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not affected. their server occurred a break-and-enter incident and those archives were injected with backdoor. since my server can't upload/update archives from internet and this should be fine.

I found a solution: Disable Firefox hardware acceleration... Setting "layers.acceleration.disabled" to true using about:config do the same result. The fault seems to be Firefox 68 have changed something in the way they use hardware acceleration.

Well, the news are that the good MS guys are sneakingly introducing telemetry to Windows 7 via a security update : https://www.ghacks.net/2019/07/11/did-microsoft-just-drop-the-telemetry-bomb-on-windows-7-users-without-telling-anyone/ while the good google guys were busy listening to conversations : https://techerati.com/news-hub/google-admits-listening-to-some-smart-speaker-recordings/ jaclaz

not VPS, just free domain name provided by freenom. they can always close any free domain without reason and I always have several free domain names for my tasks. by intranet :)

We had all this sort of stuff: dire warnings of instant infection by multiple unspecified security risks with Windows XP. IT magazines were running multiple articles for month's beforehand stoking up fear about what was going to happen and how your 'old' WinXP PC would suddenly become redundant and have to be put out to pasture like some senile OAP. The fact was/is WinXP remained and still remains usable online, with care. I was using it, protected by a good AV and other security software, for over 3 years after support ended. The only reason I stopped using it was because the 14 year old laptop it was on suddenly died (serious component failure - probably the dedicated GPU). It is generally only the other software, particularly browsers, being updated to include features/functions that WinXP did not support that was the problem. But old browser versions still worked and many other software creators supported WinXP long after MS dumped it, some still do. I expect the same will be true for Win7 as well.

UPDATE! After getting a semi-vintage Mac Mini from 2006 running System 10.6.8 "Snow Leopard", I've been able to port the UOC Patch to the Macintosh. Installing the patch is as simple as doing it on Windows. You just unzip the patch and put the UOC_Patch_Mac.js file into the following folder: Applications\[Browser folder]\Contents\Resources\Defaults\Pref The UOC Enforcer for 38 ESR browsers is the version that must be used with the Macintosh one. You can install the Enforcer on the Macintosh by putting the user.js file in the following directory: Macintosh HDD\Users\[Username]\Library\Application Support\[Browser Name]\Profiles\[Profile Name]\ In this way, you will have the UOC Patch + the Enforcer fully working even on your old Macintosh. Just like the Windows version, please test it on as many platforms as possible! I'm particularly interested to know how it performs on a PowerPC Macintosh, G4 and G5, and I'm curious to know how it would run on a G3 Power Macintosh (both the original iMac, the eMac and the beige G3 models), maybe it could even work with Classilla. The patch is offered AS IS, and to the people who still haven't updated the Windows version, please do it now and do not forget to try the UOC Enforcer alongside the Patch, for better performance!

A note on Personas Plus and Serpent 55: Serpent 55 will support the new WE versions of Personas Plus (2.01 through 2.03) but the UI is totally different and didn't seem to work, or at least, I couldn't figure it out. The latest legacy version is 1.83 but the preferences dialog was incomplete with that version, so I rolled back to version 1.78, which seems to work just fine. Don't know if Serpent 52 or Firefox 52.9 would have similar issues with Personas Plus or not.

UPDATE! After some weeks of intense development, I have finally released the new version of the UOC Patch, build number is N2F. Compared to the previous version, this new one has been reworked almost entirely: many entries that point to my FF45 ESR SSE installation have been removed, shaving the size down to around 25KBs, making it even easier to fit in a floppy disk (3.5" or 5.25", your choice, for easier portability), but I've also reworked the loading routine of webpages, disabling the asynchronous panning and zoom feature, which instead of offloading the CPU, it is somehow bugged even on 45 ESR based browsers, causing an excessive spike in the CPU usage. Also, scrolling webpages while they are loading images should be smoother now, at least it is on my Tualatin RDD. I've also increased the memory cap of Javascript processes to 96MB, which seems the sweet spot between usability and performance, at least on my machine. But the biggest news is the introduction of the UOC Enforcer. The UOC Enforcer is a custom "user.js" file that must be placed into the browser's profile folder and that tells the browser to change the "stubborn" entries in the about:config that are hardcoded by the developer, making the UOC Patch work even better. You must remember though that the UOC Enforcer doesn't let you change the edits from the about:config, so if you want to change a "stubborn" entry, you must edit the user.js file directly (you can do it with Notepad). Therefore, I strongly suggest you to open the UOC Enforcer file and check out what are the stubborn settings, in case you want to change them in future. Most likely, you won't need to do that. While the Enforcer is optional, I strongly recommend it in order to get a better experience with the UOC Patch, as it tweaks the browser further. You can download the updated version of the UOC Patch and the UOC Enforcer in the main post. Please test the patch on as many machines as possible, and remember that it's offered AS IS, since I develop it in my free time, in order to squeeze some more power out of old computers and making them still useful online just like when they were new. Thanks!

The Autoconfig method seems to work for me. However it's a bit of a PITA; if you get anything wrong the browser refuses to start and tells you to contact your IT administrator (or words to that effect). Here's how it works (if everything's set up right): You need to set two prefs in your "main" pref file to invoke Autoconfig: pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); pref("general.config.filename", "myuseragents.js"); (As you can tell, I'm using this trick for my SSUAO list, since it lets me override SSUAOs built into the browser, whereas the built-in SSUAOs take precedence if doing this the "normal" way, much like the problem you're having with the prefs you listed.) Then you put the file named above (myuseragents.js) in the same directory as the browser (firefox.exe, palemoon.exe, or whatever.exe), and it has to look like this: // Needs to start with a comment line defaultPref("webgl.enable-draft-extensions", true); defaultPref("webgl.enable-privileged-extensions", true); defaultPref("dom.ipc.plugins.asyncdrawing.enabled", true); Notice the mandatory comment line at the top, as well as the use of defaultPref() vs. pref(). In an Autoconfig file, pref() works like user_pref(), while defaultPref() works like pref(). If you get everything right, the browser will start, and if you check about:config, you'll see the prefs above all default to true now (which you can still override back to false if desired). But since it's so easy to break this with a typo, and since the browser is completely unhelpful in troubleshooting problems, it's still not an ideal solution.

... and remember that in the good ol'times the successor to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was the QL, i.e. Quantum Leap, and it was actually for the time an incredibly good computer ... jaclaz