[HN Gopher] All Pocket accounts will be converted to Firefox acc...
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All Pocket accounts will be converted to Firefox accounts
Author : eurvin
Score : 57 points
Date : 2023-06-30 18:58 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.mozilla.org)
| pessimizer wrote:
| _All Youtube and Gmail accounts will be converted to Google+
| accounts..._
| fsckboy wrote:
| that's the Buzz I heard too! I guess it's the next Wave
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| ooooh BURN.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| That was my immediate reaction, too.
|
| I guess for me the difference is that if my firefox account
| goes away tomorrow, it is an issue I can resolve by making a
| new one. It's annoying but it doesn't concern anyone but me.
|
| Losing access to my gmail address because of some youtube
| fuckup, now there's something that disrupts my communications
| with others and is hard to recover from.
| fefe23 wrote:
| Hey Mozilla, have you considered that maybe I don't want to open
| an account?
|
| In fact I don't want to open accounts with anyone. Not with
| social media, not with newspapers, certainly not newsletters.
| Accounts allow better tracking that cookies, and cookies are now
| regulated.
|
| If a web site tries to get me to open an account, it will reflect
| poorly on my view of them, and I will be less inclined to come
| back.
|
| I only opened an account here after years of lurking and trust
| building and I still only log on if I want to comment or upvote
| something.
| felipelemos wrote:
| > In fact I don't want to open accounts with anyone
|
| Then it's not and issue for you, as you probably didn't want to
| open an account with pocket in first place, right?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Even though I have a firefox account, I'm glad I have moved off
| Pocket (to Readwise Reader).
|
| I don't want all my accounts joined. I don't want a threat model
| where being locked out of one service takes down everything,
| especially when that service has no support. This applies to
| gmail and Mozilla equally.
| freefaler wrote:
| I don't see it either for 108 USD/year. I get that they need to
| pay for servers, for developers and etc, but I pay less for
| Spotify and somehow they manage to license vast amount of
| content.
| digging wrote:
| Well, Spotify does it by underpaying artists.
| accoil wrote:
| Do Pocket/Mozilla have artists to pay?
| digging wrote:
| Don't know. I'd think they pay the original sources.
| Agreed that the cost seems out of alignment, but they're
| also working with a much smaller user base than Spotify.
| A small profit margin on tens of millions of users gets
| you a lot more money than a small profit margin on tens
| of thousands (numbers made up). So maybe it's actually a
| very fair price and Spotify's is not, which we know it's
| not.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| It will be $8 a month if you signup during the beta and pay
| yearly. Seems kinda steep if you're just using Pocket as a
| "read later" tool that scrapes the page.
| Jaepa wrote:
| Readwise looks really good, but I have a hard time
| understanding the value proposition. For the full application
| with the Readwise Reader it is 9 dollars a month. Then again
| its certainly worth more than a blue check-mark.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| I recently switched after years of using Pocket. The first
| thing that made me switch was Pocket rebuilt their iOS app
| but with only a few of the features. Many things, such as
| highlighting, were left out and support says they will be
| built sometime later.
|
| The second is the parsing seems to work much better.
|
| Also, I can subscribe to RSS feeds or sign up to email
| newsletters so that they go directly to Readwise Reader.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| And they almost fubar'd the Pocket integration witht the Kobo
| eReaders in the process.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I love Pocket.
|
| It's the only bookmarking tool I ever stuck with.
|
| I also use Firefox as my main browser.
| criddell wrote:
| I want to love Pocket, but I just can't. Every time I open it,
| all I see is a lot of work that past me wanted future me to do.
| I've stopped using it because I'm trying to be kinder to future
| me.
| themadturk wrote:
| I've loved Pocket as well, but I didn't like paying $45 a year
| for it. It was more of a bookmarking service for me than an
| actual read-it-later site. Now that I've found Raindrop.io,
| which works fine for me on the free tier, I can save a little
| money and have better organization than Pocket gave me.
| muxator wrote:
| At the dawn of browser sync technologies, it was possible to self
| host a Firefox sync server. I think I remember there was a
| component for authentication and one for storage proper. You
| could use each one of them, or both.
|
| Is this still a thing? How would today's firefox handle a custom
| sync server?
| drdaeman wrote:
| Theoretically - yes.
