Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 46 | Hacker News Reader

Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 46

webkit.org

39 pointsmichaelrkn11 comments

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Another notable change from that page:

> Froze the user-agent string to reduce web compatibility risk and to prevent its use for fingerprinting

The relevant commit can be found here: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/commit/4bc237458115ac916f39...

I love that Apple cares about privacy when just about every other megacorp is a really fancy advertising agency

Can somebody explain how it helps with the privacy?

Assuming most of the users of the browser are on the latest version, it implies that majority of users are already sharing the same useragent. How does useragent version # helps with reducing the fingerprint?

It’s freezing to a static version, everyone would have the same static (frozen) version from now on, not a build number. So you can’t use it as part of a finger print.

https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/commit/4bc237458115ac916f39...

Also suggests you’d need to do capability detection other ways in future.

Does this mean web push notifications are coming to Safari on iOS?

No, this has nothing to do with push notifications.

Except that Service Worker support is a prerequisite for supporting the standard Push API, and push notifications are probably the most common usage of Service Workers. So it's a reasonable question.

Safari on the desktop has supported push notifications for a couple of years, with no indication they will be coming to iOS. I assumed go was referring to those push notifications, and not a different type of push notification.

Offline support is the core reason for Service Workers and using the offline capabilities is literally a prerequisite for handling any other events from additional specs.

Offline caching support is the most common use.

Service workers allow things such as offline apps. Not related to push notifications at all.

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