I used to be hardcore Opera fan, and this reminds me of something they did back in the days when Jon von Tetzchner was over there. They released "Opera Bork" edition https://press.opera.com/2003/02/14/opera-releases-bork-editi... because MSN was sending a broken website specifically to Opera, so they spoofed the user agent.
I came to the comments precisely to post this exact link so delighted to see someone beat me to it.
Opera were always so good at giving a window into the world of compatibility testing & challenges - @hallvord in particular had a great blog on my.opera about their work subverting large websites that would block or thwart Opera & other non-IE browsers.
I know some people on here don't like the EU "over regulating/sanctionning" tech companies telling them what to do when they misbehave and refuses to play nicely (eg Apple usb-c, to take one that was clearly controversial on HN), but I really really hope some massive case is coming against the clear monopolistic walled garden abuse that is reappearing lately on the web, it's like the early 2000 all over again.
Google breaking stuff for Firefox, Microsoft breaking stuff for Chrome, ... There is a difference between not bothering to ensure full compatibility and showing a warning, and limiting to your own market.
We can keep pretending smart phones are not two different markets but one unified so apple and google are free to abuse users, but not computers and the web.
We're so far beyond the 2000s in terms of bad behavior that it's not even funny. Remember that the case United States vs Microsoft [1] was about, literally, nothing but Microsoft bundling Internet Explorer with Windows! That was seen as (and is) anticompetitive behavior detrimental to competition from other browsers. And Microsoft lost that case, initially leading to the potential breakup of the entire company! Though they [obviously] managed to get a lesser penalty on appeal.
Now companies package all sorts of random crap, often make it impossible to remove or in many cases even disable, prevent users from getting apps except from their own walled in app-stores (where they take a huge cut of revenue), phone home endlessly for opaque purposes, forcibly impose updates which regularly reset user preferences to the benefit of companies, artificially promote their products in every single way (such as by being the automatically selected 'default' selection in every aspect of a system, knowing full well that changing the default is too onerous for the average user), and much much more.
The problem is not a lack of regulations or rules, but a lack of enforcement. As soon as all of these big tech companies started "lobbying" politicians, let alone becoming deeply intertwined with our intelligence agencies [2], it's like any concern whatsoever about antitrust just disappeared, or at least set to a practically unreachable level of villainy. All the rules in the world don't matter if they're simply not enforced for certain companies.
I would argue it's even worse than that. Spoof your UA string or other behavior to achieve the best user experience, then find yourself blocked by 50K Cloudflare sites for spoofing:
It's ridiculous, but we need a regulation stating that web sites designed for use by the public need to be accessible by the public. Of course I don't mean performing compatibility checks with the last 5 editions of three dozen different browsers, but simply avoiding situations that lead directly or indirectly to
if browser$ == a {render site}
if browser$ == b {render site}
if browser$ == c {render site}
if browser$ == d {render site}
else {echo "go away"}
Yes, IMHO it is the the old browser wars resurfaced and I don't really understand why. Arrogance cloaked by the veil of security? We've learned nothing. At worst I consider this a corollary to net neutrality...and we know where that currently stands. I would love for the EU to take notice, but they seem so obsessed with cookies. I briefly tried getting the EFF to take a stance, but don't think they bit. Maybe it's because everybody IS using Chrome?
I'm going out on a limb, but I can't see a downside to making an "ADA for the web". Any for-profit company of a certain size or revenue has to have their content available in plaintext, including audio and videos being transcribed. Content should also be available without artificial restriction (like DRM), so you can use whatever software you like to process the text.
If everything is going digital, this will be necessary for visually impaired people to access critical information.
The only thing I can think of as a negative is that it raises the bar for new players to join.
You already will have a very tough time hosting your own materials without using a major player as an intermediary. Emails in particular are far more likely to be blacklisted simply because they're not originating from a known approved source regardless of your DKIM, SPF, or DMARC settings. Adding that every new website has to be fully accessible to the visually impaired when on top of that there isn't a single collectively approved standard to measure yourself against would be an enormous hassle and stop a lot of new people from even being able to take a chance with starting a new website.
However, that is remediable with an approved standard to meet and clear guidelines on the processes that must be followed to meet them, so that's not as big of a deal as it can be made out to be.
