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"Web Environment Integrity" is an all-out attack on the free Internet | Defective by Design

Write to your country's anti-trust body if you feel Google is unilaterally going after the open web with WEI (content below taken from HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36880390).

US:

EU:

UK:

India:

Example email:

Google has proposed a new Web Environment Integrity standard, outlined here: https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/....

This standard would allow Google applications to block users who are not using Google products like Chrome or Android, and encourages other web developers to do the same, with the goal of eliminating ad blockers and competing web browsers.

Google has already begun implementing this in their browser here: https://github.com/chromium/chromium/commit/6f47a22906b28994....

Basic facts:

  1. Google is a developer of popular websites such as google.com and youtube.com (currently the two most popular websites in the world according to SimilarWeb)

  2. Google is the developer of the most popular browser in the world, Chrome, with around 65% of market share. Most other popular browsers are based on Chromium, also developed primarily by Google.

  3. Google is the developer of the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Android, with around 70% of market share.

Currently, Google's websites can be viewed on any web-standards-compliant browser on a device made by any manufacturer. This WEI proposal would allow Google websites to reject users that are not running a Google-approved browser on a Google-approved device. For example, Google could require that Youtube or Google Search can only be viewed using an official Android app or the Chrome browser, thereby noncompetitively locking consumers into using Google products while providing no benefit to those consumers.

Google is also primarily an ad company, with the majority of its revenue coming from ads. Google's business model is challenged by browsers that do not show ads the way Google intends. This proposal would encourage any web developer using Google's ad services to reject users that are not running a verified Google-approved version of Chrome, to ensure ads are viewed the way the advertiser wishes. This is not a hypothetical hidden agenda, it is explicitly stated in the proposal:

"Users like visiting websites that are expensive to create and maintain, but they often want or need to do it without paying directly. These websites fund themselves with ads, but the advertisers can only afford to pay for humans to see the ads, rather than robots. This creates a need for human users to prove to websites that they're human, sometimes through tasks like challenges or logins."

The proposed solution here is to allow web developers to reject any user that cannot prove they have viewed Google-served ads with their own human eyes.

It is essential to combat this proposal now, while it is still in an early stage. Once this is rolled out into Chrome and deployed around the world, it will be extremely difficult to rollback. It may be impossible to prevent this proposal if Google is allowed to continue owning the entire stack of website, browser, operating system, and hardware.

Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.

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I am a bad software developer and this is my life

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An interview is just a test.

Whenever I speak with students/new grads about interviewing I actually specifically advise them that an interview is not a test. Yes, you need to have a certain level of base skills, but beyond that, an interview is much more like a date than a test. I say this because you can do everything right and still be rejected. It doesn't mean that you did anything wrong or there's anything with wrong with you, but rather there just wasn't a match between you and the company you were interviewing with at that point in time. There are so many factors entirely outside of your control that determine if you're given an offer or are rejected to the point that I find it really tough to consider it a "test" in the academic sense where you need to score a certain value to pass or fail it.

Likewise, it's incredibly common for students/new grads to focus heavily on the technical skills while completely ignoring the soft skills. The best thing you can do in an interview is make the interviewer like you and want to work with you. It's amazing how many people will overlook subpar technical skills either consciously or subconsciously if they feel comfortable with you (the amount of borderline incompetent people I've seen hired that are otherwise smooth talkers is astounding). It seems like the author of the linked to article here might be falling into that trap too. He writes about his technical experience heavily but does not touch on the soft skills at all, even questioning at one point that he may simply be bad at interviewing which is a strong sign to me that he's not presenting himself well in the interview.

This is something that transcends software engineering. If you're a sociable and likeable person you'll go far further in life than the person that is quietly a genius but doesn't work well with others. I wish more people folks in this industry would focus on that side of the coin instead of simply saying "grind Leetcode more to get more offers."

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Why is React, a client side rendering framework, a popular choice for server side rendering?

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The mere existence of the term "server-side rendering" illustrates this well. I remember the first time I read about that concept and immediately thought "you mean the way we've been writing websites since the 90s?"

Maybe I'm just out of date, but IMO web development has completely lost its way. I don't do much frontend work anymore, but when I do my goals are always to see how few JS libraries I need to use and how little JS I need to write in general. The end result of that plus doing all/most work on the backend, sticking to standard HTTP conventions, and using only vanilla JS means super fast and performant websites with fewer bugs, less constant deprecations to keep up with, less security vulnerabilities in all the JS libraries, and no constant headaches from a complex Webpack-style build system for assets. It's actually quite enjoyable when you remove all the bs of modern JS frameworks from your workflows.

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What's some really unpopular opinion you have?

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I'm on the same train. The original trilogy never did much for me (maybe if I was around in the 70s/80s when it was groundbreaking VFX), the prequels obviously suck, and the sequels are a hot mess too. Now you have Disney milking the hell out of it with all the TV shows and spinoffs. The only Star Wars thing I ever enjoyed was Rogue One.

...then I discovered Dune. And Dune is exactly what I wished Star Wars had always been.

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A concept to redefine the internet

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I get it if the goal is to explore ideas, but any serious proposal that starts with "get rid of TCP/IP" isn't a serious proposal because that stipulation alone makes it dead on arrival. Unless you could convince major internet backbone providers to adopt a complete replacement because of fantastically convincing reasons, dropping TCP/IP simply isn't going to happen. Case in point: we've had a pretty damn good reason to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6 for decades now and we all know how well that's going.

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People of Lemmy! How to get fit?

If you're not overweight and simply want to become more athletic I personally think the most important thing to do is to find an activity you enjoy. That's something you have to discover for yourself.

For example, I can't stand working out for the sake of working out at a gym. But I do get really motivated by climbing, hiking, trail running, and skiing. Climbing builds strength and has a certain level of problem solving involved too so it's mentally stimulating. Hiking and trail running are excellent cardio and have clearly defined goals to reach a certain summit or some endpoint. And skiing is just a blast in all forms. All of that keeps me active and having fun while I'm doing it. That makes me want to do it more which allows me to set bigger objectives and then it builds on itself.