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Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

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Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#131

Post by delecti »

snowwrestler wrote: post #117
Forgeties79 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No. Contrary to popular belief, browsers on iOS aren’t all Safari skins. I know some people hate Apple for both good and bad reasons, but it's pretty wild to me people think Apple does this. I mean right out the gate that would be pretty illegal, no?

It would not be illegal. In fact the iPhone launched with only Safari. Because Apple is selling the hardware device, they can decide what software they ship on it. This is not specific to phones, it’s true of all hardware. There’s no feature to load arbitrary browsers onto a PlayStation, for example.

> There’s no feature to load arbitrary browsers onto a PlayStation, for example

Not anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#134

Post by semigroupoid »

delecti wrote: post #131
snowwrestler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not be illegal. In fact the iPhone launched with only Safari. Because Apple is selling the hardware device, they can decide what software they ship on it. This is not specific to phones, it’s true of all hardware. There’s no feature to load arbitrary browsers onto a PlayStation, for example.

> There’s no feature to load arbitrary browsers onto a PlayStation, for example Not anymore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS

That feature has been dead for over ten years.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#135

Post by JimDabell »

aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #107
Forgeties79 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No. Contrary to popular belief, browsers on iOS aren’t all Safari skins. I know some people hate Apple for both good and bad reasons, but it's pretty wild to me people think Apple does this. I mean right out the gate that would be pretty illegal, no?

...what are you talking about? Every browser you use is forced by App Store policy to run off of the system WebView, which is Safari...other features being part of the browser doesn't change being forced into using that engine.

> Every browser you use is forced by App Store policy to run off of the system WebView, which is Safari

No. It’s WebKit. Not Safari. That was the whole point of this subthread.

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#136

Post by Wowfunhappy »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #124
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that the website is still exactly the website they intended it to be. How could they realistically do that?

If you make a curated list, you become responsible for it ?

So I guess the question is, what is the alternative?

The only realistic option I can think of is some combination of:

• Make autocomplete operate on a blacklist instead of whitelist, with a more limited goal of only removing e.g. known porn sites.

• Make the list of potential matches machine-generated, without human intervention. (Aside, are we sure the current list isn't just the 250K most-visited sites on the internet, or something like that?)

Either of these would remove culpability since it's no longer a curated list. And yet, would that make it more safe in a meaningful way?

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#137

Post by KerrAvon »

onion2k wrote: post #40
thyrox wrote: post #30

Quoted post unavailable.

1. Killed flash because it's insecure and drains battery. 2. Crippled and never let PWAs fully work because security and battery. Your hypothesis raises two slightly ugly questions - "Why could't Apple make those things work on their platform in the past?" and "What's changed in the security and battery aspects of PWAs that means Apple are now moving to support them?" If you look at the changes for iOS 15.4 there are…

We don’t need to make stuff up about Apple’s reasoning on Flash — Steve Jobs was quite clear and quite public about it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple...

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#138

Post by jerf »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #123
dolni wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure they can find a way with tens of billions in quarterly revenue.

Billions in quarterly revenue doesn't allow Apple to solve the halting problem. I can't begin to imagine how they would do what you're suggesting. They need to detect when a website changes in kind, but ignore day-to-day changes or normal UI revamps.

I'm honestly unclear on how you can't see how Apple could solve this with billions. It is definitely a "throw money at it" situation, no question.

Moderation is a hard problem because it isn't just a matter of someone filtering between the polite posts and the less polite posts, it's a matter of filtering between the polite posts and the content that will sear your soul, no joke.

But that's not what this is. This is just, is the website still there and look correct? With the correct software setup it's roughly a person-month by my estimate to gets eyes on every site in the list.

(Though most people usually don't set write this sort of software very well, making someone laboriously click this, scroll around some, click some more, click a tiny radio button, click the tiny submit button, wait for the next thing to load, etc. It'll be longer & more work with this style. Someday I hope to have the chance to write some sort of classification program and implement the UI I've wanted for a while, which amounts to "right -> ham, left -> spam", and everything as pre-rendered as I can get it before it gets to the human. I'm sure some people out there have done something like this, but it makes me honestly sad how few I've seen.)

Re: Apple's whitelist of the 250k auto-completable domains in iOS

#139

Post by dolni »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #123
dolni wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sure they can find a way with tens of billions in quarterly revenue.

Billions in quarterly revenue doesn't allow Apple to solve the halting problem. I can't begin to imagine how they would do what you're suggesting. They need to detect when a website changes in kind, but ignore day-to-day changes or normal UI revamps.

> Billions in quarterly revenue doesn't allow Apple to solve the halting problem.

That would be a good point if this were the halting problem. It's not. It's a list of domains that you're suggesting to users.

For starters, a VERY basic solution might be to look up the domain name ownership information and see if that has changed. If so, flag for review.

Secondly, you can store the public SSL certificate and make sure that's still the same. If it changes, flag for review.

Thirdly, screencap the site, save it, periodically re-cap and compare how similar the images are. If it changes, flag for review.

> I can't begin to imagine how they would do what you're suggesting.

Did you try?

> They need to detect when a website changes in kind, but ignore day-to-day changes or normal UI revamps.

The solution doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be good enough.

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