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> better privacy/security than a webapp. It's the complete opposite and one of the reasons I prefer to use a comparable web app over a native desktop app. Inst

> better privacy/security than a webapp. It's the complete opposite and one of the reasons I prefer to use a comparable web app over a native desktop app. Installing an app requires way more trust into it than using a web app that runs inside a heavily restricted sandbox. As for why I also like to prefer developing web apps, that's because the available tools make web development more productive. Checking changes to the source is near-instant by simply pressing F5 in the browser, and the dev tools in browsers are some of the best you can get for debugging.

jonny_eh 5y ago
It's easier to ensure your users are always using the latest version.
- db65edfc7996 5y ago
  As a user, I am unsure that is a positive. There are near-daily stories about how feature X of a program was removed/hidden/etc for seemingly no reason. Using an offline only program ensures some UI developer does not get to swap buttons on me for "engagement".
  - djbusby 5y ago
    Button change for KPI is a Company problem not a Technical problem. That BS happens on all the platforms
    - thfuran 5y ago
      Sure, but it has a technical solution if you're using a desktop application — just keep using the old version.
      - masukomi 5y ago
        i think most folks allow auto-updates because we want new features and security fixes. So, while you're technically correct i think the practical result is that it's no different on this axis than a webapp.
  - rekabis 5y ago
    This is why I am still using an arse-old version of Mailwasher - the newer versions started sharing data with the mothership, including your eMail passwords, just so it could transparently sync that data to their iOS & Android apps. My passwords are between me and my eMail server. No-one else should get that data, for any reason whatsoever.
0xCMP 5y ago
Even in iOS which keeps apps in a fairly restrictive sandbox + goes through some kind of review process I wouldn't trust an app like Facebook's or Reddit's to not be gathering some kind of other information to use somehow. There is a reason Reddit insists on you downloading their app.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  This, on the other hand, that is, necessarily networked applications where the entire purpose is to interact with people and data that are geographically distributed, is perfect for taking place in a browser, and yes, I agree that I trust the browser much more than someone's native app. For applications that don't need to be networked, though, given me native.
- wanderer_ 5y ago
  I think there are other possible motivations, too. Not to say that you are wrong (you aren't), and not that this necessarily applies to Reddit specifically, but there is something to be said for having your service's icon implanted on the user's homescreen, possibly being one of the first things they see every time they open their phone. This opens up having muscle-memory to open up your app, making it that much easier to hop on and start doomscrolling. Having an app also makes it easier to drive engagement using notifications.
  - slaymaker1907 5y ago
    I think it's eye opening how unsuccessful web notifications have been on desktop. It's my belief that most people would not turn on notifications for most apps which send them if Android prompted like web notifications (I think iOS also defaults to allowing notifications without prompting for permission, but I'm not sure). There isn't even an option on Android to block notifications except when explicitly allowed in settings. Each time you install a new app, you need to turn off its notifications.
    - jbarrs 5y ago
      iOS does not allow notifications by default. Apps must display a system pop-up to request permission to display notifications, and the option is there to deny permission. Whether users have already fallen into the same cycle as cookie consent pop-ups and, more recently, GDPR pop-ups, just clicking "allow" by default because it's the easier option, is a different question.
goodpoint 5y ago
> It's the complete opposite and one of the reasons I prefer to use a comparable web app over a native desktop app Citation needed.
- root_axis 5y ago
  It's obviously true. Executing random binaries from the internet directly on your machine is clearly much less secure than executing a js script in an extremely hardened and restricted browser sandbox.
  - sirjaz 5y ago
    Which isn't true with all the access the latest html5 apps want to your hdd,webcam, etc .... They can take over your system silently and you don't need to click on anything
    - root_axis 5y ago
      > They can take over your system silently and you don't need to click on anything No, this is totally wrong. All browsers require explicit permission to grant access to hardware resources, they cannot "take over your system silently"... unlike an arbitrary binary.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    This is absurd. A binary reviewed and vetted by a Linux distro is really unlike to contain spyware, unlike 90% of webpages. The web a well-known security dumpster fire. Additionally, it's false that desktop applications are not sandboxed. On the contrary, the sandbox implemented around an application can be way more fine-grained that a browser. Firejail is a good example. Browsers are behemoths and you can look up for yourself how many vulnerabilities they have and also the SLOC count. Edit: silent downvotes? Leave it to HN to believe that webshit is more secure than desktop applications. This is material for /r/ShitHNSays
