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Topic: Keeping an eye on Opera (Read 169169 times)

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #525 –
Quote from: krake on
Their "Turbo" in the past was a transparent proxy which leaked your IP.
You can talk about leaking if you expect it to hide your IP. But a transparent proxy is not meant to hide your IP. As far as I know, VPN is also not directly meant to hide your IP.

Anyway, hiding or changing your IP is easy: Just connect to your neighbour's wifi - or any other available wifi out there. What seems more relevant to me is hiding your browser fingerprint and MAC address, when you are paranoid to the level that you are.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #526 –
I thought VPN was just marketing speech for SOCKS proxy,[1] or can you actually use those "VPNs" to make all of your devices think they're on the same local network?

Quote from: krake on
Their "Turbo" in the past was a transparent proxy which leaked your IP.
[…]
After searching the Internet for a few minutes:
Block Opera VPN from leaking your IP address
That's just a bug in an early dev build. The important thing is whether it was fixed by the time it reached beta, let alone release. From a quick test on https://www.perfect-privacy.com/webrtc-leaktest/ (via your link) it leaks my local IP address without the secure proxy and doesn't when I disable it. Then again, maybe the test is broken because it never shows my public IP address in the test itself even though it's proudly displaying my current IP (or the proxy's IP when enabled) in the top left corner… In any case, it looks like the bug was fixed.
1 But I apologize for copying the mindless marketing blather without much thought.↵

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #527 –
Quote from: krake on
- Edit -
After searching the Internet for a few minutes:
Block Opera VPN from leaking your IP address
Opera VPN behind the curtains is just a proxy, here's how it works
I don't know, performing that  WebRTC leak check the only thing the test shows is:
IPv4: 185.137.17.29
DNS: 185.137.17.29
Country: Netherlands
City: Amsterdam

I like Amsterdam but I'm not there. :)
The test disconnects the VPN connection but is not able to go forward more than the above IP. Repeating the test the VPN connection connects and the test blocks itself again. Always in Amsterdam.

Anyway I'm not an expert at these things.


A matter of attitude.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #529 –
Quote from: ersi on
You can talk about leaking if you expect it to hide your IP.
Why do you think that I was using the term "transparent"?
Quote from: ersi on
But a transparent proxy is not meant to hide your IP. As far as I know
A transparent proxy is by definition leaking your IP.
(X-Forwarded-For: ...)
Some Opera users thought that they can surf anonymously through Turbo. ;)

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #530 –
Quote from: Belfrager on
I don't know, performing that  WebRTC leak check the only thing the test shows is:
IPv4: 185.137.17.29
DNS: 185.137.17.29
Country: Netherlands
City: Amsterdam
Enjoy your virtual trip to Amsterdam.
At least this Chinese browser can offer something you seem to enjoy.  :)

The bad news at last - Opera VPN doesn't allow torrenting.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #531 –
Quote from: krake on
Why do you think that I was using the term "transparent"?
My quibble is rather: Why were you using the term "leak"? A leak concerns only secret or hidden information, but transparent proxies are not trying to hide. Transparent proxies let through as intended.

A sieve does not leak water. It's not meant to hold water in the first place. A broken pot or cup may leak.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #533 –
Quote from: krake on
The bad news at last - Opera VPN doesn't allow torrenting.
No? and what's the problem? I just want the VPN to reach seedr (that has an extension to the Opera browser) et voilà - seedr does the torrent part and I get the result through the VPN. Request and result both encrypted.

Maybe there's something I'm not considering, have to think a little more about it.
A matter of attitude.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #534 –
Quote from: krake on
You were close to it anyway, except it's HTTPS not SOCKS.
I've never heard of an HTTPS proxy, only an HTTPS proxy over SOCKS? But no matter how it works, if you can only use a real VPN as a proxy in any meaningful way then the technical distinction is moot.

Over a decade ago I used an app called Hamachi for "LAN" gaming with friends elsewhere in the city. It was the Opera Unite of VPNs. Hamachi still exists, but in a severely more limited form. There's also a free alternative called Wippiein but I'm not sure if that's still supported.

