As if it wasn’t bad enough that they want me to use a random internet service to add a keyboard to a usb wifi receiver, they have the balls to put this for Firefox users. I clicked out of pure curiosity, as I’m not even remotely interested in involving a corporate internet service in getting my keyboard connected to my computer. This is the message you get now on Logi Options software if you have a Unifying Receiver: 
For the curious: https://logiwebconnect.com
EDIT: some people on the thread have brought up that the error message being displayed for Firefox users is due to the WebUSB API not being implemented by Firefox due to security concerns. This still does not justify having to use a web app to plug peripherals to a PC.
Lesson learnt. Stop buying products from HP, Adobe and now Logitech. Create a list of shitty companies and share it with everyone. Consumers have the ultimate power, stop buying g their product ans see how quickly they change everything back to normal.
Comments like this just make me depressed (well this is all depressing really) because it feels like a lot of people don’t quite understand how utterly insignificant we are to these businesses. They will lose so few customers it won’t even wiggle the dial. People will simply download Chrome to do whatever this is, they will get the data they want, user goes back to using Firefox until the next shitty company makes them use Chrome for something.
The problem is simply the consumers. We are all suffering, increasingly, because of the complacency, tech illiteracy, laziness, and short-sightedness of the average consumer. It’s not really their fault, in that these businesses are the ones making the decision to do this, but realistically, if there’s no market pressure, a business is going to do exactly what every business does, which is maximize all potential avenues for profit.
The average consumer is the reason why we can’t have nice things anymore. And it is getting very hard not to feel a certain degree of resentment toward them as everything seems to just get progressively worse and worse with no hope in sight for any type of correction. They don’t think that this is something they need to care about, and it legit makes me want to scream thinking about 6-7 years from now when these same exact people will complain about how unusable the internet has gotten.
@deweydecibel @Yoz don’t blame the consumers people have busy lives and don’t have the time or interest to spend their limited free time learning privacy or avoiding a certain company because of an obscure privacy reason they don’t understand.
this is why market pressure is essentially bullshit. If more aggressive action is taken towards these companies instead of just blindly believing in the free market we might actually make an impact.
we have the free time let’s use it to hurt them
You’re both kinda right. Things wouldn’t be nearly as bad if the average consumer actually gave a shit, but the things these companies are doing should be illegal in the first place.
People do give a shit. There is just an overload of shitty corporate behavior and people only have so much bandwidth. Each person fights on the fronts most important to them - which vary person to person (and over time). In the end you’re right, the answer is to regulate and make things illegal so people aren’t fighting thousands of battles at once.
Most people don’t even understand it. Those that do, you’re right, are fighting too many battles at once.
Exactly. I used to run a corporate banlist, where if a company screwed me over, or I though what they sold simply insn’t good enough I wouldn’t buy their shit. If I stuck to it completely, I would have 0 options for computer mice, 0 options for phones, 0 options pretty much for laptops, literally 0 option for any home appliance, the list goes on and on and on.
Market pressure is not bullshit. Unorganized mod simply doesn’t exert any. You need money (corporations and billionaires) or coordination (unions, activists, and governments) to pressure markets.
So yeah, it’s possible to exert market pressure by pushing politicians to outlaw such practices.
Regulations are what matter
Man you took this whole comment right out of my mouth. These days I just resent everyone around me.
- Meta users
- pickup/SUV drivers
- Gamers
- people who don’t think privacy is important.
- People who are not only okay with but avid supporters of shit politicians (which, to be clear, is the vast majority of politicians).
- People who put my single item in plastic bags without asking me or drink hundreds of plastic bottles (I have a family member who owns a corporate environmental consultant startup who does this constantly)
And these people are just fucking everywhere. The future just feels so hopeless.
Like I get it can be difficult but I point out how they can be better and they just get offended.
I agree so much.
I sometimes go to a grocery store near work to pick up lunch, and I usually get like two things. The cashier always seems confused when I ask for no bag, despite me obviously being capable of carrying those items to the register.
So not only are people making weird choices for themselves, they seem adamant that I need to make them too.
