The Certificate Authority model does not work for LAN devices

HTTPS is the future and the future is (finally) here. Secure HTTP requests that provide end-to-end encryption between the client making the request and the server providing it with the requested content is finally making some headway, with almost a third of the top one million sites on the internet serving content over SSL, as of August 2017:1

But what this chart doesn’t show is an important subsection of HTTP traffic that is unfortunately infamous for a general lack of security: IoT. The “internet of things,” as it is called, is famous for fiascoes that have allowed hackers to break into the privacy of homes, spying on consumers via internet-enabled nanny cams, gaining access to so-called “smart locks” to break into houses, obtaining sensitive information, and exposing private content and data thanks to insecurely designed consumer products and services that live on the local network.

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  1. Source: BuiltWith SSL trends 

On the matter of Firefox and memory leaks…

Recently our original article/rant on Firefox’s legendary memory abuse has seen an increase in comments and views; and I had intended to post the following comment in light of the article’s rebirth and the ensuing discussions in the comments.

The reply turned out to be longer than I’d originally intended, so here it is as its own post.

I’ll try to be as objective as possible in this reply:

The most important thing for frustrated end users to keep in mind is that Mozilla/Firefox cannot be held responsible for cases where incorrectly written plugins and/or extensions cause Firefox to abuse system memory – that’s the trade-off between empowering developers and keeping the code squeaky clean.

Most of the cases reported are indeed caused by one or more extensions or plugins gone awry, doing something they shouldn’t be doing, or something they don’t know how to do properly. Some of the most popular plugins for Firefox are notorious for their memory leaks; but few users realize just how dangerous they can be, and that the Firefox devs cannot really do anything about it.

At the same time, there can be no doubt that Firefox has some memory leaks in the codebase itself. They’re clearly not easily reproducible and they don’t happen very readily nor often enough because the developers have clearly spared no effort in their attempts to address this problem for once and for all. But they’re there, nevertheless.

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Firefox 3 is Still a Memory Hog

One of the biggest “improvements” that Mozilla claims has made its way into Firefox 3 is improved memory usage, in particular, the vanquishing of memory leaks:

Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.

We’re sorry to have to break it to you, but if you thought it was too good to be true you were right. Firefox still uses a lot of memory – way too much memory for a web browser.

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Just How Big is Opera 9.5 (Kestrel) Going to Be?

Opera is an awesome company. If you were wondering where most “innovation” in the world of web browsers came from, you need look no further. Many of the features that other browsers like to claim as their own actually originated in Opera; from in-line search to tabbed Windows, Opera had all of these and many more way before Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox ever knew they existed.

Opera 9.20 introduced a really nifty feature that, having tried it, you’ll find impossible to go back. Simply put, the “blank” tab page is a group of 9 screenshots of your top-nine most-visited sites. It renders the concept of “favorites” obsolete – because most people have this-is-a-good-resource-if-i-ever-need-it favorites and i-visit-this-site-every-single-day favorites. It’s a waste of time to go through the favorites menu (even the cool, new IE7 favorites sidebar/widget/utility) to find that site you visit every other time you turn on your browser, and Opera addresses this issue by making those pages just a new tab away.

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Firefox 2.0 Recap

Besides the ugly new theme, the convoluted “too-cool” first-run website, and the myriad of half-baked features that Firefox 2.0 brings to the scene, there’s a couple of not-so-welcome policy changes in Firefox 2.0 that make us wonder what’s going on at Mozilla. Basically, these changes go against everything that the Firefox team has been doing for the past couple of years, and make it look like Firefox wasn’t run by an open-source community so much as a big corporation with nothing but money on its mind.

When Firefox 2.0 came out, we didn’t really care to review it – after all, there were plenty of reviews already out there from the Beta and RC stages. But now, a month into the RTM release of Firefox 2.0, we find a re-cap being called for.

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Inventors of Feed Icon Scrap Design, Start Anew?

If the Mozilla has one cross-browser innovation fully licensed and acknowledged across the world, it’s their feed icon. The now infamous feed icon even has websites dedicated to it, and has successfully been adopted by Internet Explorer 7, Opera, and the much of the rest of the browser herd.

But is it about to change? Just today, the Mozilla Foundation released (on it’s official wiki) concept art for the new Firefox 2.0 theme, and something caught our eye. Is it possible that along with the new UI for tabs, buttons, and boxes, Firefox will ship with a brand-spanking-new RSS icon? It sure seems that way!

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Browser Traffic @ NeoSmart.net

Following our story on the different browsers of the future, you may be interested in the traffic rankings for NeoSmart.net since the story's publication:

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A Cool Look at the Future Three

Dear Readers, you might find this comparison of traffic-per-browser to NeoSmart Technologies since this articles publication interesting. 

Internet Explorer 7 has undeniably come a long way. Whether you like Microsoft's giant of a browser or hate it to pieces, the fact remains that Internet Explorer 7 is the single biggest update/upgrade this browser has ever seen, very comparable to the Windows 3.1.1 => Windows 95 upgrade in Microsoft's Operating System lineup. In this mini-writeup, we will be discussing from a fairly objective position how Internet Explorer 7 now stands compared to the latest offerings from it's biggest competitors: Firefox and Opera. This isn't a comparison, there will be no "winner," not in this article at any rate!

Unlike the other so-called reviews on the web, we're not going to compare it to Phoenix 0.1 and Opera 3; we're doing the real thing here, IE7 as it stands side-by-side with Opera 9 Build 8372 and the latest Firefox weekly. This isn't going to cover the glitches and the bugs that will be sorted out (hopefully) sooner or later, we're focusing on the hard-core features and the projected audiences, to evaluate the overall product experience.

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Firefox Copy & Paste Bug: (Not) Fixed!!

Ever since we expressed our frustration and outrage about what was potentially the most annoying bug in Firefox to date, several big and small websites around the web picked up the cry, and a flurry of activity ensued on the Mozilla Bug Entry for this particular glitch. More than a thousand users contacted us about their experiences with this bug, and soon enough, the media generated enough attention to warrant this bug a second look. It didn’t take long for the bug to be pinned down and a fix found; and here we are today, only a month later, with links to a Firefox build that makes your copy and paste experience complete!

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