SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
This standard is being used by ads to track your mobile browsing habits across sites, connections and VPNs.
From the article:
Intended to allow site owners to serve low-power versions of sites and web apps to users with little battery capacity left, soon after it was introduced, privacy researchers pointed out that it could also be used to spy on users. The combination of battery life as a percentage and battery life in seconds provides offers 14m combinations, providing a pseudo-unique identifier for each device.
The standard suggests that false data can be provided by the client to hide the true battery status for testing purposes. It seems to me that there should be a privacy setting to randomize battery status, which privacy mode in browsers should enable by default.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday August 02 2016, @07:33PM
How about just making web pages nice and lightweight in the first fucking place?!
Why do you think your battery got low in the first place? If all web pages were designed like everyone used Lynx or Mosaic 1.0 (proper web design BTW) then you would not be draining your battery, you would not be waiting forever for pages to load, and those stupid enough to pay by the megabyte or whatever would not pay out the yingyang (well the providers would up their prices so perhaps not).
Honestly, I have no idea how people can even browse the "modern" web without a quad core 16GB ram/1TB SSD /dual-nuclear-power-plant computer these days. Oh, right that is what "apps" are for.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday August 02 2016, @08:11PM
It might not just be about page "weight". It could also be the overall brightness of the standard theme. In theory you could actually deliver the same pages with a different (darker) theme to save power (for some screens). http://stevemould.com/phone-battery-save-black-wallpaper/ [stevemould.com]
But this is the wrong approach, imo. The site could just have a dark theme and let people pick it like they currently do for mobile versions. Instead of mobile.site.org or m.site.org they could do lowpower.site.org. But i feel that time would be better spent making a site readable by the blind, or function without javascript, or something like that.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2016, @08:29PM
LCD screens don't save any power on dark pages. Brightness uses power, but pages, fortunately, don't control brightness.
It matters for OLED screens, though. And CRTs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 02 2016, @08:55PM
Instead of mobile.site.org or m.site.org they could do lowpower.site.org.
Great idea, maybe also add chargedHalfway.site.org and charged75Percent.site.org and phoneinlandscape.site.org and phoneinportrait.site.org and wastelotsofcycles.site.org and ... you get the point.
They can't even make a website that works for all browsers yet, now you want to throw another permutation on top of it as well? Are you a masochist (if you are, that's cool by me as long as it is targetted towards web^Wfull-stack 'developers')
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday August 02 2016, @11:07PM
You must not have read my entire post. I said that if you had to do it, then there was probably a better approach (that protects privacy). But even then it is a waste of time when you could be doing something that matters more like ADA compliance or non-javascript feature parity.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday August 02 2016, @08:15PM
Adblockers really, really help. My ancient Thinkpad T500 (Core 2 Duo T9400) crawls when browsing without one, but things are usually tolerable when it's activated. At this point I run the adblockers not so much not to see ads as because the internet's unusable without one. It looks like downtown Harajuku crossed with Max Headroom out there!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 03 2016, @09:28PM
Interesting...I've been noticing the opposite, ad blockers don't seem to help much anymore. Noscript, privacy badger, adblock plus, and a browser with a builtin adblocker and I was *still* seeing ads all over the place. So I decided to get a bit scorched earth, and now my internet experience is positively beautiful :)
I got a pfsense hardware firewall (not really required, but it's nice...) then I grabbed some blocklists from iBlockList.com -- I think I'm using Level 1, Level 2, Microsoft, and ads. But even with that, occasionally something will get through, so I wrote a little shell script to generate my own list on top of those. Whenever I see anything I don't like -- ad, script, tracker, anything unnecessary -- I grab the domain and drop it in a list, then my script looks up that domain in a few dozen different nameservers, fetches the IP addresses, and adds all those addresses to the firewall. Which is far more than necessary for just ad blocking, as there's a domain-based blocklist too; but obviously that can only block outbound requests, and I run a few servers so I want to block these suckers on both sides. And the multiple nameservers are used to better take down companies with big CDNs, like Google. I'm sure I won't get ALL their systems, but it still makes me feel better... :)
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Tuesday August 02 2016, @11:41PM
marketing guys' heads will asplode if you tell them they can't have their 'carousels' and moving graphics. and those mouse-overs - the worst thing about 'active' pages. I move my mouse to get away from something and I bump into yet another popover. whoever thought that was good should be shot. and I'm almost serious, too. shoot the stupid morans who do first, before thinking.
I had an argument with a marketing puke about the 'need' for a landing page with a moving carousel and he looked at me like I wanted to shoot his dog, when I suggested I don't want things moving on my page when I first land there, or any time after that. he drank the koolaid and he would hear nothing of what i suggested. his fellow pukes would not accept him if he didn't copy that annoying style like they all did.
amazon has gotton worse, too; very few areas are 'safe' for a mouse anymore. and once something pops up, to see the thing I wanted, I spend more time getting rid of that popover. dammit.
"how can I fool my fellow man" is NOT something to be proud of, you stupid yellow-tie-wearing asshats.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."