dat – Dan Q

Apple just killed Offline Web Apps while purporting to protect your privacy

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

On the face of it, WebKit’s announcement yesterday titled Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More sounds like something I would wholeheartedly welcome. Unfortunately, I can’t because the “and more” bit effectively kills off Offline Web Apps and, with it, the chance to have privacy-respecting apps like the prototype I was exploring earlier in the year based on DAT.

Block all third-party cookies, yes, by all means¹. But deleting all local storage (including Indexed DB, etc.) after 7 days effectively blocks any future decentralised apps using the browser (client side) as a trusted replication node in a peer-to-peer network. And that’s a huge blow to the future of privacy.

…

Aral Balkan

Like Aral and doubtless many others, I was initially delighted to see that Safari has beaten Chrome to the punch, blocking basically all third-party cookies through its Intelligent Tracking Protection. I don’t even routinely use Safari (although I do block virtually all third-party and many first-party cookies using uMatrix for Firefox), but I loved this announcement because I knew that this, coupled with Google’s promise to (eventually) do the same in their browser, would make a significant impact on the profitability of surveillance capitalism on the Web. Hurrah!

But as Aral goes on to point out, Apple’s latest changes also effectively undermines the capability of people to make Progressive Web Applications that run completely-offline, because their new privacy features delete the cache of all offline storage if it’s not accessed for 7 days.

PWAs have had a bumpy ride. They were brought to the foreground by Apple in the first place when Steve Jobs suggested that something-like-this would be the way that apps should one day be delivered to the iPhone, but then that idea got sidelined by the App Store. In recent years, we’ve begun to see the concept take off again as Chrome, Firefox and Edge gradually added support for service workers (allowing offline-first), larger local storage, new JavaScript interfaces for e.g. cameras, position, accelerometers, and Bluetooth, and other PWA-ready technologies. And for a while I thought that the day of the PWA might be drawing near… but it looks like we might have to wait a bit longer.

I hope that Google doesn’t follow Apple’s lead on this particular “privacy” point, although I’m sure that it’s tempting for them to do so. Offline Web applications have the potential to provide an open, simple, and secure ecosystem for the “apps” of tomorrow, and after several good steps forwards… this week we took a big step back.

Note #14062

wewillrock.eu

You know how sometimes you get an idea, and you already wrote and extended the code that makes it possible so surely you only need to do a little audio editing and CSS animation tweaking and graphic design and HOLY SHIT HOW DID IT GET SO LATE?

Totally worth it.

Also available via dat:// here or there.

Note #13334

nonstophammerti.me

now a #PWA
now available on #dat
now open source (#GPL)
still as pointless as ever

More: danq.me/2019/04/03/nonstophammertime

Non Stop Hammer Ti.me

You know how sometimes I make a thing and, in hindsight, it doesn’t make much sense? And at best, all it can be said to do is to make the Internet more fun and weird?

I give you: NonStopHammerTi.me.

Things that make it awesome:

Well, the obvious.
Vanilla Javascript.
CSS animations timed to every-other-beat.
Using an SVG stroke-dasharray as a progress bar.
Progressively-enhanced; in the worst case you just get to download the audio.
PWA-enhanced; install it to your mobile!
Open source!
Decentralised (available via the peer-web at dat://nonstophammerti.me/ / dat://0a4a8a..00/)
Accessible to screen readers, keyboard navigators, partially-sighted users, just about anybody.
Compatible with digital signage at my workplace…

Digital signage showing NonStopHammerTi.me — My office aren’t sick of this… yet.

That is all.

Post-it Note Affirmations and the Amazon Dash

This article is a repost promoting content originally published elsewhere. See more things Dan's reposted.

The amazon dash is a pinnacle of modern web design. It’s one of the most intrusive, complex, and resource-dependent devices we’ve introduced into our homes, yet it appears as a simple oval with a single button for a single use. The use is absurdly narrow: the button will have a picture of Tide detergent, and when you press the button, Tide detergent is sent to your door.

Zach Mandeville

Barely a week goes by between the times that I discover some horrifically over-engineered “solution” on the Internet. Amazon’s Dash buttons are terrible: disposable (plastic) single-purpose computers that could so easily have been made into something “more” – more-versatile, more-open, more-configurable, more-flexible. Indeed: people have been doing exactly that kind of thing! But the vanilla Dash button remains little more than selling you convenience (and not much convenience, if we’re honest) in exchange for more and more of your feeling of digital freedom. Yet another example of what replaced the Web we lost…

By hiding the technical processes, and simplifying the onboarding and engagement of their services, Amazon can continually reinforce your depression for a profit— and you can get name-brand laundry detergent faster.

Zach Mandeville

Also, can I just take a moment to point out how awesome Zach’s website is. Not only is it the perfect example of how fun and weird the Internet can be and having a mixture of fascinating and curious content, it’s also available via dat:// for those of you who’ve got some love for the datbaseiverse.