this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Firefox

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WebGPU Lands in Firefox 141 on Windows, Eyes Linux and macOS Next (linuxiac.com)
submitted 3 days ago by KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
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[–] katja@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I'm not really knowledgeable enough to say for sure, but this sounds like a privacy nightmare. It's hard enough to keep browsers in general from giving up enough info to identify you even without cookies, but I can't even begin to see how to stop this from leaking just about everything.

Direct HW access for browsers? Not a fan. What we need is a layer between the browser and the HW that anonymizes and generalizes the API responses instead. I get the increased latency would be directly opposed to what this is trying to achieve, but it's a prize I'm willing to pay. It's contrary to what every tech giant wants, which is an indication it's actually a good idea. They aren't our friends.

[–] chromodynamic@piefed.social 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The root of the issue is this idea that a web browser should be an "everything app" that can basically recreate the functionality of any other app on the system. It's total feature creep, and in addition to privacy issues, creates a barrier-to-entry that makes it very hard for people to create new browsers because of the sheer amount of features they're expected to implement.

[–] katja@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago

Couldn't agree more.

[–] KarnaSubarna@lemmy.ml 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Set dom.webgpu.enabled to false in about:config

[–] katja@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago

I used to, but that's not enough and that's only for me anyway. To few people are doing it, so you can be easily identified because you do stuff like this. (See the TOR browser approach and their recommendations about changing the defaults) Many sites don't like it so most people aren't willing to do that or rather don't care or know how to.

By Bowdlerizing/randomizing the data for each call (or site/session probably) instead, the data will still be 'valid', but not as traceable and would negate the need for such hacks that almost noone does and which also makes you stand out like a sore thumb.

It probably isn't possible or at least not easy on Windows/Apple, so it would be a Linux only thing. Which is a problem too and opens up to Linux blocking or subtler "upgrade your browser to..." type errors.

There are certainly issues and problems with this I've not considered or mentioned. It is not a popular idea among the tech giants for one, and they'd do whatever they can to nip something like this in the bud.

[–] paperplane@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I wonder why a permission-based approach wouldn't be feasible. Most websites don't need GPU access anyway, so why couldn't a game or simulation just prompt the user quickly for granting access to the GPU?

[–] katja@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 days ago

I'd say it is feasible, it is more about willingness to implement. My guess is also that many sites will probably request this or intentionally not working or working badly if off, so most people is gonna keep it always on because convenience, if implemented. It's better than always on by default but not optimal. Letting randos on the internet control your HW is iffy at best.

[–] Vincent 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I wouldn't even know what the implications of allowing it would be, and I'm a programmer. I just want to play the game.

In other words, the permission prompt would achieve nothing except annoy me and make me ignore prompts.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

Certainly you'd be okay with certain pages using it, and you could hopefully disable it everywhere so you don't see the prompt if you really don't want it.

[–] pinguinu@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 3 days ago

It's not direct hardware access. It is pretty restricted in what it can do compared to Vulkan, for example, and what you can is checked by either the shader compiler or the api implementation itself at runtime to make sure the program is not doing something nefarious.

[–] dditty@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Apparently Chrome and Safari have already implemented WebGPU so I suppose I can't be that surprised that Mozilla now has to follow suit.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

They’re always a few steps behind current technology.

[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's sometimes what we pay for better privacy. Not perfect, but better for sure.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

On the other hand: Firefox isn’t particularly known for its privacy-focused default configuration.

[–] ByteMe@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Yey