Alex/penguat. They/them
Peter Gordon 🇺🇦Switch to Firefox.
Edit: Google have now ditched WEI, but this still shows why it's important to have competition in the browser space.
nGFX@Lumpbucket
Somewhere along the ride someone at google must have hit his head hard and then decided that Chrome should become the biggest evil in browser land.
I liked it for a while ... and now I just try to get people to stop using it.
eons Luna (Eonity)@nGFX @Lumpbucket At this point I dare say Chrome is now more evil than Internet Explorer ever was.
And yet people out there still almost glorify Chrome, when it's now much worse than Internet Explorer ever was.
jfml - Jonas Laugs@Lumpbucket Never understood why you would use chromium-based browsers aside for edge-cases where videocalling doesn't work well in Firefox. Oher than that, what's the problem with using FF?
@jfml beats me. I never switched to chrome in the first place.
ResunaEdge cases where some dumb multinational is using some awful middleware and you have to re-login literally every page load because it's doing some obscure session management hack that only works in Chrome.
I'M LOOKING AT YOU HP.
Edit: AND LENOVO.
@resuna @Lumpbucket Haha, wow that sounds terrible! +___+
Antonio Páez 🇲🇽🇨🇦I stopped using HP and Lenovo years ago. Their products break, they fail to honor the warranty, they waste your time, and they blame you for all of it. Crap companies with crap products.
@paezha @Lumpbucket @jfml Last time I needed Lenovo support they fixed my touch screen with half the turnaround they predicted.
That’s reassuring
Billy Smith@paezha @resuna @Lumpbucket @jfml
I've still got a functioning Lenovo laptop from 25 years ago. :D
It still works. :D
When Lenovo was a brand run by a division of IBM, and, when they did all of their manufacturing in-house, they were great.
Since they out-sourced the manufacturing, and sold the brand, the reliability has fallen.
@BillySmith @paezha @Lumpbucket @jfml You mean you have a functioning IBM ThinkPad from 25 years ago, because IBM didn't sell their PC business to Lenovo until 2005.
I have one from 2007 from before they had a chance to screw it up too much.
@resuna @paezha @Lumpbucket @jfml
Yes, that's the bunny. :D
Very chunky machines. :D
I thought that the sale took place way before then.
I do know that they were out-sourcing the manufacturing before that sale, as it was a way of reducing costs when the Thinkpad line was still wholly-owned by IBM.
@BillySmith @paezha @Lumpbucket @jfml They outsourced some Thinkpad lines to Acer from 1998 to 2002. I don’t think they did anything with Lenovo before 2005.
andwhyisit@andwhyisit @Lumpbucket @jfml I had to switch to Safari on the Mac for one of them for a while because login broke in Chrome, I suspect keychain shenanigans. It's working again now.
tamas@jfml @Lumpbucket Google Meet (not video calling in general) used to not work well in Firefox specifically because they implemented it using a binary blob that was shipped with Chrome. They switched to open standards and it's been working fine in Firefox for years now.
Kevin Karhan 
@Lumpbucket At this point #Chrome and #Google have to be labeled #Malware and #MaliciousActor respectably...
Soulfire Jarexi Backblaze ΘΔ@Lumpbucket I'll reconsider it once they add Passkeys and PWA's
Also when they get rid of a lot of the ads for their subscriptions
yuki - queen of the snow@soulfire @Lumpbucket firefox has pwas on mobile i think, and there is an extension for it on the desktop i believe, idrk what you mean by passkeys though
Yassie > moved to 0w0.is@yukijoou @Lumpbucket @soulfire The PWAs on Firefox Android are really… Ugh. Weird? IDK how to explain it - but a PWA from Edgeium/Chrome seems to just feel more native and less janky that Firefox’s implementation of PWAs.
@yassie_j @Lumpbucket @soulfire huh, never had any issues... though i never used pwas on chromium either sooo... yeah
Lady Strawberries 
[Yaseenist] CauseOfBSOD 
Why Not Zoidberg? 🦑@Lumpbucket I hate using Firefox but I might have to soon.
@WhyNotZoidberg once you're used to it, it'll be fine.
@Lumpbucket I have used it for years but it just doesn't click with me. Chrome is the best browser for me from an usability standpoint. Trust me I've actually tried them all and compared.
ima@WhyNotZoidberg @Lumpbucket I've used both, they're not that different? I switched from Chrome to Firefox as soon as they made the tabs as processes change, that was the main benefit Chrom(e/ium) had over it. I mostly prefer the dev tools that come with Firefox as well.
@ima @Lumpbucket I have no use of the dev tools so I wouldn't know; the rest tho... I hate the UI and on top of that Chrome just feels... smoother. In everything.
That said most of it is just a feeling. I like it better because I like it better. I ALSO prefer it over all other Chromium based browsers because it does what I need it to do (and so does Firefox of course): It's a window with a browser in it. No AI in the corner, not 43547 functions I will never use, no irritating side bar.
