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Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

chromium-review.googlesource.com

51–60 of 136 posts

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#51
post #15

For context, this is is not allowing websites to prevent View Source for all users. Rather it is a setting that administrators can set on Google Chrome installations within their company/school/etc. That said, I highly doubt that Google would take this feature request seriously if this were not associated with another Google property. For example, I can't imagine that if Typeform users opened a similar bug ticket tha…

Is it remotely possible to vote against this policy? Who controls Chromium features – I know it's open source and thus one could always fork it, but how is the project governed? "Benign" dictatorship?

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#52
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But perhaps they will get by in life by finding clever solutions that circumvent common expectations through curiosity and familiarity with technology.

Is this a euphemistic way of saying cheating?

If solving a problem in an unconventional or novel way (assuming legal) has a business value, that will absolutely get someone by in life.

I don't understand what the term "cheating" means in a post-school context.

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#53

This is for the chromeos devices/managed chrome browsers [1]. From the bug [2] it looks like this was relevant in a school setting, where this is common. So the school hands out some chromebooks and wants to use that managed environment to prevent kids cheating on quizzes by looking at source code. DRM and related technologies are an effort to wrest control of devices away from their owners, and give control the manu…

Why would viewing HTML+JS source-code reveal correct answers to a school quiz? It certainly doesn’t have to.

Maybe a case of shortsightedness, thinking, that they need to solve it in a javascript single page app framework and then forgot the basics about client server architecture, sending the solutions to the frontend, to check them right there. A beginner mistake.

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#54
post #15

For context, this is is not allowing websites to prevent View Source for all users. Rather it is a setting that administrators can set on Google Chrome installations within their company/school/etc. That said, I highly doubt that Google would take this feature request seriously if this were not associated with another Google property. For example, I can't imagine that if Typeform users opened a similar bug ticket tha…

Is it remotely possible to vote against this policy? Who controls Chromium features – I know it's open source and thus one could always fork it, but how is the project governed? "Benign" dictatorship?

You think you should get to vote against other people's local policies? Just you, or do we each get a vote? Where do I get my list of your policies in case I need to vote against some of them?

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#55
post #49
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Students will not learn to experiment with technology if they are blocked on every attempt.

Time and place. Taking a math quiz is the wrong time to experiment with bypassing quizzes.

Why is that?

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it remotely possible to vote against this policy? Who controls Chromium features – I know it's open source and thus one could always fork it, but how is the project governed? "Benign" dictatorship?

You think you should get to vote against other people's local policies? Just you, or do we each get a vote? Where do I get my list of your policies in case I need to vote against some of them?

That's a rather aggressive way of answering my question. I meant "who decided to let chromium disable view-source, and if this decision is unpopular, can it be reconsidered?".

Your local policy is yours, but in much the same way that I don't think it's a good idea for an OS provider to provide a single, easy-to-use button saying "spy on this user who I pinky-swear is a member of my family under 18 and tell me everything they do and where their mobile is", an option to permit the disabling of view-source in a mainstream browser does not fit easily with me. I accept that there might be some situations in which you'd want to do it, but honestly it's the thin-edge of the wedge.

"Benign dictatorship" is a common form of open-source project governance; it's not unreasonable to expect that is the case here (with Google, or a part of it, as the dictator). That being said, many open-source projects are managed in a way other than "benign dictatorship". Debian, for example, famously uses the Condorcet method [1] if there are any significant ideological disputes; see this vote [2] about Richard Stallman for an example.

To my mind, a browser supporting -- in whatever form -- an option to disallow "view-source" could well be a controversial enough decision to necessitate a vote through this means. I don't know how Chromium is governed, and all I meant to do was ask how.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method [2] https://www.debian.org/vote/2021/vote_002#outcome

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would viewing HTML+JS source-code reveal correct answers to a school quiz? It certainly doesn’t have to.

Maybe a case of shortsightedness, thinking, that they need to solve it in a javascript single page app framework and then forgot the basics about client server architecture, sending the solutions to the frontend, to check them right there. A beginner mistake.

Or just nobody did care. Contractor's main expense are kickbacks and actual product is made by cheapest subcontractor.

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#58
post #15

For context, this is is not allowing websites to prevent View Source for all users. Rather it is a setting that administrators can set on Google Chrome installations within their company/school/etc. That said, I highly doubt that Google would take this feature request seriously if this were not associated with another Google property. For example, I can't imagine that if Typeform users opened a similar bug ticket tha…

Is it remotely possible to vote against this policy? Who controls Chromium features – I know it's open source and thus one could always fork it, but how is the project governed? "Benign" dictatorship?

Here's the link to vote, no registration required: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#59
post #13

> With Schools using Google Forms as a testing platform, students are able to use this shortcut to search through the source of the page, and determine the correct answers. So they're serving the answers with the questions, and get annoyed when the students figure this out. What a lark. How about using a system which doesn't do that?

I’m not that surprised tbh. A couple of years back the Chrome Dev Summit quiz did the same thing. I thought that was the joke (“haha, they’re requesting allanswers.json at startup”), and didn’t realize it was apparently unintentional until they revealed I was in first place at the end of the day.

Re: Chromium: Permit blocking of view-source: with URLBlocklist

#60
post #3

Some more context at https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=895462 : > With Schools using Google Forms as a testing platform, students are able to use this shortcut to search through the source of the page, and determine the correct answers.

That feels like some hardcore X Y problem.

Not really, if you consider that X is not 'ensure quizzes work', but rather 'how do we cover our asses'.
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