[wei] Ensure Origin Trial enables full feature · chromium/chromium@6f47a22
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This CL moves the base::Feature from content_features.h to a generated feature from runtime_enabled_features.json5. This means that the base::Feature can be default-enabled while the web API is co...

I guess I’ll never use Chrome or Google products again then

i’ve been using a samsung chromebook plus since it launched until now… and it’s end-of-support next month. being a typical human with low funds for new gear, i WAS considering a new chromebook of some kind. The chrome drm bullshit doesn’t effect me too much as I use this mostly within the linux container, or firefox android version… however, I realize i need to take a stand and not financially support these tyrants.

so, what are my options? a pinebook running debian? are there any good netbooks out there? I don’t use this thing for games or streaming media at all - mostly ssh, some browsing, etc. it’s about time I take the final steps to de-goog my life.

Install Linux on your current chromebook. If the hardware is still good that’s a no-brainer in my book.

i’m in the middle of this process now, and just frustrating myself. i’ve forgotten too much of the inner workings of the kernel - that is, my old knowledge doesn’t apply anymore. I’ve got a dualboot working, but can’t for the life of me get the wifi module to load. not relevant to this thread, so i won’t dirty it up. but, thank you for getting my head in the right space!

i will, somehow, get some flavor working

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creator
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Used thinkpads (like the T480) are a great choice.

I use Manjaro Cinnamon on mine.

@[email protected]
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deleted by creator

Get a used Thinkpad. They run Debian well!

Any ideas what the behavior of webpages will be if somebody uses PiHole?

Since PiHole isn’t part of the browser but in the network I assume that still works.

PiHole can be bypassed with DNS over HTTPS, although there’s ways to prevent that.

Pardon my ignorance but Can someone explain what google is trying to do?

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Pardon formatting, on mobile. Its a form of device authentication. Apple does this with safari already BTW, and it can reduce things like captcha because the authentication is done on the backend when a request hits a server. While still an issue in concept with Apple doing it, chromium browsers are a much larger market share. In layman’s terms this is basically the company saying, hey you are attempting to visit this site, we need to verify the device (or browser, or add on configuration, or no ad blocker, etc) is ‘authentic’. Which of course is nebulous. It can be whatever the entity in charge of attestation wants it to be.

This sets the precedent that whomever is controlling verification, can deny whomever they see fit. I’m running GrapheneOS on my phone currently, they could deny for that. Or, if you are blocking ads. Maybe you’re not sharing specific information about your device, and they want to harvest that. Too bad, comply or you’re ‘not allowed to do x or y’.

This is the gist. The web should be able to be accessed by anybody. It isn’t for companies to own nor should it be built that way. Web2 is a corporate hellscape.

Edit wrt Safari: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/

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I suspect “authentic” will mean “pays a license fee to Google.” In this respect it will work like other forms of DRM, and it will have the same effect of excluding new and smaller players from the market. Except in this case the market is the whole of the web.

Yeah, definitely. Some form of extortion because ultimately that’s what will happen either way. I mean, that’s really the whole point of being the party that chooses what is authentic or not (and, what the definition of that word even means in this context). Monetary, data, whatever. Gotta keep the bottom line increasing for shareholders.

No, there are no fees at all. Authentic just means approved device state, which will be defined by the website you go to I believe. So youtube might required many different things in order to be “authentic” like no ad blockers, genuine browser, non-rooted phone, etc., whereas bank-xyz may just check for one thing, like a genuine browser. Also, websites have to enable this on their side, so its not going to be used by default on all websites. The whole thing is crap though, even if only a few websites enable this, it could have huge impacts.

Not necessarily. With some forms od tracking being curbed, just being sent the who accesses which webpage on what device when (the bare minimum for attestation) has lots of value. And google won’t stop at the bare minimum of data grabbing, of course.