|
| Practically, it's poorly documented clusterfuck of very
| confused technologies
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125). I hope they've
| possibly sorted that out over the years, but I don't have much
| hopes. Although they seem to went monorepo for FxA stuff (IIRC,
| it used to be that Accounts and Content services were
| separate). Still, no end-user docs - best you can get is
| assorted bunch of articles aimed at developers:
| https://mozilla.github.io/ecosystem-platform/tutorials/devel...
| - summing it up, it's a project that no one seem to have ever
| meant to be able to use outside of Mozilla, an ability to self-
| host it is an accident.
|
| It used that one could've host a single simple program and have
| everything working. After switch to Firefox Accounts, trying to
| deploy all those services and their dependencies (and keeping
| up as it grew) quickly became complicated. I used to maintain
| my own half-assed almost-all-in-one re-implementation
| (https://gitlab.com/drdaeman/firesync, still required Kinto as
| a dependency), but I gave up.
| depereo wrote:
| It'd handle it fine, considering that's still an option. The
| account hosting side of things is a little trickier but it's
| doable.
|
| https://mozilla-services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/howtos/run...
| ano-ther wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34674569
| zerocrates wrote:
| As far as I know you can still self-host Firefox sync.
| booi wrote:
| This sounds like a good thing imo. Pocket is a great tool that
| should be fully integrated
| autoexec wrote:
| pocket is a... well, it's a tool anyway, that never should have
| been anything but an add-on. Including it in the browser was
| one of the biggest signs that firefox was willing to sacrifice
| their user's privacy and security for revenue. If people are
| fine with telling Pocket what they read and letting them push
| related ads at them all day they should absolutely have that
| choice, but it should never have been shoved on everyone.
|
| Firefox Sync already had a Reading List which was encrypted and
| open source, they really didn't need to bundle a third-party
| proprietary cloud service that required an account and
| increased attack surface (https://web.archive.org/web/201508181
| 75419/https://www.gnu.g...). People who wanted pocket, and
| found it valuable would still be just as well off with it as an
| add-on, everyone else would have been spared the extra trouble
| of disabling it.
|
| Firefox is still the best browser in terms of privacy and
| security but only after you make an ever growing number of
| about:config changes, many of which exist only to remove or
| disable anti-features added by Mozilla. I really wish Mozilla
| would embrace privacy, security, and customization as what
| (apart from the rendering engine, which most users will never
| be aware of) truly differentiates them from chrome and every
| other popular browser which are also chrome, but again and
| again their choices are in direct opposition to those very same
| principles
| bscphil wrote:
| > If people are fine with telling Pocket what they read
|
| I don't believe the ads shown in Firefox require sending any
| browsing history to the web (whether to Firefox or anyone
| else). The mechanism used here is different. I do agree with
| you that pushing ads into the browser chrome by default is
| abhorrent (a judgment compounded with the fact that they
| initially pretended that these weren't ads).
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Saving pages to Pocket tells Mozilla what you read though.
| Reading List did not.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| Pocket was a great tool until the released a new iOS app the
| other month. The app has only a fraction of the features in the
| prior app.
| cobertos wrote:
| Well, it sounds like it's still going to have extensions for
| all the other browsers. Im not sure if the integration is
| changing other than the auth method to pocket.
|
| I'd rather it not become any more integrated, I just want to
| browse the web and use extensions for additions like this.
| krono wrote:
| What's there to integrate, really? You click a button, the URL
| of your current opened page is transmitted to their service
| along with your user ID, they scrape the page content, and
| voila.
| politelemon wrote:
| For a while there was an announcement that pocket would stop
| working on kobo devices, due to this announcement. But now it
| seems kobo will be given an extension and will make their pocket
| integration work with Firefox accounts.
| uxjw wrote:
| I already killed my pocket account and switched to self-hosted
| wallabag when I saw they were killing off Kobo integration.
| Simulacra wrote:
| This is disappointing. I love Pocket but I don't trust Mozilla, I
| will not use a Firefox account, and this ends my subscription.
| LanternLight83 wrote:
| lol, I see this the other way around;
|
| Cheers to consumer choice!
| amarshall wrote:
| Pocket has been owned by Mozilla since 2017; why didn't you end
| your subscription then?
| Simulacra wrote:
| Because it was just owned then, I disagree with further
| integration.
| Karellen wrote:
| But if you don't trust Mozilla, what made you think that
| further integration wasn't already going on without you
| knowing?
