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Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

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211–220 of 307 posts

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains) Just wait until Google has pushed everyone into encrypted DNS like they did with HTTP ...

HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way without a single party having access to your sites visited. DNS-over-HTTPS is by its nature centralized. So is DNS. Your DNS provider has a list of all sites they’ve resolved for you, whether it’s encrypted over using TLS or not. Maybe that doesn’t go against your point, but I wanted to clarify that the two technologies have very different privacy implications.

> HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way

How does that work? AFAIK there is always a root authority.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains) Just wait until Google has pushed everyone into encrypted DNS like they did with HTTP ...

The TV will still need to update its certificates and work on corporate wifi, so there should always be a way to feed it your own certificate and MITM DNS. I think, anyway.

Only until they implement cert pinning, unfortunately.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#213

I cannot stand how everything with internet access is just becoming a vehicle to shove ads down everyone’s throat. This web browser wants to sell me credit deals. My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains). An increasing amount of apps are sending “offers” I never requested via push notifications on my phone. My belongings are not a fucking corporate billboard.

> My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus Mine doesn't, because I don't plug it into the intertoobs. (I use a Roku box.)

I read somewhere that roku makes more money by selling user data than they do by selling hardware.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus Mine doesn't, because I don't plug it into the intertoobs. (I use a Roku box.)

I read somewhere that roku makes more money by selling user data than they do by selling hardware.

Wasn't that Vizio? Probably all of them are making more money selling data...

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way without a single party having access to your sites visited. DNS-over-HTTPS is by its nature centralized. So is DNS. Your DNS provider has a list of all sites they’ve resolved for you, whether it’s encrypted over using TLS or not. Maybe that doesn’t go against your point, but I wanted to clarify that the two technologies have very different privacy implications.

> HTTPS can be implemented in a decentralized way How does that work? AFAIK there is always a root authority.

Keys can be exchanged without root authority. Root authority is only required for identifying that website owner is who he claims to be.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#216

I cannot stand how everything with internet access is just becoming a vehicle to shove ads down everyone’s throat. This web browser wants to sell me credit deals. My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains). An increasing amount of apps are sending “offers” I never requested via push notifications on my phone. My belongings are not a fucking corporate billboard.

But what can we do? Ads provide employment for tens of millions of people and fund literally billions of hours of content watched a year. Even if you agree most is trash, it's also allowed some really high quality stuff to flourish while being able to stay relatively independent. It's strongly tied to economic growth, and thus everybody's pensions are tied up in the success of advertising. It seems illogical it makes…

Thos reads like an advertisement.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#218
post #140
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not agree that maximizing profit is necessary. A company needs to take care of our customers and employees, and only make enough profit to keep doing so. More is just unethical.

I used to have similar thoughts until I got my MBA. We live in a capitalist economy. Investors consider where to invest by comparing an investment opportunity to a safe rate of return. They need some upside (greater returns) to offset the risk of less certain investments. Maximizing profits or at least ensuring hefty returns is important for a firm to continue to grow and receive investment dollars.

Maybe the need for continual growth and always angling for more investment dollars is a problem for society.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not an answer?

Because no matter what their subscription price is it’s only reflective of the development work required to add features on top of Chromium, not of building a web browser. As such it’s not sustainable. If it ever became a competitive issue Google could very easily close source Chrome. Then suddenly all these Chromium-based subscription browsers would be on the hook for all browser development, security updates includ…

> Google could very easily close source Chrome.

Only today did I realize that most of Chromium (and WebKit) is BSD licensed. So closing the source would be much easier than I expected.

Firefox and Gecko are MPL licensed, which is like GPL but scoped to individual source files.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#220
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Microsoft's raison-d'être is to extract as much money as possible from computer users. No matter how much they try to not be evil, no matter how many overtures they make to developers, it won't change the fact that Microsoft is basically just a hostile entity out there to extract as much money as possible from the computing scene.

You just described every tech company.

Not every tech company is a for profit company.
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