@[email protected]
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Yeah, definitely. Some form of extortion because ultimately that’s what it will be either way. I mean, that’s really the whole point of being the party that chooses what is authentic or not (and, what the definition of that word even means in this context). Monetary, data, whatever. Gotta keep the bottom line increasing for shareholders.

EME for the rest of the internet, not just video. Basically doing what hulu does to stop screen recording/as blocking but across every webpage

From my limited understanding as a common pleb, they are inserting DRM into Chromium browsers to prevent ad-blockers.

Internet with no ad-blockers is like a nightmare

@[email protected]
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Yes, it is a nightmare. The insane volume of ads and clickbait injected into web pages is killing the internet as an information source. Most of the searchable stuff is unusable. Which explains why ChatGPT was so enthusiastically embraced - it’s really just synthesizing content into a readable form that doesn’t require navigating around a jungle of animated gifs and flashing ads. That’s also I think why Lemmy and Mastodon are so refreshing to use, and hopefully will stay that way - although money seems to find a way to ruin everything. Lemmy right now feels a lot like the internet used to be before the big money came along and ruined it with advertising and platform lock-ins.

Danny S
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@fuser @Lem0n Regarding articles, I just save them to a read-later app that strips them of all the crap. If the site won’t let me, I’ll find another source reporting the same information, and save it to read later. If this process ultimately fails without a saved page, I won’t read the article.

Right - that’s a good approach, however if you’re looking for a quick answer to an immediate question by searching using a common search engine, the garbage SEO pages are the most irritating, even with adblocking.

Catweazle
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@fuser @Lem0n, the only AI I most use and which is really useful for me is Andisearch.
https://andisearch.com

https://andisearch.com looks like it might be a better option - thank you so much for posting. I’m mostly using duck-duck-go which is tolerable but by this point we should have come up with a more useful way to index relevant information. Google would rather we see ads than any relevant content, which wasn’t the case when they first launched google in the late 1990s. Google was refreshing at the time because of its cleaner interface than yahoo and uncluttered results, amusingly enough - it’s a far cry from what it once was.

Catweazle
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@fuser, Andi certainly is a fresh wind, it was the first search engine with AI which appears, before Google, Bing and the others. Great work of two very nice and friendly devs, Angie Hoover and Jed White, with an open ear to the user in their Discord channel for suggestions, feature request, bug report (well, it’s still in developement) or simple chat.

Well, thanks again for the info - I’m trying it now and the results seem excellent, it took me to wikiwand, which I’d never used but it’s a front end for wikipedia - it’s quite nice. I’ve learned so much about alternative FOSS and great ad-free content by reading and posting here. I was never a great fan of reddit - liked to scroll but hardly ever posted there - I thought RPAN was the coolest thing they did - but Lemmy is great for conversation, despite the relatively small user base - I’m grateful that reddit’s nonsense drove so many helpful people here.

Living the dream.

To be fair, it is useful for other purposes, but the cost to users is likely to be huge, with ad blocking being one of them. It probably also prevents other things even outside your browser because there’s no point in securing a browser running in an untrusted environment. IIRC there is/was an issue running Netflix on certain Android devices and rooted devices after a similar feature was added to Android.

This would also hurt users that need accessibility extensions so they can properly browse websites that don’t have good accessibility features.

My S7 was running a custom rom, I had to manually download and install the Netflix apk, as the play store wouldn’t let me do it. WhatsApp was weird too, it would let you install, but there were a bunch of aggravating bugs, like if your device was on it showed you as “online”. Got in trouble at work because my boss thought I was on my phone all day.

The Doctor
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I guess I won that bet. :/

noughtnaut
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I quite disagree, it is very hard. Sure, switching search engine takes all of two seconds, and email can be had from many vendors free and commercial.

But calendaring! A calendar that is at least somewhat integrated with am email client, supports more than one actual calendar, and has real-world capability to share them with others - “if you succeed in this, two me how.”