Yeah I know. My brother in law (and by extention my sister) are super smart and politically active but they have a house full of data sucking gadgets like Alexa and absolutely no concerns about data privacy or security. I’ve tried to talk to them about being more selective about how they share their data, but my brother in law is a lawyer so trying to persuade him is like going to court and is just exhausting.
The average consumer is the reason why we can’t have nice things anymore.
No, it’s the supply side cornering the market. If there was two similar mouses on the shelf, and one said “no crappy spyware bundled”, the average consumer would buy that. That’s what they teach the “free market” is, and how free market capitalism should solve this problem.
But free markets don’t really exist, the better mouse without crappy spyware doesn’t either, so people need to come together and force corporations to respect the social contract. One might call this governmental regulation. That’s where the answer is.
So then the problem is not consumers, it is citizens. Because how do you expect government regulations to come about if citizens are not asking for it? Citizens and consumers are generally the same people.
My point is more about “vote with your wallet” is stupid, you should vote with your … vote.
Then again, some places don’t offer the plurality of vote choices that would make a democracy function properly, so privacy regulations can’t be voted for. I mean if all your choices are Putin or Putin; or Trump or Biden; what do you do to regulate companies to preserve privacy?
Activism is the answer I guess.
The logic is still somewhat circular, given that ordinary people mostly do not vote for Pirates even if they have the choice, and they do not ask their politicians for privacy regulations, much less bother joining a party or running for election.
And if in a democracy your choice is Putin or Putin, who ultimately is to blame for that? Was Putin parachuted into his position by foreign agents? Political systems, whatever their exact nature, are ultimately dependent on the responsibility of their citizens. And, well, it seems that in most places citizens, like consumers, are just not very responsible.
Activism is an answer, agreed on that.
100% even I blame the consumers for being lazy and illiterate.
I think we will finish sooner if we make a list of ethical corporations:
These are the closest I’ve found in the US: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/
yeah I’ll start:
- ㅤ
done
The list is a book
🤣🤣
Add
- NVIDIA
- Apple
- Microsoft
- Meta
- Tencent
- Amazon
- ARM
to the list
Yep this. We act like wait, how, what, why, where when we let them do it all along. Take the camera back. Let them choke on their websites, registration and other nonsense.
heh, all of them (plus several others) were on my list of “never buy from them” list a decade ago. Never had any reason to reconsider
Ever since the fake tweeters (the speaker).
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They have begun disabling printers remotely.
They still think they own the printer after you buy it. “No, you’re not allowed to buy other ink that’s worked for you for so long. Only buy ours:” https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/11/23635168/hp-printer-update-brick-third-party-ink-dynamic-security
well shit, their mouse are good. do we have an alternative to the mx master series?
Now imagine having to do this under literal pressure while trying to configure the Logitech controller for your submarine.
This thread imploded way quicker than I expected
You should really sink about your moral compass
Don’t tell me you didn’t sea it coming
“Mayday we’re sinking!”
“What are you sinking about?”
That was a wired controller in the submersible; they wouldn’t have had to do this. Everything about that submersible was ridiculous, just not in this particular way.
If your website doesn’t work with non-chromium browsers your website doesn’t work.
Well, no, this is using the WebUSB most likely which is not supported by Firefox. Regardless of the security implications of the WebUSB API, this is a Firefox specific issue
I thought that you have to open a website to connect some peripheral was the issue here. You should not need a browser for that at all. The issue here is very clearly Logitech.
Well this is true only in the sense that, half the available browser engines don’t support it.
72% of users use a browser that supports this API. They’re probably all Chromium-based browsers though. https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_usb
Motto of this age of internet
Especially when there are things like Babel that make it fairly trivial to get your scripts working on all browsers.
I run the website on Vivaldi and it didn’t work
Wow, wtf Logitech?
Any simple device, that should just work by plugging it into your computer, that instead demands an internet connection between you and the device… is 100% a device thats designed to steal your information/habits/etc.
because there is no reason to have the expenditure and costs of running a webservice otherwise.
it’s 100% a device that is getting returned for a full refund because it literally doesn’t work.
