I can only advice to try out a color E ink eReader in person. Their screen is usually low contrast and dark, to a degree that you need to use it with backlight by default, which kinda defeats the purpose of an E ink eReader. For E ink, monochrome displays are still the way to go, and if you really need color, a device without E ink.

I guess even QubesOS would have been affected by this?

Time to find interests that don’t depend on a company taking advantage of my consumption habits.

I wonder if the intention could be purely financial as well: Once the backdoor is in, you can sell it for millions to a company which sells the service of breaking into systems. Or it was such a company itself that pushed the backdoor into the code.

Lavender has been fed with information that targeted people often hide in healthcare facilities. The threashold for labeling anything as a target that is related to medical or humanitarian support is passed easily obviously. A food truck that we are informed about and gave clearance for? Anyways, threashold is passed, Lavender says, so … approval stamp for drone attack!

It’s the only decentralized communication protocol for personal messages that is widely adopted. And yes, it’s a privacy nightmare.

I appreciate your detailed description of the probable benefits of telemetry. While I acknowledge there are benefits, however, before accepting a given set of telemetry, I would like to know with sources and in exact terms (not just ‘improved UI’) what enhancements were made to Firefox that couldn’t be achieved without telemetry. I want to decide for myself if those features are truly important enough to justify sending my personal data to the developers. Only then can I make an informed decision, and it still wouldn’t necessarily mean agreement. It’s not paranoia; it’s simply refusing telemetry for any reason given.

Privacy always comes at a cost. We are all different and have varying preferences based on our experiences and perspectives. Deciding how much privacy one wants to give up for convenience or other benefits is a personal choice. There’s no need to judge others for that decision. To each their own.

There’s certainly a trade-off by not having Telemetry, and I prefer privacy over some “slightly better development”. It is not necessary for good development.

Websites collect information, but I expect that in a public space, and also aggregating information across websites isn’t so easy. However, I have higher expectations for my web browser. When something is installed on my laptop, it’s like my house, and I don’t want anything to access my private space without permission.

Even worse, Firefox has it implemented as Opt-Out. Telemetry by default and without asking the user isn’t good practice. At the very least, they should give users a choice before enabling it. Yet, they collect everyone’s IP address and other information at least once when you start up Firefox for the first time. This doesn’t deserve my trust.

I don’t want to play a game of ‘what do I need to opt-out for privacy’ with an entity that I need to trust. Why would I use Firefox if Icecat gives me the level of trust that I need. It’s a personal choice.

By default Firefox collects data and sends it to their server, which Icecat doesn’t. I don’t want having to use another service like NextDNS to protect me against the application that I want to be able to trust because I’m using it for a lot of personal data.

From the mozilla website itself:

Identification:

When Firefox sends data to us, your IP address is temporarily collected as part of our server logs.

And then the data that I don’t want to share with other entities:

Interaction data includes information about your interactions with Firefox such as number of open tabs and windows, number of webpages visited, number and type of installed Firefox Add-ons and session length, as well as Firefox features offered by Mozilla or our partners such as interaction with Firefox search features and search partner referrals.

Technical data includes information about your Firefox version and language, device operating system and hardware configuration, memory, basic information about crashes and errors, outcome of automated processes like updates and safebrowsing.

Icecat, a Firefox fork without Firefox’s privacy issues (telemetry).

That’s not normal. On my phone the location is exact to a meter and it takes 2 seconds.

Buy the paper version, cut off the papers with a paper knife, and scan to PDF, with text layer. Takes half an hour for 300 pages, a book I’d read several hours. I paid for ownership, I’ll own it. Legal in many countries, research the legal situation of your country of residence.

How about the customers that are both time- and price sensitive?

I remember there was a time Google tried to be the best search engine out there, by ranking first what has most value for the user. Now it is ranking first what brings them more money, hence undermining Google’s credibility, and making itself less ueful for the user. The enshittification of Google for everyone to see.

I’d expect that the advertisement is relevant to the content of the page. But I don’t know, as I haven’t seen a single bit of advertisement for the last 15 years.

How about kolabnow.com

Their platform itself is open sourced (see https://kb.kolabnow.com/faq/what-does-kolab-now-run and https://kolab.org/), they adhere to standards, and they are recommended for privacy reasons as their servers are in Switzerland.

You can create as many email addresses as you want and they all go to your standard inbox, which is great not only for being able to just cut-off spammy websites, but also for privacy, as you won’t be connected to a single address.

The color screen of e-readers is too dark for me and substantially lacks contrast. It’s very noticable. The layer for pen recognition already makes the screen darker, but the color display is adding a lot more to the darkness and lack of contrast. I would only go with an e-reader with black/white screen and even without pen recognition.

Furthermore, e-readers are much more fragile than mobile phones. The design of their screen leads to a high probability of getting broken which is a common thing, search “ereader screen broken” online. My Boox e-reader fell 50 centimeters and the screen was broken, which renders the whole devide unresponsive.

The pen recognition is not as precise as on tablets. You can draw with it, but it’s a bit annoying and not for detailed work.

So my suggestion is to go with a device that costs less than 200 USD and do anything else than reading on a phone or tablet.

The fact that the NSA was apparently not breaking the law is actually more infuriating and shifts focus on the need to change the law, which is opposing the government. You see, it’s always better to stick to the facts if you want to change things to the better.

Maybe deleted from the productive database (if at all, as Reddit for example just flagged “deleted” comments apparently in the past).

But Backups, does data really get removed from backups? I don’t think so.