Google is serious about trying to oust ad blockers from its browser, or at least those extensions with fuller (V2) levels of functionality. One of the crucial twists with V3 is that it prevents the use of remotely hosted code – as a security measure – but this also means ad blockers can’t update their filter lists without going through Google’s review process. What does that mean? Way slower updates for said filters, which hampers the ability of the ad-blocking extension to keep up with the necessary changes to stay effective.

(This isn’t just about browsers, either, as the war on advert dodgers extends to YouTube, too, as we’ve seen in recent months).

At any rate, Google is playing with fire here somewhat – or Firefox, perhaps we should say – as this may be the shove some folks need to get them considering another of the best web browsers out there aside from Chrome. Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has vowed to maintain support for V2 extensions, while introducing support for V3 alongside to give folks a choice (now there’s a radical idea).

  • @DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    1755 months ago

    I downloaded Librewolf today - the privacy oriented fork of Firefox!

    Good to see there are browser variants that aren’t just Chrome.

    • @Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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      75 months ago

      I’ve been using librewolf for a several months. Be careful because streaming doesn’t always work on it due to DRM features, and YouTube has been spotty AF. With YouTube it might start the video a couple seconds into it, buffer for no discernable reason, or just skip a few random seconds.

      • partial_accumen
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        35 months ago

        There’s still Vivali which is Chromium based and still supporting V2 extension (like uBlock) until June 2025. Its not a full fix, but its a stay of execution. That said, I’m a FF primary user.

        • funkajunk
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          -45 months ago

          Vivaldi isn’t entirely open source, if that matters to you.

          Brave would be my recommendation, I just disable the crypto stuff.

          • @datavoid@lemmy.ml
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            25 months ago

            I’m already mad about having to potentially abandon my highly customized Vivaldi should ublock lite not work up to my standards

            • @Mossheart@lemmy.ca
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              15 months ago

              Is a combo of ublock lite and Vivaldi’s own blocker insufficient? They made updates to allow custom lists, I think. What about a network wide blocker like a pihole or adguard.

        • @Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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          25 months ago

          And I do. Sometimes I’ll just fire up Edge if Chrome isn’t installed since it’s chromium based.

      • warm
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        25 months ago

        If people used other browsers, then the market share would change and this would become less and less of a problem.

      • skulblaka
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        105 months ago

        In what situation do you need one?

        I’ve been using Firefox for over a decade and have literally never once needed to open a different web browser. For anything, ever. This is a very common complaint that tons of people seem to have that I have never seen happen even once out in the wild.

        • @sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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          -15 months ago

          Firefox is getting so small it’s starting to disappear out of the testing matrix. Confluence has issues with it, you can’t always log into Vanguard on Firefox, many news website layouts have overlapping elements on Firefox, quite a few shopping websites too (H&M in Europe has a long-standing but with putting stuff in the shopping basket until they revamped their website a couple of months ago). Etc etc. I see it ALL the time.

        • @suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          Several government websites for the state of Pennsylvania complain and refuse to work if they detect that you aren’t using chrome/edge/safari.

          • bitwolf
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            85 months ago

            You can spoof your useragent to appear as chrome. And you should as it makes your browser less “unique”

            • @suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml
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              5 months ago

              While you can do this, it’s not clear to me that you should. There are a number of additional laws having to do with perjury and misusing goverment sites and while I would undoubtedly agree with you, were you to assert the application of those laws to the utilization of a user agent switcher is a ridiculous overreach, I am just as certain I have no desire to be in the hot-seat on the day we all find out.

              • bitwolf
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                35 months ago

                Oh wow I didn’t know that. I’ll have to double check for the states that are relevant for me.

                I imagine many people naively install a privacy extension and unknowingly have altered useragents

                • @datavoid@lemmy.ml
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                  55 months ago

                  Imagine the government coming after someone, demanding they give Google their fair share

        • Evkob (they/them)
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          45 months ago

          I use Librewolf on desktop and Mull on mobile. I have a few extensions on both, which could definitely contribute to issues. When I have issues (usually government sites or financial stuff, sometimes DRM-related stuff for media) it’s easier to just use a Chromium-based browser with no extensions than try to troubleshoot specifically what’s causing the issues. I keep Falkon (desktop) and Vanadium (mobile) installed for this purpose.

