Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#91

Post by userbinator » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

sophiebits wrote: post #46

mlyle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days. Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user. Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-…

You used to need a certain amount of technical competence to be literate. Now we teach everyone to read and write! What is the world coming to?

It's more like "now we don't have to teach everyone to read and write, we do the (filtered/censored/etc.) communication for them."

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#92

Post by tracker1 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:30 AM UTC

andrewstuart2 wrote: post #22

morpheuskafka wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could be said for HTTP... FTPS and SFTP do exist. That said, I agree that its outmoded today.

You'd think it's outmoded, but when the systems you're integrating with provide and expect multi-gigabyte files, the ability to append to a single file in a straightforward way and get some posix-ish APIs becomes a real life saver.

How do you spend to amultigigabyte file in chrome?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#93

Post by john61 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:35 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #90

clouddrover wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be Bully them back. Don't use Google search and don't use Chrome.

Easier said than done, especially when most of the population doesn't care either because they're too young or too nontechnical; actually, I already don't use Chrome, but their search (which still shows FTP sites...) is, despite slowly getting worse too, still giving a wider breadth of sites most of the time. Bing and DDG help fill in the gaps.

startpage.com gives me better results than Google itself, because of the missing personalization bubble.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#94

Post by altmind » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:39 AM UTC

rahuldottech wrote: post #27

I know for a fact that HP distributes software and drivers over FTP files that they link to on their website. FTP isn't used much anymore, but IMO/IME, it's still nice to have for those rare times when you come across a file that you need to download and it's served over FTP.

Same for supermicro - your drivers/firmware is on ftp

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#95

Post by big_chungus » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

anyfoo wrote: post #41

big_chungus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTP is basically useful as a single-use protocol: file transfer only. File transfer only allows a more stripped-down, dedicated server with better security. Vsftpd and others have excellent security specifically tailored to permission-based file transfers with access control lists etc. You will rarely find a comparable http option. It's not perfect, but there are also good partes and reasons why it's still around. Se…

As written in another comment, you will find FTP to actually be a truly horrendous protocol, at least from today's perspective. I'm not sure there is anything that FTP offers, that the rsync or sftp, for example, offer much better (or simply HTTP if it's only in one direction), and then some. SFTP is actually not just FTP over SSH. The protocol is different precisely to get rid of a lot of the outdated nuisances.

Yes, there are lots of issues with FTP. I've worked with it, and it is in many ways a nightmare.

That aside, you can use FTP for auth and ACL in of which HTTP and rsync just aren't capable. I'm not sure this is a flaw in the core protocol so much as the tooling, but there you have it. FTP config syntax may often be byzantine. But it's widely supported (especially on old, low-spec, or embedded devices). For newer stuff, yeah sftp is probably better. But it's still got its uses.

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#96

Post by quotemstr » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:44 AM UTC

aloknnikhil wrote: post #33

quotemstr wrote: post #14

Isn't it clear to everyone now that HTTP is the new IP and TCP? That all future protocols will subsist on a web tech substrate? Is that such a bad thing? The vocabulary of URLs and cookies is much richer and less centralized than the vocabulary of port numbers and connection tuples. Why should we keep FTP or other legacy non-HTTP protocols around? What are we buying? Slightly lower connection setup byte counts?

That's a naive statement. Take streaming protocols, as an example, and that alone is reason enough for why you shouldn't it over HTTP. HTTP is inherently stateless. There are many use-cases that are stateful. This leads to high latencies for HTTP streaming since the full state (HTTP headers to tell me who you are and what you want) is sent for every request.

HTTP these days (via WebSockets) allows for the creation of stateful connections. My idea is that HTTP will just expand to encompass any remaining non-HTTP use cases. HTTP isn't even coupled to TCO anymore!

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#97

Post by a_t48 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:47 AM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #84

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What big attack surface? The client? FTP is an ugly/stupid protocol, but it's not really complex (I suspect it's far simpler than HTTP).