I own Logitech products and I while I agree it should work out of the box, it’s great you can change the connection to a different USB plug in case you lost one. Until they started providing this web app you had to install their software and it only supported Windows and OSX. On Linux, having it available through Chrome is better than before.
Friend bought an Asus motherboard. In the user’s manual, in the pins layout section, there’s no instructions nor description of the pins, but instead a QR code and a text that tell you to scan it for the Pins Layout instructions. (Note: The page is mostly blank and have tons of empty space, beside the QR code and the little small print texts). Scan The QR code, lead to a page to download another PDF. Open the PDF, it have one single page showing the Pins Layout description. (That only took half of the page)
And my friend wonder why I got so mad.
You just know that that page will be gone one day and then nobody will ever be able to find that pinout anymore
Not to mention that nobody knows what other code that QR code might have run on their device when it was scanned.
QR codes themselves are a security problem.
QR codes just store a text string, so it’s down to the client to interpret the string and execute it in a safe manner
Print the page and save it in a box so you can be a hero in 20 years.
As a public service, we should set up clearly named torrents of files like this.
This is reminding of how pissed off I am with Adobe recently after using After Effects a lot, documentation, or lack thereof. It’s really hard to find instructions on what a given effect does, or how to use it. Each effect in the effect panel in After Effects itself has an about button in a context menu, but it’s a credit for the author of the effect which is useless and weird anyway because aside from some exceptions the credit is ‘Adobe’ . There’s no locally supplied electronic document for the user manual, it’s all online. That’s frustrating enough, but there doesn’t really seem to be any one single user manual, there’s lots of different things with similar names but with widely varying degrees of detail. Sometimes if you happen to accidentally stumble on to the right section of Adobe’s site that has a list of effects and also details about them (there’s at least one page which just lists them) the degree of detail is variable in the extreme. One effect I tried to use didn’t have any user reference and the best I could find on Adobe’s own website was a dead link to a forum post (not Adobe’s forums, a random internet forum) which I was eventually able to find myself through Google and then recover the video via youtube (the original of course was long since not on that site). That video also, while very helpful, wasn’t even entirely correct because the author of the effect responded to the forum post many years ago to correct some incorrect information in the tutorial.
I was already furious at this fucking joke of an attempt at documentation of their own software, but I looked up more videos, all from around 2008-2009ish and in those videos, the user was running the Adobe Creative Suite software that used to come in a box before Creative Cloud and they were able to open up a real user manual that came with the software which had documentation for the very effect that they were able to browse to demonstrate some of the concepts for its proper use. WTF!? They had documentation already written and then revoked access to it! Why!? What’s the point? Ant they have the documentation for the effects in some form albeit varyingly useful, on their website, why can’t they just collate it in to a PDF and package with the application download? Resolve does, I use it often. It’s so unprofessional to rely on random internet forum posts from decades past in lieu of proper documentation. People lament users not RTFM well I literally couldn’t.
I’m spitting at my screen like it’s adobe’s face while reading all that
I can sort of see the reason behind it. If they’re hosting the manual then they can keep it updated (typos/mistakes/changes etc.). Printed manuals can become outdated by the time it reaches the buyer.
What they should’ve done instead was to include a printed version, and then add a QR code to see the latest version online. That would’ve been very handy
The thing is it’s not the entire manual, just one (half) single page that tell me which pins doing what.
The printed manual is for this specific model (with exact rev. Version) and with the rest of the information available.
The physical pins on this board is not going to randomly change themselves.
If they’re hosting the manual then they can keep it updated (typos/mistakes/changes etc.).
This was never a problem with manuals when they were hosted offline.
Printed manuals can become outdated by the time it reaches the buyer.
What, the product magically changes during shipping?
Are they updating the pin layout after I bought the motherboard somehow? The dude didn’t say it was the whole manual. Just the pin layout on the actual hardware.
