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by socalgal25 hours ago |
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upvoteby lxgr15 minutes ago|
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> It's a self correcting problem. You go to a site, it freezes your machine, you never visit the site again.

What do regular users do about a malicious ad that runs on thousands of different sites?

> Turning off WebGL = no more Figma, no more Canva, no more Google Maps

Which is why you should probably rather turn off the actual vulnerable API, i.e. WebGPU, not WebGL.

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upvoteby graemep4 minutes ago|
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It really ought to be something you can enable or disable per site. I was surprised to find its not.
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upvoteby zelphirkalt5 hours ago|
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Do you think a regular user knows how to block a specific website or never click a link leading to it again? And what about the ads people, adding such a thing if you don't load their ads?

I think this point of view is making it a bit too easy.

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upvoteby ktm5j1 hours ago|
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As someone who supports some bottom of the barrel "regular users".. they aren't monkeys. They have brains that function enough to process "oh, I shouldn't do that again".
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upvoteby andyferris18 minutes ago|
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Nitpick: monkeys have enough brains for "oh, I shouldn't do that again".
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upvoteby socalgal25 hours ago|
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A user doesn't need to know anything other than "when I go to site XYZ.com my computer freezes. Guess I won't go there again"

> I think this point of view is making it a bit too easy.

It's been 15 years since this was possible. How many times have you heard of this being an issue? Again, it's self correcting. Site freezes machine, user stops going to site. There's zero incentive to do this and tons of incentive to not do it. Even an ad, your ads would get banned, not good for you, no incentive.

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upvoteby sersi2 hours ago|
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An average user will not know that the site caused the issue. The first time after force turning off the computer, it will restart and reopen all windows causing the computer to crash again. The next time, they might click on the button to prevent reopening all windows and everything will be fine until they opens safari which will cause the same issue. At that point, they'll call whoever is their computer expert user to help them out.
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upvoteby xingped3 hours ago|
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I think a lot of HN commenters are way too disconnected from the average person. You're making a big assumption that a user will even connect the dots until the same thing happens multiple times, if even then. The average computer user is extremely bad at connecting cause and effect on their computer. Think of how many times you hear "my computer is broken!" when actually it's something like the printer was unplugged/turned off and they were just having trouble printing a document (or, if you are so disconnected from average users/people, the answer is _this happens a lot_). Even what we think of as simple stuff completely befuddles them.
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upvoteby DrewADesign1 hours ago|
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> I think a lot of HN commenters are way too disconnected from the average person

This is basically an old-man-and-the-starfish situation for me.

> You're making a big assumption that a user will even connect the dots

If they do, it’s because their wildly inaccurate mental model happened to guess the right answer. What most will think is “I was just browsing the internet and my computer froze.” Maybe they’ll connect it with that notification they just got about renewing their antivirus software subscription. Maybe it will confirm their (probably mistaken) impression that their computer has been “acting weird” since something arbitrary and unrelated happened. And similarly, some people with an accurate mental model will mistakenly assume that they deduced the cause because they’re smarter, rather than having a different focus with corresponding lacking mental models in other areas.

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upvoteby chrisjj3 hours ago|
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> A user doesn't need to know anything other than "when I go to site XYZ.com my computer freezes.

Not true, given any unknown link or button press can redirect/go to such a site.

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