Also it's quite unfortunate that bots can easily use the same interfaces designed for screen readers, so just using a slightly-standardized REST API or plain-old HTML can expose you to bot attacks (ddos, spam, etc) once you reach a certain size.
> A browser that is intentionally deviating from how the rest of the common browsers works cannot expect to receive the same level as support
There should be no need to "support" it. The server should just send the data requested and be done with it. Whether or not it works is the user's problem.
I know CloudFlare is an increasingly popular bogeyman but that's like blaming the Linux kernel for dropping your request to a website after its owner added a rule to block your IP...
CloudFlare does tell users of their services how their different levels of protection will impact their visitors. The site owners CHOOSE to add those barriers. CloudFlare didn't force them, they're perfectly happy being a mostly passive CDN if that's what the website owner wants.
The EU woke up too late for that MS/IE situation, but it did lead to some massively good thing (in my opinion): documentation of office file format, of SMB protocol, decoupling on IE and Windows Media Player ("Windows N" was funny, but the decoupling was real and is still to this day), etc ...
That's why I hope for them to react to this one. The EU has been stepping up lately about making sure enforcement match the rules.
Windows N and KN are still the best option to get working Windows without the wallpapers, game promotions, seasonal news in the start menu, weather apps etc. All windows editions should be like these.
Because that was the original pain point and the one that made the news ("Windows N is the version that can't play video or audio files" makes clicks), but Windows N is actually the version where every optionnal component is uncoupled and removed by default.
Now "nobody" buys Windows N on purpose, but its legally necessary existence force Microsoft to keep these components away from Windows' internals.
I wish that the regulations would exist in America to begin with, and the American people would push more for it. Instead we have to adhere to whatever their laws are and try to play catch up with regulations. And when we threaten with lockout or gating, they threaten back to exit the market completely, because they don't have any ramifications in their own country, and are not super interested in the issues which the regulations try to address.
There was more to the Microsoft antitrust case than just bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. But on that point, the funny thing is that they probably wouldn't have gotten in trouble if they had just built a web browser into the operating system from the beginning. When they first released IE they actually charged for it and sold it in shrink wrapped boxed at retail stores. Then to compete with Netscape Navigator they started giving it away for free before finally adding it to Windows. In retrospect it seems obvious that every consumer desktop OS should include a built in browser.
>In retrospect it seems obvious that every consumer desktop OS should include a built in browser.
It's amazing the insight 30 years of hindsight can provide. At the time of MS releasing IE, the internet was this thing unlike anything Gen Z can compare to what the internet is now. It was one step up from being something used only in CompSci labs at universities accessed via dial-up modems that were measured in bauds then kbps. Now we have Gbps, >50% of internet traffic is streaming videos (i'm probably shorting that %), everyone has a connected device in their pocket, and pretty much all commerce is done via the web. It did that in less than the 30 years since IE. What can you accurately predict will have the same "in retrospect" analysis applied to it in a similar manner?
* I'm rounding up to 30 years, since we're closer than not to it.
Old encyclopedias are gold mines for seeing how society has changed. In 1950s encyclopedias, Christmas is listed as a pagan ritual. In modern entries, it is listed as a Christian holiday. I first became aware of this in the 90s, so in 40 years, a group rose to power enough to get encyclopedias to update as they saw fit. So, that in itself is information gleaned from an encyclopedia that wasn't actually written in the pages.
United States v. Microsoft Corp. happened because Windows stood at 95%+ market share. It hasn't happened again because no platform has risen to that level of market share.
We need more antitrust on everything. Things are not working if consumers have no choices in practice. "Support Nestle or just never purchase any snack or drink," isn't a real choice.
