"PeterC" wrote

| Using PM 27.9.2. "network.predictor.enabled" is there and not bold, so I
| assume that it's standard

Sounds like it. I'm using v. 24, the last for XP.
Mine seems to date from 2014. (I keep thinking of
switching to SeaMonkey, which still has an XP
version, but never quite get around to trying it.)

The links I found relating to the setting date from
2015 and mentioned that it had been "set to default
to true again". Apparently it had been called "seer",
they changed the name, then set it to run. I
don't remember the seer setting or whether
that defaulted to true.

Either way, as you may already know, the
setting causes pages to load if you just hover
over the link. So it's not so much "predictor"
as "network.halfwit.over-reactor".

I think of these kinds of settings as sleazy
attempts to hide incompetence. Like the MS Office,
Firefox and Libre Office pre-loaders. Instead of
putting an effort into making the program lean
they make it even more bloated in order to make
it *appear* more lean: The program seems to
start up fast because it's already running. The
pages seem to load fast because they're already
loaded.

In this case it also adds a whole new dimension
to privacy and security issues. People end up visiting
numerous sites they never knew they visited.