The Devil You Know - Firefox 150
Mozilla has recently dropped Firefox 150.0, marking the first time I've been impressed with a browser update since Netscape 8.0. It’s actually pretty great. And I don’t say that often, because lately, these updates have been a little more taketh than giveth.
Literally one day after purchasing an annual subscription to Windscribe, Firefox announced the inclusion of it's own VPN, for free. You're welcome. My fortune succubus smiles upon thee. Of course I jest (to a degree), as giving Windscribe a paltry amount of money for such a solid VPN and the best marketing emails I've ever actually read, is one of the best deals I've encountered this year.
But Firefox 150's VPN is free, and when the fuel I require to go to work so I have the money to buy more gasoline for the following week of work... good fucking god, why are we not in the streets taking back our country?! Maybe we can be celebrated like the January 6 cucks. Ahem, it's no secret the shit we require to live is out of control expensive, and even though folks like Windscribe offer very affordable plans, it's still too expensive to live in the United States if you're not a millionaire. So free VPN via Firefox (the browser you should already be using) is currently the hottest of hot deals.
Quick aside, if you're reading this and you're from anywhere other than Amerikkka, please know I hate us just as much as you do. 😞
I have only gone as far as ensuring it works, but according to CNET, Firefox 150's free VPN is for "controlled, limited use" rather than a total system privacy solution. In other words, it only really protects your browser (Firefox) traffic. No apps, system processes, or anything else. So not nearly as robust as a paid service, but a decent, free, on-demand solution already baked-in to your browser.
But wait, there's more.
Here's a quick and dirty on the rest of Firefox 150's nugs of neatness:
Split View (For Double the Distraction) - Now, you can right-click any link and choose Open Link in Split View. Boom. Now you can read about why you’re procrastinating on the left, while actively scrolling through something entirely useless on the right. You can even search your open tabs to create the split view and quickly reverse their positions. Nothing too monumental, but sure beats dragging tabs to new windows and resizing the mess.
Mass Tab Sharing - You know when you go down a 3 AM panicked rabbit hole about, say, what to do if your home has been sprayed by a skunk, and you need to encourage your partner to read all of it immediately? You can now select several tabs, right-click, and choose "Copy X Links". When you paste it into a chat, it brings both the page title AND the URL. No more sending a wall of naked, terrifying blue links like a sociopath.
PDF Editing Without the Tears - Party down, fuckers! Editing PDFs without the correct tools is a form of psychological torture. Even with the right tools, it can be a frustrating affair. Firefox 150 added to their built-in PDF editor (which was entirely ok) the ability to reorder, copy, paste, delete, and export pages. Sounds like something that should have existed from the get-go, but who am I to say. I've been blessed through my employment with Satan's Asshole's Acrobat, so I need not a lightweight, affordable solution. Not my money, not my problem.
Real-Time Private Translations - I feel like we've gone from struggling to find a reliable translator easily to there being translators built into everything. In 150, you can now just type "translate" into the URL bar to get a quick-action shortcut to a real-time, private translation page.
Emojis for the Linux Crowd - If you are one of those wildly brilliant people running Linux, Firefox finally added support for the GTK emoji picker so you can insert emojis using a system shortcut. Welcome to the 21st century, nerds. 🫶