    - root_axis 5y ago
thewebcount 5y ago
> It's the complete opposite No it's not. To use a web app I have to have an internet connection to even start the app. Anything I click on that loads a new resource sends data to the server about what I'm doing. I can unplug from the net, install desktop software and run it without it being able to send anything anywhere.
- mschuetz 5y ago
  The average user and use case typically has internet connection so you're talking about edge-case scenarios. In a regular scenario, a native app can send whatever it wants about your system to a server, including your sensitive photos and private information. > Anything I click on that loads a new resource sends data to the server about what I'm doing. Nothing stops native apps of doing that. Plenty require you to have internet connection and coerce you into telemetry. The difference is that one can only send data that the browser will allow it to have, while the other can read all your sensitive data on disk.
  - xigoi 5y ago
    > The average user and use case typically has internet connection Clearly you're not poor or living in a developing country.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      And those people are unlikely to pay for my product
    - mrlemke 5y ago
      Or living in a rural area with crappy Internet. I've installed wireless Internet in places where the people are wealthy but could only get a crappy DSL line. An Internet connected app, web or native, was a pain in the butt to use. Mobile users can have problems too. I still come across dead zones in network coverage that render some apps useless and I'm not even outside of town.
- selfmodruntime 5y ago
kodah 5y ago
I think your statement on the security of desktop apps is a tad misinformed. Desktop apps do have to adhere to the same system security permission that the browser provides. WebApps can be even more intrusive than a desktop app because you're constantly sending signals to a central set of servers with a unique browser fingerprint. You also lose control of updates, and would be completely unaware of new tracking dependencies being injected. The data you create with a web app is and always will be property of the company that manages it. Desktop apps being packed into Flatpak is a good start to addressing sandboxing desktop apps, imo, and touches on your concerns as well.
- root_axis 5y ago
  > Desktop apps do have to adhere to the same system security permission that the browser provides. WebApps can be even more intrusive than a desktop app because you're constantly sending signals to a central set of servers with a unique browser fingerprint. You also lose control of updates, and would be completely unaware of new tracking dependencies being injected. The data you create with a web app is and always will be property of the company that manages it. A browser is just an arbitrary binary, a desktop app is going to be capable of anything a browser is, but much much more.
- mschuetz 5y ago
  > Desktop apps do have to adhere to the same system security permission that the browser provides. A desktop app on an average users PC has access to most files on disk, including sensitive data. While a browser has that too, apps running inside a browsers sandbox do not.
- hedora 5y ago
  Isnt flatpak's sandbox mostly snake oil? Has something fundamental changed recently?
- jart 5y ago
  Yes it's possible for web apps to integrate things like FullStory that let devs monitor people like a citizen of Zalem. But local guis are doing that too these days. For instance someone posted a show hn thread a few months ago of a terminal gui they built that had fullstory integrated. The author was like mea culpa and removed it, since all he probably wanted to do was fix bugs. But my point is that everything creepy browsers are able to do, local apps can now do too -- and then some. On the other hand, local apps can be positively the most secure and they're the foundation on which big companies are built. But what distinguishes the apps that empower you versus the ones that disempower you isn't obvious, so I'll explain how I do it. The question people always ask is how can we build a technology that makes being evil impossible? Like sandboxing. And that's usually the wrong question to be asking, because it's a people problem, not a technology problem. What we need is transparency. The ability to monitor the monitors. If you can empirically see what a local app is actually doing, then you can say for certain that it's more trustworthy than anything else. So how do we do that? Well, for starters, here's a 1KLOC tutorial (similar to Antirez's Kilo editor or Linenoise) on how to build your own version of the `strace` command in pure C. https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/tool/build/strace.c https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/tool/build/... If you monitor the system interfaces then you don't need to read the source code. It's analogous to