"Oh you want to make a little start up to share recipes between friends or whatever? Aww, that's cute. Well, here's the OAuth spec and an incomplete list of footguns. I hope your grasp of elliptic curves is strong. Prison time if you fail."
The absolutely only consequence of laws that criminalise mistakes in handling of PII is to force everyone to externalise auth to the likes of Auth0. And you can bet your ass that if this ever happens, the likes of Auth0 will lobby like hell to never ever repeal or update those laws, being a vast corrupt funnel of business to them.
The oldest story in tech standards; a play in three acts:
> "We've developed Foo 2.0. It does not have feature parity with Foo 1.0, but it's more architecturally elegant in ways that are meaningless to the public. It took ten thousand man hours and was done instead of much needed upgrades to Foo 1.0."
*one year later*
> "Why is no one adopting Foo 2.0? Yes, it doesn't have feature parity with Foo 1.0, but it's frankly irresponsible of the public not to understand that 2.0 is a higher number than 1.0."
*ten years later*
> "Remember Foo? What a mess. Thank god Bar came along."
You're implying the only solution to unnecessary friction is reams of unnecessary lubricant.
Someone had to spend time building those unnecessary toolchains. Imagine if this time were spent developing cool libraries or use cases for WASM, instead of building out plumbing.
These are things that literally everyone but Google thinks are terrible ideas.
Why don't you flip the conspiracy around and ask yourself why Google, the world's largest advertising agency and data hoover, wants browsers, a category dominated by Google, to have unmediated access to ever more user, system, and local network data?
That's nonsense. There's plenty of people that want those APIs that don't work at Google. And it does not give Google "unmediated access" - you have to explicitly opt-in to allow the browser to use them when a website requests access to these APIs. But of course, don't let the facts get in the way of your fanboyism for Apple.
And when it's normalised for firmware updates to happen via WebHID and WebUSB? Saying no will seem as fringe as browsing the web with NoScript. It's already the main way to upgrade keyboard firmware for a lot of mechanical keyboards, and it only works on Chrome. Thrilling developments for Google.
>> But of course, don't let the facts get in the way of your fanboyism for Apple.
Mate, I didn't even mention Apple. You're the one with the fixation here. Mozilla/Firefox is also deeply opposed to these anti-features.
>Mozilla/Firefox is also deeply opposed to these anti-features.
Mozilla is irrelevant, and they don't have a hardware platform where they forbid all other browser engines from it like Apple does.
If Apple weren't total assholes and didn't forbid Chrome from actually being Chrome on iOS, then I wouldn't care, I'd simply tell users to install Chrome. But Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use Safari, which they have intentionally crippled and refuse to let other browsers use their own engine.
If you don't think that's abusive business practices and deserves the DOJ lawsuit, then you're just another Apple shill.
>> Mozilla is irrelevant, and they don't have a hardware platform where they forbid all other browser engines from it like Apple does.
>> If Apple weren't total assholes
>> Apple forces all browsers on iOS to use Safari
>> you're just another Apple shill.
I've still not even mentioned Apple once.
You seem extremely fixated on Apple.
I'm not aware of any major corporation, group, standards body, or OSS project that would agree with Google's attempts to extend the browser so deeply beyond the web. The general consensus is that it is deeply reckless.
Google failed to get stuff like WebHID into the standard - because everyone thinks it's a terrible idea - so they've just rolled it out on their own anyway, using their browser monopoly to force facts on the ground. Facts favourable to Google, unsurprisingly.
When Microsoft did this sort of thing, we used to call them out on it. I have no idea why you seem so adamant to defend this. I can only suspect that you've let yourself become completely partisan in some grand Google-Apple war that you've imagined, which is why you keep bringing up Apple out of nowhere?
I never mentioned Google. You seem really fixated on Google for some weird reason.
>The general consensus is that it is deeply reckless.
Bullshit, you made that up in your own head. Show some actual statistics instead of making shit up.
>Google failed to get stuff like WebHID into the standard - because everyone thinks it's a terrible idea
So you think you speak for "everyone"? Because you're also making that up.
>When Microsoft did this sort of thing, we used to call them out on it. I
Oh, like when they came out with XMLHTTPRequest and everyone told them to fuck off? That time? Oh, no, they actually didn't tell them to fuck off with their proprietary API, they also all implemented it in their browsers, and now it runs most of all the web.
> I have no idea why you seem so adamant to defend this.
