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On HackerNews? You're probably not the only one. In the world of real users? You're probably the extreme minority. Most people want convenience, and will trad

On HackerNews? You're probably not the only one. In the world of real users? You're probably the extreme minority. Most people want convenience, and will trade almost anything for it. Especially if they don't realize they are trading something like "privacy" or "trackability" for convenience.

nsajko 7y ago
Why do you try to imply that a Web browser experience not built around making the user trackable most effectively, like it is by default with the big browsers, has to be inconvenient? The way I use Chromium [0], is very convenient to me. The downsides are almost nonexistent, and the upsides are not just in privacy: it is convenient (albeit perhaps of questionable morality?) to not have to worry about newspaper article quotas; likewise with having more control over cookies and other browser data in the "simultaneous multiple sessions" model. For example having more than one user logged in to some Web site does not take any extra effort compared to just one user being logged in. On the other hand there is a difference between "real users" and those willing to exploit the Unix programming environment/interface to its full potential, and that is required knowledge, or the willingness to get it. For example to use my script tb effectively one has to understand that "being logged in with a Web site" means temporarily storing appropriate data chunks gotten from the Web site (cookies) so that they are accessible to the browser and it could send them back to the server to authenticate. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484845
- elefanten 7y ago
  You answered your own question. The vast majority of users are not "willing to exploit the Unix programming environment." For the vast majority of people who do not already have Unix skills (or whatever), it is convenient not to have to learn them.
baybal2 7y ago
> Most people want convenience, and will trade almost anything for it. No, this is what indoctrinated "UX" people think. I hear it every day from ordinary office workers how sick they are from dysfunctional, progressively dumbed down UIs. Ask just how many people keep MS Office 2003 just because they can't use the "ribbon" UI.
- class4behavior 7y ago
  You're conflating bad UI design with user-friendly, intuitive, comfortable UX. Also, design is simplified because that strategy works. People want simple UIs, while business doesn't want to invest in design, costs of which rise exponentially unless you have talent both in development as well as management at work, or deal with too many unique support requests.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
diafygi 7y ago
When framed correctly, a stateless browser is totally acceptable for general users. General users have no concept of cookies, so if you describe browsers as just a dumb window to let you load websites, it totally makes sense that you would have to log back in when you close the window. For example, I set my Mom up with a Firefox configuration that doesn't remember anything when you close the window (basically incognito by default). She has used that configuration for years and never complained. In fact, she always compliments me for how safe and reliable I've made her browser. When she sees other people on other computers just load their logged-in websites without having to log in, she thinks they're totally unsafe and exposed. She associates closing the window == back to safety, so whenever she ends up on a scary website or sees a scary popup, she just closes firefox and opens it back up again. It's wonderful. I didn't have to teach her about cookies or sessions or anything. All I had to teach her was that if she ever got into a situation where she didn't know what to do, just close the window and you're safe again. Anyway, I feel pretty strongly that if browsers were incognito by default and you had to opt-in to persist sessions (e.g. whitelist cookies), general users would get used to it pretty quickly and end up thinking the time back before was a very unsafe place (like the free love era before the AIDS epidemic).

nsajko 7y ago

Why do you try to imply that a Web browser experience not built around making the user trackable most effectively, like it is by default with the big browsers, has to be inconvenient? The way I use Chromium [0], is very convenient to me. The downsides are almost nonexistent, and the upsides are not just in privacy: it is convenient (albeit perhaps of questionable morality?) to not have to worry about newspaper article quotas; likewise with having more control over cookies and other browser data in the "simultaneous multiple sessions" model. For example having more than one user logged in to some Web site does not take any extra effort compared to just one user being logged in. On the other hand there is a difference between "real users" and those willing to exploit the Unix programming environment/interface to its full potential, and that is required knowledge, or the willingness to get it. For example to use my script tb effectively one has to understand that "being logged in with a Web site" means temporarily storing appropriate data chunks gotten from the Web site (cookies) so that they are accessible to the browser and it could send them back to the server to authenticate. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484845 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484845

elefanten 7y ago
You answered your own question. The vast majority of users are not "willing to exploit the Unix programming environment." For the vast majority of people who do not already have Unix skills (or whatever), it is convenient not to have to learn them.

baybal2 7y ago

> Most people want convenience, and will trade almost anything for it. No, this is what indoctrinated "UX" people think. I hear it every day from ordinary office workers how sick they are from dysfunctional, progressively dumbed down UIs. Ask just how many people keep MS Office 2003 just because they can't use the "ribbon" UI.

class4behavior 7y ago
You're conflating bad UI design with user-friendly, intuitive, comfortable UX. Also, design is simplified because that strategy works. People want simple UIs, while business doesn't want to invest in design, costs of which rise exponentially unless you have talent both in development as well as management at work, or deal with too many unique support requests.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

diafygi 7y ago

When framed correctly, a stateless browser is totally acceptable for general users. General users have no concept of cookies, so if you describe browsers as just a dumb window to let you load websites, it totally makes sense that you would have to log back in when you close the window. For example, I set my Mom up with a Firefox configuration that doesn't remember anything when you close the window (basically incognito by default). She has used that configuration for years and never complained. In fact, she always compliments me for how safe and reliable I've made her browser. When she sees other people on other computers just load their logged-in websites without having to log in, she thinks they're totally unsafe and exposed. She associates closing the window == back to safety, so whenever she ends up on a scary website or sees a scary popup, she just closes firefox and opens it back up again. It's wonderful. I didn't have to teach her about cookies or sessions or anything. All I had to teach her was that if she ever got into a situation where she didn't know what to do, just close the window and you're safe again. Anyway, I feel pretty strongly that if browsers were incognito by default and you had to opt-in to persist sessions (e.g. whitelist cookies), general users would get used to it pretty quickly and end up thinking the time back before was a very unsafe place (like the free love era before the AIDS epidemic).