watching someone's behavior rather than reading their dna. But the nice thing about ptrace() is it gives you the power to control the interfaces in addition to monitoring them. For example, you can disable the socket() system call and see if it breaks. If it does, and there's no apparent reason for it to need sockets, then maybe you shouldn't be using it. Another good tool that might help you control your digital spaces is Blinkenlights. Right now it only supports static binaries, but if you have one of those and you want to learn more about how it works, then you can watch what it does with memory in real time. https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/ https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/ This is the same philosophy behind Chrome's incredible debugger GUI (which is something that sadly local electron-like apps have the power to take away) because transparency is the bedrock of trust for those of us who aren't whole hog on faith in institutions. It's always surprised me that more people haven't been focusing on building tools like this. It also makes me sad when certain open source apps (which shall remain nameless because I don't want to be flamed) go out of their way to make strace output incomprehensible. The libertine use of dependencies is part of the problem. For example, you might not be using sockets, but maybe your programming language or ansi color framework library does, due to some API you didn't even know it had. So if you're a developer, you've really got to monitor this stuff, because if you don't your users will. And if you learn about it the first time from your users, then you're going to lose out on a lot of potential.
nonameiguess 5y ago
I believe the rationale here is, sure, you need to trust that the vendor isn't giving you malware, but for most software makers that have existed for longer than a few months, you have a reasonable track record to grant that level of trust. On the other hand, trusting that your data won't be exfiltrated somehow is much harder because of how widespread the practice is. But at least desktop software can, in principle, run without network access. A web app cannot. Beyond that, you can also, in principle, run a desktop app in a sandbox and/or audit it in some way to observe its behavior and assure yourself it isn't malicious, and only then use it on a sensitive host. A web app, in contrast, can't even be guaranteed to serve you the same version of itself from one second to the next, let alone guarantee that any change made to it between requests wasn't malicious. The sandboxing done by the browser is the only protection you have (short of only ever visiting the web at all from a sandboxed host). Then get into applications like basic photo processing and document editing. Sure, it can be done server-side via the web, but the only way for that to be possible is for you to upload all of your photos across the network to the server, along with all the threat models that entails. If the software is running on your host, your data can stay on your host. I'm assuming here that pure Javascript is still not really used for compute-intensive applications and things like doc-to-pdf conversion and photo smoothing accomplished via web apps mostly still relies on server-side processing.
- selfmodruntime 5y ago
  Browser sandboxes are among the best in the world. Chrome has an entire team focusing on sandboxing the browser nonstop. Every single Tab is sandboxes from the next, too.
- scarface74 5y ago
  You mean like “trusting” that Zoom won’t secretly install a web server on your computer that reinstalls itself when you uninstall it or trusting that Chrome won’t corrupt your Mac when you turn off System Integrity Protection
EastSmith 5y ago
This is the reason I am using open.spotify.com, instead of their desktop app. Same experience, but browsers provide pretty good sandboxing. They will track me anyways, with web atleast they don't get the chance to go over all my other stuff.
rob_c 5y ago
Yes, please trust us with your account id, email and probably everything else... Give me a fixed binary i can throw through a debugger/profiler any day
philwelch 5y ago
If you’re using a web app, your data lives on someone else’s server. Not on a computer you can physically control or even—perish the thought—disconnect from the internet. Oh cool, the app that handles all my private financial and/or health records runs on the internet and keeps my information in a datacenter in northern Virginia, but at least it can’t get access to the data on my local drive, which by the way there isn’t any because all of that data is in another web app and stored in quite possibly the exact same datacenter!
- Anunayj 5y ago
  But there is no need for the app to do that really, there are APIs like localstorage and IndexedDB in place to allow you to do all this clientside. Browsers have come a long way from just html renderers.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    There's no need for web apps to store all of your data in the cloud, but almost all of them in the real world do it anyway. Users have been conditioned to expect that if they log into the same web app from two different devices that their data will still be there, and this can be a huge convenience, but it's also less private and less secure than what we had with desktop apps.