If you view $1000 iPhones and $200 Androids as the same market, yes. If you view them as different markets because no one’s picking between the two, Apple has 75% market share in premium phones and Android has 100% market share (I do not consider Jio flip phones as a real competitor) in non premium phones
to be fair it was way worse in the 2000. Publisher’s cut, physical manufacturing and the brick and mortar store margin when added together was generally way more than 30%. Of course Apple giving you no choice but to use their appstore sucks and is something that should be fixed via regulation. However generally 30% seems like a good deal for some products (e.g. nobody is forcing game developers to publish on steam).
it wasn't worse when it came to computing. Hell even taking Microsoft as an example at 95% marketshare, at least Windows was a genuine platform people could build software on. Imagine Windows in 2005 working like an Iphone, the only way to install software being the Windows Store and MS taking 30% of literally every transaction conducted. Doom would have probably been kicked off the app store on day one as well because some concerned mom complained about it. Imagine Windows blocking your executable from running because you implemented your own payment system in your own piece of software.
As much as everyone loves to complain about MS, at least they sold us an operating system and we could pretty much do on top of it whatever we wanted.
Windows wouldn’t have had 95% of the the market had they tried that. Also comparing a Desktop/PC OS with a phone is not completely fair, you can do all of that on macOS (assuming you’d don’t mind updating your app every few years since Apple couldn’t care less about backwards compatibility).
But I was mostly focusing on the 30% bit and I still don’t believe you could have reached a significant audience back in the 00s without having to give someone else a much bigger share than that.
And for some people, that is great. But for others, it simply lead to them getting their money and passwords stolen because they do not have the ability to discern malware from non malware.
> - Implement Green New Deal but add a metric tonne of taxpayers money to support Hidrogen because Shell says so
Hydrogen is pretty much the main hope for truly carbon neutral replacement of industry use of natural gas (huge in Germany for instance). Long range transportation could also probably use it - modern day batteries are simply impossible to use on e.g. medium and up range aircraft.
It's not simply a "because Shell said so thing". France is also investing massively in hydrogen, in multiple local companies Shell has nothing to do with.
> - Start a Ban on ICEs but then push it back another 15 years because Exxon says so
I'm fairly sure the ban on new ICEs is for so out in the future because it's simply impossible to replace all automobile manufacturing capacity much quicker; and if anyone is lobbying against it (do Exxon even do business in the EU??), it's existing EU-based manufacturers that have to retool their entire supply chains to produce EVs. Most are on their way, but EVs are still a small part of their portfolio and manufacturing capacity. Not to mention the drastic loss of employment that will come. It's just not something you can do with short notice.
Not sure if you are joking... Even if you don't have an Esso petrol pump within a few minutes' drive unlike the majority of Europeans, in their own words
"We are one of Europe’s largest oil and gas producers, a major refiner of crude oil for fuels and lubricants, and one of Europe’s leading petrochemical companies"
> Hydrogen is pretty much the main hope for truly carbon neutral replacement of industry use of natural gas (huge in Germany for instance). Long range transportation could also probably use it
In Switzerland the three big wholesalers got together and switched their whole truck fleet to hydrogen. They have the foresight to invest their money well.
You can produce hydrogen with surplus electricity generated from wind power. Can it get any greener? In Germany Greenpeace Energy creates Methane this way and adds it to natural gas. Hydrogen would be much better IMO. Feeding wind energy to the grid was stopped for a while because there was so much of it and nuclear reactors run when they do. There is a lot of potential to be tapped.
what you are missing is:
1. Keeping the hydrogen at high pressure requires a lot of energy.
2. Hydrogen produces H2O in gas form, which in itself it is still a greenhouse gas.
3. True, hydrogen can be produced by "green" technologies, but what is the energy lost throughout the procedure? It is quite a loss (about 20%).
Moreover, it is theoretically viable to produce all electric energy via renewables, albeit impracticle and 100 years away. Thus, I can't see how saying that """EVENTUALLY""" hydrogen might be renewable is good for the environment.
Hydrogen is good for a very niche part of our production system (and spoiler it is not car industry or house heating where better alternatives already exist[1][2]).
A salad in McDonalds is infinitely healthier than a large burger with fat sauce, lots of fries and a big sugary drink; in the same way that hydrogen, depending on how it's produced, could be infinitely better more eco-friendly than natural gas.
For aviation at least I doubt that hydrogen is going to be viable due to issues with fuel volume, storage, handling, and embrittlement. I expect batteries to be used for short flights and carbon-neutral synthetic kerosene to be used for long flights.
EV production is one thing, other is charging.
I would love to invest in EV but in many EU countries there is basically no public charging infrastructure.
and if you live in apartment there is usually no way to charge at home.