| mozman wrote:
| fxa auth is superior to pocket auth
| jacquesm wrote:
| Browsers shouldn't have accounts to begin with.
| kibwen wrote:
| Browsers shouldn't _require_ accounts, and thankfully Firefox
| doesn 't. But having a way to synchronize my passwords across
| all my devices is pretty important.
| drdaeman wrote:
| They had an implementation that did not require any accounts.
| They deemed that it's too confusing for users* to scan some
| QR codes (or type a bunch of characters), so they went with
| an account-based system.
|
| *) Or whatever the real reason was. It was about time Mozilla
| started to have management issues so I absolutely won't be
| surprised if the goal was to "become an ecosystem" or "gather
| a userbase" (or whatever is management speak for forcing
| people to sign up).
| andybak wrote:
| > scan some QR codes
|
| How is that not still an account? What definition of
| account are we working with here?
| drdaeman wrote:
| Sure, strictly speaking, of course there were accounts as
| in "database records". However, users gave no details
| about themselves, and haven't signed up for anything. No
| long-term credentials, just a rendezvous point.
|
| You used to just open two Firefoxes, start sync setup on
| the one, copy (or scan) a code to another - boom, done,
| they're talking to each other.
| BudaDude wrote:
| It depends how you define an account. Is an account an
| email? Is an account an id in a database? An IP? You
| can't sync anything without an "account"
| RunSet wrote:
| Maybe it was using technology similar to magic wormhole.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G3_Xa1GBTs
|
| https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole
| feyman_r wrote:
| Where does one store favorite links so I can handle them on
| phone and two separate machines?
| themadturk wrote:
| I'm using raindrop.io. So far, even the free tier works well
| for me.
| Bolderman wrote:
| > Where does one store favorite links so I can handle them on
| phone and two separate machines?
|
| Linkding: https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| You value the syncing browser accounts offer. Personally I
| like being able to go between several of my own computers and
| not have all settings synced. It's not a fresh slate
| situation but it is a bit freeing to not carry all my digital
| baggage all the time.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Good for you. Firefox accounts are optional.
| tedunangst wrote:
| On your ftp account, where else?
| cogman10 wrote:
| I prefer to telnet it over with a bespoke protocol loosely
| based on gopher.
| davidwritesbugs wrote:
| that sounds like the lazy guy's way of doing it.
| cogman10 wrote:
| What can I say, the product guys have gotten to me. This
| was an MVP approach.
| sedatk wrote:
| Hold on, let me spin up my IMP nodes first.
| mistercheph wrote:
| This niche use case which offers a marginal benefit even to
| those who want it, is a laughable mask for the assembly and
| deployment of one of the world's largest data harvesting
| networks, the browser 'sync' account
| dredmorbius wrote:
| On your personal homepage's bookmarks page.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| I just use my domain with a simple frontend for links
| TheFreim wrote:
| I like that my browser (Vivaldi, Brave) has accounts so my
| phone, desktop (2x OS), and laptop (2x OS) are always
| completely in sync, with no downgraded functionality if I
| choose to not use an account.
| jorvi wrote:
| Brave doesn't have accounts, for privacy reasons. You sync
| via a.. private E2E (don't know what else to call it) group
| you join via a key phrase.
| pyrophane wrote:
| Seems like pocket is losing a lot of its value due to more sites
| not working with its article view. I've stopped using it because
| of that and also because it doesn't work well for pages that
| aren't articles and I didn't like having to maintain multiple
| bookmarking tools.
|
| That being said, if it was more integrated with Firefox and
| Firefox's bookmarking tools, that might make it compelling for me
| again, so maybe this is a good thing....
| Ntrails wrote:
| I hate the way pocket was just plonked in as a feature i never
| wanted along side a bunch of splash screens.
|
| Gits
| digging wrote:
| I was also upset at that, but I decided to give Pocket a go.
| it wasn't bad. and then they changed it so that the Pocket
| section of the home screen couldn't be collapsed, and it
| became a problem. see I want it to be there as an option, but
| I wanted it collapsed by default - otherwise, it's too
| distracting when I'm just opening a new tab to search for
| something. so I disabled Pocket and don't use it anymore.
|
| Gits
| simondotau wrote:
| When reading your replies I choose to think that "gits" is
| hacker news slang for using git to check out the source
| code, patch the offending behaviour, and compile it
| yourself.
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(page generated 2023-06-30 23:02 UTC)