Is Firefox Finished? Will Windows Survive? And Is Microsoft OK?

It’s December 17th, the 121st anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight! At 10:35am all those years ago, Orville Wright made history by spending 12 seconds airborne on the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. However, it wasn’t until the following couple of years, when the brothers managed 20 and 30 minute flights, that they got their recognition.

Alright. Let’s get started!

Firefox Removes ‘Do Not Track’ After 13 Years

We love Firefox. They’re good folks. For the last 20 years they’ve been the crunchy, hippie sister to the tech overlord’s web browsers of Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge. Firefox’s big push has always been privacy and anti-tracking cookies… so it’s somewhat bittersweet to find out they’ll no longer be offering the ‘Do Not Track’ option in upcoming releases of Firefox, according to Ars Technica.

Firefox admits on its own website that the feature doesn’t work as intended; the support page for the Do Not Track feature states quite clearly: "Many sites do not respect this indication of a person's privacy preferences, and, in some cases, it can reduce privacy.” This means that websites themselves don’t often follow this preference and that, in practice, the whole ‘Do Not Track’ thing works about as well as someone saying “Scram!” out loud to their computer.

The ‘Do Not Track’ movement had a good run. It started in 2010 and peaked with an Obama-era White House backing in 2012, but didn’t catch on after advertisers found they could create digital fingerprints of end users (from everything else a user did on the internet), even using the ‘Do Not Track’ option itself as an identifier.

The privacy issue is still as relevant as ever, with 96% of iPhone users opting out of app tracking when that option appeared in iOS 14.5. Maybe those crunchy hippies at Mozilla were right all along.

Microsoft Hijacks Keyboard Shortcut To Force You Into Copilot

Microsoft—a small company with a big heart who one day hope to break even— desperately want you to use Copilot, which is billed as Microsoft’s answer to a question nobody asked: What if AI, but bad?

According to The Register, Microsoft folks recently made the interesting decision to hijack the “Alt+Space” keyboard shortcut exclusively for Copilot. But that’s not a big deal, you might be saying. Oh yes it is, we might reply, as “Alt+Space” is used by a veritable cornucopia of Microsoft’s own programs, including Windows itself (it ‘shows the context menu of the active window’).

Making people use AI is pretty obnoxious. There’s not even a good joke to write about AI… beyond this one: Two AIs walk into a bar. The first one goes up to a bartender and says “01001001 00100111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100101 01110010.” The second AI walks up to the bar and says, “Claude, you’re wasted. Let me order.” On to the next story.

Hey, Guess What? Windows Has Another Massive Security Loophole

Windows EDR tools have a potential blind spot, according to new Akamai research reported on by Tech Radar. The Akamai team demonstrated a previously unknown method for running unauthorized code without detection, raising important questions about current endpoint security approaches. It’s also a loophole that can be exploited on every version of Windows starting from XP and beyond.

The loophole exploits UI Automation, which was originally developed to help users with disabilities use computers more easily. It uses these permissions to essentially watch and listen to everything you do on a computer, meaning that it can steal credit card info, personal details, and definitely view whatever dirty things you’ve stored in a folder marked ‘Taxes 2020’ thinking that nobody will look there… and also do this over a remote connection.

We highly recommend reading the full Akamai blog post about it, which offers some advice on what to look for and what to do.

⚙️ Tool Time

“What products, or better yet suite of products, really do a good job of limiting tracking/sharing of your data/etc. I'm not a crazy person about this kind of thing, but as much as I can, I use Firefox, Duckduckgo, etc. in an attempt to minimize my digital footprint. I know that I'm fooling myself in some regard as to how possible it may be to actually do that, but I've got to think it is better than, for example, typing every site I go to into a Google Chrome browser.” - ByteSize Reader CJ.

We hear you CJ! That’s why we added Tool Time - a section where ByteSize readers can recommend their favorite tools & services they use.

Have a tool to recommend to other ByteSize readers? Tell us here!

ByteSize reader Joe recommends Mullvad, and after looking into it, so do we.

A VPN so simple to use, even a boomer could love it. At just $6/month, Mullvad shields you from observation of your internet doings. Which is a hefty promise. But by all accounts (including various EE staffers), Mullvad follows through.

The coolest part? You don’t need personal info to sign up. All you need is an account number, which you can generate on their website. That’s right. No email needed. No personal info. (Yep, all purchases in life should be this easy.)

Getting a trustworthy VPN is a no-brainer, since your IP address is the easiest way to identify who you are on the internet. The fastest way to reclaim your privacy is to hide it, and that’s exactly what Mullvad does. Most VPNs say they’ll help hide you, but Mullvad went the extra step by publishing extensive policy documents and abides by them.

Six bucks a month to support and enable free communication? Count us in.

👨‍💻 Job Opportunities

Data Architect AWs Azure Databricks @ Tredence Inc (Remote)

Do you have 8-12 years experience in data engineering? Sure. We all do. But do you also have knowledge of relational databases and data architecture systems, including SQL? How about strong attention to detail and the ability to work as part of a team? The crowd thins. A great job for the right person.

Power BI Developer @ Forward Air, Inc (Remote)

If you have a background in managing complex data visualizations, dashboards, and analytics that empower data-driven decision-making, and want to make up to $145K a year (!) working to optimize ground transportation and delivery solutions, this is the job posting you’ve been holding out for.

🛩 Industry Moves

Citrix Acquires 2 InfoSec Companies, Bundles Them Up

Citrix—which sounds like a futuristic lemon, but isn’t—acquired both deviceTRUST and Strong Network, which sound like third-tier Coachella acts, but aren’t. Both companies will be folded into Citrix’s cybersec/infosec bundle, which itself is an invitation-only proposition (not dissimilar to Broadcom’s oft-maligned VMWare bundle). Interesting strategy!

Google Going All-In On Solar For AI Datacenters

Google doesn’t believe that America’s electrical grid can handle all the energy needs for future AI processing, so it’s teaming up with Intersect Power (to the tune of $800M, initially) to build solar powered datacenters, according to The Register, with the first one arriving “soon”. We almost made it through a whole section without mentioning AI.

💽 Data Upload

We have a Dell PowerEdge T340 with Server 2016 Standard that cannot boot after a power cut.”

Though Azure has many advantages, one major concern still is if it is a wise long-term investment with a slow return or if it will save money

I am trying to upload an image to a field in a table. The field is called photo. I do not want to rename it or anything else

Well, well, well. If it isn’t the direct results of our own actions. We wrote a whole newsletter and now it is over. So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu.

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