Even if it was the whole manual: the hardware won’t be updated. The BIOS could be, but that’s like one little section of the manual most of the time and would be the only thing to make sense to send a user to a webpage for. All the info about the physical thing will never change, so needing it online to be updated is unnecessary.
You know you fight it? Return it. Say it doesn’t work with your system. It’s a perfectly valid reason to return a product.
Wait until you learn about the government. To get your birth or marriage certificate, my county requires that you go to a totally shady URL of a private company that actually is in the business of printing those and shipping them, for a fee of course. Oh and enter your SSN and ID please, without knowing if there’s any security standards they follow.
Am I the only one spooked that the government would not keep those records itself??? And ask a private entity that returns almost nothing if googled by name?!?
This depends on your government I guess? In Germany the authority for passports is a private company (former state property and now again owned by the Federal Republic of Germany) - but indeed that sounds scary.
Yes, that’s in the US where shady things are done like this a lot. Having lived in diffeeent countries abroad this doesn’t happen anywhere else as far as I can tell.
Oh it does. Neolibs looooove privatization. I’m from Honduras, where the modus operandi is to drive public entities to the ground from the inside in order to justify privatization, and then just pretend it’s doing its job while corpos and politicians line their pockets. We’re currently under a leftist government, and one of the first steps it took was to retake control of the energy sector, since it got privatized and sold to a Colombian company, a stunt that ended up in millions in debt and led to a mud fight between the private company and the government, which resulted in, among all the lawsuits back and forth, constant country-wide blackouts during a few months this year. It’s the first leftist government in over a decade, and it’s admittedly not doing great (we really don’t have our shit together), but people here tend to forget we were sold a capitalist dystopia dressed up as a utopia, by a druglord-president that’s currently holed up in NY over drug and arms trafficking charges.
Mmmm… I sure love how if I want to check my credit score for free I have to go through several different companies, all of which have shady-looking websites that were probably last updated 10yrs ago (but only for the page where you request info on your credit score, otherwise they look fairly modern); especially when said companies have had a reputation for leaking everyone’s info and yet are still the official US contracted companies for it. Granted, it’s been a while since I last tried to do it, but it’s really uncomfortable.
Well I am kinda surprised thats the US, otherwise … not really surprised though 🫠
I think it depends on where you live. I had to go in person to get a copy of my birth certificate and provide a picture ID and SSN card.
I wonder how many millionaires became billionaires out of that scheme
I get this vibe from kroll. I have had multiple companies send me mailing to use kroll monitoring after they have had a security leak.
So it’s doubly concerning. They managed to lose my info and not they want me to use a random shaft looking website to monitor my credit.
In the beginning there was NCSA Mosaic, and Mosaic called itself NCSA_Mosaic/2.0 (Windows 3.1), and Mosaic displayed pictures along with text, and there was much rejoicing.
And behold, then came a new web browser known as “Mozilla”, being short for “Mosaic Killer,” but Mosaic was not amused, so the public name was changed to Netscape, and Netscape called itself Mozilla/1.0 (Win3.1), and there was more rejoicing. And Netscape supported frames, and frames became popular among the people, but Mosaic did not support frames, and so came “user agent sniffing” and to “Mozilla” webmasters sent frames, but to other browsers they sent not frames.
And Netscape said, let us make fun of Microsoft and refer to Windows as “poorly debugged device drivers,” and Microsoft was angry. And so Microsoft made their own web browser, which they called Internet Explorer, hoping for it to be a “Netscape Killer”. And Internet Explorer supported frames, and yet was not Mozilla, and so was not given frames. And Microsoft grew impatient, and did not wish to wait for webmasters to learn of IE and begin to send it frames, and so Internet Explorer declared that it was “Mozilla compatible” and began to impersonate Netscape, and called itself Mozilla/1.22 (compatible; MSIE 2.0; Windows 95), and Internet Explorer received frames, and all of Microsoft was happy, but webmasters were confused.