@WhyNotZoidberg @Lumpbucket that's fair, everyone is allowed to have their preferences. I was just wondering if there was something beyond that. I always apply a couple of small customizations to Firefox upon install as well.
apophis@WhyNotZoidberg @ima @Lumpbucket oddly enough i agree with this with the exact opposite conclusion, chrom/ium stuff always felt weirdly "floaty" and unreliable to me somehow, like every action felt like i'm pretending to do something instead of doing it
antipode77But what about all the adverts it wants to show you.
It is getting #Enshittified the last few years.
Initially it was a few adverts, now it is a literal deluge.
This does not bode well.
Same story with youtube. Adverts covering 100% of your screen. Popping up way too often.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/
Irony : A video about this on youtube.
https://youtu.be/PqyfzTr2XOk?si=Mbk-tx9knpTwRKAs
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3035-the-internet-con
The Internet Con:
How to Seize the Means of Computation
by Cory Doctorow
Gerard Cunningham ✒️@Lumpbucket Complain to your public representatives and regulators
Kuru.len("Autumn Leaf")@Lumpbucket kinda just waiting for someone to figure out a way to bypass this integrity check too, just like magisk delta does with safetynet
Kohane@Lumpbucket Can someone explain in a way that is understandable and practical to the general population what Web Integrity is? I just checked and all the articles sound like gibberish to me.
🪨@kohane @Lumpbucket It's essentially allowing websites to check if the requests come from a "legit" source. Google's argument is fighting against fraud and whatnot, but it means that website can limit content to whatever does not implement WEI and has a trusted source, essentially being a DRM for how you browse the internet. Can it limit fraud and web scraping by bots stealing your data for training ML models? Sure. Can it be used to block whatever the authorities (in this case Google) don't like? Abso-fucking-lutely. This is a terrible decision that essentially kills the freedom of browsing the internet from whatever you want.
Gregor Aisch@kohane @Lumpbucket I think the official explainer is good enough: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/blob/main/explainer.md . TLDR: it’s a new API to find out if the browser and/or operating system can be “trusted” not to lie about the user in an attempt to fix Googles advertising business
hambach18@kohane in a much simplified form a website could ask an attester if certain conditions about your computer are true and then deny or allow access.
The risk is that they could deny access if your computer is "too old", if you do not use an Android phone, if your Browser has an extension installed, if you do not use Google Chrome and so on.
If many websites have such conditions they can force you to have a device as they want, not as you want.
@hambach18 Okay, now I understand.
Viraptor@kohane @Lumpbucket It would mean that a website can verify if you're seeing exactly what the page owner sent. That means: ad blocking, cookie blocking, any customisations, any client-side accessibility fixes, any non-mainstream browsers, any non-mainstream operating systems will be rejected.
That would start from Google search results ensuring you're seeing the ads, but quickly would move to any payment page, banking sites, any ad-supported site, etc.
That would start from Google search results ensuring you're seeing the ads, but quickly would move to any payment page, banking sites, any ad-supported site, etc.
@viraptor @Lumpbucket What if I'm using some another browser? Like Safari, Opera or Firefox? What happens in that case?
@Lumpbucket @kohane yup, Firefox is a nice example and easy to migrate to in most cases. But anything not based on Chromium, or actively disabling WEI is a great statement / a vote at this point.
Kiki Buber
IfritDemonGoat@Lumpbucket Waterfox is what daily drive ever since I switched away from Chrome years ago. Fork of firefox without the needless telemetry.
Jon Bosak@Lumpbucket
If only I could.
If only I could.
Kabit Bunny ~ θΔ ~ 🔜🔜 Berlin@Lumpbucket i agree with all but one part of this
the internet is built on proposals. WEI being a "proposal" isn't any part of the problem
crumbcake@Kabit @Lumpbucket Google typically treats their "Proposals" as "Here's what we're going to do regardless of what people actually care about".
Janis La Couvée@Lumpbucket been using Firefox since 2004 - back in the days of RSS feeds and before multiple tabs were a thing. And StartPage for search.
@lacouvee @Lumpbucket Oh yeah, viewing RSS-source-code in browser, those where the days ^__^
Raptor 
@lacouvee @Lumpbucket firefox actually always had tabs, they just didn't make "open as new tab" default until 1.0, even pre-firefox/firebird mozilla had tabs, you did have to turn them on in mozilla though.
Pretty much used nothing but since the netscape days (aside from a short stint trying out opera wayyy back, opera had some cool features way before netscape/mozilla did)
@raptor85 @Lumpbucket there was a short period when Opera performed much better than Firefox but I've been a regular user pretty much since 2003/4
@lacouvee @Lumpbucket yeah, there was a time when opera was kinda at the forefront making all the best optimizations, adding new features before anyone else, etc. Modern opera is an absolute mockery of their former self :/
Curioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)@raptor85 @lacouvee @Lumpbucket
Modern Opera is Opera only by name. The people that did the old Opera are now making Vivaldi, which is really a new implementation of nearly what was good about Opera, with more features. Pity that they are using the same engine as Chrome, though.
Ritzga
TeslatheDoggo@Lumpbucket I’m using Ecosia!
Ava 
@TeslatheDoggo @Lumpbucket Ecosia’s browser is based on Chromium and thus will have this shoved in (unless they manually remove it). The search engine is great, but the browser is just reskinned Chrome.
@avakining @Lumpbucket I still trust Ecosia more than google.