Can a browser just be a fucking browser? Every stupid fucking feature they cram in is yet another security issue waiting to explode in our face. Just make a damn browser and let us figure out how to "follow creators".
[0] https://blog.google/technology/ads/helping-publishers-recove...
Google helping with “Adblock” is a farce considering research has shown a key reason people use as blockers is to protect their privacy…from Google.
Like Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla did for a long time.
Nothing good is viable with the current tech "economy", where software is an endless death-march of feature-bloat to justify the unlimited (also known as cancerous) growth required by venture capital or public markets.
But I bet a couple guys could pull off an Opera 2.0 and make a nice living for themselves. You only need a couple thousand paying users at a very modest subscription fee to cover a couple of developers' salaries
Re: Windows, if we're not paying for it anymore are we still the customer? Even if that's a yes, it represents a cost for msft, so they seem to be looking to extract any amount of value out of it that they can. I doubt I'll use it past Win10, the downsides just keep piling up.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/windows-11-pro/dg7gmgf0d8h...
At the end of the day, only legal requirements are going to curtail this type of behavior.
> Even paid products do this kind of stuff these days.
Yes, if you pay for the product, then not only are you still the product, but you're a sucker as well.
It's not quite that stark, but I don't see why a company would truly change its business model just because they charge a fee. It's too tempting to "do something with all this data," i.e. treat all consumer software as spyware.
"You're always the product and willingness and ability to pay for a nonessential service makes your disposable income an even juicer target to advertisers."
Zero-telemetry, with built in adblocker.
Business model: pay for the browser.
Your turn!
Yes, OEMs pay for Windows; probably businesses pay for Windows. It's pretty clear they've gone to an ad-supported model whether they're honest about it or not. And of course, paying for the product doesn't mean they won't suplement invoice revenue with advertising revenue.
Last time I checked you could still just set the wallpaper via the context menu. It only locks the appearance settings.
He wasn't the nicest guy much earlier than that.[0]
So yeah, MS is being paid for their browser. But a trillion dollar valuation is simply not enough.
Not on Android. AOSP is free, but if you want to ship the play store then you have to also include the other Google apps. It is the Google data harvesting and advertising that pays for Android.
Maybe those goals align at some point, but corporations' alignment drift makes AI look downright peachy.
You don’t have to name names if that’s a problem, but there should at least be something credible we can look into.
Pretty explosive allegation imo.
It also makes my blood boil that Safari both hides the full path of the URL you're currently visiting and doesn't implement the standard practice of giving you a preview of the full URL you're about to visit when you hover over a link. These are horrible choices for usability and security, especially at a time when phishing is so productive.
Safari has both of these. Safari > Settings > Advanced > Show full website address, and View > Show status bar.
Moreover, I don't think either of them help out with phishing. The intention behind not showing the full website address is specifically to stop phishing, since it puts the emphasis on the domain name. (Is there a phishing situation where someone could spoof the domain name? Maybe, but I imagine in that case, they could spoof the rest of the URL as well). As for the status bar, I don't think anyone would look at it even if it was enabled by default.
In regards to the https problem specifically, while safari will say you are browsing an insecure page if using http, they do it in a horrible way - by adding text to the beginning of the url bar. Certainly if you were trying to reduce url confusion, you would add a separate symbol and label! I can click insecure icon on chrome and other browsers to read more about how, but I cannot do so on safari -- so much for trying to reduce confusion.
What's the problem with this?
> Certainly if you were trying to reduce url confusion, you would add a separate symbol and label!
Why? I'm not following what's wrong with Safari's approach. You're stating your conclusions but not your reasoning.
> I can click insecure icon on chrome and other browsers to read more about how, but I cannot do so on safari
Read more about what?
In the second, Safari inlines the "not secure" to the URL but not in a visually clear way. It looks like "not secure" is part of the domain.
Read more about what the "not secure" and the padlock actually means.
The move to hide the full URL is to make the URL readable for the average user. People on this site might know how to parse URL components in their head, but the average user does not inherently understand the DNS hierarchy nor do many completely understand URI delimiters.
https://secure.bankofamerica.com.0-0.pw/login/securelogin.aspx
0-0.pw
The padlock is mostly useless in today's world. It was useful in a time when ecommerce was young and otherwise legitimate sites were collecting information via http. There was an attempt to make it more useful with extended validation certs, but that solution didn't really end up being effective. Phishers could still register EV certs that spoofed other names, and adoption was too low to change user behavior.
Criminals today phish people, use HTTPS, and people have a false sense of security because of those who told them “padlock = good”. The padlock served a purpose to drive http adoption. It does more harm than good today.
Browsers should instead upgrade to https automatically on all connections.
And frankly, the Settings window and the View menu are not obscure places to put these options. Those are the first places you should look if you're in a Mac app and want to configure the UI.
If Safari was a 1:1 clone of Chrome but without (probably) sending my stuff to Google, I'd be all over it. Millions of other Mac users too. Instead I'm using Chrome on Mac just to get many websites to even work.
Uh, which part of my comment do you agree with? Clearly you disagree with something, because that's the opposite conclusion I came to.
Reference?
If it is “near impossible to turn that off” it means it is possible. How?
I haven't used Firefox in ages but AFAIK it has very little bloatware. The problem, from the perspective of a web dev, is that it has quite a few rendering quirks/bugs. These days chromium sets the standard for the "correct" way to render things.
Though I have noticed some issues in Teams but that’s about it
I apologize if you are already well aware of this and that the problem is that is more complex than that.
Actually I did some Googling around, and found that it was fixed recently - after 4+ years lol. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/28/bitwarden-firefox-private-...
Hamburger Menu > Settings
Privacy & Security tab on the left
Scroll down to the Firefox Data Collection and Use section (2nd section from bottom)
Uncheck all of the boxes in this section
What's weird is that some of your comments aren't dead, and typically shadowbanned users have all of their comments auto-marked as dead. It's possible those got vouches though.
And don’t get me started on Firefox nagging people to use Mozilla VPN, and their push towards DNS over HTTPS, as in “Trust me dude, I want your logins, your passwords, your DNS and your VPN, and pinky swear I’m just a charity with benevolent intentions, Google just gives us money for… stuff.”
I think the "opens tabs all the time telling you how much Big Browser care about your privacy" is primarily referring to the tabs that are sometimes opened when you restart the browser for the first time since a new update has been installed, telling you the sort of stuff that is in the new update, or sometimes talking about other projects they have.
Or like, "hey, try colors" or whatever.
I disagree with their insinuation that the push of their VPN etc. is for a nefarious purpose due to their receiving some funding from Google.
We’re in the paradox that it is possible to claim there is no ad on a browser because you don’t look at them when they appear. Similarly, people who are satisfied with a government stance will see no problem in violently repressing opposition. Defects only appear when you are on the other side.
But they do appear, and they educate the users such as my parents into creating a Firefox account or assuming that Firefox equals privacy, which is clearly not the case.
I didn't make that claim. I just said I immediately close them and don't mind them much because I basically only restart the browser when I reboot the PC (so about once a month because after that all kinds of bugs start to appear).
Of course I see them as problem, I assumed that was obvious from the rest of my comment.
Agree that Mozilla building independent sources of revenue is a good thing.
[1] - I'm presuming HN people, not moms & dads.
That's literally the only reason I use Edge. I want someone to release an "Edgium" like vscodium or, alternately, implement Edge's vertical tabs in Chromium.
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
Pick your browser, I like Lagrange.
https://gemini.circumlunar.space/software/
Now we just need content.