Quote from: krake on
Quote from: ersi on
Quote from: krake on
Why do you think that I was using the term "transparent"?
My quibble is rather: Why were you using the term "leak"?
Because not everybody knows or is sure of what a transparent proxy is.
What I meant when I said Opera Turbo has always functioned as a "VPN" is simply that it secures the endpoint. The reason people want a "VPN" on their cellphone is so they can browse on free public wifis without worrying about leaking information to anyone with an antenna. I don't think they care too much about anonimizing. Perhaps it's nerdview, but I think it's self-evident that a VPN (whether real or just a proxy) only anonymizes by accident unless it's an explicit design goal.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #537 –
Did I see correctly? The latest update of Opera Mini has introduced whole-screen ads. I think I was just welcomed by one when I switched to Opera Mini from locked screen.

What I am sure of is that the previous update made an addition to my bookmarks. This thing is begging me to uninstall itself.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #538 –
It doesn't feel all that mini anymore with all of the news and ads that load on the home page. Maybe it's nice enough not to do that when not on wifi. All of the animations on the addressbar and tab switcher are too freaking slow, even though they got it more or less right in Opera Mobile… But I haven't seen any fullscreen ads.

Edit:
Quote
Opera Cricket - the fastest way to stay up-to-date on cricket. […] * Only in India.
Um, okay then.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #539 –
When Opera Mini was a Java app (I still have it on SE W200), animations were introduced at some point (version 3 or thereabouts) and they were also the first thing I turned off. The Android version does not seem to offer a way to turn animations off.

They have an adblock, but at the same time the app is adware. Crazy world we are living in. Well, I guess I have too many browsers on my current phone anyway, and I should be using more often those that permit scrolling with the side key (volume key/button).

This side-key scrolling should be a given on every browsing and reading app for handhelds. Opera Mini used to make excellent use of hardware buttons. Not so for a long while now.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #540 –
I've had three Sony Ericsson phones before my current ASUS: a T630, an S500i, and an Xperia ray. I've had Opera Mini on them since '05.

Quote from: ersi on
This side-key scrolling should be a given on every browsing and reading app for handhelds. Opera Mini used to make excellent use of hardware buttons. Not so for a long while now.
CyanogenMod has become worse through the years. Not entirely their fault I suppose, but they don't seem to put terribly much effort into preserving community improvements when a new Android version comes out. Trivial things like being able to use SD cards using any freaking filesystem you want have to be reintroduced time and time again. (One time by me in Android 6, simply through providing the perfectly working patch from the previous version…) The real question is why Android completely artificially limits it to FAT32 and maybe exFAT. Because you know what "adding" support means? Removing a few restrictions that Android places on Linux which supports it all out of the box!

Anyway, features like double press home to switch to the last app (enabling almost meaningful multitasking much like on my better-than-Android, better-than-iOS S500i) and volume keys for cursor control still exist. A previous version of CM may also have allowed you to enable volume key to scroll but I might be confused with the option in individual apps like Kiwix and Dolphin.

Some people say they prefer stock Android, but I prefer at least some Android coatings like ZenUI and CyanogenMod over stock Android.[1] I believe Android 7 touts double-tap home to switch to last app as a grand new feature. Well, I was using it five years ago on Android, a decade ago on my "dumb"phone.

I don't know why things went wrong.[2] Ten years ago we had feature phones that were quite possibly better than many "smart"phones even today, with superior operating systems like Windows Mobile and Maemo on real smartphones. Now we have inferior Android and iOS, with a reasonable shell of Windows Mobile called Windows Phone in the margins, and a superior operating system called Sailfish OS (i.e., Maemo revived after Nokia killed it) as a total niche.

Sure, my current phone has some pretty neat features that I'd have liked to have ten years ago, like wifi and GPS. But maps combined with what I assume was some form of celltower triangulation was surprisingly useful. It went like "oh, you're within 1km of this celltower — ah look, I've been able to ping a couple of different towers to get your location within 50m or so accurate… 20m if you're lucky, maybe even 10m, 100-150m if you're unlucky."[3] Somehow this cool piece of technology seems to be amazingly lost on my current and last phone. It's pretty much either completely clueless or accurate within a few meters, which is simultaneously a lot better and a lot worse.

