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My favorites are the ones that never knew Google Reader existed, but use it as a martyr every chance they get. >My fear is this -- once Google has control of t
by bitmapbrother 8y ago
My favorites are the ones that never knew Google Reader existed, but use it as a martyr every chance they get.
>My fear is this -- once Google has control of the web, they can turn off huge parts of it for whatever reason, however thoughtless, and without disclosing why.
This person has either been watching too many movies that depict the web as a place where IP's can be traced by writing Visual Basic GUI's or doesn't understand how the Internet works.
- matwood 8y agoFor many people the web is google. If google drops a site out of search it is effectively turned off for many people. Another point that he has been harping on is that lots of sites do not need https, but Chrome will shortly warn on visiting those sites. It stands to reason some future version of Chrome will block those sites outright. There are parts of the internet that could disappear when that happens. You may not necessarily agree with his doomsday scenarios, but I assure you Dave Winer[1] understands how the internet works. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Winer
- filleduchaos 8y agoThere is no site I know of - or to be more accurate, there is no user of an internet application I know of - that does not need transport-layer security.
- jessaustin 8y agoI don't need it when I'm reading sports stories, when I'm researching a technical topic of interest, or when I'm reading out-of-copyright literature. If someone else does need it when doing the exact same things, that's fine, but my unsecured reading does not impose a cost on them.
- filleduchaos 8y agoCorrection - you think you don't need it when you're reading those things, which indicates a serious misunderstanding of HTTPS' problem domain. Unless what you're trying to say is that you're totally fine with third parties (governments, ISPs, the person whose WiFi you're connected to, some random script kiddie): - snooping on your browsing habits (you can intercept and read off an entire HTTP request plain as day, including headers such as User-Agent strings, the specific URL that's being visited, etc, allowing you to build a profile of/digitally fingerprint the unsuspecting user; these are encrypted in an HTTPS request) - maliciously handling your requests, returning whatever response they please instead of forwarding it to the intended remote, allowing them to not just censor the content but straight-up lie to you without your knowledge - tampering with responses - injecting a cryptominer, tracker, script that adds your computer to a botnet or other malicious/non-benevolent script into the response before it reaches you or even just fucking around with the CSS or throwing in porn for the lulz
- jessaustin 8y agoWhy do I trust the host at the far end of the connection more than those in the middle? In fact HTTPS has done little to prevent any of the things you mention, especially through e.g. ad networks. I wouldn't mind if they were to "throw in some porn for the lulz", but that has never happened for me... The point is that for this sort of web use, my brain is already turned on, and there's nothing at risk. If someone rewrites a page to mislead me, I'll notice eventually, whether that someone is running a TLS site or MitMing a non-TLS site. ps. your first sentence is pretty obnoxious; there's no need to personalize this.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoYou seem to not understand how SSL works. It is how you know the site you are talking to is the site you think it is.
- hopesthoughts 8y agoMy blogs are a good example of that one. I don't have certificates installed as of yet.