Item — HN Reader

Such evil genius - and what is the solution? Yet another popup so sites can ask for permission to access the ambient light sensor?

We're already past the point where the average consumer is confused by what they are actually allowing when they click "Allow" for the various permissions.

2 comments

The obvious solution is not having an ambient light sensor API, or a much more granular one, like the battery API should've been.

Exactly. Same with vibration, accelerometer, and gyro. For me personally there is zero reason why my browser should ever need these yet they can use them without any permission on Android Chrome and they cannot be disabled without rooting your phone.

Games can use all three of those very effectively. Agree they should be behind a permission prompt, though.

Gyro is really nice for VR. But it should not be allowed in background tabs. No clue whether it is right now.

Part of the problem (the big one) lies here: "(filters in SVG work on cross-origin resources)" - without it, second attack (more serious) is not possible.