"Allegedly, these policies are also supported on Windows via Group Policy and MacOS using plist files. I wouldn’t know, since I use a real operating system."
Real 2006 Slashdot energy here. Very rare to see in the wild these days.
If you go from using Linux for years to having to use an OS like macOS or especially Windows, it really does feel like using a computer with padded walls and safety scissors so you don't hurt yourself. You do get used to the limitations eventually, but for technical users it's a pretty noticeable step down in terms of how you may use and configure your own system. Calling them "not real operating systems" is definitely a little cheeky, but it resonates, and isn't out of character for a blog post about configuring your browser with JSON overrides.
I've been daily-driving desktop Linux for close to 15 years, hadn't touched Windows in about 10 years, and then got a job a few months back that requires Microsoft-everything.
"Primitive" is the word that comes to mind every day. There's a steady drum-beat of aggravation and missing features and bad design decisions. I lose probably close to thirty minutes of daily productivity to the Microsoft tax.
> … for technical users it's a pretty noticeable step down in terms of how you may use and configure your own system
It’s such a frustrating experience on both ends—I use macOS for most of my work because I like the hardware it ships on, but it is so annoying to not be able to, like, use a different window manager (hacky accessibility API systems notwithstanding).
On the other hand I’ve probably burnt weeks troubleshooting and configuring different compositors/window managers on Arch (and STILL don’t have the setup of my dreams), so it’s frustrating on that end too.
It's funny, I use OSX as my daily driver, and going over to Windows is painful - probably as painful as it is for OP to go from whatever they're using to OSX.
I don't understand your sentiment - not sure about MacOS, but I'd definitely argue that Windows was much more of a real OS in 2006. These days, it's basically indefensible.
It's an intellectually lazy "No true Scotsman." I personally clicked away from the page as soon as I read that line because the author lost my trust in that moment.
It's really not that intellectually lazy. When you're stuck in the quagmire of daily driving (modern) Windows you almost don't even notice how bad it is, but after being away from it you can come to see how truly patronizing, obnoxious, and asinine the whole OS has become. You get to a point where you see people getting screwed by Windows and complaining about it, and you just think "you're doing this to yourself."
Unless you're running your own local DoH server, it's just privacy theater, and not even good theater. It's the same bogus argument made in favor of retail VPNs. "Encrypt your traffic so your ISP can't spy on you!" Meanwhile failing to recognize that you're just moving the spying agency to some free service owned by--oh, let's look at the top providers... Cloudflare (not great), Brave (advertising company), Google (Bad)... Need I go on?
Perhaps you've forgotten that old adage: if you're not the customer, you're the product.
Security theatre is far too strong. It’s not perfect but it does solve real world, actively exploited privacy flaws, such as ISPs monitoring and selling insights from DNS, NXDOMAIN hijacking, etc.
Your internet traffic is all MITMd by Cloudflare anyway. Using their DNS barely moves the needle.
I run a local DNS server that has its own blocklists, internal DNS records, etc. I imagine most people who might bother to deploy an enterprise browser policy do something similar.
With DNS-over-HTTPS, your DNS queries are sent to Cloudflare (by default; it is configurable). Without it, your DNS queries are sent to your ISP. The question is which company you trust more with your DNS queries.
Given how often ISPs and/or countries do stupid things with DNS, I think DNS-over-HTTPS is a reasonable default. But some people don't trust Cloudflare with that info, so they use the ISP option instead.
If you have write permission to the folder, you can do this on a corporate machine, but your IT department probably has a preferred configuration that will overwrite your changes.
I think most people use an enterprise MDM like JAMF or Intune, but manually creating the file at /Library/Managed Preferences/com.google.Chrome.plist might also work.
Slop. "I use a real operating system" but lists Chrome, as if that was any better in its own category; mentioning policies that are long dead (Cloud Print? Pocket? Really?) or harmless (DoH). Ironic.
I concur with the misuse of the word "slop". But this is almost exactly how i setup my browser anyway and since I only do that on once i am nor sure how useful this is actually... maybe for setting up systems for others?
Yeah, I was gonna say. These are reasonable defaults for a technical user and I do much of the same, but it's also reasonable for many users to want the features that are being disabled here. It's not slop just because the author personally does not want them.
Real 2006 Slashdot energy here. Very rare to see in the wild these days.
"Primitive" is the word that comes to mind every day. There's a steady drum-beat of aggravation and missing features and bad design decisions. I lose probably close to thirty minutes of daily productivity to the Microsoft tax.
I've been sincerely surprised at how bad it is.
It’s such a frustrating experience on both ends—I use macOS for most of my work because I like the hardware it ships on, but it is so annoying to not be able to, like, use a different window manager (hacky accessibility API systems notwithstanding).
On the other hand I’ve probably burnt weeks troubleshooting and configuring different compositors/window managers on Arch (and STILL don’t have the setup of my dreams), so it’s frustrating on that end too.
As for Chromium browsers, none of them are safe.
And "I use a real operating system" alongside a list of seven different non-obvious and seemingly arbitrary config locations is pretty funny.
Not sure if i'm missing something, but i don't consider privacy protection slopware.
Perhaps you've forgotten that old adage: if you're not the customer, you're the product.
Your internet traffic is all MITMd by Cloudflare anyway. Using their DNS barely moves the needle.
Wasn't Pocket discontinued and no longer exists?
Presumably the Google money is what keeps Firefox from doing the same.
> Disables native privacy and anti-tracking features
> Disables DNS-over-HTTPS
Why?
Given how often ISPs and/or countries do stupid things with DNS, I think DNS-over-HTTPS is a reasonable default. But some people don't trust Cloudflare with that info, so they use the ISP option instead.
Both are reasonable choices.
In short: Ask your system administrator.
Why though?
(Sidenote: Over/misuse of the word "slop")