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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

I use Safari 11 as my primary browser. This is promising:

> Safari’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention managed to mitigate all third-party cookies to a tracking domain, apart from redirects. However, we found that future completeness can be undermined by having this option disabled for even a short interval. Third-party cookies set in this interval by tracking domains, which otherwise would have been prevented, will still be included in cross-site requests after enabling the option again, identical to the results when the option is disabled. Luckily, this option is enabled by default, so future completeness can only be affected through explicit disabling by the user.

I'd also like to know whether that applies to iOS, but the paper didn't perform any mobile browser testing.

That said, every so often I view my stored cookies and I'm always shocked at the number of domains that I've never heard of that have stashed cookies. :-(

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I never wanted to "waste money" on a mac, but I feel like Apple takes user privacy seriously, and I'm genuinely considering making the switch from Windows just to support that practice. I dunno, maybe that's silly, but it seems like the whole world stopped caring about user security and privacy, and this is refreshing to see fairly consistently.

Try developing for Safari and get back to us. Safari is easily the worst browser to develop for this year.

And this is the end users problem... how?

Lack of support for one.. Safari doesn't have the market share to force developers to support it when it's painful to work with..

If you can't make a web site work with Safari then you have no business calling yourself a web developer. Not even joking.

I was under the impression the discussion was about developing extensions for Safari, not websites.

I am perfectly capable of making a website work in safari but I am not able to test it because I don't want to spend $xxxx buying a macbook for the purpose of refreshing a web page. Firefox and chrome run on my dev machine and Microsoft gives out a free VM image with edge.

I'd say the majority of websites were never tested on safari because most small dev places can't afford to buy macbooks just to test one browser.

They could use Sauce labs or some similar very affordable solution.

Potentially. Although in my experience safari works 99% the same as chrome so I'd bet a bunch of devs just assume if it works on chrome it will work on safari.

Can you elaborate on that, why, what exactly makes is so bad?

Warm feelings aside, security experts are typically more objective than Apple's keynote bullet points.

The key thing to remember is that there is no privacy without security. Factually speaking, ChromeOS is far more secure than either Windows or macOS. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-google-chromebooks-became-the-...

> there is no privacy without security

This is factually incorrect. You can have privacy without security, and you can have security without privacy. Security keeps things safe, privacy keeps things hidden.

Also, ChromeOS devices ship with a rootkit called the Play Store. There are also hundreds of apps on the play store that install malware on Android devices. You may not need to install an anti-virus, but you may also very easily install what looks like a fun game, and then find your funds being drained from your bank account.

ChromeOS devices don't ship with Play Store, you have to enable it.

> This is factually incorrect. You can have privacy without security, and you can have security without privacy. Security keeps things safe, privacy keeps things hidden.

Uh that's not factually incorrect. You can definitely have security without privacy, but not the other way around. Without security that means your privacy can't be protected.

"The domain of privacy partially overlaps security (confidentiality), which can include the concepts of appropriate use, as well as protection of information." [1] It does not, however, implicitly provide security.

If I send and receive e-mails with a reporter off the record, we are communicating privately. But the communication may not be strictly confidential, nor secure, unless I take additional steps to ensure it.

If I keep files in my home directory, on my own hard disk, with permissions so only my user can access the files, then my files are private. They are not, however, implicitly secure. Another example: an SSH private key. Without a password on the key, the key is private, but not secure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy

The fact that your privacy isn't secured doesn't automatically mean that it is automatically compromised, does it? I mean, sure, maybe you assume it is for any real purpose, but that doesn't mean your privacy is actually compromised.

For example, my first iPhone, I didn't have a password (I think -- maybe that was my first ipad). It was insecure, but I'm reasonably sure that everything on there was private (in that more physical sense; I have no idea about internal security of those first generations of iphone/ipad).

A weaker claim that is probably true might be: you cannot guarantee your privacy without security. That you cannot have privacy seems like too strong of a claim?

