Well FSF still not updated the Icecat binary but icecat still maintained by FSF Heros.
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GNU Icecat on github? the same platform that build copilot ?
RMS said about the great harm GitHub has done to the free software community
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For more techy people, I recommend trying sxmo interface with postmarketOS. In that case, you wonāt be using systemd or gnome.
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Of course, what one should be aware of is that āIcecatā comes from automated scripts that basically add brand-removal patches to Firefox ESR.
If you check with the official source code repository, it really isnāt maintained. It absolutely hasnāt kept up with known bugs (e.g. last CVE fixed that wasnāt part of Firefox ESR was in 2021/12/07), etc. gnuzilla.git - GNUzilla and IceCat . The last material change to Icecat was in 2022/11/16 that including code to help āresist fingerprintingā. Here is their public mailing list: bug-gnuzilla Archives ā activity is near 0.
The official repository doesnāt show any work on HW acceleration.
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You may be right Privacy2, butā¦ you know. On some Level you can make a fork from Source Code. Update future security issue with community ( i know this is really hard), and just do not delver any new options, to some Software. In this case you may have not any fancy DRM, Video or Server changed interaction behavior which will your be banned by a slow feeding of data from Servers by Alphabet, Meta or Google. But its fully compatible with plain HTML and 90% of the old Web, just not with the fancy one.
Its the same for Applications SDKs and accessing APIs of Mainstream Megacorps like Meta, Apple, Amazon, Facebook or Tennet.
Back 2 Browsers, they are dying and become obsolete. So i think we can take have that risk and stay in a future where we have to use some app to access special Mainstream Content like Videos on Alphabets place or Data from Metaā¦ and just use a highly fast updated Application. Right now the usual User do not use a Browser any more. Kids do not know what a File is or a hierarchy of files and folders, cause they just let the phone os search (to share that data with the internet), to find and open a file. And of course this Kids do not know what the Internet is, what HTTP was, what was Usenet or BTX and just skip itā¦ and will not known about URLSā¦ so we have to take care on alternatives in future.
Personally i would suggest to just write scripts for accessing Information indirect by Bots, and have a sandbox liked check to the accessed files before a further processing and a display to your holy computers.
Browsers are dying and be the new FLASHā¦ however its a multi level Tool to access and describe Information like Math and Language to Humans or Turing Machines.
Edit: By the Way: If i download a Video File, the Script did not need to have Hardware acceleration, if i have that Video as File and my mplayer or vlc hasā¦ which in the end will display/render that file for me. I still love RSS ;D
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You may be interested to know that GNU IceCat had many recent commits relating to privacy front-ends; they use āPrivacy Redirectā instead of āLibRedirectā. Activity otherwise remains nearly non-existent.
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Is this a new Firefox annoyance?
When starting a video from a streaming site, FF now defaults to a muted state, displaying an āUnmuteā button over the video in progress. Iāve never seen this behavior before, and Iāve never had to unmute an online video when starting it from my streaming account. I assume itās due to a recent FF update from a couple of days ago.
Unmuting is not persistent, which is incredibly annoying. So is having to click to unmute every episode.
CONDITIONS
OS: Linux Mint, multiple computers
Browsers: FF, FF-ESR, LibreWolf - even in Troubleshoot mode
Sites: e.g. mhzchoice.com, www.criterionchannel.com
I have no system, or remote (BT keyboard) mute buttons activated anywhere that I can see.
In FF Preferences, I do have āBlock Audio and Videoā enabled, as always, in the autoplay settingsā¦ because I donāt want anything to autoplay. Anyway, thereās no āAllow Audioā setting (only) there. (Of courseā¦)
It also doesnāt have any effect if I whitelist the website for cookie storage.
I do have Pi-hole enabled, but I also had it enabled before this strange behavior started.
Is anyone besides me experiencing this now?
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I have to use Edge or Chrome at work, so I use Edge. It also videos by default, at least for the sites I use often.
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Strangeā¦ My LibreWolf did not have this problem until a few days ago.
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Iām sure some are interested in whatās new from FF:
Firefox 142 sees its Link Previews feature graduate to stable builds, and longer requiring a keyboard shortcut to trigger. Right-click on a link and select Preview Link to see a thumbnail, brief description, and estimated reading time.
Previews can optionally include AI-generated key points. Enabling this downloads an on-device model to parse links. Bullet point summaries generated by the AI very slowly, often incorrect, banal, or lacking the point ā clicking through and reading is faster.
Link Previews is available to users in the USA, Canada, the UK and Australia using the browser on a device with āmore than 3 GB of available RAMā, though itās not clear if thatās free RAM or just installed RAM.
Link Previews are part of a progressive rollout. You may not have access to feature after you update to Firefox 142.
(from Firefox 142 Adds New Tab Topics, Local AI in Extensions + More - OMG! Ubuntu)
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How to (allegedly) disable AI in Firefox:
about:config
browser.ml.chat.enabled false
browser.ml.chat.provider [blank]
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The Register: ā¦it interfaces with llama[.]cpp, which lets you run Metaās Llama LLM and other models, locally or in the cloud.
(Boldtype by me.)
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This muting issue has stopped recently in LibreWolf. I donāt think I did anything specific to fix it.
Not fixed after all.
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