I think that if you have mobile data and wifi enabled then Google can do some kind of wifi triangulation instead… except even in the best case scenario (i.e., cheap data) the same problem still applies. It's better when it works as you're virtually guaranteed to be within 100m or so of any given wifi, probably 150-200m tops, but for the same reason you can't get a quick "within these X km around the celltower" kind of range. You're SOOL. Sure, you might argue a 5 km range is pretty useless, but it's a matter of convenience. GPS itself is typically fairly useless anyway, unless you're tramping around in the wilderness or driving, as the map by itself is quite sufficient to find your location. But it's a lot easier if it gives you the map somewhere near you to start looking rather than having to take care of moving the map hundreds of kilometers yourself.

There are only three or four things that are unquestionably improvements since ten years ago: the display size and quality, standard wifi and GPS, the camera,[4] and the fact that 3.5 mm audio jacks are (were?) standard instead of annoying proprietary connectors.

Many things are either falsely lauded as improvements (e-mail? contact sync? calendar sync? yeah, my T630 did all of those already) or aren't improvements at all (capacitive touch, endless notifications).
1 Most people probably only know the horrors of Samsung. I'm not sure why the worst Android vendor is the most popular, while superior ones like HTC and Sony are suffering. I'd rather have an iPhone than a Samsung, and iPhones are seemingly nice (properly responsive UX!!!) but infuriatingly limited.↵
2 Actually it was probably the iPhone which somehow cemented the "smart"phone as an utterly dumb device. It can't even so much as send files through Bluetooth.↵
3 Of course since the only metric this can be based on is signal strength I wonder how accurate it can actually be, but in my experience it really wasn't that far off as long as you weren't moving too fast.↵
4 Sure, a nice Nokia N8 or something probably still easily beats a cheap smartphone camera today due to the optics but the point is that even the worst cameras will be surprisingly close to such a phenomenal device.↵

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #541 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
There are only three or four things that are unquestionably improvements since ten years ago: the display size and quality, standard wifi and GPS, the camera,[...] and the fact that 3.5 mm audio jacks are (were?) standard instead of annoying proprietary connectors.
I might also add microUSB - a good common standard to connect the phones to chargers and computers. But yes, all the substantial improvements seem to belong to the hardware department.

Smartphone RAM and CPU have lately caught up with laptops. This is as good as it can get. From here on it will be downhill, I suppose.
 

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #542 –
Oh yes, that's a very good point. It sort of slipped my mind because this was already happening with Mini-B (from 2000!) before the switch to Micro-B (from 2007), which is something that annoyed me slightly due to different connectors. It was understandable on account of the smaller size.

My Samsung P&S from '05/'06-ish has Mini-B, as does my Mio Moov 330 GPS and my wife's HTC Touch Diamond 2 Windows Mobile smartphone. It might be worth mentioning that my phone has replaced both the P&S and the GPS in practice, even if it's only superior to the GPS.[1] I've also got at least one 2.5" HDD enclosure with Mini-B, and I think my wife's 2.5" portable HDDs sport Mini-B as well but don't quote me on that. The BeBook ereader also came with Mini-B iirc.

USB-C would indeed also belong on that list, although I suppose it's debatable whether it's an improvement, or at least whether it's sufficiently so. I'm inclined to think that Lightning actually has the better idea in that you can insert the cable either way and the ports on your devices barely wear out. USB-C can be inserted both ways (improvement over micro-B) but still wears out the ports on your devices (same as micro-B). The fact that I've had to replace my phones for reasons completely other than port issues seems increasingly moot now that developments are finally slowing down. My two-year old Zenfone 2 has probably aged the least of all of my phones that I've had yet.

The single upside of less physical buttons is that what's not there can't break either. On my T630, for instance, the stick thing to navigate the menus was showing some serious signs of aging after a couple of years, eventually making replacing the battery not worth my while compared to buying a new device. My s500i was still going strong on the surface after some five years, including the battery, but I had to replace it because it started having odd issues like never reconnecting to the cell network after surfacing from a building or tunnel with cell signal. My Xperia ray started barely making the day on one charge, but although it was physically fine in every way I had to replace it because all the software had just become too demanding for the poor thing.[2] In any case, what I'm getting at is that I expect I'll probably have to replace my Zenfone 2 for proper reasons again: i.e., physical malfunction, not something stupid like lack of speed or memory.

