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Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

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Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#271

I wonder if the top brass at alphabet ever worry that their trillion dollar empire is based on fragile foundations like web audio fingerprinting, etc. that sure would keep me up at night. obviously, i know google does more, but it seems like a large chunk of their revenue must be dependent on shady technical tricks like these working.

They realized it was a risk so they built their own browser to have more control. And it worked. Only now, users are wising up and moving to Firefox.

No meaningful fraction of users is moving to Firefox [1] [2]. I wish this was the case, but it sure is not.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#...

[2] https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#272
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turing-complete code You can't build apps without turing complete code. We would be back to downloading and executing applications/programs.

> You can't build apps without turing complete code. Sure you can. None of these things should require me to run your arbitrary Turing-complete code in my browser: * Reading an article * Writing an article * Shopping online * Searching for things online * Reading social media posts/comments * Submitting social media posts/comments * Browsing a code repo * Submitting issues / PRs / etc. to a code repo * Reading docume…

> Good. That's the direction the mobile world has already been going for a decade now.

I genuinely don't understand this argument at all -- either you understand something about native platforms that I don't, or you're working under the assumption that all of your native apps:

a) aren't already vacuuming your data at the same rate as web apps.

b) wouldn't get considerably worse if they replaced the web ecosystem.

On the first point, native sandboxing is almost universally terrible. There's some promising stuff happening (notably with MacOS and with Flatpak/Wayland) but it's all just playing catch-up to where the web was years ago.

Pick just about any company that maintains both a website and a native version of the same app -- almost universally, the web version is safer to use. Nobody should be installing Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit on their phone. In fact, I would say the single best piece of advice I can give to anyone to improve their privacy/security on their phone is to stop installing things.

On the desktop, the situation is better, mainly because the desktop is very slowly turning into a niche platform and the web is a much more attractive place to put skuzzy, privacy-violating software. But this is a bit like the old argument that MacOS was more secure than Windows because no one was targeting Mac with viruses at the time. Get rid of the web and all of those skuzzy developers you hate aren't going to go away, they're just going to start making native apps. Where, again, the current sandboxing for most users and OSes is completely inadequate.

If your security model on the desktop is, "I'll only run code I trust", you can already do that on the web today. You can already turn off Javascript. And if you don't feel like the modern web-app ecosystem accommodates that decision, then what makes you think a theoretical, purely native world would accommodate you running a small, tight system that only includes code you trust? I can run a beautiful, tight Linux system because I don't have to install much software on it.

The unfortunate, horrible problem, is that running code we don't trust is gonna be necessary, no matter what world we move to. Sandboxing and permission systems are something we are going to have to figure out. Web or not, there is never going to be a world where you'll be able to trust all of the code you run on your computer. And currently, despite the many problems that browsers have, they're still still the best consumer-accessible solution for sandboxing code.

Of course integration and app performance suffers on the web. But frankly, neither of those are more important than sandboxing.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#273
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HTML based ads but no js (run it through DOMPurify https://github.com/cure53/DOMPurify ) Or use iframe.sandbox, which was designed for it. https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_iframe_sandbox.asp

Using an iframe sandbox has some issues: 1. scrollbars and positioning can cause problems with iframes that an inline div doesn't have, especially if there are multiple small iframes on the page. 2. As soon as you allow script in the sandbox iframe, then you are susceptible to these types of fingerprinting attacks. The fact that you have origin isolation doesn't really block what the ad was doing. This is because ifr…

>1. scrollbars and positioning can cause problems with iframes that an inline div doesn't have, especially if there are multiple small iframes on the page.

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, but I'm curious. Have any examples?

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course you pitch this way. you hire an inside sales guy who has personal relationships with c-level execs, and those execs make it happen because they're personally invested.

Make what happen exactly? C-level execs do not run ad campaigns. At most they'll defer to the CMO, who then just tells you to talk to their agency. There are private marketplaces and other deals you can work out with agencies but this is usually for inventory against existing campaign RFPs, and comes with all of the typical creative requirements. They're not going to run an entirely custom campaign under your own ter…

Thanks for your insights here dude. It is wasted on HN crowd though, who are mostly clueless about business and have pre-conceived notions and hate about everything. Any books / blog posts that you recommend. You should write a book :)

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We got content without this in the past, and we can do this in the future. And I will note THEY admit this is bad. Stop trying to defend the indefensible.

You didn't get Stackoverflow, and barely any of the content today. You may be fine with the internet of the early 90s but most people are not.

Who paid for the content I actually visit StackOverflow for? It surely wasn't SO; they provide a nice platform but they also get that content for free. This isn't a journalism site, the value in SO comes from freely provided user answers. Yes, SO provides some value vs. forums via their q/a platform, but it is a marginal amount of value.

Sure, SO is easier than parsing a forum thread, but the actual value that I care about is the answers provided for free by their users. I could easily return to 90's era usenet, it wasn't as convenient but it worked. What I couldn't deal with is a lack of a platform where people ask technical questions & get answers, I remember being on dial-up and reading paper manuals that were out-of-date/incomplete. But SO isn't irreplaceable, and I am oftentimes frustrated with finding questions closed for incorrect reasons, normally my answer is buried 2 links deep in SO because my DDG search (and Google too) takes me to an improperly closed question where the 'previously addressed' question is adjacent to my query.

StackOverflow does not provide an irreplaceable service; like github they do some nice things but there isn't any reason they must be the dominant platform. And the real value is in the answers, which SO gets for free.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#278
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would pay for an ad-free version of Stack Overflow. Take my money, please.

I think the data in aggregate is worth more than people like you would pay for an ad-free service.

Very likely. I'd pay hundreds of dollars a year to Gogle if they guaranteed* me, with severe legal repercussions otherwise, that they wouldn't track me, or allow a single bit of my data, anonymized or not, leave their servers, or be used in any other way that wasn't for my own purpose.

Re-selling digital personas as commodities must be far more lucrative.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could “solve” the issue by not having third party ads. Of all the sites on the internet, StackOverflow has the demographics that any advertiser would crave. How large of an inside ads sales force would you need to target higher than average income earners? How large reputable sites trust third party ad servers is a mystery to me. Besides, native ads that could be served from StackOverFlows own servers would be h…

That's just not how digital ad campaigns are run. Advertisers, agencies, media buyers and the rest of the supply chain don't negotiate with individual sites like that, not at any scale that can sustain a site like SO.

Youtubers run ads and sponsorships in their videos all the time (not the automated ads from Adsense). Squarespace, Dollar Shave Club, Ting, PIA; they all directly pay Youtubers to run ads. Youtube even had to block Youtubers from using brand's logos outside their ad network in videos.

Re: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worse than that. Imagine a TV ad which sends malicious code that gets executed to your television, which profiles the hardware in your TV and sends information about your viewing habits (tied to a unique ID) back to the advertiser. In any other context we would call this a security vulnerability. I think that label also applies here.

My Vizio's built-in software tries to do that. There's a reason it's not allowed to connect to wifi.

When you say "it's not allowed", do you trust its own settings? Are you sure it's not doing something like [0]? How do you even protect against that?

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...

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