Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com • Hacker News Board

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#11

Post by mattmanser » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:10 PM UTC

taspeotis wrote: post #8

octo_t wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Google wouldn't be blocked by the same mechanism?

Well let's assume that each URL or domain that is blocked is reviewed by a human who's paid to look at content, not necessarily to have technical knowledge. They'd be much more likely to know that blocking anything from Google is probably a bad idea/false positive but they've probably never heard of jQuery and when they look at the jquery*.js files all they see is The Matrix. So if you allow the above assumption, it'…

So they've never heard of jQuery, but they won't think that googleapis.com looks like a dodgy site as it's trying to pretend to be google.com?

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#12

Post by sudomal » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:15 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #4

Sucks for the people affected by this, but if the result is that more people use google for this, I'd be a happy bunny. Why would anyone use code.jquery.com, really? They obviously don't mind a third party hosting their js, so why not use the most popular service (google) to increase the chances that users arrive at their website with jquery already cached?

Better yet, host it locally. More privacy for the user.

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#13

Post by csmithuk » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:21 PM UTC

Sky user here[1].

Turn it off then!

This is entirely optional. It asks you when you first install and connect the router via the WiFi landing page if you want to use any blocking. If you don't answer the question or select no, there is no blocking at all apart form the IWF firewall stuff. Every kind of blocking comes with problems of some description. You either live with it or trust your users.

[1] £7.50/month for ADSL2 for 12 months with line rental and calls included was too good a deal to throw away. I'd go for Andrews & Arnold if I could afford idealism at the moment.

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#14

Post by voltagex_ » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:45 PM UTC

csmithuk wrote: post #13

Sky user here[1]. Turn it off then! This is entirely optional. It asks you when you first install and connect the router via the WiFi landing page if you want to use any blocking. If you don't answer the question or select no, there is no blocking at all apart form the IWF firewall stuff. Every kind of blocking comes with problems of some description. You either live with it or trust your users. [1] £7.50/month for A…

Interested Australian user here. That's about half of the cost of our cheaper monthly ADSL2 plans - what's the catch? How far away from the exchange are you?

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#15

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:46 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #3

ISP interference makes for a interesting question regarding liability. Their interference are now potentially causing massive amount of economic damages to companies which relies on jquery library. Webshops, economic infrastructure, hospitals, transportation systems are just a few that relies on having fully functional websites up and running. But for liability, a few questions pops up. Who is the offended party, and…

Alternatively, does code.jquery.com offer any kind of uptime guarantee? Big companies would rather rely on their own hosting / CDN than that of jquery, I'm sure.

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#16

Post by VLM » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:50 PM UTC

taspeotis wrote: post #8

octo_t wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Google wouldn't be blocked by the same mechanism?

Well let's assume that each URL or domain that is blocked is reviewed by a human who's paid to look at content, not necessarily to have technical knowledge. They'd be much more likely to know that blocking anything from Google is probably a bad idea/false positive but they've probably never heard of jQuery and when they look at the jquery*.js files all they see is The Matrix. So if you allow the above assumption, it'…

Now that the secret's out, that google won't be blocked, expect the next wave of malware to be served from drive.google.com public links.

There might, just possibly, be a meta lesson here that whack-a-mole blocking doesn't work and is basically a lost cause / waste of time. Try solving the problem another way.

On the other hand, its excellent security theater operating perfectly. Sometimes security is inconvenient, therefore anything inconvenient must be secure, therefore this is great PR.

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#17

Post by csmithuk » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 12:51 PM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #14

csmithuk wrote: post #13

Sky user here[1]. Turn it off then! This is entirely optional. It asks you when you first install and connect the router via the WiFi landing page if you want to use any blocking. If you don't answer the question or select no, there is no blocking at all apart form the IWF firewall stuff. Every kind of blocking comes with problems of some description. You either live with it or trust your users. [1] £7.50/month for A…

Interested Australian user here. That's about half of the cost of our cheaper monthly ADSL2 plans - what's the catch? How far away from the exchange are you?

Well I was an O2 customer. Sky bought O2 last year and in the effort to maintain their customer-base they will give you silly offers if you argue with them for long enough. It's usually £20.50/month including line rental but I argued it down to £7.50/month on the basis I stayed with them for 12 months.

No catch. Confirmed no traffic management, no download limit, free router, free migration. This is purely for customer retention.

I'm 800m away from the exchange and get 12.2Mbits down and 1.1Mbits up.

I pull an average of 120Gb/month over the line with no problems.

Edit: just to add I was paying £35.50/month with O2 before which is crazy amounts.

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#18

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 1:08 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #3

ISP interference makes for a interesting question regarding liability. Their interference are now potentially causing massive amount of economic damages to companies which relies on jquery library. Webshops, economic infrastructure, hospitals, transportation systems are just a few that relies on having fully functional websites up and running. But for liability, a few questions pops up. Who is the offended party, and…

So, yeah, one thing that I learned about these CDNs

They will stop working eventually

So you may try to load from them, but always have a fallback. In your website

An example: what if code.jquery.org gets compromised?

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#19

Post by eloisant » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 1:08 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15

belorn wrote: post #3

ISP interference makes for a interesting question regarding liability. Their interference are now potentially causing massive amount of economic damages to companies which relies on jquery library. Webshops, economic infrastructure, hospitals, transportation systems are just a few that relies on having fully functional websites up and running. But for liability, a few questions pops up. Who is the offended party, and…

Alternatively, does code.jquery.com offer any kind of uptime guarantee? Big companies would rather rely on their own hosting / CDN than that of jquery, I'm sure.

Even for a small company/project, I've stopped using external CDN.

The gain is not significant enough to balance problems like this one. It's not often than a consumer ISP does this mistake, but that's pretty common for a user behind a corporate proxy.

Re: Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

#20

Post by ftfish » Mon, Jan 27, 2014, 1:12 PM UTC

taspeotis wrote: post #8

octo_t wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Google wouldn't be blocked by the same mechanism?

Well let's assume that each URL or domain that is blocked is reviewed by a human who's paid to look at content, not necessarily to have technical knowledge. They'd be much more likely to know that blocking anything from Google is probably a bad idea/false positive but they've probably never heard of jQuery and when they look at the jquery*.js files all they see is The Matrix. So if you allow the above assumption, it'…

I believe that countries that block Google block all their domains, including their CDN. This was actually an issue once when one of my "projects" was used by co-workers in China.

Regardless of which CDN you use, having a fallback is a must (see rmrfrmrf's post). Also, if you are making a website (as opposed to a web app), it really shouldn't "break" without JavaScript/jQuery.