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Serous question: I don't get why so much steam goes towards Chrome which can be basically open source (Chromium) and the same folks accept Microsoft Windows per

Serous question: I don't get why so much steam goes towards Chrome which can be basically open source (Chromium) and the same folks accept Microsoft Windows perfectly well (which is closed source and has much bigger impact on our privacy IMHO) Edit: same with MacOs?

audunw 3y ago
I think you’re confusing two things. How open standards are developed/pushed vs open source. In the context of web integrity API, what good does it do that chromium can be open source? Whether a browser is potentially fully open source has no impact on the bad google is doing by pushing evil we. standards through the mainline chrome browser. Personally I’ve switched to just using Safari on MacOS simply because giving Apple some power against Google in adoption of web standards is beneficial in my view. Apple is one of the few companies not incentivised by maximising ad revenues which is really toxic to the web. Not that I like what Apple is doing in general. On Windows I’ve used Firefox only for years. (Why not on MacOS? My laptop (only macOS machine I have) is a bit old, safari runs smoother, and I like the iOS integration futures)
userbinator 3y ago
Whether the source is open doesn't matter, and in fact I think that's part of a distraction; it's orthogonal to the issue of whether the software respects the user's freedom or is a way for a third-party to control the user (turning it into a "used"). Both closed and open source user-hostile software exists, and the same goes for software that isn't user-hostile. Also, I suspect many of those who are anti-WEI are also either not Windows users, or Windows users who are grudgingly doing so and have also killed off the spyware and customised the environment to their own liking, which can still be done even without requiring source code.
bimblesticks 3y ago
Can’t speak for everyone else but I just think that getting people to change their OS is much harder than getting people to change their web browser, so it makes sense to start there. Chromium is in that awkward position where it is technically an open-source community-driven project but in practice operates like a closed-source one. Google has complete control over decisions and can make changes that serve their profits (see: JPEGXL debacle). Of course, you can make the same critique of Firefox, but at the very least they are a nonprofit foundation and don’t have enough market share to abuse their power.
foota 3y ago
I think the main issue is the concern over whether you can access other resources on the web. E.g., windows doesn't allow websites to refuse service to you based on, say, your physical address; but the web integrity (WEI) proposal might allow a website to refuse service to your new custom browser because it can't implement WEI. Imagine instead that chrome refuses to start if WEI can't be guaranteed (but otherwise it doesn't do anything). Is it annoying and dumb? Sure, but it doesn't limit how you can connect to the internet. I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886572) that I think a better aligned proposal might be to introduce some system for pluggable 3rd party attestations that could be used by websites to verify the that the user is in some sense real. I imagine a lot of people would still object to this, but to me it would remove a lot of the concerns about the open web, since anyone would be able to build a browser integrating with the attestation services (I imagine some sort of service like LetsEncrypt would exist for this, although it's not clear what websites would settle on as being trusted attesters, if it's only a small set of companies then there's still some issues I think). This whole debate has been interesting to me, since in some sense even with WEI the web is still a thing, it's just that it would be sent back to the 90s. E.g., any website would still be able to allow you to visit without WEI, but large swaths of the internet as used today might be unavailable without it.
blackhaz 3y ago
Google, in all its products, is adopting aggressive architectural decisions that break interoperability, sacrifice user freedom and strongly favor their proprietary business models. They are not interested in building an open Internet. They're building a business where users have no ownership of their data, everything runs on their servers and they are getting a commission on each step and layer of service/application creation, delivery and consumption.
creata 3y ago
I'd get family to switch over to Linux, but it isn't ready. As far as I know, there's no comprehensive substitute for Microsoft Office, or many other Windows-only apps. In contrast, Firefox and Chrome are practically interchangeable for most people.
- JacobSeated 3y ago
  That's just inaccurate. Microsoft Office is one of the easiest things to replace; LibreOffice takes some getting used to, but it does what you need it to do. What's going to be harder is Microsoft Exchange, but if people work in a company that uses Exchange, they need to push their Exchange admin to enable SMTP and IMAP. You should not be using Exchange for calendar synchronization anyway, and I am sure there are better dedicated alternatives in the OSS world. Probably something like Nextcloud which comes with numerous useful apps. For video editing I think Kdenlive does everything you need for basic editing.
  - blacklion 3y ago
    > Microsoft Office is one of the easiest things to replace; LibreOffice takes some getting used to, but it does what you need it to do. Nope. No. Nada. No way. MS Office is one of hardest software to replace. On the same level as proprietary SCADA system alike. I know this hard way. Yes, if you only need prepare new small documents and print them out into PDF or on physical paper, you could replace MS Word with almost anything - LibreOffice, OpenOffice, KWord, Google Docs (though, Google Docs has very primitive style system, but if you need to make small simple documents, you don't need good style system anyway). As soon as you need to work with documents created by others, and exchange these documents with others in office format (not PDF), oh man. When document was created in Office'2000 (yes, in 2020s), edited by several other versions by different people on computers with different fonts and locales, when it contains images, sections with multiple columns, is formatted half with styles (both paragraph and character ones) half by direct applications by attributes like "Bold" and "Interline space"... And you need to edit it and pass to the next person with unknown version of MS Office - good luck to use anything but MS Word. Same with Powerpoint. Yes, MS Word could break such document too - but typically by rearranging images and adding unneeded pagebreaks, not by showing only blank pages or replacing all fonts with Courier New. After any alternative you could get anything, literally anyhting. And your OpenOffice will show "perfectly" formatted document, only your counterpart with MS Office will complain that YOU ruined document. How do I know this? My wife is freelance translator. We've tried not to pay for MS Office several times, because, you know, new version of *Office is compatible for MS Office at last. But no, it could be Ok for next 10 clients, all looks good, and eleventh will yell t you by phone because result you provided him looks completely different in his MS Office (including, as I mentioned, empty pages without text at all or all these fancy fonts replaced with one Courier New - it is real cases from my experience). And don't let me start to rant about Excel where people write crazy macros in VBasic and such - good luck to use any other software when you need to communicate and exchange documents with other Excel powerusers.