It's on laptops where USB-C can really shine, allowing all of those nearly-compatible charging cables to become one. And of course it will be an improvement when you can carry one charger for both your phone and your laptop. Although you might still want to charge both of them at once… so the advantage of that remains to be seen. I guess you could charge your laptop from the wall and your phone through your laptop. Assuming, of course, that they didn't skimp on the number of USB-C ports because "they can do everything". In that case USB charging hubs might help as an annoying necessity.
1 Or at least the screen is superior. The actual GPS functionality is probably about the same, as is my current navigator of choice HERE WeGo. On my Mio Moov I used  custom iGO navigation software (for Windows CE) instead of the Mio software. You can also get iGO Navigation for Android. The real question is probably how the excellent free navigation from HERE maps makes any money.↵
2 I still retain it in wifi mode as an occasional music player/remove/generic "smart" device and the battery actually still works fine for that. But stick it in cell mode and the battery empties within a day or two. Perhaps there's a physical defect of some sort after all. I don't think passive connectivity is supposed to drain the battery like that. Then again, play audio for a few hours and the thing is half empty too. Quite unlike my dedicated mp3 player which seemingly lasts forever.↵

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #543 –
Quote from: ersi on
Smartphone RAM and CPU have lately caught up with laptops. This is as good as it can get. From here on it will be downhill, I suppose.
Hah, my laptop has 4 GB RAM, as does my phone. But my laptop is using 2 GB of it with several PDFs, a whole bunch of browser tabs, a few text editors, etc. (Admittedly, the text editors aren't really worth mentioning as far as things like memory use goes.) My phone is using more than 2 GB with… I don't know, three browser tabs (only one of which is even loaded), Kiwix, a Dropbox sync service and… basically nothing at all? I can "clean" my memory by killing all currently unused apps, which makes them slower to switch back to and still doesnt' get total RAM use under roughly 1.5 GB. The laptop starts with merely a few hundred.

I actually have no idea how the CPU speed on my laptop and phone compares. My phone sports an Intel Atom Z3580 (2M cache, 2.3 GHz, quad-core). My laptop has an Intel Core m3-6Y30 (4M cache, 2.2 GHz, 2 core). Of course my laptop is almost certainly faster, but the question is by how much. But it almost doesn't matter. Even my slower 2010 netbook would easily outperform phones in just about every way if it weren't for its slow HDD. But even so, its slow HDD allows it to store 300 GB or so, whereas my "generously" proportioned phone storage is limited to 32 GB, plus a 64 GB microSD card. Windows phones can also get away with about half the speed of Android phones without being any slower in practice.[1][2]
1 My new laptop actually only comes with only 120 GB, but at least I can replace the stock SSD if I want to.↵
2 NB That doesn't apply to junk like Facebook, which will run like @#$ no matter what.

See, e.g., how much smoother interaction with apps is on Windows (okay, maybe half the speed is an exaggeration but in sheer hardware power Windows phones are definitely less)
https://youtu.be/z71dLBnxblI?t=3m31s↵

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #544 –
This time I most definitely saw correctly - Opera Mini now sports full-screen ads. They display for a second and then go away, so that you are left like wtf. This is a highway to hell kind of progress.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #545 –
Quote from: ersi on
They display for a second and then go away, so that you are left like wtf. This is a highway to hell kind of progress.
Reminds me of an interesting study I've read once, about how human brain and perception works.
To make a long story short, the ad industry can take advantage (in case they don't already) by bombing you with ads you don't even notice if they are displayed only for a fraction of a second. Such ads still can sneak unwitting into your memory. :devil:

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #547 –
I've been comparing Opera Mini and the non-mini Opera on Android for a day. The verdict: The non-mini Opera is slimmer in features and thus really minier.