jonny_eh 5y ago

It's easier to ensure your users are always using the latest version.

db65edfc7996 5y ago
As a user, I am unsure that is a positive. There are near-daily stories about how feature X of a program was removed/hidden/etc for seemingly no reason. Using an offline only program ensures some UI developer does not get to swap buttons on me for "engagement".
- djbusby 5y ago
  Button change for KPI is a Company problem not a Technical problem. That BS happens on all the platforms
  - thfuran 5y ago
    Sure, but it has a technical solution if you're using a desktop application — just keep using the old version.
    - masukomi 5y ago
      i think most folks allow auto-updates because we want new features and security fixes. So, while you're technically correct i think the practical result is that it's no different on this axis than a webapp.
- rekabis 5y ago
  This is why I am still using an arse-old version of Mailwasher - the newer versions started sharing data with the mothership, including your eMail passwords, just so it could transparently sync that data to their iOS & Android apps. My passwords are between me and my eMail server. No-one else should get that data, for any reason whatsoever.

0xCMP 5y ago

Even in iOS which keeps apps in a fairly restrictive sandbox + goes through some kind of review process I wouldn't trust an app like Facebook's or Reddit's to not be gathering some kind of other information to use somehow. There is a reason Reddit insists on you downloading their app.

nonameiguess 5y ago
This, on the other hand, that is, necessarily networked applications where the entire purpose is to interact with people and data that are geographically distributed, is perfect for taking place in a browser, and yes, I agree that I trust the browser much more than someone's native app. For applications that don't need to be networked, though, given me native.
wanderer_ 5y ago
I think there are other possible motivations, too. Not to say that you are wrong (you aren't), and not that this necessarily applies to Reddit specifically, but there is something to be said for having your service's icon implanted on the user's homescreen, possibly being one of the first things they see every time they open their phone. This opens up having muscle-memory to open up your app, making it that much easier to hop on and start doomscrolling. Having an app also makes it easier to drive engagement using notifications.
- slaymaker1907 5y ago
  I think it's eye opening how unsuccessful web notifications have been on desktop. It's my belief that most people would not turn on notifications for most apps which send them if Android prompted like web notifications (I think iOS also defaults to allowing notifications without prompting for permission, but I'm not sure). There isn't even an option on Android to block notifications except when explicitly allowed in settings. Each time you install a new app, you need to turn off its notifications.
  - jbarrs 5y ago
    iOS does not allow notifications by default. Apps must display a system pop-up to request permission to display notifications, and the option is there to deny permission. Whether users have already fallen into the same cycle as cookie consent pop-ups and, more recently, GDPR pop-ups, just clicking "allow" by default because it's the easier option, is a different question.

goodpoint 5y ago

> It's the complete opposite and one of the reasons I prefer to use a comparable web app over a native desktop app Citation needed.

root_axis 5y ago
It's obviously true. Executing random binaries from the internet directly on your machine is clearly much less secure than executing a js script in an extremely hardened and restricted browser sandbox.
- sirjaz 5y ago
  Which isn't true with all the access the latest html5 apps want to your hdd,webcam, etc .... They can take over your system silently and you don't need to click on anything
  - root_axis 5y ago
    > They can take over your system silently and you don't need to click on anything No, this is totally wrong. All browsers require explicit permission to grant access to hardware resources, they cannot "take over your system silently"... unlike an arbitrary binary.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  This is absurd. A binary reviewed and vetted by a Linux distro is really unlike to contain spyware, unlike 90% of webpages. The web a well-known security dumpster fire. Additionally, it's false that desktop applications are not sandboxed. On the contrary, the sandbox implemented around an application can be way more fine-grained that a browser. Firejail is a good example. Browsers are behemoths and you can look up for yourself how many vulnerabilities they have and also the SLOC count. Edit: silent downvotes? Leave it to HN to believe that webshit is more secure than desktop applications. This is material for /r/ShitHNSays
  - root_axis 5y ago

thewebcount 5y ago

> It's the complete opposite No it's not. To use a web app I have to have an internet connection to even start the app. Anything I click on that loads a new resource sends data to the server about what I'm doing. I can unplug from the net, install desktop software and run it without it being able to send anything anywhere.

