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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Web browsers are just another adware/spyware ridden operating system running on top of the original adware/spyware ridden operating system. For as much as possible we should go back to more dedicated protocols and clients that have a very limited scope that volunteer developers can actual keep up with like gemini for blogs or for lemmy - desktop clients like Alexandrite or Neon Modem.
P.s. get linux --> ur OS no longer adware spyware
I guess, but that's just half the problem. Like most people now use google docs not just because it's super convienient but kids are also conditioned to do so on chromebooks now. That creep RMS was right about somethings lol.
Yes I have heard several independent sources (all personal anecdotes only) that many teens/young adults are not framiliar with basic computing tasks such as navigating the file system. Because their experience has primarily been this kind of mobile-first "cloud" stuff. Design is streamlined enough that you don't need to know where your file resides. It is all hidden from the user.
I can understand why schools distribute chromebooks but it is a terrible disservice to the students to allow such a limited experience of computers to pervade.
Teachers are their own IT department too in all this so keeping simple where possible is important.
With the way everything else is going I don't know if learning libreoffice is really a worthwhile priority over growing and storing food, metal shop, construction and permacomputing.
What are u talking about. Alexandrite runs in a web browser. Idk these others but the premise is insane so not checking.
U should at least get a browser like w3 or elinks if u r gonna be weirdo like this.
Dont go around posting that ppl should prefer clients vs web bc most clients ppl have r 1000% worse for privacy and tracking than web version of same site. Someone will read this and think fb app is better than fb in browser which at least can be configed to send less tracking.
What's wrong about the premise? We have been stuck with Windows and Unix for decades and instead of writing new systems capable of integrating fully into the internet instead "we" (mainly corpos) wrote an entirely new system (the system of web servers and web browsers) on top of current ones that is easily as large, complex, and featureful as any other operating system and forced everyone to use it. It takes enormous amounts of resources to maintain this infrastructure and stave off the flood of security vulnerabilities and bugs that are constantly discovered as a result of this system's complexity and the interaction between this system and contemporary operating systems like Linux or Windows.
Even with modern protections built into web browsers now it is still a security and privacy nightmare. You are right though that it's usually better than an app on Android or something but I don't think that's what they meant.
The premise is wrong because
99.9999% of "clients" are way worse than any browser for same service
so just throwing such advice around is wildly irresponsible. Examples given were
alexandrite for desktop - does not exist and if it did it would be what, an electron app?
Gemini - impossible or unweildy to use web browser anyway. gemini is a revamped gopher. You can access gemini via a web proxy but i doubt that is substantially worse than using a client https://geminiprotocol.net/clients.html either a proxy or client could contain malicious or sloppy code
neon modem - a github project with 9 contributors https://github.com/mrusme/neonmodem. it is a TUI interface for an itty bitty nichy part of the web. Cool to find out there is a tui for lemmy i will try it because i am a total weirdo not a normal person. It took me years to learn enough to be able much less willing to try a tui for fun.
So we have zero examples. Better but still not great example would have been reddit with 3PA prior to the API changes. Or mail cient vs webmail. Or usenet vs forums. Or bittorrent streaming vs netflix. Ytdlp vs youtube. Rss vs most other options.
Web is universal and low barrier. If you want to move to clients for everything youd have to rework every kind of function done on the web. Personally i like using special FLOSS clients when i can (like the lemmy client i am using right now) but i dont want it for everything. And a lot of the coziness with volunteer small groups of devs would vanish with any degree of popularity. A lot of the vulnerabilities that persist are pervasive to the internet and need systemic solutions like net neutrality and enforcement of regulations. Same problems could easily reproduce themselves with the proposed solution. Security thru obscruity sux.
@PaX & @EatPotatoes I tried neonmodem. Was eventually able to login to hexbear.
username and password stored plain text wtf
--help, the readme, the applicationLots of people share computers, they have unencrypted hdds, they have auto cloud backup etc. Hopefully no need to describe all reasons why plain text credential storage is Bad.
Like the advice to prefer clients over web, this project in its current state is plain irresponsible.
Clear from the github/website that this is intended primarily to adhere to devs' aesthetic tastes and nothing more.
BASED
Are you familiar with Plan 9 or the Plan 9 Filesystem Protocol (9P)? It's a simple protocol for representing system resources (any resources, remote or local) as a tree of files. The protocol itself doesn't do much but it can be a common language for all kinds of systems to talk to each other with. It can be very efficient and robust to represent resources as a tree of files and better than the alternative of bespoke protocols and abstractions for every resource. The Plan 9 system uses this abstraction everywhere and it results in a very tightly integrated system that can be more capable than other operating systems with a fraction of the code. And since almost all operations on the system are operations on abstract files it doesn't matter if the files are local or remote to the system :3
I thought you might be interested because web browsers partially arose as a result of the poor integration of systems like Unix or Windows with the internet. But Plan 9 was written from the start as a distributed operating system. I want to write a 9P fileserver for lemmy sometime. I hope this doesn't come across as too rant-like. I got no sleep lol
Plan 9 aesthetics are under appreciated. Would often imagine a communist society with plan 9 terminals everywhere when I went through that phase.