That is a fair point, regulation often gets watered down as it undergoes revision after revision, though in fairness, most cases can not be solely blamed on US tech.
The stricter timetable for an ICE ban, to use something mentioned, was mainly changed due to pressure from European business interests, including in part Poland, Germany, Austria, etc. Essentially countries with a significant Auto industry that hasn't pivoted to EVs in the same way as e.g. France. I did not hear of Exxon lobbying to that extent in this case, but maybe I just missed that.
Basically, whilst US concerns definitely have their lobbying efforts in Brussels and Strasbourg, we need to be aware that European business is just as able and willing to engage in the same. The lack of interest in European politics compared to the national level tends to make this more frictionless and effective too, though that is a bit of a chicken/egg problem. People won't engage much with EU politics if the EU is seen as overly bureaucratic and lead by lobbyists, but there is little incentive to change without public interest.
Still feel that regulators can do tremendous good if motivated. The US has shown their abilities during Dieselgate, the EU in data protection. We, the public, need to tune in. Writing letters and calling does make a difference, as hard as that can be to believe.
These companies are exploring bad business behavior all over the world. US is exporting wholesale anything that is detrimental for democracy. It's nuts
It's a matter of competence. EU is a massive technocrat apparatus with countless incompetent unelected failed teachers, political scientists, and MBA's. How does anyone think they could possibly create sound legislation? It happens sometimes, but it's more of a mistake than a feature. It's because sometimes the lobbyists intentions align with ours, not because most of the MPs are working in our interests. I am certain that most of them do think that they are actually working for the betterment of our societies though.
Most societies at various times that built future proof infrastructure had a healthy amount of engineers at the higher levels. Germany, France, the US, China(whatever you make think of their society they are clearly at the forefront of hard tech and infrastructure investments right now), Taiwan(or R.O.C.). If you listen to older folks in Taiwan they will tell you that a lot of infrastructure including the heavy investment in semiconductors and other infrastructure early on was very much related to the amount of engineers they had in senior leadership.
> It's a matter of competence. EU is a massive technocrat apparatus with countless incompetent unelected failed teachers, political scientists, and MBA's.
With that level of "knowledge" about the EU and how it works and is composed, you should probably educate yourself a little bit on the matter before making such affirmative comments.
> So you decided to personally attack and gaslight people because you have some irrational belief in something that is fundamentally undemocratic and corrupt.
No, I decided that if someone's answer is false enough that it sounds exagerated on purpose, then I prefer to assume that person is genuinely uninformed because the other possibility isn't worth spening my time on.
As for your point of view, the minister / cabinet members / ... Of your governement are not directly elected either, they're named by the people you elected to handle that part of their governement, it's the same principle.
Again if you don't understand this principle then this is not a conversation worth having without you first learning about how representative democracies work, and if you understand it but disagree with it that's your point of view you're allowed it but that's another dicussion entirely.
> prefer to assume that person is genuinely uninformed
You are way too charitable. I found out most people that start a conversation about the EU with accusations of it being "undemocratic" to be simply acting in bad faith.
There are many valid criticisms to the EU, and many things that should be improved, typically with more integration, not less. But keep in mind that eurosceptics are not interested in any improvements, they just want it gone.
No government of significant size can function with full direct democracy, decisions made by the elected members of government have to be delegated and turned into workable solutions by someone. Should all these bureaucrats be elected?
As for the the Commission President, the EU Parliament gained a veto over this appointment. Elected representatives have influence over the position, which is a bureaucratic one.
Using an example of a country that decided the EU was "not democratic" enough and actually left. In the UK people find out about who has power behind the scenes when a scandal makes it to the newspapers. Aside from that the powerful Civil Servants that ultimately decide how policies are put into practice are hidden away.
There is very little scrutiny of the Civil Service by Parliament as a whole, the party in government simply shuffles people around if internal conflicts get too heated.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
The EU parliament is elected. The council of ministers is formed by representatives of each member states governments (which are themselves elected).
There are many imperfections (which is expected for an international organization), but most of EU's shortcomings are a consequence of it not being integrated enough.