          I get the feeling a lot of issues people are having in Firefox might be due to extensions or settings, which gets “fixed” by using another browser (which happens to be Chromium-based because most browsers are) and they blame the issue on Firefox itself.

        • @Zetta@mander.xyz
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          125 months ago

          I also use Firefox on my work computer, I need to quickly authorize a login in the browser before the local “app” opens (“app” because it’s just a webpage pretending to be an app) and I just recently got a notification that slack won’t support Firefox anymore so please switch to chrome. The fucking animals.

      • Fonzie!
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        15 months ago

        I’ve had that once, as well as some websites running inexplicably slow on FF.

        I changed my user agent to a recent Chrome one and that solved it issue.
        Moral of the story? Websites are discriminating.

      • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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        275 months ago

        Almost 20 years and I’ve never needed a Chromium browser for anything. I’m sorry you were forced to use such garbage ass software.

        • @BassTurd@lemmy.world
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          75 months ago

          I have chromium installed for the sole reason to cast some streams to my remote TVs. Otherwise it stays closed. I tried some work around with FF, but I couldn’t get it to work. It’s only once or twice a week for live sporting events, so I can stomach it.

          • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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            105 months ago

            I understand where you’re coming from. It’s never happened to me, but if a website didn’t work with Firefox, I would just assume it’s a shit site ran by rookies who know nothing, and move on to a different site. I understand most people don’t have that kind of principle though.

            • @BassTurd@lemmy.world
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              115 months ago

              It’s not that the site doesn’t work in FF, it’s that casting the stream from that site to a remote TV in the house is only possible in chromium, at least with my current device setup. If I just watch on my computer, I watch in FF.

              • @LucidNightmare@lemm.ee
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                35 months ago

                Ah, you did say that. I’m sorry for my misunderstanding. I’ve never tried that, and you’re the first I’ve seen to mention it. I concede to your argument.

                • @BassTurd@lemmy.world
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                  45 months ago

                  I’m in the slow process of replacing devices with HTPCs then I won’t need to cast anything. Unfortunately computers and time don’t grow on trees.

    • Album
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      295 months ago

      yep firefox with arkenfox for me, same deal as librewolf. And Mull on mobile.

      Switched about 2-3 months ago thinking it might be difficult or impact me negatively or something but its been easy and great.

      • @kitnaht@lemmy.world
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        215 months ago

        You know the problem I have with Librewolf? – Fuckall nobody knows how to spell it.

        The beauty of Firefox is that even the densest idiot knows how to spell those two words. And with attention spans the equivalent of a gnat, people need to have things simplified for them as much as humanly possible.

        Fortunately enough, Firefox is about the only one with a renderer that isn’t controlled by Google, but - even now they’re shifting to a pro-advertising stance and backing off of the privacy orientation that they took just a year or two ago.

        • @Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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          75 months ago

          Yes, and we will drop Mozilla when it drops uBlock as well. We will all get behind whatever open-source browser stops ads, and it will very quickly become the most widely used browser. Why? Because everybody despises fucking ads and you can’t curb-stomp them into liking ads, that’s why.

          Google can spend all the money it likes trying to piss on users and tell them it’s raining but at the end of the day, a new king will be crowned and if it isn’t Chrome and it isn’t Firefox, then it will be something else.

          And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it. Assertions to the contrary are FUD constantly being seeded by Google, Microsoft and their ilk to destroy competition. This is an existential necessity for Google, you can bet they are doing everything in their power to maintain the status quo.

          • @WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            35 months ago

            And no, FOSS doesn’t need money behind it. FOSS needs a dedicated community behind it

            how do you imagine a Linux-sized community getting built around firefox in a few days? and even that is a bad example, because a lot of linux devs are paid by their employer from a company anywhere on the world

            • @Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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              15 months ago

              Nice straw man. Nobody said the community was going to “Linux-sized” nor that it was going to be built in a “few days,” nor that it was going to have paid devs. It’s like you’re being intentionally obtuse.

              There are already multiple supported forks of Firefox and while it doesn’t take much to maintain such forks when they are being fed a large part of the codebase by Mozilla, if you think such a project would not pick right the fuck up where Mozilla left off if Mozilla tried to pull a Google and get behind Manifest V3, you are, I believe, mistaken.