I'm surprised the article claims there are still bugs, because one would think (hope) that a protocol over 30 years old with an implementation over a decade old should've received its last bugfix long ago and become truly stable by now.

Can you give an example of a piece of software of reasonable complexity (network/file handling, etc) that has solidified like this?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#98

Post by kart23 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:51 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #77

cameronbrown wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. I'm a fairly young person. What I've seen over the past few years is technology is finally useful and accessible to everyone. Forcing people to use the command line isn't a useful skill for 99.5% of people anymore, it's just senseless gatekeeping to make it a computer requirement. I got in…

I think you missed my point. Before, a huge portion of the population was using computers and had to peek under the hood. This means you got a lot more people who got curious about how the machine worked very early on. I am teaching STEM stuff to kids these days-- programming in Scratch and python, etc. My friends and I, back in the day, were all poking around memory, rekeying Basic programs from magazines and moving…

I agree with you. I was in high school a couple years ago, and lucky enough to take cs classes. What I experienced was not good. Most of the kids just showed up, did the projects, passed tests, and got A's. But they were not good programmers. They were just going through the motions, if you gave them something slightly outside their knowledge, they would likely just give up.

I think there's something fundamentally wrong with the way cs is taught, but its hard to teach computers in a class setting. You really need to inspire that deep interest that so many of us have in computers, and it's very tough to get at that in the modern day. Because of the overload of information and media that kids are getting thrown at them these days. It's very easy to sit down 20 kids and make a game in scratch, and call it computer science.

We should have kids use technologies that professionals use in their work. Setup a flask web server, write a scraper, use apis, etc. Stop dumbing down things, expect more from the younger generation. Those coding bootcamps sure as heck don't teach scratch right?

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#99

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

cameldrv wrote: post #86

paulryanrogers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same could have been said of Gopher. FTP is typically insecure and painful to use with it's varying port maps. Transferring files over HTTP or more modern protocols is the future.

FTP in PASV mode operates very similarly to HTTP, and is no more insecure. With an organization the size of Google and the Chrome team, they should be able to make it work.

Honest question: Has anyone not used FTP in PASV mode in the last 20 years over the internet?

I think it's pretty much a given since most clients change to PASV mode as a first step. And it's rare that people have a port open to them (behind all firewalls, etc)

Re: Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome

#100

Post by reilly3000 » Sat, Aug 17, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #65

mlyle wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days. Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user. Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-…

> Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. I'm a fairly young person. What I've seen over the past few years is technology is finally useful and accessible to everyone. Forcing people to use the command line isn't a useful skill for 99.5% of people anymore, it's just senseless gatekeeping to make it a computer requirement. I got in…

I encourage you to spend some time getting to know the linux command line. I had a similar path and I gained the most enlightenment (and productivity) when a got some help from a good mentor and learned how to find my way around. Menial digital tasks that most people suffer through all day turn into small puzzles with big rewards: you get your day back. Sure, maybe half of it went to figuring out a syntax error, but then the rest of the days get to benefit from that work. Moreover, you learn the most when trying to fix that little bug, and you're better for it the next time.

Stuff like renaming 200 files, or converting 200 images to a different size, or normalizing 200 audio files you recorded yesterday, or finding the right few words in 200 files all can be done with minutes of effort once you unlock those powers. I use 200 because that's about how many times people are willing to sit there and bang out something manually. Tasks larger than that people tend to give up on, or buy a tool to help. The neat thing is, the same solution for 200 items could be applied to 200 million items without changes.

I would love for the full power of the CLI to be available to everybody without training. Until that gift comes from on high, we use the tools we have, GUI or text or SMS or whatever. Today you can pick your path.

The internet does unlock all of those doors to those who want to learn. There are incredible resources for learning new things and fixing problems that others have ran into. Reading man pages and printed manuals may be fun for some, but I'd rather search for answers, and chip in some when I can.