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Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

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Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#661

Post by Const-me »

scrollaway wrote: post #586
simias wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the root of all evil here is Javascript being opt-out instead of opt-in (and effectively mandatory for a big chunk of the internet these days). Letting any website and their friends (and the friends of their friends) run turing complete code on the client PC probably sounded reasonable when the web was created but it seems incredibly naive in hindsight. It's not as bad as ActiveX and other plugins, but it's…

> it seems incredibly naive in hindsight Oh stop with the dramatics, please. JS has brought us an immense amount of innovation on the web. It has lowered the barrier of entry to programming and introduced tens of millions of people to the world of development. If you're on HN the odds are that directly or indirectly, JS is one of the reasons you have a job today, and that you can execute it remotely. And today specif…

> It has lowered the barrier of entry to programming and introduced tens of millions of people to the world of development.

I think Basic, Pascal or Python achieved more at that.

> it's the only reason many kids can do remote learning as efficiently as they can.

The main reason is internets and TCP/IP, that’s essential and irreplaceable. Another important reason is h.264, equivalents do exist, but given the state of hardware acceleration it’s irreplaceable, at least not on mobile devices.

JavaScript ain’t an essential tech, as it’s replaceable on both clients and servers. Your kids would learn equally efficiently using a native app instead of these JS-rich web sites.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#662

Post by boring_twenties »

nunez wrote: post #646
mikem170 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I browse in firefox with javascript turned off, in ublock, with a bunch of other restrictions [0], and temporary containers. I make exceptions for a couple dozen sites, like my bank, open street maps, etc. Youtube is my only soft spot here, the rest of google I keep blocked. I can make one-off exceptions to read a tab in front of me, but that's not routine, it's not hard to find sites that support this. [0] https://g…

How do you use the internet with JS turned off? Every time I try doing this, I undo it five seconds later because of so many sites breaking instantly. (I sometimes browse the web with w3m; sites blocking you because of no JS happens often)

Many sites break instantly. If I care enough about those sites, I whitelist them. Otherwise I move on.

On the other hand, many sites work better with JS disabled: they load much faster, don't slow down scrolling, don't break copy & paste, and so on.

edit: I should probably make clear that I'm not the same user you responded to

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#663

Post by frabcus »

tclancy wrote: post #613
dkarl wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can have been incredibly naive and have brought great benefit at the same time. In the 1990s did we foresee that in 2021, tracking our individual web activity and building profiles of our behavior would be a pillar of the business model supporting most of the online economy? Did we foresee that we would be looking to government regulation to prevent comprehensive profiles of our individual web browsing activity fr…

Not predicting what will happen thirty years hence is naive? The web was all shiny goodness and going to be a panacea for anything you could name back in the late 90s. The fact that it did not come to pass isn’t naïveté so much as a disappointing repeat of what our current economic systems of reward drive companies to do.

The general pattern was predictable - I was involved in making an early ad blocker in 1996. Adbusters magazine was a thing then.

Technically, the detail of super-cookies is inventive and surprising. The general trend for how capitalism inevitably both uses and abuses advertising was predictable.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#664

Post by dathinab »

dcposch wrote: post #543
dathinab wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per-site caching negates the principal selling point of centrally-hosted JS and resources It doesn't or more correctly the benefit wasn't really a think in most cases. I will not start the discussion her again but on previous hacker news articles about this topic you will find very extensive discussions about how in practice the caches often didn't work out well for all kinds of reasons and how you still have a per…

Plus, FF can preserve the value by allowing cross domain resource caching as long as the request specifies a hash. That negates the super cookie use case, but still lets you eg. load Jquery from a shared CDN. You get a free security upgrade to go with it.

> Plus, FF can preserve the value by allowing cross domain resource caching as long as the request specifies a hash.

This does not work as you still can have the same timing attacks the hash only helps wrt. source integrity from CDN's but not with chach based time attacks.

Still what should be possible without timing attack channels is to de-duplicate the storage of resources (through not easy and likely not worth it for most use-cases). So you will only lose the most times small speed post on the load time when you open a domain the first time.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#665

Post by JKCalhoun »

mstade wrote: post #479
emayljames wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run the same requests throught different end points. Each through pihole & unfiltered, while monitoring the traffic on both.