              Mozilla itself owes its existence to Netscape’s failure in the face of unfair competition by Microsoft’s Explorer. Netscape released its source code, Mozilla was founded and the power of open-source created Firefox. Chrome’s halfhearted support of Mozilla is itself owed to the fact that they don’t want to get spanked over Chrome like Microsoft was over IE.

    • sunzu2
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      15 months ago

      They know that’s how peasants feel that’s why they feel zero shame or guilt about fuxking people over. We are not human to them anyway.

      • @Frays6142@lemmy.world
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        85 months ago

        Teams works in Firefox, I sadly have to use it almost every day interacting with clients who use teams for comms.

        • @Frays6142@lemmy.world
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          05 months ago

          I’ve not had either of those issues on my laptop, using teams through Firefox. I wonder if there is something else going on there.

        • frozen
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          35 months ago

          One of my company’s customers is a DoD contractor that uses the government version of Teams, which does require Chromium, unfortunately. Or at least, I haven’t found a way to make it work on Firefox yet.

    • @spookedintownsville@lemmy.world
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      195 months ago

      Most “Chrome-only” web applications I have to use I can get around just by changing my user agent string and everything works fine. I try not to use that stuff when I can, though.

    • @linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      15 months ago

      Google’s working on fixing that for you right now. That’s more people switch to Firefox and there’s futures don’t work they’ll start complaining to the developers and then to Firefox. Microsoft road the it only works in IE train for a long time and it eventually buried them

    • @WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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      65 months ago

      Firefox doesn’t support a fair few Chrome features because of security and privacy reasons, such as WebHID, WebUSB

      I’m very serious about my opinion that we are better off without them. If the feature does not exist, it cannot be activated by a bug in the permission system, and also the lesser technically inclined people won’t allow them by reflex/accident

    • katy ✨
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      515 months ago

      We’re going to have a serious problem on our hands soon with compatibility. I’m a software dev and I’m already seeing a few issues here and there where Chrome is being treated as the default expected browser and features don’t work on Firefox.

      It’s basically IE6 and ActiveX all over again.

    • @pumpkinseedoil@sh.itjust.works
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      105 months ago

      I’m using Firefox as my only browser. If everything works in Firefox that’s fine for me.

      That’s the best advantage of only making websites / web applications for fun (for friend groups, video games, family etc)

        • Kronusdark
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          145 months ago

          I saw this quote a while back “if you only make code that works in chrome you aren’t a web developer, you are a google developer.”

      • Konala Koala
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        15 months ago

        What about ad blocking services where you would need them, such as browsing into an ad farm of a website?

  • @werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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    -45 months ago

    I heard that google is sending fake focus groups invites to males around your area. Yeah, it’s true! Someone gullible enough to drive to their facility and sit in their special google chairs. Once they sit, the chair 💺 traps them and a small machine arm approaches in between their legs, injects local anesthesia and procedes to remove the genitalia. It was a really well done Fox News report that I heard on MPR. It’s supposed to be part of alphabet’s war on cancer. They will eventually have the robots smart enough to remove only cancer cells. But yeah, for now it’s removing the whole thing. So be on the lookout for that. And ads! I hate the ads!

  • @sramder@lemmy.world
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    65 months ago

    Comeon 0.0001%! Let’s get those last 5 people who know what an extension is but were holding out for…???

    Yeah… These articles are like reading the tally marks on a prison wall. Let it go.

  • @cley_faye@lemmy.world
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    -65 months ago

    Move, yeah. To Firefox… meh. The writing’s not on the wall yet, but we’re not going to ignore the very heavy signaling Mozilla has been doing for years now.

  • @wabafee@lemmy.world
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    145 months ago

    It’s going to be internet explorer era again. I wonder which will replace chrome in the future.

    • @hjjanger@lemmy.world
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      -15 months ago

      How? If you would have said Chromium based era, then sure, possible. Internet Explorer for 64 bit was officially retired June 15, 2022 and permanently disabled through an Edge update.

