Display

Is anyone having problems with the display?
Is your avatar missing?

Not I

I'll tell you what problem I *have* been having though.  For a couple weeks I've been getting pop-up boxes on my screen, accompanied by a bonging noise, telling me my computer needs cleaning and to go to a particular website.  Actually a rotating series of websites, never the same one twice.

Normally I ignore such obvious spam, but it keeps happening, like every hour.  The windows disappear as soon as they pop up.  And the "bonging" is picked up by my audio recording software when I'm dubbing an LP - yeow.  

I tried clicking on the link, but the spamish websites it sends me to have no option, illegally, for turning off the notification.

I tried warm and cold boots.

I've taken to using Safari instead of Firefox until I can figure out how to fix this.  Actually, maybe Mozilla fixed this already.  I got a new Firefox version yesterday and it hasn't happened yet today.  Looking at the "new features and bug fixes" I see this:

• Proxy authentication dialog box repeatedly pops up asking to authenticate after upgrading to Firefox 67 (bug 1548804)
  

Howard, you're a developer, maybe you can make sense of this.

Fuck. Just got spammed again. Not fixed.

Simply put, a "proxy" is a device - a computer - which handles traffic between your computer and the internet (or another target such a server). This allows you to hide your computer's identity, as the proxy's identity is the one exposed to the internet or other target.

Your computer must provide authorized credentials to the proxy - and the proxy must accept the credentials - in order to proceed with the communication. Apparently, there was a problem with the credential process. That's what the complaint was about.