The list of features accessible from the menus is slimmer in the non-mini Opera. For example,

- Night mode missing. Opera Mini has the coolest night mode among Android apps with yellow light. The non-mini Opera has none whatsoever.
- RSS missing. As far as I know, full-bred Opera Mobile never had it and now Opera Mini has ditched this feature lately too. It was cool as long as it lasted.
- No proper full-screen. The Android statusbar can be hidden when browsing in Mini, but not in the non-mini.
- No themes. Want to see your app in a different tint? Only possible in Mini.
- Make-me-default nagger. Again only in Mini.

And last but not least
- Full-screen ads missing. It's a very recent addition in Opera Mini, probably can be expected in an update to the non-mini rather sooner than later.

Then there's some stuff the other way round too, that the non-mini has and Mini doesn't. Such as:

- Reader mode can be unset. It too often hides (some of the) actual content text. The reader button stays, however, in the main interface. It's useless and annoying because all it does is take you to some "Discover" article, instead of making the current webpage more readable.
- "News and promotions" can be unset - a different (non-)feature than the loathsome "Discover". The latter is called these days "news feed on home page"

Well, geez, it's so hard to decide which one I prefer. Probably neither :D Opera Android does not stand for standards anymore. RSS is a web standard. WAP/WML is a web standard. Opera Android has ceased displaying them. Handheld apps should do something common-sensical with the volume button on handheld devices, but Opera Android doesn't. Etc.

In the non-mini I like the way it displays full complete webpages in desktop mode, something that Opera Mini fails to achieve no matter what. However, this makes Opera an ordinary browser like others, nothing special (not to mention some features that it lacks compared to others). I would much more prefer the old days when Opera Mini and Mobile were able to reduce webpages suitably with hiding of images, sensible trimming of whitespace and colouring of headings.

Looks like the only option to have a screen-considerate textmode on Android these days is to get Elinks or W3M running. I have already done it :) 

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #548 –
Quote from: ersi on
- RSS missing. As far as I know, full-bred Opera Mobile never had it and now Opera Mini has ditched this feature lately too. It was cool as long as it lasted.
I do recall something about using RSS feeds in Opera Mini somehow, but I forget how it worked. However, I don't think real Opera Mobile was any different than real Opera in this regard, so at the very least you could bookmark 'em even if you couldn't use them offline like in a feedreader.



Quote from: ersi on
- No proper full-screen. The Android statusbar can be hidden when browsing in Mini, but not in the non-mini.
Interesting. But on Opera Mini I don't even see a way to do it. On Opera Mobile I have to put it in landscape, otherwise I can't seem to do it either.

Quote from: ersi on
RSS is a web standard.
Some argue it's dead. I vehemently oppose them. (With an exception for those who say RSS is dead because you should be using Atom instead.)

Quote from: ersi on
WAP/WML is a web standard.
To be fair though, WML is pretty dead. But it definitely was convenient to be able to browse what little of it still exists.

Quote from: ersi on
In the non-mini I like the way it displays full complete webpages in desktop mode, something that Opera Mini fails to achieve no matter what.
Meh, real Opera (Mobile) had site preferences. It wasn't exactly easy to edit them on Android, but they were there and it was (presumably) merely a matter of adding a sensible GUI. In Opera/Blink Mobile you need to switch back and forth.

Quote from: ersi on
I would much more prefer the old days when Opera Mini and Mobile were able to reduce webpages suitably with hiding of images, sensible trimming of whitespace and colouring of headings.
Yes, although I think it might actually be Opera that's responsible for having improved Chromium text wrapping to near-usability. It used to be awful.

Re: Keeping an eye on Opera

Reply #549 –
Quote from: Frenzie on
I do recall something about using RSS feeds in Opera Mini somehow, but I forget how it worked.
Go to a webpage with RSS feed defined as alternative link in the HTML head and a little RSS link used to appear at the upper rim of the webpage. Bookmarks had a special folder for such links and they displayed properly. The engine had a special address protocol for them, view://feed or such.

Quote from: Frenzie on
Quote from: ersi on
- No proper full-screen. The Android statusbar can be hidden when browsing in Mini, but not in the non-mini.
Interesting. But on Opera Mini I don't even see a way to do it.
In the Preferences where it says full-screen, on mine it also mentioned statusbar. Then again, versions could differ based on at what point you installed them and on what version of Android you have them. Maybe.

By this time I have already uninstalled both Opera Android and Mini. Really sad how useless they are.