And Microsoft sold IE with Windows, and made it better than Netscape, and the first browser war raged upon the face of the land. And behold, Netscape was killed, and there was much rejoicing at Microsoft. But Netscape was reborn as Mozilla, and Mozilla built Gecko, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826, and Gecko was the rendering engine, and Gecko was good. And Mozilla became Firefox, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0, and Firefox was very good. And Gecko began to multiply, and other browsers were born that used its code, and they called themselves Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040825 Camino/0.8.1 the one, and Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.8.1.8) Gecko/20071008 SeaMonkey/1.0 another, each pretending to be Mozilla, and all of them powered by Gecko.
And Gecko was good, and IE was not, and sniffing was reborn, and Gecko was given good web code, and other browsers were not. And the followers of Linux were much sorrowed, because they had built Konqueror, whose engine was KHTML, which they thought was as good as Gecko, but it was not Gecko, and so was not given the good pages, and so Konquerer began to pretend to be “like Gecko” to get the good pages, and called itself Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; FreeBSD) (KHTML, like Gecko) and there was much confusion.
Then cometh Opera and said, “surely we should allow our users to decide which browser we should impersonate,” and so Opera created a menu item, and Opera called itself Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; en) Opera 9.51, or Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; U; en; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061208 Firefox/2.0.0 Opera 9.51, or Opera/9.51 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) depending on which option the user selected.
And Apple built Safari, and used KHTML, but added many features, and forked the project, and called it WebKit, but wanted pages written for KHTML, and so Safari called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; de-de) AppleWebKit/85.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85.5, and it got worse.
And Microsoft feared Firefox greatly, and Internet Explorer returned, and called itself Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0) and it rendered good code, but only if webmasters commanded it to do so.
And then Google built Chrome, and Chrome used Webkit, and it was like Safari, and wanted pages built for Safari, and so pretended to be Safari. And thus Chrome used WebKit, and pretended to be Safari, and WebKit pretended to be KHTML, and KHTML pretended to be Gecko, and all browsers pretended to be Mozilla, and Chrome called itself Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13, and the user agent string was a complete mess, and near useless, and everyone pretended to be everyone else, and confusion abounded.
This site best viewed at 800x600 on Netscape Navigator
I remember upgrading to 800x600. I was stuck on 640x480 for a long time.
The real game changer was going from 256 colors to 16 bit. The jump to 24 bit/true color after that wasn’t as huge.
Yes!! The 640x480 screen I mentioned only supported 16 colours. 256 was supposed to work, but trying to change it to 256 would just cause the entire display to become corrupted. I tried multiple drivers and multiple refresh rates, but nothing worked. Maybe my S3 Trio3D was faulty.
Upgrading from that to 800x600 with 16 bit colour was such an amazing improvement.
Maybe, just maybe there should be an universal standard of how internet communication looks like, and the user agent shouldn’t matter one bit.
Oh for fucks sake. It’s getting to the point where this needs legislative intervention to put an end to this tomfuckery.
Every day, I’m inching closer and closer to pulling the trigger on moving to Linux once and for all.
Just do it. I’ve been on Linux full time for >10 years, and these days there’s very little to give up when going to Linux.
Give it a shot! Maybe you’ll like it. :)
Me 4-5 years ago. Join us. :p
It’s totally doable now. Even compared to when I switched (when Windows 10 came out), it’s smoother and easier to transition.
The only real issues are adobe products being a pain in the ass. I don’t use them in the first place, but they’re a dealbreaker that requires dual booting for some folks.
Anything else mainstream tends to be WINE friendly nowadays. I keep a Windows 7 media computer for my music needs because musicbee is a pain in the ass on Linux, and that’s it. Everything else is linux now that’s mine.
For music, consider running a Plex server and using Plexamp. It’s a fantastic app, and they recently made the basic features free - previously you had to have a Plex Pass. There’s Plexamp apps for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
Join us. Gooble Gobble we accept them!
I switched fairly recently and it’s definitely not perfect. Some stuff is better, some worse. The big thing for me is: Linux on desktop is getting better and better all the time. Windows on the other hand? Well, just ask any windows user. Most of them seem to want to just go back to XP.Just did it, building my Arch now. Working on ricing, and I got GPU passthrough setup for a Windows VM for when I need it
Just do it. You can use the Fedora or Mint installer to make a dual boot and keep your windows install.