mschuetz 5y ago
The average user and use case typically has internet connection so you're talking about edge-case scenarios. In a regular scenario, a native app can send whatever it wants about your system to a server, including your sensitive photos and private information. > Anything I click on that loads a new resource sends data to the server about what I'm doing. Nothing stops native apps of doing that. Plenty require you to have internet connection and coerce you into telemetry. The difference is that one can only send data that the browser will allow it to have, while the other can read all your sensitive data on disk.
- xigoi 5y ago
  > The average user and use case typically has internet connection Clearly you're not poor or living in a developing country.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    And those people are unlikely to pay for my product
  - mrlemke 5y ago
    Or living in a rural area with crappy Internet. I've installed wireless Internet in places where the people are wealthy but could only get a crappy DSL line. An Internet connected app, web or native, was a pain in the butt to use. Mobile users can have problems too. I still come across dead zones in network coverage that render some apps useless and I'm not even outside of town.
selfmodruntime 5y ago

kodah 5y ago

I think your statement on the security of desktop apps is a tad misinformed. Desktop apps do have to adhere to the same system security permission that the browser provides. WebApps can be even more intrusive than a desktop app because you're constantly sending signals to a central set of servers with a unique browser fingerprint. You also lose control of updates, and would be completely unaware of new tracking dependencies being injected. The data you create with a web app is and always will be property of the company that manages it. Desktop apps being packed into Flatpak is a good start to addressing sandboxing desktop apps, imo, and touches on your concerns as well.

root_axis 5y ago
> Desktop apps do have to adhere to the same system security permission that the browser provides. WebApps can be even more intrusive than a desktop app because you're constantly sending signals to a central set of servers with a unique browser fingerprint. You also lose control of updates, and would be completely unaware of new tracking dependencies being injected. The data you create with a web app is and always will be property of the company that manages it. A browser is just an arbitrary binary, a desktop app is going to be capable of anything a browser is, but much much more.
mschuetz 5y ago
> Desktop apps do have to adhere to the same system security permission that the browser provides. A desktop app on an average users PC has access to most files on disk, including sensitive data. While a browser has that too, apps running inside a browsers sandbox do not.
hedora 5y ago
Isnt flatpak's sandbox mostly snake oil? Has something fundamental changed recently?
jart 5y ago
Yes it's possible for web apps to integrate things like FullStory that let devs monitor people like a citizen of Zalem. But local guis are doing that too these days. For instance someone posted a show hn thread a few months ago of a terminal gui they built that had fullstory integrated. The author was like mea culpa and removed it, since all he probably wanted to do was fix bugs. But my point is that everything creepy browsers are able to do, local apps can now do too -- and then some. On the other hand, local apps can be positively the most secure and they're the foundation on which big companies are built. But what distinguishes the apps that empower you versus the ones that disempower you isn't obvious, so I'll explain how I do it. The question people always ask is how can we build a technology that makes being evil impossible? Like sandboxing. And that's usually the wrong question to be asking, because it's a people problem, not a technology problem. What we need is transparency. The ability to monitor the monitors. If you can empirically see what a local app is actually doing, then you can say for certain that it's more trustworthy than anything else. So how do we do that? Well, for starters, here's a 1KLOC tutorial (similar to Antirez's Kilo editor or Linenoise) on how to build your own version of the `strace` command in pure C. https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/tool/build/strace.c https://github.com/jart/cosmopolitan/blob/master/tool/build/... If you monitor the system interfaces then you don't need to read the source code. It's analogous to watching someone's behavior rather than reading their dna. But the nice thing about ptrace() is it gives you the power to control the interfaces in addition to monitoring them. For example, you can disable the socket() system call and see if it breaks. If it does, and there's no apparent reason for it to need sockets, then maybe you shouldn't be using it. Another good tool that might help you control your digital spaces is Blinkenlights. Right now it only supports static binaries, but if you have one of those and you want to learn more about how it works, then you can watch what it does with memory in real time. https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/ https://justine.lol/blinkenlights/ This is the same philosophy behind Chrome's incredible debugger GUI (which is something that sadly local electron-like apps have the power to take away) because transparency is the bedrock of trust for those of us who aren't whole hog on faith in institutions. It's always surprised me that more people haven't been focusing on building tools like this. It also makes me sad when certain open source apps (which shall remain nameless because I don't want to be flamed) go out of their way to make strace output incomprehensible. The libertine use of dependencies is part of the problem. For example, you might not be using sockets, but maybe your programming language or ansi color framework library does, due to some API you didn't even know it had. So if you're a developer, you've really got to monitor this stuff, because if you don't your users will. And if you learn about it the first time from your users, then you're going to lose out on a lot of potential.

