3 ms·

Why is it so easy to find people in this industry who don't care that users can't trust their own computers (or, by extension, anything they own with a computer

Why is it so easy to find people in this industry who don't care that users can't trust their own computers (or, by extension, anything they own with a computer in it, which is quickly becoming everything)? If I select some text and press Ctrl+C, it should copy the text I selected. The user intent is obvious. There's no excuse for the ability to hijack the clipboard to exist in the first place. Web pages shouldn't be able to modify my selection. Why is there even an API for this? The web ecosystem (including browsers) turned straight up malicious like 15 years ago, and users became nothing more than a product for everyone involved. That cancer has even metastasized and spread to the OS or even products that people pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for. I don't know how people who think that way can live with themselves.

xigoi 3y ago
> Web pages shouldn't be able to modify my selection. Why is there even an API for this? To make “copy to clipboard” buttons possible.
- dotancohen 3y ago
  Does not sound like a worthwhile trade-off.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  I have a copy to clipboard button that's standard across all apps and has decades of precedence: Ctrl+c. Some (older?) keyboards even label it! On my phone, if I select text, my browser pops up a menu with "copy" as an option. Why does a web page need to reinvent that wheel? For the 1/10000000 case where it makes sense, how about a "X page wants to modify your clipboard" dialog? This has been a known security vulnerability for at least a decade. Edit: actually, I just noticed that was a reply to selection, which makes even less sense. Just let the user select what they want.
  - xigoi 3y ago
    When copying Unicode characters from sites like symbl.cc, it would be incredibly annoying to have to select them and press Ctrl+C instead of just pressing a single button.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Ctrl-c sends the interrupt signal. Remembering that in normal use (terminal) it sends interrupt, except for this one program (Firefox) where it copies would be pretty confusing and annoying.
    - ndriscoll 3y ago
      Incorrect pedantry that ignores decades of established convention with GUI applications aside, the same incorrect behavior happens when you select, right click, and choose "copy". Any normal person would expect that it copies what you selected, and doesn't let the page instead place whatever it wants to into the clipboard. The user tells their computer to do a simple thing, and the computer adversarially does not do that thing, and instead obeys someone else, intentionally. That should not happen.
bee_rider 3y ago
A computer is a tool and also a consumer device. I think most of us are in some sense selling the output of the tool (for example a programmer sells programs, not computers). Since we are not selling computers, we’re not automatically concerned with whether people are happy with their computers. If you went to a scissor factory and told them that their scissors were too sharp, they might at least think of doing a run of safety scissors. If you go to a tailor and suggest that, they will probably be confused and not very receptive.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  But it's not about sharp tools. In fact one of the problems is that computers are all being turned into safety scissors. But they're safety scissors that sometimes randomly fire a bullet backwards into the user when you snip. And the people making these things say "well yeah you need to know about the hidden gun and be careful of where it's aiming." Or if instead of things like the sawstop, we made power saws that sometimes just flip open the guard and swing the blade to toward the user. But there's a safety to prevent that, but it disengages whenever you start the saw, so you need to reengage it every time you cut something in-between starting the saw and actually cutting.

xigoi 3y ago

> Web pages shouldn't be able to modify my selection. Why is there even an API for this? To make “copy to clipboard” buttons possible.

dotancohen 3y ago
Does not sound like a worthwhile trade-off.
ndriscoll 3y ago
I have a copy to clipboard button that's standard across all apps and has decades of precedence: Ctrl+c. Some (older?) keyboards even label it! On my phone, if I select text, my browser pops up a menu with "copy" as an option. Why does a web page need to reinvent that wheel? For the 1/10000000 case where it makes sense, how about a "X page wants to modify your clipboard" dialog? This has been a known security vulnerability for at least a decade. Edit: actually, I just noticed that was a reply to selection, which makes even less sense. Just let the user select what they want.
- xigoi 3y ago
  When copying Unicode characters from sites like symbl.cc, it would be incredibly annoying to have to select them and press Ctrl+C instead of just pressing a single button.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Ctrl-c sends the interrupt signal. Remembering that in normal use (terminal) it sends interrupt, except for this one program (Firefox) where it copies would be pretty confusing and annoying.
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    Incorrect pedantry that ignores decades of established convention with GUI applications aside, the same incorrect behavior happens when you select, right click, and choose "copy". Any normal person would expect that it copies what you selected, and doesn't let the page instead place whatever it wants to into the clipboard. The user tells their computer to do a simple thing, and the computer adversarially does not do that thing, and instead obeys someone else, intentionally. That should not happen.

bee_rider 3y ago

A computer is a tool and also a consumer device. I think most of us are in some sense selling the output of the tool (for example a programmer sells programs, not computers). Since we are not selling computers, we’re not automatically concerned with whether people are happy with their computers. If you went to a scissor factory and told them that their scissors were too sharp, they might at least think of doing a run of safety scissors. If you go to a tailor and suggest that, they will probably be confused and not very receptive.

ndriscoll 3y ago
But it's not about sharp tools. In fact one of the problems is that computers are all being turned into safety scissors. But they're safety scissors that sometimes randomly fire a bullet backwards into the user when you snip. And the people making these things say "well yeah you need to know about the hidden gun and be careful of where it's aiming." Or if instead of things like the sawstop, we made power saws that sometimes just flip open the guard and swing the blade to toward the user. But there's a safety to prevent that, but it disengages whenever you start the saw, so you need to reengage it every time you cut something in-between starting the saw and actually cutting.