Re: [webkit-dev] Request for position on the aspect-ratio CSS property

[Jen Simmons]

I’ve talked to some folks here, poked around, and we believe it’s probably fine 
for `aspect-ratio` to override `-webkit-aspect` ratio. 

It looks like Chromium removed `-webkit-aspect`  in 2014 because the "property 
is parsed and stored on RenderStyle, but it's not used anywhere, i.e. it has no 
effect.” https://codereview.chromium.org/647723002 


I don’t see any Author-facing feature here. There's nothing about it on CSS 
Tricks, nothing on MDN. My demo does nothing. Looks like aspectRatioNumerator 
and aspectRatioDenominator appear to be unused.

Jen

Jen Simmons
Web Technology Evangelist
Apple, Inc.

> Hi,
> 
> I was looking into aspect-ratio and there is one thing Christian did not 
> mention yet. There is an existing aspect-ratio implementation 
> (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=47738 
> ) that uses the property 
> -webkit-aspect-ratio and seems replaced elements only. Probably 
> aspect-ratio can override -webkit-aspect-ratio, anyway since this may 
> influence the position I thought I should mention it.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rob.
> 
>  >Hello,
> 
>  >I'd like to request an official position the aspect-ratio CSS
>  >property, as both Gecko and Blink are currently implementing it, and
>  >ideally we'd like to ship it soonish.
> 
>  >https://drafts.csswg.org/css-sizing-4/#aspect-ratio 
> 
> 
>  
> >https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VqD0mfkIDyCxQBrrvDw5wEbhXBsmEYIhk6ahiX_fvco/edit#
>  
> 
> 
>  >Thanks,
>  >Christian

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Re: [webkit-dev] Request for a position on the Idle Detection API

[Ryosuke Niwa]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 12:54 PM Reilly Grant  wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 9:20 PM Ryosuke Niwa  wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Oct 28, 2020 at 4:56 PM Reilly Grant  wrote:
> >>
> >> I would like to request an official position from the WebKit team on the 
> >> emerging Idle Detection API specification. I am aware that this API was 
> >> included in a list of APIs which you have decided not to implement due to 
> >> fingerprinting concerns. I assume that this objection was based on the 
> >> original explainer provided for this API.
> >
> > Our position has not changed. Our concerns are not limited to 
> > fingerprinting. There is an obvious privacy concern that this API lets a 
> > website observe whether a person is near the device or not. This could be 
> > used, for example, to start mining bitcoins when the user is not around or 
> > start deploying security exploits, etc...
>
> Thank you for expanding on your concerns. I agree that malicious sites
> may attempt to hide their activity from the user by waiting until they
> appear to not be paying attention. There are plenty of mechanisms
> currently available for this, for example, a site can already tell
> that it has been placed in the background and can observe that the
> user has not interacted with it in a long time, which likely means
> that the user is no longer at their computer.

If that were the case, then it seems like we don't need this API in
the first place.

> It is true that this
> capability would allow a site to be more precise about targeting a
> time when the user is not present. I think the mitigation in that
> case, especially for activity such as cryptocurrency mining, is the
> work that is being done elsewhere to define the semantics for
> throttling the work that sites are allowed to do in the background.

Throttling isn't enough to mitigate all security attacks. Some attacks
might be more of visual cue like going to full screen, etc...

> >> Since that list was posted the API has been extended to include a 
> >> permission that sites must acquire before being granted access to user 
> >> presence signals. I would like to start a conversation to understand the 
> >> fingerprinting risks you foresee from this API.
> >
> > This kind of action-at-a-distance permission prompt is problematic because 
> > it's unclear to the user why such a permission should be granted and for 
> > what purpose.
>
> It is the site's job to present a compelling case for why the user
> should grant it a permission.

That doesn't make any sense. We can't let the user make a judgement on
whether something is a good idea or not based on a text which is
supplied by malicious content.

> > Additionally, the use cases listed at 
> > https://github.com/WICG/idle-detection/blob/master/README.md are rather 
> > weak.
> >
> >> Chat application: presenting a user's status to other users and delivering 
> >> notifications to the device where the user is active.
> >
> > Why does delivering a notification to all devices considered bad? That's 
> > what happens to most notifications I receive and modern operating systems 
> > have ways to hide & dismiss old notifications anyway. It's also unclear how 
> > users are supposed to know of this use case when assessing whether to allow 
> > a permission for this API or not.
>
> Developers we have talked to (see the WICG discourse thread for
> supportive comments from Slack and Google Chat) have identified that
> receiving notifications on all their devices simultaneously is in fact
> a frequent user complaint. In the introduction section of the
> specification I explain the user scenario in more detail. Being able
> to hide or dismiss old notifications is helpful but does not address
> the core issue, which is that user's want to receive notifications on
> only the device they are currently using. The current tools for this
> are lacking because they cannot distinguish between the user leaving
> their computer and simply switching to another application.

That doesn't seem like a strong enough use case for this API. For
starters, there is no guarantee that the user won't immediately come
back to the device. Also, who is such a service supposed to know what
other device user might be using at any given point? We're definitely
not going to let a website know all the devices a given user might be
using at any given point. That's a very serious breach of the said
user's privacy. It seems to me that such a suppression / distribution
mechanism is best left for the underlying operating systems / web
browsers to handle.

I'm going to stop responding to this thread at this point because none
of the use cases presented either here or elsewhere are compelling,
and none of the privacy or security mitigations you've presented here
and I found elsewhere are adequate. However, not responding to this
thread or future thread about this topic does not mean we'd reconsider
our position. Unless a significant new development is being made in