audunw 3y ago

I think you’re confusing two things. How open standards are developed/pushed vs open source. In the context of web integrity API, what good does it do that chromium can be open source? Whether a browser is potentially fully open source has no impact on the bad google is doing by pushing evil we. standards through the mainline chrome browser. Personally I’ve switched to just using Safari on MacOS simply because giving Apple some power against Google in adoption of web standards is beneficial in my view. Apple is one of the few companies not incentivised by maximising ad revenues which is really toxic to the web. Not that I like what Apple is doing in general. On Windows I’ve used Firefox only for years. (Why not on MacOS? My laptop (only macOS machine I have) is a bit old, safari runs smoother, and I like the iOS integration futures)

userbinator 3y ago

Whether the source is open doesn't matter, and in fact I think that's part of a distraction; it's orthogonal to the issue of whether the software respects the user's freedom or is a way for a third-party to control the user (turning it into a "used"). Both closed and open source user-hostile software exists, and the same goes for software that isn't user-hostile. Also, I suspect many of those who are anti-WEI are also either not Windows users, or Windows users who are grudgingly doing so and have also killed off the spyware and customised the environment to their own liking, which can still be done even without requiring source code.

bimblesticks 3y ago

Can’t speak for everyone else but I just think that getting people to change their OS is much harder than getting people to change their web browser, so it makes sense to start there. Chromium is in that awkward position where it is technically an open-source community-driven project but in practice operates like a closed-source one. Google has complete control over decisions and can make changes that serve their profits (see: JPEGXL debacle). Of course, you can make the same critique of Firefox, but at the very least they are a nonprofit foundation and don’t have enough market share to abuse their power.