Regulations that create exceptions for key big players entrench them further and their poor business practices against competitors that wish to usurp their market dominance. New entrants have to play by the rules, but established ones get preferential treatment.
Indeed but for all the plutocracy criticism we make of the US system we are pretty toothless at addressing conflict of interest and quid pro quos at EC level.
Isn’t this a word wide problem, though? Since we live in a capitalist society, if Big Money wants something, they use Big Money Lobby to get it. That’s true in Europe, US, China, India or Africa.
While EU regulations like the GDPR aim to limit big tech's power, they can unintentionally solidify it. These rules increase costs and bureaucracy, creating barriers for startups while major corporations absorb these burdens easily. The GDPR also legalises data trade, as users now routinely consent without understanding implications. This essentially gives companies the right to repackage and sell data, where before GDPR it was a gray area. Also, penalties for violations, although significant, may merely be seen as a cost of doing business for these giants. So, we must scrutinise whether these regulations genuinely promote competition or inadvertently strengthen the monopolies they're designed to control.
It's arguably a problem with the enforcement not keeping up. Many of these practices are in pretty clear violation of the GDPR.
The wheels of justice turn slowly, but time and time again these practices have been deemed illegal, in no small part due to the legal hijinx of Max Schrems.
Consider this alternative perspective: large corporations that profit from user data might have found themselves in a tricky position, facing potential lawsuits and lacking a clear framework to legitimise their data collection practices.
Perhaps GDPR came into existence partly as a solution to this issue. One could argue that its design started from a premise to make data collection and trade more manageable for big corporations, but then was reverse-engineered to present it as a policy protecting people's privacy. This way, the EU could maintain its image as a protector of citizens' rights, while simultaneously assuaging public concerns over data security. This could result in individuals being more willing to consent to data collection.
A significant contributing factor to this could be the EU's 'Cookie Law', which may have conditioned users to automatically agree to pop-ups without thoroughly understanding what they're consenting to.
While this perspective may sound cynical, it's worth considering that regulatory decisions can have complex motivations and implications, often beyond the most apparent intent to do good.
> lacking a clear framework to legitimise their data collection practices
Why should that be a goal of the legislation at all? The design of the GDPR makes their business model illegal, in the same way that the design of the EPA makes chemical dumping illegal. Providing a path to legitimize their data collection would be contrary to the goal of stopping their data collection.
As the owner and operator of small (<25 employees each) companies in the EU directly affected by the GDPR, I disagree with you.
Implementing it has required work but mostly due to the need to change habits, it didn't add any real burden in day to day life, it promoted a much healthier and safer environnement for our customers, it allowed us to push something we believe in without disadvantaging us compared to our competitors, and it gave us a direct marketing advantage in that customers trust us much more than "web giants" to keep our words about this in the experience I have.
YMMV but the GDPR has been a massive gain on every front for me, both as a user, as a citizen and as a small business owner and operator.
I think monopoly is not the right term, but I don't know the correct one.
They control a huge share of one market, and they use it to force their way into another in an unfair way (Microsoft: windows to push edge and keep making it default and making it harder and harder and scarier to switch, and now using edge to push their own web services; Google: gmail & co to push chrome, ...).
One would argue "if it's not a monopoly is it not legal ?" but that's sort of my point, if it's illegal it should be punished, if it's currently legal it should be regulated.
We cannot keep treating browsers like a regular piece of software when they're becoming more and more like an utility. I sort of feel the same way toward OSes, but browsers are even more important.
Which mean there is still time to stop their abuse in Windows, unlike last time with internet explorer when we reacted too late.
Changing browsers went from a simple and smooth experience in 7/8, to one with roadblocks and warning in 10, to one that's absurdely abusive in 11, all to push Edge forward.
In this case Microsoft is using Bing Chat to promote Edge use, but Bing Chat doesn't have anything close to a dominant position so it's hard for me to see an argument that this isn't allowed under US anti-trust (or that it should be prohibited).
Only realistic outcome from this would be Google/Chrome becoming even more dominant since there would be no reason for anyone to use any other browser.
Yep. Back in the day, Outlook Web Access (OWA) in Exchange used to check to see if you were on IE and block if you were on any chrome browser, and then (mostly) work fine if you just spoofed user agent, leading to things like owa-user-agent. Same story, different day.