(not sure this worked as intended. I meant to reply to https://lemmy.world/comment/1748023)

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Tutanota is trying, but there’s still ways to go

BrooklynMan
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oh, hai guys

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Safari is ahead of this DRM game. It already deployed attestation silently a while ago: https://httptoolkit.com/blog/apple-private-access-tokens-attestation/

Atemu
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Hello there browser which already implemented DRM similar to this a while ago!

And this is the consequence of browser vendors relying on Chromium.

To be honest - easy to pull a Microsoft a fork a branch without the crap.

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deleted by creator

Chrome is a bag of shit anyway, easy jump

MuchPineapples
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Chromium, not chrome. Which means also Brave, Edge, Opera, Vivaldi and a lot more. Basically only Firefox and Safari are left as the big non-chromium ones.

But that’s not the worst of it. Even if you tear out this code, more and more websites will be built that rely on it. Which means Firefox etc also need to include it to keep functioning.

Well, you can’t say not chrome because it does include chrome, yes, it extends to other browsers using the same codebase, I understand I’m well versed. Either which way, fuck google

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21Y

Isn‘t Safari‘s WebKit the origin of Chromium‘s Blink 😉

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Well, that’s the worst case scenario. I hope that Brave will fork Chromium and leave the WEI out. Brave prides itself on being the no nonsense browser …

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31Y

Brave is a PoS. They are not looking out for you

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41Y

I saw some people recommend Brave and tried it out. What is with all the crypto integrations in that. Ditched Chrome earlier this year for Firefox when I made the switch from Windows to Linux.

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Sorry, what is PoS? I’m using Brave just shortly but it appears to be concerned with privacy and ad-blocking - more than what Firefox does.

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111Y

If WebKit and Mozilla put up enough fight. It will not be the standard.

@[email protected]
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11Y

Not saying you don’t realize, but Safari already has this tech. They call it Personal Access Tokens.

Bappity
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this is a userbase killer right here

Bad3r
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If manifest 3 didn’t change egoogke chrome share I doubt this will.

Manifest 3 didn’t create noticable chnages for the average user. Not yet anyway.

The idea is these changes are never a full at first. The internet will not break tomorrow because of integrity checking.

But it will in a few years. And people will be upset then. When it’s far too late.

Gross.

hey everyone a friendly reminder that alternatives exist, and just drop this shit fast and move to better alternatives. In this case firefox.

When websites start blocking clients that don’t implement the wei handshake, you’ll be forced to use one that does if you want to visit those sites. Firefox will either adopt it or become a second rate browser.

For now, Mozilla’s official stance is to oppose this proposal: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/852#issuecomment-1648820747

I wish that this kind of thing would generate enough outrage to increase Firefox’ market share considerably (from the <3% it is today), and in that way deter websites from adopting it since they would block a larger share of users. Unfortunately, I think that might be too naive of me…

You require Chrome or a Chromium based browser to view this comment.

BoscoBear
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Websites should be able to block me. I can just go elsewhere.

May be a bit problematic with banks, insurances and maybe government institutions…

it will truly be messed up if essential websites block user access because of this

Most banking apps don’t work on rooted Android phones. It’s not the same, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that at least these companies would force their customers to use specific software…

And I use my root to hide my root from my banking app… Idk about the implementation details of this, but I kinda think the same could happen here as well.

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This is the problem for me. If my bank or other critical institution decides to refuse me access with Firefox, I can’t use Firefox. This is the crux of the issue. Google is creating a browser monopoly with it’s market dominance and attestation scheme.

MS tried to exert control in the early 2000’s with its IE dominance and was thwarted by an anti-trust lawsuit. Google will probably skate on this one. Nowadays the consumer is only a resource to be plundered. The customer is shit.

As pointed out above, individual use of Firefox doesn’t really do that much. Especially when Firefox already doesn’t work properly for some sites. Plus, lots of people (myself included) need to use Chrome for work. This shit sucks.

