webpackage VS chromium

Good stuff. Still, drives me a bit nuts that we package/HTTP Signed Exchanges, Message Signatures, and web archiving all have very similar but different versions of the same thing.

Webpackage has a lot of stuff that seems super cool to me. Alas it seemed mainly to be a small handful of engineers & most seemed to have moved on from the effort. https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/713

Given the frosty response in the comments they got I guess I'm not shocked, but in general it feels like web standards could use better long term care, that they often don't get, alas.

Some of the navigating into a bundle stuff is indeed not presently happening.

But there's a bunch of specs for signed exchanges & subresources that underpin & allow resource exchange, and which do have recent drafts. Webpackage seems to be doing OK ish. But yeah we bundles specifically do seem to be all expired.

https://github.com/WICG/webpackage#specifications

Cool idea, but what I'm really hoping is that webpackage gets properly developed and integrated with browsers eventually. Unfortunately it probably won't happen, a tiny chunk of Google showed interest but that's about it.

With certificate transparency, I dont think SXG's expiration s a real barrier to adoption. The hardnosed shitty browser attitude aroumd right now: it will collapse in the face of onvious utility, other people will implememt more aspirational & liberal systems. This stance is untennable im the face of the obvious huge value of being able to lool at old signed content, particularly when coupled with certificate transparency systems. This conservative standard will is just a minimal & onvious agreeable starting place, but adoption will give way to expansion, given the immense user value of signed content. I say this as a core core protester against these pathetic loserly expiration timeouts[1].

I get maybe not putting all your chips in SXG basket. I disagree with a bunch of the protest: this seems like a sensible, basic, obvious layered enhancement to the existimg web. Safari & Mozia are as is the modd today being terrible shits as usual, the regressives.

Contrasting ADX versus SXG just feels so wild, because SXG is a small refinememt to a vast world spanning & complete ecosystem of technology that has already taken over the planet. And ADX is an standalone completely isolated alternate world, it's own reality. This tension, whether we need a baseline which is 100% new & novel & redefines the entire problem space on it's own terms, completely from scratch, or whether we can hack & improve & enhance what we have: I dont feel like there's any camp at all left to defend improvememt.

Tear it all down, start over... it's the mode. I agree, this debate needs more than HM comments. But this tension & conflict, this view of the world & how it evolves or revolts: it's been trying to make revutions & insist no bounds, nothing today can possibly be good enough for tomorrow. And two plus decades latter, it's made such tiny impact, is so niche.

I accept your snub, getting told im exasperated, but it's for a real reason, it's because these decades have failed to deliver & so few have willingly tried improving what is (Safari & Mozia being a quite vocal modern anchor keeling things in place, a modern astrpturfing shouting class against trying anything, especially). This effort does have the social capital to perhaps emerge & birth something new, but we could also just improve & greatly fix everything that ready is. With minor, layered, small, principled enhancements.

[1] https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/597

signed web bundles [1] let you package up a page as a fixed resource, distributed with a signature to verify that the content of that page is what the author intended it to be, so a site like twitter that is embedding it can be sure that what they're embedding is always the original resource.

however, this is AMP, and so everybody hates it.

[1] https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/blob/main/explainers/sign...

A phyrric victory for a Web that is basically ChromeOS.

Ever heard of Web Bundles?

https://web.dev/web-bundles/

https://github.com/WICG/webpackage

I think advertising is positive [1] and the role of ads in funding freely-available sites is very important. My current work is primarily on how browsers can allow more private and secure advertising [2][3][4] which I think most people will agree is valuable even if they are less in favor of advertising in general.

At a lower level, I do this job because I'm paid, which allows me to donate. [5] But I wouldn't do this work if I thought it was harmful; there are lots of different kinds of jobs I could take.

[1] https://www.jefftk.com/p/effect-of-advertising

[2] https://github.com/google/fledge-shim

[3] https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/issues/161

[4] https://github.com/WICG/webpackage/issues/624

[5] https://www.jefftk.com/donations

data urls encode things in base64 format so bloat up the file. Also the user agent can't just seek over them, requiring it to parse the entire included base64 content. There are better ways, but sadly nothing cross platform:

* https://github.com/WICG/webpackage

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webarchive

One of the unexpected use of shadow DOMs for me was a document generated for image resource URLs [1], because the HTML standard apparently specifies the exact DOM structure of the generated document except for the `` element [2].

[1] https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/f02ca73/third_part...

[2] https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/document-lifecycle.ht...

Recently my favorite open source mouse gestures extension SmartUp Gestures was taken over by some shady entity (with github no longer being updated of course).

I opened Chrome ticket that they should ask to re-enable extension when ownership changes. They just closed the ticket replying with this link:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/extens...

:(

Hmm. It looks like files with the .lnk or .pif file extension can only be downloaded on a user gesture: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/39841e54180...

So it can't be done silently. Although, I do wish the type was marked "DANGEROUS" a la dll files.

On Linux, Chromium uses setuid or user namespaces to restrict the access of sandboxed components and seccomp-bpf to reduce the kernel attack surface.

Check out the Chromium docs on this topic: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/l...

You can also disable JIT in Firefox by setting javascript.options.baselinejit to false in about:config, although you won't get CET.

[1] https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/12c232c43ce7324d30...

Chromium targets iOS already: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...

For the sake of completeness, I've traced the evolution of the notice over time:

From 2008-07-26: "Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of: / • Websites that collect or share information about you / • Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit / • Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys / • Surveillance by secret agents / • People standing behind you" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/09911bf300f...)

From 2013-12-07: "Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, software, or people standing behind you." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/c5e36c57178...)

From 2013-12-13: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/70821506825...)

From 2014-02-27: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, governments and other sophisticated attackers, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/ab54bd65701...)

From 2014-04-29: "Going incognito doesn't hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/eb09a62ef40...)

From 2016-01-15: "However, you aren't invisible. Going incognito doesn’t hide your browsing from your employer, your internet service provider, or the websites you visit." (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/b7dac1a6a79...)

From 2017-02-27: "Your activity might still be visible to: / • Websites you visit / • Your employer / • Your internet service provider" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/cfe102adddc...)

From 2017-03-29: "Your activity might still be visible to: / • Websites you visit / • Your employer or school / • Your internet service provider" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/7ca3ccf74e8...)

(Note that some of these were behind a feature flag for a few months.) Also, it looks like they've been intending to modify the new-tab page text for Incognito windows for some time, as part of the "Revamped Incognito NTP" project. You can view the modified text with 'chromium --enable-features=IncognitoNtpRevamp':

From 2021-08-13: "What Incognito doesn't do / Incognito does not make you invisible online: / • Sites know when you visit them / • Employers or schools can track browsing activity / • Internet service providers may monitor web traffic" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/e6ae57ba385...)

From 2022-01-25: "What Incognito doesn't do / Incognito does not make you invisible online: / • Sites and the services they use can see visits / • Employers or schools can track browsing activity / • Internet service providers can monitor web traffic" (https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/8b349f6c984...)

Blink can now be compiled for iOS, but without JIT or WASM:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=141170...

I think its weird that Vercel has this limit. There is no practical reason I can think of for having such a limit on URL characters that is so small. Chrome suggests a 2MB limit[0] for example. The platform itself doesn't have one, and Firefox I believe if memory serves (I can't find the source for this claim atm) is 1 MB effectively, and I don't think Safari is any lower than that either (and may well be more inline with Chrome on this, at 2 MB)

[0]: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...