      • @wabafee@lemmy.world
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        15 months ago

        Chromium based era is what I think we had around 2012 and today. But lately Chromium is not exactly equal to Google Chrome now they been getting divergent.

      • @nonfuinoncuro@lemm.ee
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        55 months ago

        it’s not literally just an analogy how a single browser guided by private corporate interests is treated as the only standard

    • rem26_art
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      305 months ago

      yt-dlp is what i normally use, tho its only got a command line interface. I think someone’s made a GUI for it, but I’ve never tried it.

    • astrsk
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      115 months ago

      yt-dlp continues to be the best option for me.

    • sunnie
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      5 months ago

      if youre just looking for a downloader website with zero setup of your own there’s cobalt

    • @Grangle1@lemm.ee
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      55 months ago

      A great privacy focused client for YouTube is FreeTube. Uses a native API or Invidious for playback, and you can download and share videos from it. Doesn’t give any identifying info to Google/YouTube and I’ve never once dealt with an ad. For mobile, Grayjay and NewPipe are similar apps.

      • JaggedRobotPubes
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        25 months ago

        The downloading on freetube is so bad as to be functionally broken, and based on what reading I did to try to get it good, it sounds like it’s gonna stay how it is forever.

        Basically it should be considered a lie to advertise freetube as having a working download function, even if it can technically do it. I wish it were better because it’s a neat little program for viewing without mucking up recommendations!

    • prole
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      365 months ago

      yt-dlp is the gold standard. Not only for YouTube either. Check out the man page, the amount of shit it can do is insane.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️
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        105 months ago

        Nah, man. I point a Betamax camcorder on a tripod at my 4K, 16bpp graphics workstation monitor to make sure I really capture all those pixels.

    • DarkThoughts
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      475 months ago

      Just stop destroying the www by supporting this toxic monopoly. How in the hell are all of those coping tweaks easier than just switching the freaking browser?! It’s like Windows users claiming superiority when they have to have like 10 tools to tweak their operating system, with each year another new one being needed. At what point do you people realize how much you’re getting duped and how you are part of the problem that makes this possible in the first place?

      • Nougat
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        15 months ago

        How dare anyone suggest that there’s a way to accomplish something!

          • Nougat
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            15 months ago

            Yeah from one of those companies that pour tons of money into developing and maintaining a web browser without any way to recoup that expense.

            • @iopq@lemmy.world
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              15 months ago

              They recoup it through shipping a default search engine that’s Google in 90% of the world

              • Nougat
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                -15 months ago

                So they’re just subcontracting the exploitation?

      • @LunchMoneyThief@links.hackliberty.org
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        -15 months ago

        I’ve seen countless of those tweaks throughout the years. You can harangue the people using them all you want, but at the end of the day they’re hooked on a powerful drug. And they’ll do anything to keep their supply.

      • @henfredemars@infosec.pub
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        185 months ago

        I relate to your Windows comment. There was a point where I was that person with a bunch of different tools to modify my OS exactly how I like it, and then I realize I’m just doing more work. If I’m willing to do that work anyway, I might as well have an OS that is more malleable.

        • @iopq@lemmy.world
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          45 months ago

          Yes, same here. After turning off a bunch of services I noticed update stopped working, but I forgot how I turned off the firewall in the first place to make it work again… Never booted windows again except for that one time to change the polling rate of my mouse (windows only app)

    • @henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      155 months ago

      For those who may not want to click the link, this appears to show a workaround that enterprises might use to bypass the change.

      • Nougat
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        135 months ago

        No, enterprises would use the Google admin console as described here.

        The above is for a single machine, applied locally.

        • @henfredemars@infosec.pub
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          45 months ago

          It looks like it’s the same flag to me. I mean, it’s entirely possible that administration could use a different path to applying the setting, but it has the same name.

          • Nougat
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            45 months ago

            Sure, it’s the same flag, but using the admin console would apply it to a group of computers. The methods in the github link are to apply it to a single computer.

      • warm
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        95 months ago

        Only until June 2025 apparently, leave chromium behind already guys.

  • Konala Koala
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    155 months ago

    Good thing I’m on LibreWolf that comes with uBlock Origin.