foota 3y ago

I think the main issue is the concern over whether you can access other resources on the web. E.g., windows doesn't allow websites to refuse service to you based on, say, your physical address; but the web integrity (WEI) proposal might allow a website to refuse service to your new custom browser because it can't implement WEI. Imagine instead that chrome refuses to start if WEI can't be guaranteed (but otherwise it doesn't do anything). Is it annoying and dumb? Sure, but it doesn't limit how you can connect to the internet. I mentioned here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886572 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36886572) that I think a better aligned proposal might be to introduce some system for pluggable 3rd party attestations that could be used by websites to verify the that the user is in some sense real. I imagine a lot of people would still object to this, but to me it would remove a lot of the concerns about the open web, since anyone would be able to build a browser integrating with the attestation services (I imagine some sort of service like LetsEncrypt would exist for this, although it's not clear what websites would settle on as being trusted attesters, if it's only a small set of companies then there's still some issues I think). This whole debate has been interesting to me, since in some sense even with WEI the web is still a thing, it's just that it would be sent back to the 90s. E.g., any website would still be able to allow you to visit without WEI, but large swaths of the internet as used today might be unavailable without it.

blackhaz 3y ago

Google, in all its products, is adopting aggressive architectural decisions that break interoperability, sacrifice user freedom and strongly favor their proprietary business models. They are not interested in building an open Internet. They're building a business where users have no ownership of their data, everything runs on their servers and they are getting a commission on each step and layer of service/application creation, delivery and consumption.

creata 3y ago

I'd get family to switch over to Linux, but it isn't ready. As far as I know, there's no comprehensive substitute for Microsoft Office, or many other Windows-only apps. In contrast, Firefox and Chrome are practically interchangeable for most people.

JacobSeated 3y ago
That's just inaccurate. Microsoft Office is one of the easiest things to replace; LibreOffice takes some getting used to, but it does what you need it to do. What's going to be harder is Microsoft Exchange, but if people work in a company that uses Exchange, they need to push their Exchange admin to enable SMTP and IMAP. You should not be using Exchange for calendar synchronization anyway, and I am sure there are better dedicated alternatives in the OSS world. Probably something like Nextcloud which comes with numerous useful apps. For video editing I think Kdenlive does everything you need for basic editing.
- blacklion 3y ago
  > Microsoft Office is one of the easiest things to replace; LibreOffice takes some getting used to, but it does what you need it to do. Nope. No. Nada. No way. MS Office is one of hardest software to replace. On the same level as proprietary SCADA system alike. I know this hard way. Yes, if you only need prepare new small documents and print them out into PDF or on physical paper, you could replace MS Word with almost anything - LibreOffice, OpenOffice, KWord, Google Docs (though, Google Docs has very primitive style system, but if you need to make small simple documents, you don't need good style system anyway). As soon as you need to work with documents created by others, and exchange these documents with others in office format (not PDF), oh man. When document was created in Office'2000 (yes, in 2020s), edited by several other versions by different people on computers with different fonts and locales, when it contains images, sections with multiple columns, is formatted half with styles (both paragraph and character ones) half by direct applications by attributes like "Bold" and "Interline space"... And you need to edit it and pass to the next person with unknown version of MS Office - good luck to use anything but MS Word. Same with Powerpoint. Yes, MS Word could break such document too - but typically by rearranging images and adding unneeded pagebreaks, not by showing only blank pages or replacing all fonts with Courier New. After any alternative you could get anything, literally anyhting. And your OpenOffice will show "perfectly" formatted document, only your counterpart with MS Office will complain that YOU ruined document. How do I know this? My wife is freelance translator. We've tried not to pay for MS Office several times, because, you know, new version of *Office is compatible for MS Office at last. But no, it could be Ok for next 10 clients, all looks good, and eleventh will yell t you by phone because result you provided him looks completely different in his MS Office (including, as I mentioned, empty pages without text at all or all these fancy fonts replaced with one Courier New - it is real cases from my experience). And don't let me start to rant about Excel where people write crazy macros in VBasic and such - good luck to use any other software when you need to communicate and exchange documents with other Excel powerusers.