this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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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: 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.

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[–] Yoz 290 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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.

[–] deweydecibel 119 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago (3 children)

@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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PermanentlyJetlagged 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think we will finish sooner if we make a list of ethical corporations:

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[–] AeonFelis 195 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Now imagine having to do this under literal pressure while trying to configure the Logitech controller for your submarine.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This thread imploded way quicker than I expected

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[–] [email protected] 166 points 1 year ago (7 children)

If your website doesn't work with non-chromium browsers your website doesn't work.

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[–] FartsWithAnAccent 126 points 1 year ago

Wow, wtf Logitech?

[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago

it's 100% a device that is getting returned for a full refund because it literally doesn't work.

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[–] [email protected] 89 points 1 year ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (4 children)

You just know that that page will be gone one day and then nobody will ever be able to find that pinout anymore

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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?!?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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.

[–] JGrffn 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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.

https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (14 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

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. :)

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] JGrffn 38 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Add that to the list of reasons I'll never buy Logitech again.

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[–] Coreidan 41 points 1 year ago

Enshitification continues. It has no bounds.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago

"This browser does not support the application" No, the application doesn't support the browser

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

This is why google adding DRM to google chrome is another blow to firefox, website owner will definitly not want you to mess up with their site or block adds. and if you want to use the web you will have no option but chromium based browsers.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Since configuring a printer or a keyboard require online web applications, I'm looking forward the need for web app to setup my network card.

[–] blastofffox 37 points 1 year ago (10 children)

At least keyboards and mouse should be plug and play.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thanks for sharing this, I'm definitely not buying Logitech products now.

I wonder if there's an open source/local implementation to connect your keyboard to the receiver?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I found this program called Solaar for Linux at least

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

Fuck Adobe in particular. Greedy bastards.

[–] Potfarmer 34 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Well, thanks for the hot tip to never buy a Logitech keyboard. I have a G604 mouse and it's really been giving me a headache, it conveniently started double clicking right after Logitech's in house warranty expired. A bit of internet research shows it's a fairly common problem with the mouse, though it sounds like Logitech fights people tooth and nail about it when it expires within the warranty. Often people get the exact same mouse back and are told it doesn't have any issues, yet it continues to double click. I really love the unlockable scroll wheel but between my mouse lasting just a year and now their web connect non-sense, I think I'll be moving on from the brand. Don't even get me started on their mouse software, they present Ghub bloatware as the solution, when the real answer to manage your mouse is the program they made for pro gamers called Onboard Memory Manager.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

So how long do you have left on your mouse subscription before it expires?

You gotta set up that monthly payment on your credit card!

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not the Logitech I became a fan of, glad they updated the name to Logi reflecting they're half the company they used to be.

I miss the old Logitech software and Logitech Gaming Software, from like 10 years ago.

Now I can't even launch the driver software to adjust my webcam or mouse behavior from my work computer because of legitimate Internet security settings preventing random background apps from exfilteating data, which is exactly what it's trying to do.

Customer support of course blames the user for their app that will never finish loading until it talks to the mother ship.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I get this fun error:

Image of the software wanting a proprietary USB cable for a update

Since I have no clue which random USB cable came with the keyboard I am locked out of the settings or updates for my 200€ keyboard.

[–] JGrffn 24 points 1 year ago (6 children)

God, I hate everything. Type C was meant to make everything easier, not fuck us over with non-standardized proprietary versions from every fucking manufacturer.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Write to their customer support and complain.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Modern software is honestly disgusting. I hate shit like this.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Sometimes I think I might have spent too much for my FLOSS System76 Launch keyboard but seeing this kind of monopoly moat-building chicanery makes me feel better.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Have you tried the old "Unifying Software"? https://support.logi.com/hc/hu/articles/360025297913 Maybe try the Bolt app: https://support.logi.com/hc/hu/articles/4418089333655

Edit: the FAQ says you should be able to add devices with the Logi Options+ app: https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500007354982-How-to-connect-a-Bolt-device Have you tried that?

Last time I dealt with this I had to download that one to add/remove devices. It was always a separate app for some reason, maybe they just moved it to the browser?

Also about the firefox notice: I think in this case it's not fully Logitech's fault, it's not the classic lazy developers, you cannot workaround it with user agent switcher: Firefox doesn't support the WebUSB api, considering it's an usb device it should need this api: https://caniuse.com/webusb The supported browsers are same as the ones supporting WebUSB.

That's another thing that firefox deliberately doesn't support this api for security and privacy reasons: https://mozilla.github.io/standards-positions/#webusb

The next question is why they developed this app as a webapp? It doesn't make any sense. If you don't have internet you cannot setup your keyboard? There are still a lot of situations when people have to use their computers without internet, this just plain stupid. But I've seen a lot of stupid things from logitech, even though I love their hardware, typing this from my K750 solar keyboard.

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