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Comment by bandrami | Hacker News Reader

This is a great example of good ideas destroying themselves. "Software should occasionally be able to find out where the computer it is on physically is" is a cool idea, but once it's there every single piece of crapware out there does it constantly.

See also desktop notifications for websites

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I think they should (permission allowing) be able to ask for location, as often as they like.

I pin the system disruption from this query squarely on the OS. It should make such determinations in the background and return whatever value it has, without starting up a new scan just for this query.

There's a big difference there.

You install an application you are giving it permission to do practically anything it wants to do with your system, including find the location as often as it wants to.

Browsers have to ask you permission to show desktop notifications, or get your location, or anything else.

> You install an application you are giving it permission to do practically anything it wants to do with your system

Not on macOS, AFAIK. You can add/remove permissions for that.

This is a more recent feature. I’m not sure if such granular permissions were in macOS back in 2020 when this blog post was written.

Even when you have granular permissions, though, it just means the negative UX of having to click "no" every three minutes because some jackass at Adobe is convinced you really want to be told RIGHT NOW about every single product they make (or whatever).

The authorisation prompt doesn't show up once you denied. Which makes sense to avoid user fatigue, but is annoying when users denied it the first time (aka "go away stupid modal dialog") and now complain about things working (or not) as designed. At some point operating systems and browsers will have to run a simulation to provide realistic fake responses from denied subsystems if application developers get even more brazen violating user interests and maybe even *locally* analyse API call patterns for abuse with the option of sending a trace to make a claim against the developer with the application distribution channel. Oh you added a bunch of criminal spyware libraries praying on your paying users? Guess that's a push notification to your whole install base offering them a refund and a ban on further sales until you've paid up. Except no existing player wields that much power and can be trusted to use it wisely. sigh

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