• Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Use Librewolf or a plugin that masks your user agent for privacy purposes; hides your OS so you can’t be fingerprinted so easily.

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    Damn! If only we had some sort of technology that was OS independent and served as a way to view content and run code written for it without having to recompile for every platform.

    I am of course talking about web browsers. Which I’m betting this screenshot is from.

  • FEIN@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    For the record, my friend (he uses arch btw) has used Pearson before and I dont believe it actually affected him, so to me the message means “it could work for you but we won’t support Linux if something screws up on your end because we’re lazy developers”

    • CanadaPlus
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      2 days ago

      Holy shit, why even implement the message then? There is no good answer.

      • Brandonazz@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Netflix does the same thing with “supported browsers.” It doesn’t matter if it’s actually supported, just whether it’s one of the two or three it allows because it can do analytics or whatever with them.

  • thorhop@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    “Upgrade”? Every other option is a downgrade. Sue them for false advertisement.

  • FryHyde@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    Very loose interpretation of the word “upgrade” they’re employing here…

    • lambipapp@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I assume it is a generic message, let’s say youd run windows 7. Then this message would sound more reasonable.

      But I agree, this is crazy if it is running in a browser

  • JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I’ll just change my web browser’s user agent then; you’re a fucking website, you don’t need to know which OS I’m using.

    It’s amazing how many “unsupported” web apps work perfectly fine once you change the UA. It’s often a completely arbitrary limitation so that they can hire less qualified support staff.

      • lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        Nope we don’t want to hire anyone who knows anything about Linux, no one uses Linux

        “Linux is unsupported”, that’ll work

        Everyone: uses a UA switcher

        “See? No one uses Linux, 100% of users are on Windows or MacOS”

    • irelephant [he/him]🍭@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      A small publisher’s ebook platform recently started blocking firefox for me, did a bit of digging and found that if pages aren’t requested with the right headers (which work in chrome and msedge) it will respond with a 302, suggesting you go to another page which takes a few minutes and then times out.

      This is probably to stop scraping, and could be because I started testing some scraping scripts on it.

      Anyway, this hasn’t even stopped me scraping, I just copied the headers and use those in my script.

  • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I had this problem over 10 years ago. change your user-agent, problem solved.

    they do it because they are regulations for educational software that must be met, like specific access requirements in order to be used in accredited courses.

    it’s not anything specifically against Linux, it’s that they can’t test and validate those access requirements for anything outside Windows due to organizational limitations.

    source: I worked for colleges early in my career that used Pearson then worked for a vendor that managed infrastructure and project management for Pearson. they aren’t unique, their competition is just as fucked as they are. most still use waterfall because upper mgmt is old and refuses to adapt.

    • cute_noker@feddit.dk
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      2 days ago

      My bank does this too. I also just change the user agent to switch and it works with no issues.

      At this point it just seems silly that they even want to go out of their way to Prohibit Linux users

    • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      How bad can it be?
      It was made by Bil Gates, I keep hearing he’s a genuine ‘philanthropist’.

      • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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        1 day ago

        Boo! 🤮

        It is so infuriating how capitalists can use their stolen money to make people think they’re saints. (All the while their “help” causes more damage than if we let experts fix problems rather than pirate kings.)

        And it’s even harder to criticize this bastard now because liberals think he’s on their “side” and any criticism must be a “vaccine microchip” loon even when you talk about things he did openly.

  • Eggyhead@lemmings.world
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    3 days ago

    Their deliberate word choice of “upgrade” to supported operating system is mildly infuriating.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Right, but that could still be given dynamically by a library as “one of the unsupported ones”, getOSName(). They still might not have hard-coded “Linux is bad”.

        • biscuitswalrus@aussie.zone
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          3 days ago

          Which will be “If not Windows 11 or Mac os then report os string”. I don’t think they specifically took the time to research different OS’s and list them.

        • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl
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          3 days ago

          They’re probably using a third party library to do user agent detection. I doubt anyone ever tested their code on Linux in the first place. They’re probably writing code like “if Windows version >= 10 or macOS version >= 10.14 or Android version > 10 or iOS version > 14” and Linux just happens to fall through because it has none of those versions.

        • Tiresia@slrpnk.net
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          2 days ago

          The program has the information, but that doesn’t mean the people that wrote the code felt it was worth their time to make the “upgrade” text inclusive to Linux, if they even considered the possibility of Linux.

        • Littux@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          If they were using user agents for identification, Android browsers on “Desktop mode” would be wrongly identified as “Linux”. Even Discord has this issue on their download page. “Premium” Android devices with large screens use Desktop mode by default