Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#241

Post by xvilka » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:36 AM UTC

downWidOutaFite wrote: post #74

edoceo wrote: post #14

Damn. And we lost Servo just when it was getting close to being not shitty. While everything else is moving towards more shitty.

Not sure why you're saying Servo, we still have Firefox.

Firefox only can compete with Chrome/Chromium-based clones only if it has a unique edge (pun intended). Being completely written in Rust is that edge, reducing work required for debugging, while Chromium team would be still busy with memory bugs, etc. Thus the complete port/rewrite is the only future it has. Genius Mozilla management voluntarily gave it up.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#242

Post by flippinburgers » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:42 AM UTC

This is just a move to obfuscate understanding of cookies per website. Weird.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#243

Post by yalogin » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:46 AM UTC

foota wrote: post #82

I don't get why people think this is a move with some agenda, most likely they just don't think enough people use the single cookie deletion functionality to warrant having it in the settings vs the dev tools.

Yeah no. This is used by a lot of the population, may be not enough to register in their measurements but it’s a good number. Not just that, this is a functionality that existed for so many years in every browser, why remove it? At this point the code comes almost free. The only explanation is they want to prepare their users to a time when cookies are gone.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#244

Post by nyolfen » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:49 AM UTC

techrat wrote: post #148

brnt wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By default it doesnt, and although I'd certainly advise going over all Brave's settings once, then you have the safest (as in not outdated like some other privacy forks) and privacy respecting Chrome based browser around.

Stop drinking the kool aid, buh. If you have to go over the settings... A safe, privacy respecting browser wouldn't resort to any shady tactics in the first place.

brave's default settings are almost certainly exactly what a privacy-oriented person would choose. it does not mine crypto, and it only pays you in crypto to view notification ads if you opt-in. i even gave the ads a shot but decided it wasn't worth the $2 a month or whatever, so now i just have a maintained, de-googled chrome, which is basically a description of the optimal browser in 2021. does firefox ask you if you want to install pocket yet?

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#245

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #158

sroussey wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way back when, we thought about this for Firebug. One thing that came out of it was browsers started adding the console object (also because devs forgot to remove the calls on it). Even so, we added CSS and stuff to highlight elements and that was easily found. What do people look for today?

The two big ones are: 1. Watching window.innerHeight/innerWidth for sudden, large decreases, indicating that the user just opened the inspector. 2. Logging objects to the console with toString methods and checking if that method gets called.

1. That could also be triggered by browser sidebar windows opening though. All of my browsers open dev-tools in a separate window so this is far from foolproof.

2. Ahhh, clever!

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#246

Post by nyolfen » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

sumedh wrote: post #240

kortex wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or Brave. Safari gives me too many issues. Brave has all the compatibility you'd expect from chromium.

I dont know much about Brave but thinking of moving to Brave on Mobile for ad blocking. Is Brave trustworthy for saving my Google credentials and credit card in the Browser?

imo the adblocker isn't as good as ublock, which you can install anyway, so there's no major advantage there. the good part about brave is that you get the benefits of an up-to-date chromium browser without google recording your activity. you can take or leave the rest of the stuff, but there are a couple of neat extras like tor support for incognito and auto-detecting 404s and linking to archive.org.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#247

Post by TheGoddessInari » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #214

xemdetia wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I feel like most of my atrocious cookie hand fix cases end up being broken redirects where you get redirected to some new url that errors, so loading the page doesn't help to get rid of the offending cookie.

That would be an atrocious bit of engineering from the developer. But I suspect that even in that case, holding Escape as you load the page would kill the redirect.

Not who you were responding to, but I've had that happen on Microsoft flows.

Manually interrupting most flows is practically impossible. Too fast, and can chain across a half dozen (sub)domains near instantly. The web hasn't been that slow or simple in a long time.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#248

Post by dheera » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 2:01 AM UTC

Does this apply to Chromium as well, or can we just fork Chromium and keep adding the feature back?

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#249

Post by aravindet » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 2:08 AM UTC

SquareWheel wrote: post #179

qutreM wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dev tools are next... same argument... not many people use them.

You can't have consumers without producers. Dev tools are an integral tool to building websites and webapps today. They're still receiving considerable investment from browser vendors. I see new features in almost every release.

Browser tools could certainly be un-bundled from the browser itself and distributed behind a "Google Developer" account, with your access cut off if you do something that threatens any of Google's numerous businesses.

I believe this is how iOS development works.

Admittedly we are very far away from this scenario, but let us not delude ourselves into thinking (a) that it's impossible, or (b) that it's not in Google's interest to do this once they are confident enough in their market power.

Re: Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

#250

Post by anizan » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

krono wrote: post #125

vimy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use Edge if you need to use a chromium based browser?

It's like Chrome, but better in pretty much every way. Never thought I'd say this but Edge is actually pretty good! Very frequent and large feature updates, deepening ecosystem integration that uncharacteristically doesn't get the way if you don't use it. I always get a bit anxious when one of these massive enterprises suddenly gets up and starts moving with newfound focus, and MS is pretty much sprinting on Adderall…

I use edge on Windows and it never gets in the way like Chrome. No annoyance whatsoever and felt zippier too

Unfortunately on Mac, I have to run some JS heavy apps and Firefox's performance on those is dismal. Jetstream benchmark for Chrome is 102 vs Firefox at 65.