I’m do not experience any of these improper working sites. My daily driver is Librewolf, where this sometimes occur, but when it does, I just switch to vanilla Firefox, and everything is fine.

Have you used Firefox recently? I haven’t had even one instance of a website not working simply because of Firefox.

I use it daily. It’s my default browser, but it ain’t perfect. Most recently, it was an interactive map for Diablo IV that would never work on Firefox. After an update it started working, but that’s just the most recent example.

it is pretty rare for issues like that to happen. and just keep a chromium based browser installed for the 0.2% of websites with compatibility problems or whatever.

for work purposes, ok fine. but personal purposes i’d try and steer clear as much as i can.

My general point is we should use alternatives whenever possible to discourage this kind of centralized power developing in the first place.

The problems start to happen when buisnesses adopt this en masse. Expect all banks to implement this for example. You can use Firefox all you want, but then you won’t be able to do online banking.

Standards are really fucking important to help people stay functional in a society. This is one area that the ANCAP mindset just gets it totally wrong, unless you like the idea of being a hermit.

Anyway, we are already seeing some websites basically reject browsers like Firefox because they basically give the consumer too much protection and freedom. Arguably we’ve seen this before, but this may be a new tier of corporate lockout of open standards as consumer protection gets thrown in the trash. Thanks America.

I don’t think that checks out.

Firefox only exists because it’s primarily funded by Google. It’s funded by Google to ensure they actually have some competition and avoid becoming a Monopoly.

If they kill Firefox or otherwise make it unusable they’ll be shooting themselves in the foot.

However, if it ends up being a bad experience that no one wants to use, well that’s not on them and they have no responsibility to fix it.

What will likely happen is Firefox will also adopt this DRM.

Mozilla does not exist because of Google. Google doesn’t have controlling power over Mozilla, nor do they have power over the many forks. It’s hilarious that you think a company would give a shit about being a monopoly; that’s what they strive for. This stupid take has been going around for years, and I’m sad to see it spread to Lemmy.

They give a shit about not being a monopoly because if they were, they’d be broken up so they’re not one anymore. At least currently still.

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Oh, you. I remember you from another thread the other week, saying how Chromium is not Chrome and that this would never happen. Hi. It is happening. Also, I remember telling you to stop moving goalposts, which is what you are doing here.

Microsoft would be happy to pay Firefox to set Bing as default (has happened in the past already) so even your goalpost moving is moot.

Come on, wake up.

deleted by creator

This needs to be pinned at the top of every single threat about this. Far too many people are just saying “Well I’ll just keep using Firefox”. They do not understand the gravity of the issue.

If my bank does this I’ll take my custom to a smaller one that doesn’t.

I don’t think they will though, since they gave me a hardware thingy to login to my online banking from my rooted android 🫠

The issue isn’t that we have no alternative, it’s that this feature will basically eliminate those alternatives sadly. You can read more about it here if you haven’t, but it’s bad.

For sure, I agree and it’s bad. But frankly unsurprising. This is the trajectory of the internet: greater control.

We’ve become too dependent on centralized tech companies and erred in allowing tech companies to change, define, and control the internet in the first place.

Alternatives must be promoted in mass scale.

appel
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Ohnonono Well time to burn down google I guess ¯\(ツ)

It’s always good time for this

@[email protected]
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So…I don’t use chrome anymore, but I use Vivaldi. Guess this’ll fuck that up too or will they remove it?

Edit: looks like they’re concerned about it but also are worried stripping it out will f up theye browser being accepted

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Hey, fellow Vivaldi user👋 . Yep, one of the Vivaldi devs already said if it was added upstream, they’d strip it out of the Chromium code, but they acknowledge that this would cause problems if WEI became standard. Websites would start to expect it, and not having that functionality would be a death-sentence for any browser (Chromium or otherwise).

@[email protected]
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That’s great to hear. I like it and would like to continue

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