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Nobara os sets up everything you need for gaming by default
I’ve been using Linux more at work, and holy crap is it quick and smooth to install something like Linux Mint now. It’s just as smooth once you start using it too.
I’ve been using Fedora too, and it’s all good, but Linux Mint really surprised me.
What is stopping you? You won’t regret it
Mainly a couple of work programs I depend on and it never gets multi monitors right on my laptop. Also, I have to keep myself familiar with Windows to support my customers.
Yeah, it’s doable nowadays. There are many guides that can help you pick a distro and then install what you need. If you’re a beginner, usually Linux Mint is the one to go for, unless you have extremely recent hardware
Ok well as a Linux user I don’t get any of this. I connect to the keyboard with Bluetooth and it just works when you plug it in. There are no pop-ups or alerts to go to any web pages.
Just saying life is quite a bit better here in that regard.
Problem are extra funtionalities. I have a MX Mastee 3. Works perfectly on Linux, but is has a additional Button for the Thumb. Can’t be configured on Linux officially. There’s a third party script called Logiops. It sometimes work, but it’s not relieable either…
Ah yes, extra functionalities probably don’t work on Linux, thats true. I have gotten so used to that but it would be frustrating if I just bought a very expensive MX mouse of course.
I have just stopping buying those things so in a way I’m missing out, but I also don’t have to deal with this stuff. So its just pros and cons as usual.
My setup is based around Logitech Unified Receivers and my linux desktop. I use solaar for pairing, which offers more functionaliry that Logitechs own software does for Windows
Solaar is 100x better than the crappy official app.
I have a Logitech K380 that for some goddamned reason by default requires Fn keys pressed to use function keys normally. On Win and MacOS their software can be used to turn it off. On Linux it’s a bunch of scripts that sometimes work and sometimes don’t.
I have a keyboard with the same anti feature. It is beyond stupid. I used to like Logitech stuff, since 2016 or so when I got that keyboard I’ve hated them. I’ve had a couple other of their devices since then, and they always come with some bullshit that require their special software or a special account to disable.
I fuckin hate Logitech now.
I had a Logitech mouse and keyboard. OpenRGB and Piper can be used to set the RGB and adjust the bindings, DPI etc
This picture here seems pretty damning for a monopoly suit. They didn’t even include Firefox, meaning every browser listed is reliant on Chrome’s Chromium engine.
Other people on the thread have commented that it’s actually due to Firefox not implementing WebUSB due to security concerns, so it is technically a valid message, but for the wrong reasons. Why the hell does this need to be a web app?
For tracking purposes !
The reason is simple: Web developers earn less on average than backend developers.
It’s the exact reason why nearly all modern “apps” are just packaged browsers rendering web pages and their APIs are in turn node servers also running in the background. Instead of actually native software. The web devs are cheap, more so if you keep hiring fresh BAs and firing anyone with seniority.
Backend developers are a subset of web developers. Did you mean application developers?
It doesn’t. Logitech does provide software for doing this. No browser needed. https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025297913-Logitech-Unifying-Software
You’re right, the site rendered weirdly so I had trouble finding the arrow to select my OS at first, but it does provide a proper driver for this! The thing OP lists seems to be the default, which is LUC-for-Chrome.
Add that to the list of reasons I’ll never buy Logitech again.
That and crappy microswitches. For some reason all logi mice I had in my life always ended up with failed microswitches after months of usage.
Yes. Each mouse developed double clicking after a few months. My glorious mouse is still good years on.
And the support! Years ago they would just send you a replacement. Now the just send an"sucks to be you" answer.
I’m in the market for a new keyboard and mouse. Any brand recommendations? I’m looking for something normal… No mechanical clicking, no glowing lights, etc. Just a normal wireless keyboard and mouse.
I recently bought a cordless, very flat keyboard from Cherry - loving it.
Enshitification continues. It has no bounds.
“This browser does not support the application” No, the application doesn’t support the browser