I think it's bit of a nitpick, but the iPad was under physical security.

I do agree with you though. Privacy is having your information to yourself. You don't need security for that, just that everyone else keep their nose to them self. But if you want to guarantee your privacy, you need some form of security.

If you knew my kids, you might not say that my iDevices are always under the best of physical security.

A system that doesn’t collect certain kinds of data also doesn’t need to protect (i.e. secure) it.

(Of course it’s impossible to tell that a system hasn’t been manipulated if it’s insecure and that makes the argument bollocks.)

> Security keeps things safe, privacy keeps things hidden.

This seems like a false dichotomy. Safety and being hidden are utterly intertwined—is the act of preventing a request revealing my identity an act of security, or of privacy? It seems like both to me: privacy is effected via security of not performing the request without my consent.

You can have privacy and security, you just have no guarantee of one just because you have the other.

Cookie tracking is like wearing only a towel at the beach. Under the towel, you have privacy. But browsers suck at security, and so many websites can still walk up and yank off your towel, exposing you.

Security would be locking the towel to your body with a padlock. I'm not aware of browsers implementing strong security mechanisms for user data, so I'm pretty sure any privacy gains you get are just another towel.

Isn’t that as long as you keep all your data with a third party? Not sure how that works for real privacy.

>I never wanted to "waste money" on a mac

it's a pedantic point I'll make, but one that's important to articulate: Apple hardware has incredible build quality- and you pay for that. An equivelant build quality Windows laptop will cost roughly the same.

The Entry level Apple MacBook pro 15" is £2,349.00 with:

256GB Storage (m.2 SSD, high speed))

2.2GHz 6-core 8th-generation Intel Core i7 processor

Radeon Pro 555X with 4GB of GDDR5 memory

16GB 2400MHz DDR4 memory

Retina Display,

The same spec DELL Precision 5530 is: £2,481.49

256GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Class 40 (Much slower)

Intel Core i7-8850H, Six Core 2.60GHz, 4.30GHz Turbo, 9MB 45W

nVidia P1k

16GB, 2 DIMMS, DDR4-2666MHz SDRAM, Non-ECC

15.6" Ultrasharp UHD IGZO4, 3840x2160, Touch, w/Prem Panel Guar 100% color gamut, Brushed Onyx

So, more powerful CPU, slower storage and less pixels with a touch screen. -- For the same price.

The issue when comparing price is that it's often Apples (heh) to Oranges, Apple only sell high quality hardware thus the cost to play is higher.

(FWIW they also charge too much for upgrades; but this is just smart business as those who need that much power are willing to pay)

(PS: I actually own a Precision 5520 and I love it; I don't buy into the Apple hype train but I don't buy into the anti-apple hype train either- all systems should be weighed on their merits but my point is that price is often an unfair metric when people talk about laptops due to the abhorrent build quality of most laptops)

I bought a MacBook Pro for 2.2k in 2010 and 8 years later, everything still works. I highly doubt I could say that about a Dell or Toshiba of any price.

It is about the same price or more expensive to get an equivalent windows machine, the Thinkpad P52 is similarly priced if you go for those specs.

I think part of the issue is that you don't have a choice of specs. If PCI-E SSD speeds are enough for you, you don't have a choice to save the money on it. If you want to go for a cheaper 4-core processor with higher clock speeds and put the money into more/better RAM, you can't make that trade-off.

I do agree that macbooks are pretty good value for the components you're getting, but I think unless your view on what you want in your computer matches what Apple will give you then you will end up "wasting" some money on your machine.

Why not Linux then? Apple can still change their minds in the future and sell previously gathered data.

On MacOS I use Cookie of https://sweetpproductions.com

On a regular timebase it removes all cookies and databases except my Favorites like HN, Docker, GitHub, Netflix, my newspaper, etc. Works like a charm, set-and-forget.

Blocking cookies is an OK first step, but I was expecting this to go into things like HSTS supercookies that exploit intended behavior and aren't really fixable.

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