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Comment by imrehg | Hacker News Reader

Does this site really start downloading a 124MB torrent right after opening the page (sintel.torrent)? If so, why would that be a good idea to do?

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I really think WebRTC should require explicit permission from the user, same as the geolocation and push notification APIs. This tech has a lot of potential, but I don't like the idea that any site can add my browser to a P2P network without my knowledge.

More accurately, the browser should monitor the data usage in the current page (including iframes and possibly subsequent pages in that domain) and cut and request an explicit permission when it reaches a high water mark.

The major issue I see here is that someone can upload and make you share a copyrighted material. It could cost you lots of money. I wouldn't be surprised if it will be abused...

The existence of a negative outcome doesn't invalidate positive outcomes. If that happens, people will gripe to browser vendors, and they'll adapt.

It's a cool piece of technology and has a lot of neat uses.

This should be default behavior but in Firefox:

URL box -> about:config <RET>

Set _media.peerconnection.enabled_ to false.

A handy extension for FF for enabling/disabling: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/happy-bonobo-disabl...

EDIT: funny, even though I disabled WebRTC using it, the torrent from the site still automatically downloads...

Doesn't work for me with FX 42.0. While https://www.browserleaks.com/webrtc shows "disabled".

I agree with you, but the average Medium blog post is around 3-8MB, so this isn't an unusual flaw.

It's a relatively small download (for desktop) and it demonstrates its simplicity.

120MB is no small deal when you're using a 50MB data bundle on a crappy Kenyan ISP, on your phone. There should definitely be a prompt, I just lost half my day's data (before I stopped it).

Edit: changed "your" to "you're" ;)

WHAT? You mean you're not sat in a cafe in San Francisco?

oh the horror, the horror!

Or a coworking open plan space?

It might be good to show a download of something like a 1MB video file that you could turn on. Tying a 120MB download to reading about what you are showing to people is ridiculous.

A 120MB video downloading and playing in real time as a torrent is a lot more impressive than a 1MB clip. A page showing a 120MB video that is not DDOSed by making it to the front page of Hacker News is even more impressive ;)

This is also not different (on desktop) from visiting a Youtube channel page which has an auto-play "intro" video. I just hope this at least tries to detect device/connection type before starting on cellphone. Wonder if there is an HTTP 'connection-metered' header or something like that...

I can turn off autoplay on YouTube. I know, when I visit youtube, that it's going to be bunch of video.

I wouldn't be very happy if I opened it in the background tab on a metered connection (say, 3G).

Except when it just blew through my data allowance for mobile..... Just have a demo page for this.

Crazy

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