

My blueray player broke, and my tv stopped showing me to use certain apps and I can’t figure out why. But a used PS4 cost me $85 and solved all my problems. And they left a copy of Minecraft in it, so I even have a game to play.


Counterpoint: my software allows you to access your banking needs. I’m financially on the hook if fraud occurs. Fraud occurs because your favorite “slap the monkey” game also installs a keylogger and network monitor. So I don’t allow my software to work if you have that installed.
I think you’re right that companies should not be able to tell you what software you can run, but users also can’t be trusted to keep their devices safe.
A lot of network, banking, and telephony protocols historically rely on trusting that there are no bad actors in the chain. Technology has added more links to the chain increasing the opportunities for bad actors to tap into it.
It’s a situation that needs better fixes. Maybe we just need to hand the current internet over to the bots and start a new one with security and privacy built in from the ground up.


It’s always super frustrating that even on “high end“ pc laptops they’ll use some shitty combined Bluetooth and WiFi chip that will bottleneck everything.


You’re right, you can see this with wire shark, or you can just use the network tab in your browsers developer tools.
But as a web developer, you’re absolutely wrong that we can’t collect every freaking keystroke if we want to.
Sometimes we wait for submit. Sometimes we collect everything as you move from one field to another, called a blur event. Sometimes we wait for the user to stop typing for like 1/4 or 1/3 of a second, called a debounce event. But we can collect every keystroke. We don’t concatenate them on the server side, we send the whole field value after each change, tied together with other fields based on a session ID.
Hell, sometimes we track your mouse movements as well. Where you move in the page, where your mouse lingers, how long you hesitate before clicking. A “good” company uses this information to make a better user experience. A nefarious one uses it to collect all your personal information without you ever clicking submit, and sees just how hesitant you were to disengage after being asked to pay. Then aggregate that experience to determine the price point.
It is not, but it is very soluble, so can be found in water.