Subtle changes, bugs and feedback

Russia has been blocked for spam for a very very long time. Pre-dating the Ukrainian invasion. Traffic from Russia was exclusively spam and bots. I think you're the first legit user who has said anything in about 5-6 years (I think I blocked Russia and a few others around 2016-2017).

Ukraine has been on a "must do a CAPTCHA" for years too, it too is a source of spam and bots especially from their hosting services there. However there were real users there too, so that's not a full block it's just a superficial block that still blocks the majority of bots. Some spam users get through, in fact nearly all the spam that gets onto the site can be traced to India and Ukraine (used to be Vietnam but I blocked that totally too).

Please do use a VPN. Any VPN that shows you as not being in Russia will be fine, I'm not blocking VPNs and apparently spammers don't even bother trying to do that.

It's perfectly reasonable for a geo-centric website to block high sources of spam/attack. I do this at work.

Russia has been blocked for spam for a very very long time.

12 years: https://www.lfgss.com/comments/7745917/

Latest iPad update now has the “automatically put the cursor in the page number selection box and launch the keyboard” bug, still super annoying.

LFGSS also still the only site affected

Does it still happen if you're not logged in?

And people have engaged with the Apple engineers via the bug, right?

People have showed evidence, variety of devices and the versions impacted?

Nope... they haven't. Oh well.

I doubt it, unless it happens on other websites too.

That's fair. But I haven't checked them all.

Plus this website hasn't changed, the html remains valid, the JavaScript default.

What changed is Safari on iOS devices.

If someone with an iOS device and knowledge of how to debug and test on that wants to provide a solution I'll test it on Linux, Windows, Chrome and Firefox and will deploy it.

But given that nothing here has changed, and it's broken on the one browser and OS I don't own or know how to operate... I'm blaming the change in their browser.

Looks like it’s spreading through the various versions- didn’t used to do it on my iPad, now post update it does. Totally new, vanilla install with zero extensions etc.

Which suggests that eventually every user who browses the site with Apple devices that don’t have a permanent keyboard will have to dismiss the virtual keyboard every single time they navigate to a fresh page.

Is there not a single person on this site who writes HTML and has an iOS device and can provide and test a solution?

I own nothing Apple except a laptop that has Linux on it.

I have no way to debug this, test anything.

Yup it will eventually roll out to every browser on iOS as Apple force every browser to use Safari and the bug/change is in Safari on iOS.

This will stay broken until either people work with the Apple Devs to fix the change. Or until someone who is a web dev and who owns Apple stuff wants to reproduce it and then work around it on here.

Commenting in here is pointless. I don't see it. I can't reproduce it. I can't test any change. I don't own any iOS device.

If it's bugging people then I hope someone does something about it. You could always use Android and non-Apple devices 😁 works great on those.

I could test it but I don’t have the problem on any iOS devices I have.
Seems like it’s just Neil.

Apple force every browser to use Safari

Is this so? Chrome, Firefox & Opera are on the app store for i-telephones and i-tablets.

Could be, but it’s happening on a brand new iPad, upgraded to the latest release of OS and so forth- all I did was log in.

Which suggests it won’t just be me.

It is so

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25850091

Chrome and Firefox on iOS are merely skins over Safari. Apple iOS users do not have a choice of browser.

It is so

I knew you'd have the answer to hand to confirm my suspicion that this might be the case long before I could find it by googling 🙂

Has any of the Apple victims at least tried one of these alternative skins to see if the cursor focus issue is specific to the Safari skin?

Not happening for me on an iPhone 11 Pro running 16.1.1.
Safari is a pile of shite, though, and every new release brings new bugs.

Or 16.2.

16.1.1 here, iPhone 12 mini, and the only think I can think of that is non standard is that I run all traffic through a VPN.

Have you tried it without the VPN?

I don't get this issue at all, fwiw.

Just tried with the iOS simulators and they don't have the problem either.

Picnic.

So we currently have:

• Only affects latest Safarai
  
• Only affects latest iOS
  
• Only affects some of those on later Safari on iOS
  
  

Which does imply there's something about some users, most likely some configuration that results in Safari behaving differently for them. Perhaps it's VPN, perhaps it's a privacy setting, perhaps it's a state/cache setting.

I still think that those affected should work with the Apple devs via the bug tracker I opened to resolve it. They are there, they want to help, they need assistance to help. If they have a bug or regression then they want to discover it as it likely affects a lot of websites in some subtle way.

Anyone who is affected, please feel free to mail me your iPhone/iPads. I'll be happy to work on the issue. Unfortunately I won't be able to mail back any devices. The more devices you can send, the better - helps to triangulate the issue ya know.

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Have you tried it without the VPN?

I don't get this issue at all, fwiw.

Turned the VPN off, still happens.