Google and Apple exert unbelievable levels of control over the entire Internet simply with their two app stores, even forcing various social media to censor legal speech.
You assume malicious intent. At work, developers are exclusively given Macs as corporate laptops, and all our internal developer tools, guidelines, and acceptance tests run on Chrome.
The side effect of this is that stuff is broken in Firefox all the time. And if you're using Firefox on anything other than a Mac, good luck getting anyone here to fix your issue.
Doesn't matter. I've worked at a lot of "top 100" Internet properties over the years, many of which you probably use at least once a month. You would be surprised how many companies don't test their product on anything other than Macs and Chrome.
I actually can see the MS perspective of not allowing applications to directly modify the default application for a given purpose. If apps can never do it, it removes some amount of vulnerability from OS. Applying fixes to block applications that work around the OS’s safety features seems valid to me. In this case, I don’t think I could reasonably claim this was MS’s concern/intent in breaking Chrome’s default app button, I’m only saying that I can imagine legitimate reasons to do purposefully do that.
Webapps are so great because they can be used on any platform that has a browser. This is anti competitive behaviour.
If everybody does that customers would have to install every browser, and then use chrome to visit google.com, edge to visit microsoft.com or have each browser spoof the websites on visit. That's just stupid.
I won't use software from companies that abuse their power. Microsoft is out. They should be fined for anti competitive behaviour.
I find it quite hilarious how the entire history of the User-Agent string is that of proliferation to masquerade as the previous dominant browser. Every browser nowadays already masquerades as Netscape/Mozilla for backwards compatibility after all. Maybe it's time to just stop with the madness and standardize all browsers as indistinguishable on HTTP level?
That's already the case with the client hints. The UA string is soon to be deprecated, Chrome has even introduced a number of reductions in the past year.
If Microsoft really wants to make it Edge-only all they have to do is bundle it as part of the browser (a sidebar, with access to your history and all the sites you visit of course) instead of making it a web app. Maybe the only reason this hasn't happened yet is that multi-department projects inside MS are hard?
Some people don't know Bing Chat is available in Skype, and almost everyone (over 30) has a Skype account already so that's a pretty low friction way to try it. Be aware though, that Bing Chat itself does not know that it's available in Skype and will refuse to continue the conversation if you insist that's how you're talking to it. Some people also don't know that on Android you can easily find & install the "Skype Lite" (for India, targeting low end devices) APK which is better than any other current version of Skype.
There is in fact a sidebar in Edge dedicated to Bing Chat with features exclusive to it. E.g. it takes the current website into account as context and is thus a good way to get for example a whole pdf into the context window. It's also a nice way to do jailbreaks since it seems to trust the content of whatever website you're looking at more than your own input.
I started using Vivaldi on mobile 6 months ago and I'm never looking back, the internet is so much better without the goatse style google ads I'm getting on mobile.
In the future I believe google will let people choose whether they want to see ads and which ads, it's just a matter of time
they will definitely not give a choice whether they want to see ads and which ads, they will do opposite recently they started not allowing adblockers on youtube web
A "trusted" browser extension that alters Headers "should" achieve the same result. I don't personally see the need to switch Browsers (e.g. Chrome) just to "masquerade as Microsoft Edge when visiting Bing".
I've been happily using the `Bing Chat For All Browsers` Chrome extension for many weeks, and have been very impressed with the new AI powered Bing and its chat agent.
I really really really despise Microsoft's habit of filtering on user-agent in their websites!
I remember back when I worked at (then recently acquired by Microsoft) Mojang and was building a solution to log into Minecraft using a Microsoft account, i couldn't access Xbox.com because I was on a Linux machine. This was during their Microsoft <3 Linux campaign.
I sent a very angry email to our internal contacts in the relevant team telling them to stop blocking us from developing a feature for Minecraft that our mutual overlord had dictated we implement.
It actually worked (kinda)! They removed user-agent filtering from the pages we needed. I wish they removed it from their business practice entirely, but that's to big an ask I guess
The desktop version of Bing Chat has recently been made available in Chrome, but Vivaldi is apparently not on the allow list and is sending Chrome's user agent. Since Bing Chat is not available in Chrome on Android, Vivaldi is sending Edge's user agent, as the article says.
