Firefox 99 Available With Strengthened Linux Sandbox, Web MIDI

[piorunz]

Spinning up a full fledged virtual machine takes a lot of time, lots of system resources, the performance is worse, usability and user interaction is worse, because I have to interact with a browser inside the VM window. VM is an awkward solution. I would much rather have something sandboxed on my existing machine. Linux supports many things like Flatpak, Snap, LXD, namespaces, etc.

I use firejail. It's able to run multiple Firefox profiles separately, each one with different defenses I can define, like disabled USB, disabled Ethernet (WAN only), temporary profiles (data will be destroyed after I close Firefox) and so on. You can do it all through firejail, no need for snaps from Mozilla, firejail is in your repository.

[Bigon]

MIDI? What year is it?!

Last update to the w3c specification is from 2015

[RealNC]

Now I am wondering what's Google intent when bringin up WebMIDI? What's their use-case for having it in the browser?

Probably DAWs that come as electron apps or as in-browser, subscription based "software as a service" crap.

[teahopper]

Now I am wondering what's Google intent when bringin up WebMIDI? What's their use-case for having it in the browser?

For me and many others - configuration of MIDI controllers. In many of those (including my own platform) configuration is done via System Exclusive MIDI messages. Having support for that in the browser means that you need a single Web application for configuration which then works on every operating system.

[RealNC]

I recently installed Firefox on a system with an HDD. Oh my god. When did Firefox get so bad with I/O? It constantly writes data to the HDD. Non-stop. Forever. No matter whether or not you're doing anything or not. The HDD will probably die a premature death with constant 24/7 I/O.

Are there any browsers that aren't garbage these days?

[NobodyXu]

I recently installed Firefox on a system with an HDD. Oh my god. When did Firefox get so bad with I/O? It constantly writes data to the HDD. Non-stop. Forever. No matter whether or not you're doing anything or not. The HDD will probably die a premature death with constant 24/7 I/O.

Are there any browsers that aren't garbage these days?

Presumably they are caches?

On my system, I got at least 1G of cache from firefox.

[Vermilion]

Has anyone worked out when Firefox‘s version number will overtake Chrome‘s, at their current release schedules?

At the current rate, never. They both follow monthly release schedules and Chrome is ahead.

[DrYak]

MIDI is basically highly detailed sheet music file storage

And in practice: often not so detailed... most .mid files on the web restrict themselves to the standardized parts of General MIDI, e.g., they'll most often use the standard GM (or maybe GS variation) instruments.

You won't find that often system-specific SysEx trying to fine-tune the sound of the synth (The exception being the retro computing scene with MT-32's .mid/.syx. It predates General MIDI anyway and dates from an era when artist would compose for a specific instrument, and thus would tweak it).
Ideally, .mid should come with some finely selected .sf2 sound-font. At which point: congrats, you've successfully re-invented tracker modules (.mod, .xm, .it, .s3m), so dear to the demoscene and indie devs!

This is the reason why most people associate .mid with awful crappy sound (e.g. ring tunes on old feature phones and cordless phones):
Iin that era and on that hardware it would have most likely been played on simple FM 4-op synth (either the OPL-3 on your sound-blaster compatible sound card, or random MA-xx in the phone, some of which even 2-op only) with whatever instrument it has in its default patchset.
Or on a "wavetable" rompler with the smallest possible rom and crappy in-house made sound-font to keep the cost of the card low (see the cheapo daughter boards like Waveblaster, see the default sound set of AWE32 if the card isn't directly programmed but used as a midi device).

That's why some time older music tracks of some older games targetting Adlib sound cooler: despite being less complex (2-op only) a lot of games targetted it specifically and did take time to tweak its sound (e.g.: ID software's older game don't even use MIDI but a stream of adlib direct commands. It's possible to make some very crazy sound, e.g. use for sound effects).

That's why some crazy japanese people will make a Sound Canvas sing the lyrics of Bad Apple through composite sine (Not a joke! - Update: damn, the Dailymotion link on real hardware has died :-( ), but most .mid sound like "take instrument 'default guitar', slap it on top of 'default drum', done !"

[DrYak]

Having support for that in the browser means that you need a single Web application for configuration which then works on every operating system.

Probably DAWs that come as electron apps or as in-browser, …

Yup, I was also wondering about web-app (device-specific, music apps, etc.)…

…subscription based "software as a service" crap.

Oh, gods! I had forgotten about this kind of monstruosity.
Yes, you're right: they'll manage to find a way to abuse it to extract more profits: "Microsoft Music 365™", "Google's gMusic", etc.

[DrYak]

Presumably they are caches?

That, made worse by the large amount of worker threads and other javascript plagues that most of the modern web persist in trying to impose on us.

Now, it's 2022, RealNC would be better off throwing away the HDD even before it's busted and replace with a SSD. (Or NVMe on a PCIe pin-adapter board) (Or a Compact Flash with modern features (support for SMART + TRIM) on a IDE pin adapter). Or if it's important to keep the HDD, at least put a large flash cache in front of it.

For performance of any browser: an AdBlock is a minimum, a fully customized JS filtering like NoScript is the must (but requires lots of configuring).