Doesn’t that defeat the point of pihole? Though I suppose if what you want to do is measure things it makes sense.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Just to get a sense of how much bandwidth I am saving by in fact blocking the request.

It would be nice to know how much we're wasting.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#666

Post by monopoledance »

ogre_codes wrote: post #554
monopoledance wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely don't respect having my weir podcast-friendship relationship with the host exploited by fully integrated ad pieces whispered to me in a trusted voice. That. Is. Sick.

I respect that podcasters are spending their time and effort putting together a program which I enjoy. The price I pay for that is listening to them talk about some product I don't give a shit about for a few seconds until I can hit the skip button. To me, there is a clear cut deal with no deceit. Do you feel people should volunteer their time gratis to entertain you? What Hacker News does with adverts slipped into t…

Please don't take offense in this, but your "advertisement doesn't influence me" take is quite silly and naive. Not being rational about the effects of advertisement is the whole point of these product placements. It is not information, but manipulation.

> Do you feel people should volunteer their time gratis to entertain you?

No. They can do as they please. I'd prefer them to do it for the sake of it, or charge in a direct matter like a subscription model. However they should not, never, try to manipulate me for their profit.

I merely said the scene dominated by enthusiasts/hobbyists changed to a predominantly revenue-focused environment. You see the same dynamic at play, which made youtube the signal:noise hell it is today.

Mind you, the German and American podcast scene were very different in that regard, as in America monetization of every possible creation seems to be much more common. I assume this is down to a different set of factual constraints and values.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#667

Post by windowojji »

nofunsir wrote: post #611
scrollaway wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems incredibly naive in hindsight Oh stop with the dramatics, please. JS has brought us an immense amount of innovation on the web. It has lowered the barrier of entry to programming and introduced tens of millions of people to the world of development. If you're on HN the odds are that directly or indirectly, JS is one of the reasons you have a job today, and that you can execute it remotely. And today specif…

I agree with simias. What does JS have to do with my VPN? What was wrong with Skype? Still beats the pants off others for quality. I cannot think of much good agressive whitespace, hamburger menus, infinite scrolling, HID hijacking, copy-paste preventing, trackers etc, etc etc, has brought us, besides into the world of Aggressive Ad Arbitrage. Need https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ be mentioned? The real powerhouse w…

I like that the website you linked still has Google Analytics JS embedded.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#668

Post by WinterHoursTF »

mstade wrote: post #199
makecheck wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern ad networks are essentially the “fax machine flyers” of old: someone you don’t know using your resources and your time, denying you use of your own resources temporarily, to send you something you don’t want. Except now it’s like every “normal” fax page includes 15,000 flyers.

I wonder how many people reading this comment are thinking, "what's a fax machine?" :o) I like the analogy, but I wonder how effective it is on anyone under the age of what, 35?

I'm 21 and I know what a fax is.

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#669

Post by nofunsir »

windowojji wrote: post #667
nofunsir wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with simias. What does JS have to do with my VPN? What was wrong with Skype? Still beats the pants off others for quality. I cannot think of much good agressive whitespace, hamburger menus, infinite scrolling, HID hijacking, copy-paste preventing, trackers etc, etc etc, has brought us, besides into the world of Aggressive Ad Arbitrage. Need https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ be mentioned? The real powerhouse w…

I like that the website you linked still has Google Analytics JS embedded.

F12 it ;)

Re: Firefox 85 cracks down on supercookies

#670

Post by nofunsir »

triceratops wrote: post #625
nofunsir wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with simias. What does JS have to do with my VPN? What was wrong with Skype? Still beats the pants off others for quality. I cannot think of much good agressive whitespace, hamburger menus, infinite scrolling, HID hijacking, copy-paste preventing, trackers etc, etc etc, has brought us, besides into the world of Aggressive Ad Arbitrage. Need https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ be mentioned? The real powerhouse w…

> I cannot think of much good...[JS] has brought us... This has shades of "What have the Romans ever done for us". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djZkTnJnLR0

Still waiting for the sanitation, aqueducts, roads, peace, etc...
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