• JackbyDev
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    387 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.

  • Jerkface (any/all)
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    187 days 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.

  • @FEIN@lemmy.world
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    177 days 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”

  • Rei
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    26 days ago

    if it’s in a browser fake ur user agent

  • @VitabytesDev@feddit.nl
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    27 days ago

    I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

  • Admiral Patrick
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    8 days ago

    “Our spyware is not able to accommodate your platform.”

    The horror stories I’ve read about what you give the software access to do (assuming there’s truth to them; I’ve never run it myself).

    Edit: I’m realizing now your screenshot is probably for a web course.

    • @foggy@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      It’s hilarious how bad it is

      I won’t ramble but I’m a cybersecurity professional with a lot of certs and… I’ve played with it (Pearson VUE)

      Hey Pearson, I have completely defeated your anticheat measures. Ironically, have used my expertise to pass cybersecurity exams. Fight me.

      Hey OP, use a free windows VM. Guess how many monitors your VM has? Guess how many your host can have? Yeah.

      This was 2019, so they may have gotten past that but I tells ya… For folks testing cybersec pros, they sure don’t have airtight opsec.

      I found more, but cannot responsibly disclose 😊

      • edric
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        238 days ago

        This is why I just suck it up and go to a testing center even though more often than not it’s unpleasant too. I’m not installing all their tools and having to clear an entire room so there’s nothing that can be seen is such a hassle.

    • @saltesc@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      Aw, manggg. But I just upgraded to Linux last week. Shoot…

      Back to being treated like an idiot, force fed bloat, having no control over my own PC, and taking four steps to get everything done but often ending up down a rabbit hole of 19 step troubleshooting just to say, “Fuck it! Fine! I’ll accept the new feature” then being toured on the new feature after it crashes first then won’t let you login, but finally you do and THEN you’ve got your file open but forget what for by then, all the while it’s notifying you of updates constantly but you won’t run them because you noticed it contains the AMD driver which is the old one so Adrenaline will stop working but that also means Windows has somehow undone the group policy fucking around you had to do. And they say Linux is hard while Windows thinks I’m the fucking idiot and I CANT EVEN SHRINK THE FUCKING PARTITION BECAUSE THE GOD DAMNED PAGE FILE IS JIZZED ALL OVER THE FUCKING DRIVE!!! RAAARRRGH!!!

      snaps back

      Huh, sorry. I get flashbacks still. The doctors say with the right therapy, I’ll be better in a year.

    • unalivejoy
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      148 days ago

      This means they forgot platforms other than Windows exists. It’s likely they’re checking for currently supported systems and anything older is insecure, so blocked for your security.

      Likely something like this pseudocode

      function isPlatformVersionSupported(useragent) {
          // Windows XP is NT 5.1
          // Windows Vista is NT 6.0
          // Windows 7 is NT 6.1
          // Windows 8 is NT 6.2
          // Windows 8.1 is NT 6.3
          // Windows 10 and 11 is NT 10.0
          if (useragent.name == "Windows" && useragent.version.match(/Windows NT (6\.3|10)/)) {
              return true
          }
      
          // TODO: insert supported macos versions here
      
          return false
      }
      
        • Victor
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          388 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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          468 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
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          278 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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          48 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
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          38 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

    • Noxy
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      17 days ago

      we have wildly different definitions for “mildly”!

  • @JuxtaposedJaguar@lemmy.ml
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    8 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.

    • spicy pancake
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      307 days ago

      and so they can use browser vulnerabilities features to collect more data on you

      • @lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works
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        267 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]🍭
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      127 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.

    • Scrubbles
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      258 days ago

      Yeah I go from an OS that I know how to use up and down to an ad riddled bloated piece of garbage. Thanks!

  • @Disorder6069@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    I ran into this before too, I believe I got around it with a User Agent changer… that or a windows 10 VM with 2 cores and 2GB of RAM that ran only Firefox… or you may be able to just press remind me later and suffer little/no consequences

    I think it’s just because people that use Linux are generally more technologically inclined and are more likely to try and get around their crappy DRM