I already spelled this out for you. Apple forbids any other browser on iOS except their own Safari. If they didn't abusively force Safari on all browsers on iOS, I would not have a problem, I would just tell users to install Chrome. But I can't, because Apple is abusive and here you are acting clueless again about what is actually going on.
You are missing the initial point here, the accusation is that apple doesn't want the web as a viable platform to develop fully fledged cross platform applications that circumvent its own moat. You just repeat the maximalist position that the web shouldn't "extend the browser so deeply beyond the web". Many people disagree with that, its the best shot we have for true cross platform applications that would force Apple to open their platform, we say the reason apple doesn't want that is for purely profit driven reasons.
Also doesn't this argument apply to WebAssembly and other standards (like WebGPU) as well? Why should I be able to render a video game in the browser but have no way to manage input devices (like multiple controllers) to make it a suitable platform for fully-fledged video games in the future? Like I understand why Apple (OR Microsoft for that matter) doesn't want Stadia-like services to suddenly run on all their devices without any cut in monetization, so naturally they sabotage such efforts in Safari...
Like here is my own reason to support that effort: I use Linux, and there are a ton of proprietary applications that if there were developed on the web platform would become accessible to me.
I understand the privacy concerns with some of those APIs, but the argument isn't that the user shouldn't have agency over those features, do you see how that's a separate conversation?
> Many people disagree with that, its the best shot we have for true cross platform applications that would force Apple to open their platform, we say the reason apple doesn't want that is for purely profit driven reasons.
And equally, Google wants their platform to replace OSes for purely profit-driven reasons of their own. I'm not saying this as some terrible indictment. They're all corporations, I don't expect anything else from them.
> Also doesn't this argument apply to WebAssembly and other standards (like WebGPU) as well?
This is a fairly consistent strain of criticism on WASM posts here on HN. The death of software as we know it; all of computing as a service, forever.
> Like here is my own reason to support that effort: I use Linux, and there are a ton of proprietary applications that if there were developed on the web platform would become accessible to me.
What makes you think future thin-client 'PC's will even be able to run anything other than a browser shell? The current requirements for Windows/iPhone/Android will just be replaced by a requirement to run an approved, TPM-clad Chromebook, cryptographically certified to be running no software other than Chrome. The ultimate in Secure Boot. But of course this will provide no actual security to end users, in a world where websites can write to your keyboard firmware. Security for corporate IP, maybe.
I genuinely think you're letting your dislike of Apple - on which I hear you, Apple's no angel - cloud your judgment here. The future Google's building is pretty dark.
But it feels like a slippery slope argument to me, like how do you go so quickly from standardized web APIs to your ChromeOS/TCPA dystopia? I think that's quite the leap to make, especially considering we already have those locked tight ecosystems right now with iOS, Android, Windows, Mac OS to varying levels of degree anyway. If proprietary applications go that route they would remain unaccessible to me, it wouldn't really change anything. But right now I can use things like figma and countless other apps because it runs on the web, it would otherwise never have been possible.
> in a world where websites can write to your keyboard firmware
again I would never relinquish control over the decision if it "can", I've been using Linux for 20+ years I already go to significant lengths to remain in control over my computing. But the fact that I can develop a cross-platform app that talks to some USB device directly via some standard web API, has benefits that outweigh the costs, that's just pragmatism.
Also if you asked me I would personally rather see Apple, Google, Microsoft and every other orphan crushing machine/publicly traded company shut down and all it's CEOs and shareholders hanging from street lamps, but personal politics aside, I'm only speaking of within the dystopia we already have anyway.
Worth noting that the distinction between democracy and republic that you're clearly advocating here is a usage particular to Americans. It doesn't have much currency elsewhere.
Countries like the Netherlands, Denmark etc all have safeguards the dilute the power of 50% + 1, and yet they are clearly not republics, being monarchies.
Political scientists tend to talk more of 'liberal democracy' (whether republican or monarchical) v 'electoral autocracy' etc. This depends on the classical use of the term 'liberal' of course, which is another word that Americans tend to use differently from everyone else.
> The nobility is another example of a minority with disproportionate power. It's important that they are reduced to ensure civil liberties.
Alexis de Tocqueville would disagree - he believed that intermediate institutions (churches, professions, elites, etc) blunt the power of the state before it reaches average people. A society without intermediate institutions is one where you have an all-powerful state on the one hand, and a largely un-coordinated mass of average people on the other. He thought this was the highway to democratic despotism. (Worth noticing that totalitarian governments focus a lot of their energy on destroying alternative centres of power such as these.)