  • @Harvey656@lemmy.world
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    435 months ago

    While this will drive some users to Firefox, we all know it won’t be enough. Too many people simple don’t know, or don’t care, it won’t affect their lives in any meaningful way, or so they will believe. Google will be harming the tech illiterate and normies (sorry for the slur) because money, bullshit, and to drive the stake deeper into the monopoly. If you have older family members using chrome, sit them down and explain to them the dangers of the internet without adblock.

    • @forgotaboutlaye@lemmy.world
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      95 months ago

      If you have older family members, you could try just installing Firefox for them and tell them it’s their internet now. This worked for me parents.

    • SSTF
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      185 months ago

      It gets me thinking. Tech literate people are the types to install blockers, and would be the same type of people both motivated and knowledgeable about how to switch browsers. On the line of thinking it seems like it is just going to drive them away from Chrome. Tech illiterate people remain unaffected since they are getting ads anyway.

      But then on the other hand, if someone is tech literate then why are they even still using Chrome? Does such a person value whatever advantage Chrome theoretically provides over their ad-blocking?

      • @shneancy@lemmy.world
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        165 months ago

        as a chromium browser user - i’ve been meaning to switch to firefox, and i know it’ll take me maybe a day, but it feels like so much workkkk. In a similar fashion i’ve been meaning to switch to Linux for ages too. I guess it just hasn’t gotten bad enough for me to take action

        as long as my adblockers & script blockers work, i’m not forced to upgrade to win11, and win10 still has security updates i don’t think it’s pushing on my discomfort buttons strong enough. I know the day will come, but like with a lot of things in my life - why do something today when i can do it tomorrow?

        • Yi K
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          35 months ago

          That’s some procrastination going on. Sometimes you should force yourself to start doing something for a minute or so and things will eventually change.

        • @alphabethunter@lemmy.world
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          25 months ago

          I use Opera for myself, but I have to use Chrome for work reasons (user profiles for different work areas based on whatever email is being used at the company computer). Thing is, Firefox also lacks the feature that makes me use Opera: speed dial. My Opera starting page is my speed dials, and speed dials are 10x better than just bookmarks, and I wouldn’t want to go through all the trouble of transfering literally hundreds of saved pages to standard bookmarks. But, if ublock fully stops working, guess I’ll have no choice.

          • @WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            15 months ago

            I don’t know what exactly speed dialsare in opera, but firefox’s homepage can show website tiles in multiple rows

        • @WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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          55 months ago

          if that helps, switching browsers is a lot easier than switching your OS. the automatic import brings over most of your data (bookmarks, passwords, history, …), and you only need to handle the addons, if you had any, and the browser settings if you need anything from there

        • @wewbull@feddit.uk
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          45 months ago

          What do you mean “work”? What is it that needs to move?

          You just fire up Firefox and start using it. It’ll even scrape your chrome setup to move bookmarks and stuff over.

          It’s not an OS. It’s an application.

          • @shneancy@lemmy.world
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            15 months ago

            i don’t use chrome itself. i have a lot of saved things, roughly a million tabs open at every moment, and passwords saved which i do not remember

            • wanderingmagus
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              25 months ago

              There’s extensions to export all your open tabs and then a similar extension to import those tabs and open them as a session in Firefox. Source: I, too, have a million tabs open at every moment, and had to do that to transition myself. Same for exporting/importing passwords.

            • @wewbull@feddit.uk
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              -25 months ago

              If you have tabs like that, they’re not “open”. They are crumbs left as you wandered the internet. You’re not going back to them. Do yourself a favour and close them.

              It’s like having thousands of unread emails in your inbox. At some point you have to stop kidding yourself you’re going to read them.

            • @Hadriscus@lemm.ee
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              15 months ago

              This is all mostly automatically transfered over… I don’t know about passwords though

              • Billiam
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                45 months ago

                I’m not sure if Firefox pulls passwords when you import your data, but you can manually export passwords from Chrome and import them into Firefox.

        • @jape@infosec.pub
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          45 months ago

          I feel you. It’s vey much a convenience thing, and sitting down with something you’re used to.

  • @aceshigh@lemmy.world
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    65 months ago

    My Chromebook heard about it and a few weeks ago developed a display issue. I’m now looking for a new laptop that allows Firefox browser. It’s kind of funny how things work out.