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Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

nullsweep.com

201–210 of 448 posts

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#201
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot WebUSB – I wish I was joking, but I'm not: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/USB

I see irony in all this web functionality. Back in the 90's if you wanted an ohms law calculator you had to go download a poorly written program from some random website. Network admins started locking down what you could download, run, and install due to security problems. Flash became a hit and they started piling on features in the browser so you could run things dynamically without having to download something. F…

yes, because for most user choosing between security and functionality is not a choice they are prepared to reason about.

I'm no expert, but I am computer savvy. My experience is that more security ALWAYS limits functionality that I want. I get around it all with VMs and snapshots. I have totally wide open VMs that have no host access and just reset to the snapshot when I shut them down. the irony is that it is not only harder to choose functionality today, when you want it, but also harder to choose security. The choices are made for you. it is infuriating.

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#202

Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think... 1) Will I ever actually use this 2) How is this gonna screw me over WebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!) Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox n…

We need a simple browser implementation for the masses. Is there any such browser in existence?

Qutebrowser.

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#203

Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think... 1) Will I ever actually use this 2) How is this gonna screw me over WebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!) Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox n…

Web browsers really are the new operating systems. Chrome OS was far ahead of its time, both in its general user hostility and in its excessive resource consumption for seemingly mundane tasks. Like when your roommate's YouTube streaming makes your Excel-like app horribly slow, because your new spreadsheet app needs high-speed internet for no obvious reason. BTW, WebRTC and WebAssembly were great for crypto mining tr…

> Before, they had to port their crypto miner to JavaScript by hand

No, cross-compilers to JS are and were thing too, and were used by cryptominers.

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#204

Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think... 1) Will I ever actually use this 2) How is this gonna screw me over WebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!) Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox n…

Websockets are nice for some things. I hack on Mastodon and it uses WSS for streams and they're very helpful. But WebBluetooth, ASM, etc are all fairly insane. WebRTC feels like a massive security issue (I've seen a demo of someone using WebRTC to find computers on an internal network at a security conference years ago. Even if that hole is fixed, it's still a hacky solution to video streaming behind NAT). I agree; m…

> I hack on Mastodon and it uses WSS for streams and they're very helpful.

I'm not familiar with Mastodon or WSS. Can you describe how using WSS make the end user's experience better? What would be different if web sockets weren't used?

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#205

Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think... 1) Will I ever actually use this 2) How is this gonna screw me over WebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!) Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox n…

We are in ActiveX 2.0 era. Can we call it GoogleX?

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is to ask the user on a site basis.

That would be amazing, but it would never happen. Mom and Pop would always click "no" out of fear of the unknown, and my awesome feature wouldn't get used! It has to be enabled by default, they don't know what they're missing!

That’s already how the browser microphone/camera API and notification API work, though. At this point, it’s the expectation/default for new APIs to act this way. The browser makers would just have to be convinced to align the behaviour of these slightly-older APIs to the best-practice UX paradigm for new APIs.

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#207

Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think... 1) Will I ever actually use this 2) How is this gonna screw me over WebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!) Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox n…

Websockets are nice for some things. I hack on Mastodon and it uses WSS for streams and they're very helpful. But WebBluetooth, ASM, etc are all fairly insane. WebRTC feels like a massive security issue (I've seen a demo of someone using WebRTC to find computers on an internal network at a security conference years ago. Even if that hole is fixed, it's still a hacky solution to video streaming behind NAT). I agree; m…

WebAssembly is awesome! It's a substantial performance boost, and will allow the off-loading of standards to open-source communities so browser developers can focus on core browser features rather than having to stretch themselves.

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web browsers really are the new operating systems. Chrome OS was far ahead of its time, both in its general user hostility and in its excessive resource consumption for seemingly mundane tasks. Like when your roommate's YouTube streaming makes your Excel-like app horribly slow, because your new spreadsheet app needs high-speed internet for no obvious reason. BTW, WebRTC and WebAssembly were great for crypto mining tr…

You can't cross compile anything other than crypto miners or how does it not help anything else?

Most of the other uses are pointless.

I don't need WebRTC for chat, because IRC is still working just fine.

I don't need WebRTC for video calls, because Skype is still working just fine.

I don't need WebRTC and WebAssembly for online gaming, because I have Steam to install games locally. Plus latency and performance of games emscripten-ed to wasm tends to be atrocious.

So the only uses where I have seen the new Web* APIs in my life was obnoxious ads and newspaper websites trying to shove recommendations and notifications into my face.

What would you want to cross-compile that couldn't be done much better by building a proper local app?

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#209
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Web browsers really are the new operating systems. Chrome OS was far ahead of its time, both in its general user hostility and in its excessive resource consumption for seemingly mundane tasks. Like when your roommate's YouTube streaming makes your Excel-like app horribly slow, because your new spreadsheet app needs high-speed internet for no obvious reason. BTW, WebRTC and WebAssembly were great for crypto mining tr…

> Before, they had to port their crypto miner to JavaScript by hand No, cross-compilers to JS are and were thing too, and were used by cryptominers.

Yes, but before webrtc they were easy to block.

Re: Why Is This Website Port Scanning Me?

#210

Every time I hear about some shiny new feature being added to a browser, I think... 1) Will I ever actually use this 2) How is this gonna screw me over WebSockets, WebBluetooth, WebAssembly, Web-You-Can-Access-my-Accelerometer-and-Battery, haven't ever wanted to use those. Ever. For anything. For any reason. (Edit 3: Oh yeah, I forgot! WebRTC!) Edit: Fantastic. You can't disable it in Firefox. So what, does Firefox n…

We need a simple browser implementation for the masses. Is there any such browser in existence?

Agreed. Firefox99, latest Firefox but party like it's 1999. Web* disabled. Canvas disabled. LocalStorage disabled. DRM-content disabled. Anything else we don't need?
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