>> For example my own (US) has a political system basically frozen in amber from a time before many of the political and policy challenges of our day were not even thought of yet.
Please, please, please go read the Federalist papers. The Founders thought of a lot more than you realise.
The design of a constitution is the design of the distribution of power. The nature of power hasn't changed.
1. Any voting system other than the disastrous FPTP which forces a two-party system and punishes any attempt to break this duopoly.
2. What if Congress is composed entirely of weasels and just, though formal law-passing or by sheer inaction, cedes nearly all their power to the executive branch?
3. What if the Supreme Court has at least 5 partisans who will say just about anything to keep in power the party (or even the individual) who put them there? What if they say stupid things like "A President has absolute criminal immunity for any act that falls within his 'conclusive and preclusive' constitutional authority, and presumptive immunity for all other official acts."
4. Even if SCOTUS is basically working as intended, what if the President just...ignores them?
5. What if a President is mentally incompetent due to age, and his whole party refuses to acknowledge it? (This one is Biden, arguably - I'm disgusted with both parties)
I do get checks and balances, I know that a big part of the whole "they can't pass anything" is a feature and not a bug. But come on, it's got out of hand when every single term we have multiple debt limit hostage negotiations -- and now BOTH parties are doing it!
That's a lot of what ifs, some more fanciful than others. There is no political system that could withstand a such a barrage of bad intentions and corruption. But I'd note that despite how bad things seem, the things you describe for the most part haven't actually happened? The executive is generally complying with SCOTUS decisions, e.g. tariffs. The US remains a robust if fractious democracy, unlike much of the rest of the world.
More broadly, go look at other countries' politics. The facade of stability is being held up in a lot of places by restrictions on speech, on assembly, on political organisation of a kind that would be unthinkable in the US. It's borderline illegal to assemble for Palestine in Britain. Is that society less divided than the US, or just more controlled? And that's a democratic peer country. Things get much worse - Hungary, Russia, Iran, etc
Congress passes tons of laws - just not on subjects on which the country is divided. Is that not a feature? Other systems require 50% + 1 to radically remake the entire country. Would that be better? Or worse? Imagine if <insert your most hated President> were Prime Minister instead, and had control of a truly sovereign Parliament with virtually no guardrails at all. Better or worse?
EOs are a problem, but SCOTUS is walking at least some of that back in subtle ways, such as the end of Chevron deference. (Not that you'd get any of this from the media, who desperately want SCOTUS to devolve into the media-friendly horse race they've imposed upon all of the rest of politics.)
Congress isn't supposed to decide on social questions. Society is. Congress is meant to represent it. A divided Congress is accurately representing a divided country.
I can't see anything in OP's post where he says any of that. Everything you said seems like an incredibly ungenerous reading of what he wrote.
Zig is a systems programming language. Moving from Python to Zig is a step down the tech stack, which brings with it exposure to underlying concepts and limitations that matter when writing any software, and which is especially valuable for a self-taught dev.
Where did he say he did it in work hours? Or that he did it instead of doing his job?
He used the word "yawn" to describe using a popular library without understanding the underlying architecture, not in reference to doing his job.
Honestly, I can't even see a tenuous connection between what you're claiming and what was said in the post. The man is expressing joy about learning new things, and you're... upset about this? For some reason? Weird.
> Some countries alter their observance of DST in line with their observance of Ramadan, which means that the time-offset changes aligned with Ramadan.
Only Morocco does this, I believe, and it's not even clear that that's actually official time at this point. In 2018, Morocco abolished DST, but it seems unclear what that means in practice.
I'd love it if someone from Morocco could weigh in on what the actual situation is on the ground. Do people still change their clocks for Ramadan? Would they be annoyed if a website kept Moroccan users on standard time during Ramadan?
If I recall correctly, this was especially common around the time of the antitrust trial, with the possibility of Microsoft being split into a Micros~1 and Micros~2.
I remember it being used in speculative discussions around which units might end up where.
The absolutely only consequence of laws that criminalise mistakes in handling of PII is to force everyone to externalise auth to the likes of Auth0. And you can bet your ass that if this ever happens, the likes of Auth0 will lobby like hell to never ever repeal or update those laws, being a vast corrupt funnel of business to them.
Congrats, you've created a new Inuit.
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