291–300 of 876 posts
Disappointing to see such a 180 on 'don't be evil'. I'm recommending Mozilla Firefox to all friends and family.
Unfortunately Firefox doesn't have a good UI/UX after all. The last time I checked, multiple profiles support is somehow half-baked.
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>Tell me how a minority of informed and caring users can avoid on their own that a single large scale bad actor pours millions over millions of dollars to convince the uninformed masses about whatever they want. Firefox. No, not Firefox of today; I'm talking about Firefox 20 years ago that defeated IE6 by sheer force of nerds alone. Of course, the landscape is vastly different now and Firefox today is about the most…
> Firefox 20 years ago that defeated IE6 by sheer force of nerds alone. Firefox was significantly better than IE though: it was faster, had more features, and things like that. This is what made Firefox popular, not "sheer force of nerds". Chrome, when released, also had some significant improvements to Firefox. In particular, it was loads faster. This changed with "Firefox Quantum" (59 IIRC), but "too little, too la…
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The Browser application needs to pass a binary image check, and if the browser hash doesn't match Google database, you cannot proceed to the website (since your browser may be corrupted). A major big deal for non main-stream browser, and for non Google browser developers, extension developers (eg. AdBlock), etc. In summary, some websites (like banks, Netflix, etc) will no longer be available for non mainstream browse…
Can you please explain why a third party browser can’t lie about its hash, just like it can lie about it’s user agent?
The infrastructure to do signed OS loading is already in place, and on some operating systems (e.g. Android), the OS attestation service is already in place. So everything is mostly in place already to have your browser attest that it is official Google chrome on Google Android on an approved device with a hardware chip that verifies a Google approved boot signature. That hardware chip contains a Google approved private key (a key that's signed by a manufacturer that Google has in turn approved/signed) that can't be extracted, and that's the key that makes the attestation. Replace the hardware boot verify chip with one that will verify software you want, and you lose your attestation key.
They could also make the OS service reach out to a web service to get an attestation that the attestation key hasn't been revoked, so even if someone did physically extract the key from hardware and share it, it could be revoked (assuming each device gets its own key).
In effect, wide use of this kind of thing means that open source software is no longer free since even if you can look at the code, you must be part of the anointed class (i.e. working within our approved by a major corporation) to edit it and run your edits.
Can you give me an idea as to why WEI is a bad idea for the web? Granted, it is morning, but as I am going through the notes linked ( https://googlechrome.github.io/OriginTrials/developer-guide.... ), I am not sure I understand why it is that bad.
WEI tries to shortcut that process by creating a secured sign-off system that would allow the server to only respond to queries from a blessed hardware and software configuration. This wildly constrains the user agents that would be possible. The pro for web developers is that they wouldn't have to concern themselves with whether their server or the HTML they are. Emitting is broadly standards compliant and compatible; they can just make sure it works with the target platforms they care about and rest easy knowing no other platforms can touch their system. But this is bad for anybody who, for whatever reason, can't use the blessed platforms (user agent and hardware combinations).
Immediate practical consequences are that a lot of the screen reader solutions people use would probably break (because the screen readers wouldn't be certified user agents), a lot of clever hacks would be far less feasible (the website somebody hacked together to track whether the ice cream machine was broken at McDonald's restaurants relied upon being able to pretend it was the McDonald's smartphone app well enough to attempt to put ice cream in the shopping bag), and it would basically become impossible to build a new browser or operating system from scratch compatible with the web (they wouldn't work with the websites people wanted to use because they wouldn't be certified as authentic on any of those sites).
This proposal grossly changes the balance of power on how the web works and places most of it in the hands of the incumbent browser and computer hardware vendors.
I feel like I have to repeat this, since so much is at stake here, where it is about the preservation of the web as we know it today, at the peril of having it turned into yet another walled garden: The only way around the dystopia this will lead to is to constantly and relentlessly shame and even harass all those involved in helping create it. The scolding in the issue tracker of that wretched "project" shall flow l…
Yeah, financial and social pressure is basically the only weapons we have against corporations when regulations don't exist. And honestly, financial pressure doesn't work at this scale or in this case.
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>The FTC has been more active on anti-trust issues in the past two years than at any time in the past 30.... That's a direct result of the 2020 election. Active against Google though? Remember, Google can help a certain political party in tough times (e.g. rollout of healthcare.gov).
So can Microsoft and Amazon, surely? Yet they're getting a lot of scrutiny from the FTC right now.
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isn't this good? banks can raise security while we can still use any browser to check hackers news! or this 3 cows story?
The problem is that this feature can and will be used to restrict the users, it doesn't offer any real benefit to you. This will not increase security for the user either, it's just a new barrier at the risk of higher fingerprinting. Why should you care how your bank handles security? It's their responsibility, not yours to handle.
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Citation for what, increased anti-trust activity from the FTC over the last two years? Sure, here's one article: > Private equity deals and transactions in the healthcare and technology sectors continue to attract heightened antitrust scrutiny... > The US agencies have also demonstrated an increased interest in challenging vertical transactions. > In January 2022, for example, the FTC sued to block Lockheed Martin's…
Except they keep losing cases. ex: https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-appeals-court-opens-docket-... Or Judges fast-tracking lawsuits to allow those being prosecuted by the FTC to get things over quicker, ex: https://www.reuters.com/legal/illumina-wins-fast-track-appea... And I think the biggest blow may actually come about because of the SEC lawsuit that will be heard this upcoming term at SCOTUS: https://www.reuters.…
And also, to switch back to Firefox
And what happens when website owners decide supporting Firefox is not worth it?
I did have issues during an interview in Microsoft Teams refusing to play my video. "Your browser is not supported", yeah fuck you it's not supported. I explain why, ask if we can switch to Hangouts and send a link.
Works fine, if more people had the balls to do the same we wouldn't be in this situation today. It's our duty to educate people instead of conforming to the path of least resistance.