Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Chrome to remove detailed cookie and site data controls

lapcatsoftware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 372 posts

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

#351

Post by BrendanEich »

Closi wrote: post #303
klipklop wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand the downvotes, but brave search is a pretty decent product so far. Competition is always good, especially in the area of search.

I've just tried brave search and it does seem to be a good product actually - my only concern with all these providers is what is the monetisation strategy will be (Brave has called out ads, but it's not in their product at the moment). Looking at Brave's monetisation strategy for their browser it seems pretty shady (effectively steal the revenue from site owners for referral links and replace the websites ads with t…

Why do you post false stuff like "replace the website ads with their own ads"? We never did that and would not unless website were partnered and getting 70% of the gross.

The affiliate link autocomplete for finance.{us, com} was a bug and fixed immediately.

Browsers other than Brave have a hard time surviving without being captured by a search or other big-tech power. We're the only user-first, private browser with opt-in revenue sharing.

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

#352

Post by FractalHQ »

ashtonkem wrote: post #350
Bellamy wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so?

Apple doesn’t make money from ads (yet), so there is no harm and a lot of marketing benefit in pushing privacy from ad trackers. Google is an ad company, so good privacy controls in Chrome hurts them.

Safari privacy is a joke until I can install UBlock Origin on MacOS and iOS Safari. Until they support proper browser extensions outside of their App Store, Safari will remain a privacy leaking toy compared to chromium and gecko browsers.

Also the amount of bugs and missing features I face in Safari as a web developer is a nightmare.

Cute animations though.

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

#353

Post by toomanybeersies »

xg15 wrote: post #279
Thorrez wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord does this. Try to find the login cookie. When discord loads, it copies it out of localstorage into a js var and deletes the localstorage. So if you examine localstorage it will be empty. On page unload it copies it back into localstorage. So if you want to see the value, you have to make sure no discord tabs are open in your browser. I believe one reason for this is to prevent self-xss. It's hard for a malici…

Wouldn't this cause problems with multiple tabs/windows? Like, if I have one Discord tab open (so localstorage is cleared) and I open a second one in parallel, will I be logged out in the second one?

Service workers would be the solution to that problem, wouldn't they?

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

#354

Post by pajko »

fartcannon wrote: post #277
officeplant wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the blog it sounds like Chrome's will be in a similar state after the update. Just another thing I'll have to navigate to in a tedious manner.

Use Firefox?

They are running their own privacy games as well. But try LibreWolf or ungoogled chromium.

https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/ https://chromium.woolyss.com/

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

#355

Post by feanaro »

zamadatix wrote: post #212
feanaro wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where I'm not sure it really ever made sense to include in the first place. So move it somewhere where it makes more sense. > Truly, editing/deleting individual cookies isn't something any regular user ever needs to do No true Scotsman? If the user needs to do this, they're automatically not a regular user, or what? Anyway, hard disagree.

> So move it somewhere where it makes more sense. >> All the functionality is already built into Chrome right here: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/storage/cookies/ It can't both be redundant and be solved by moving one of the interfaces somewhere else. Either you meant to say it's not redundant and is needed but didn't list any reasons why you think this or your idea of simply moving the redundant interfa…

> It can't both be redundant and be solved by moving one of the interfaces somewhere else. Either you meant to say it's not redundant [...]

I never said it was redundant. Perhaps you mixed me with someone else?

Regardless of how you call the fallacy, I think there still is one since the vagueness of the term "regular user" seems to implicitly define out the users that would need to access the cookie dialogue.

If the wording is switched to "non-developer", then I once again disagree with this conclusion. Non-developers should definitely retain the ability to view, edit and delete their cookies.

I view this mostly as a matter of power. Yes, non-developers won't be editing or deleting individual cookies most of the time. However, if a website starts misbehaving and attempts to seize control of some part of experience from the end user, the end user must have the ability to counter that.

Having the ability to delete and edit pieces of information stored by websites on the user agent is a crucial part of that. If you take this ability away, then you ever so slightly took control out of the hands of the end user. In the end, you are making the user powerless and submitting them under your control.

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

#356

Post by indymike »

londons_explore wrote: post #310
indymike wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There shouldn't be a general-public UI to manipulate individual cookies, since making a mistake is very likely and leaks the user's private info. Power users can use the F12 tools Um, I'm pretty sure deleting a cookie or too isn't going to leak my private data. If it does, it is because some third party website defaults to doing the stupidest thing possible.

The leak is that you think you've deleted the right tracking cookie, but since the site uses 20 cookies for tracking different kinds of state you haven't.

Um... there are reasons other than privacy to delete a cookie. Many reasons.

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

#357

Post by happymellon »

tombrossman wrote: post #327
happymellon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't tell from the link, but does it let me run two profiles side by side? This is the only thing that makes FF awkward for me when not using a Mac.

You can bookmark about:profiles and click "Launch profile in new browser" under each profile to open it in a new Firefox window. If you are using GNOME desktop you can also try this to integrate the profiles into the launcher. I wrote it when still using Ubuntu but I'm on Fedora now and it's the exact same steps: https://www.tombrossman.com/blog/2020/launch-firefox-profile...

this would fall under the "awkward" way of changing profiles.

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

#358

Post by happymellon »

commoner wrote: post #345
happymellon wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't tell from the link, but does it let me run two profiles side by side? This is the only thing that makes FF awkward for me when not using a Mac.

Yes. With the extension, you can launch any other profile and a new window under that profile will be opened. There is no limit to the number of profiles that can be simultaneously active. The extension menu also lets you add, remove, and edit profiles.

Thank you, I'm going to add this.

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

#359

Post by BrendanEich »

BrendanEich wrote: post #351
Closi wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just tried brave search and it does seem to be a good product actually - my only concern with all these providers is what is the monetisation strategy will be (Brave has called out ads, but it's not in their product at the moment). Looking at Brave's monetisation strategy for their browser it seems pretty shady (effectively steal the revenue from site owners for referral links and replace the websites ads with t…

Why do you post false stuff like "replace the website ads with their own ads"? We never did that and would not unless website were partnered and getting 70% of the gross. The affiliate link autocomplete for finance.{us, com} was a bug and fixed immediately. Browsers other than Brave have a hard time surviving without being captured by a search or other big-tech power. We're the only user-first, private browser with o…

Binance (spellcorrekt turned it into “finance”).

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

#360

Post by laumars »

codezero wrote: post #348
laumars wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s usually a “good reason” — however that “good reason” is subjective to the people maintaining the application and might not align with the preferences of its users. Reasons don’t really matter to users though. It’s pointless arguing if we should assume innocence or guilt because irrespective of the developers motives, if a particular feature is a show stopper for you then you switch to a platform that supports…

I agree with what you pointed out about subjectivity. I think it’s still worth discussing though to serve as a warning to others who act with their own best intentions only to have them get bitten. Without calling this out it just always leans on the malicious side which doesn’t trend with reality in my experience. In terms of end users driving decisions ultimately, I agree. That said, this is a discussion forum so I…

The problem is any such discussion is going to be entirely speculative. Sure, you can discuss what you presume the developers motives might have been but it reveals more about the opinions and personalities of the people holding the discussion than it does about the developers since all you’re doing is projecting your own story to fill in some pretty sizeable blanks.
Post reply on HN