It's still rolling out to browsers. it's on flighting fase, not general available. Each browser will have a different flight configuration and set of features... Cleaning cookies might help get you in the flight.
Are you sure you don't an extension spoofing the Edge user agent? When I access bing.com/chat from Chrome, I get a screen saying "Unlock conversational search on Microsoft Edge".
You can avoid that by using Bing Chat for All Browsers.
I have never understood why Microsoft didn't do this with Microsoft Edge. So many people use Google as their homepage, and Google has a "Please download Chrome" notification the homepage, always, whenever you aren't using Chrome.
Considering Microsoft Edge is based on Chrome... what's to prevent Microsoft Edge from telling Google, "Hey there, I'm Chrome!" just to screw with the notification?
Or heck, why not have a built-in lightweight Ad-Blocker that detects "We recommend Chrome" popups and hides them?
Why is it not a blatant antitrust violation for a company that makes a browser to add code to their other products that goes out of its way to not work when it detects competitors' browsers?
Not a lawyer but I think it's because that would be considered "compelled speech". If you think of a website as someones free speech, then forcing someone to make their site compatible with a certain browser would be "compelled speech".
Safari has a nice feature in the 'develop' menu that allows you to spoof a user agent, i just switch it to 'Microsoft Edge - MacOS' and bing chat works perfectly fine
It is funny that you mention it, I also had this feeling. There is very much a pattern and rhythm palpable from ChatGTP's answers. Together with an almost mathematically nuanced position. I wonder if this is inherited to the model or the because of the layer written on top and/or the prompt. Many times when I try and make a query to it I can already predict the exact dry content it will give me. Which is too bad because I usually use it as find refuse from being able to predict the dry and useless SEO spam a Google query would give me.
You're not the first one to reply to the OP saying that. Seems like even on Hackernews people want to farm Karma. But for what reason? To then eventually sell their accounts to spammers perhaps?
Yes, I have been using it an Reddit, hn and a bunch of other sites. The hard part is still managing/getting the proxies, the content is better now but it wasn’t bad before. Rarely the reason an account was banned.
Don't wanna start a witch hunt but check the userpage: account was created on May 13th, 2018 and the oldest comment comes from only 14 days ago and karma counter shows just 2.
So Vivaldi lets you set your own User-Agent string? How is this notable? Doesn't every modern browser let you do this in some form or another?
> Many websites worked perfectly in Vivaldi but were blocked when not included on the site’s allowed list of leading browsers. To combat this, back in 2019, we were forced to change Vivaldi’s User-Agent strings.
This is a poor characterization, and attributes as malice what is actually just technical debt. Did Vivaldi forget that every major browser's User-Agent basically masquerades as all the others?
Chrome's default User-Agent string advertises Chrome, AppleWebKit, Gecko (Firefox), and Safari. Go figure.
> So Vivaldi lets you set your own User-Agent string? How is this notable? Doesn't every modern browser let you do this in some form or another?
No and no. I think neither Chrome nor Firefox have that feature built-in in the settings UI, and the blog post is about how Vivaldi doesn't just masquerade as Edge, but completely identifies as it when visiting bing, to get over the fence. All other sites still get the normal UA string.
> This is a poor characterization, and attributes as malice what is actually just technical debt. Did Vivaldi forget that every major browser's User-Agent basically masquerades as all the others?
Err what... The cluttered UA string we have today is the result of exactly that kind of practice, blocking browsers because they're not X. If companies still decide to block browsers in new products today because of their UA string, this is the opposite of technical debt.
There is no way to change useragent in Android Chrome or even Android Firefox. There is just a crippled "desktop mode" button that still tells the site you're on a mobile browser.
I don't know about Chrome, but you certainly can set your User-Agent on Android Firefox. I have it set right now to Linux desktop, so all websites render as desktop by default. Just set general.useragent.override in about:config.
True for me, too. I have never been able to access an about:config for firefox in android. We are supposed to use extensions to configure firefox, too bad that the extensions for android firefox are few.
I use vivaldi as a "javascript disabled" browser, since I can't disable javascript in firefox.