nonameiguess 5y ago

I believe the rationale here is, sure, you need to trust that the vendor isn't giving you malware, but for most software makers that have existed for longer than a few months, you have a reasonable track record to grant that level of trust. On the other hand, trusting that your data won't be exfiltrated somehow is much harder because of how widespread the practice is. But at least desktop software can, in principle, run without network access. A web app cannot. Beyond that, you can also, in principle, run a desktop app in a sandbox and/or audit it in some way to observe its behavior and assure yourself it isn't malicious, and only then use it on a sensitive host. A web app, in contrast, can't even be guaranteed to serve you the same version of itself from one second to the next, let alone guarantee that any change made to it between requests wasn't malicious. The sandboxing done by the browser is the only protection you have (short of only ever visiting the web at all from a sandboxed host). Then get into applications like basic photo processing and document editing. Sure, it can be done server-side via the web, but the only way for that to be possible is for you to upload all of your photos across the network to the server, along with all the threat models that entails. If the software is running on your host, your data can stay on your host. I'm assuming here that pure Javascript is still not really used for compute-intensive applications and things like doc-to-pdf conversion and photo smoothing accomplished via web apps mostly still relies on server-side processing.

selfmodruntime 5y ago
Browser sandboxes are among the best in the world. Chrome has an entire team focusing on sandboxing the browser nonstop. Every single Tab is sandboxes from the next, too.
scarface74 5y ago
You mean like “trusting” that Zoom won’t secretly install a web server on your computer that reinstalls itself when you uninstall it or trusting that Chrome won’t corrupt your Mac when you turn off System Integrity Protection

EastSmith 5y ago

This is the reason I am using open.spotify.com, instead of their desktop app. Same experience, but browsers provide pretty good sandboxing. They will track me anyways, with web atleast they don't get the chance to go over all my other stuff.

rob_c 5y ago

Yes, please trust us with your account id, email and probably everything else... Give me a fixed binary i can throw through a debugger/profiler any day

philwelch 5y ago

If you’re using a web app, your data lives on someone else’s server. Not on a computer you can physically control or even—perish the thought—disconnect from the internet. Oh cool, the app that handles all my private financial and/or health records runs on the internet and keeps my information in a datacenter in northern Virginia, but at least it can’t get access to the data on my local drive, which by the way there isn’t any because all of that data is in another web app and stored in quite possibly the exact same datacenter!

Anunayj 5y ago
But there is no need for the app to do that really, there are APIs like localstorage and IndexedDB in place to allow you to do all this clientside. Browsers have come a long way from just html renderers.
- philwelch 5y ago
  There's no need for web apps to store all of your data in the cloud, but almost all of them in the real world do it anyway. Users have been conditioned to expect that if they log into the same web app from two different devices that their data will still be there, and this can be a huge convenience, but it's also less private and less secure than what we had with desktop apps.