from Hacker News

Sky parental control system blocks code.jquery.com

by digitalclubb on 1/27/14, 10:04 AM with 67 comments

  • by belorn on 1/27/14, 11:23 AM

    ISP interference makes for a interesting question regarding liability. Their interference are now potentially causing massive amount of economic damages to companies which relies on jquery library. Webshops, economic infrastructure, hospitals, transportation systems are just a few that relies on having fully functional websites up and running.

    But for liability, a few questions pops up. Who is the offended party, and how much negligence is required for software bugs. Does it need to be a civil suit with each customer, or can the website owners sue? If a truck crash right outside a store and disrupt business, the store owner can sue even if they have no formal relation with the truck company.

  • by csmithuk on 1/27/14, 12:21 PM

    Sky user here[1].

    Turn it off then!

    This is entirely optional. It asks you when you first install and connect the router via the WiFi landing page if you want to use any blocking. If you don't answer the question or select no, there is no blocking at all apart form the IWF firewall stuff. Every kind of blocking comes with problems of some description. You either live with it or trust your users.

    [1] £7.50/month for ADSL2 for 12 months with line rental and calls included was too good a deal to throw away. I'd go for Andrews & Arnold if I could afford idealism at the moment.

  • by rmrfrmrf on 1/27/14, 11:51 AM

        <script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
    <script>window.jQuery || document.write('<script src="path/to/your/jquery"><\/script>')</script>
    Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1014203/best-way-to-use-g...

  • by Robin_Message on 1/27/14, 11:01 AM

    That is really not very reassuring in terms of the level of technical understanding/oversight in managing their block list.

    Mind you, I'm not surprised that someone updating the list is on a Sunday night is not qualified.

  • by markdown on 1/27/14, 11:28 AM

    Sucks for the people affected by this, but if the result is that more people use google for this, I'd be a happy bunny.

    Why would anyone use code.jquery.com, really? They obviously don't mind a third party hosting their js, so why not use the most popular service (google) to increase the chances that users arrive at their website with jquery already cached?

  • by jdorfman on 1/27/14, 7:10 PM

    FWIW my company (MaxCDN) provides the CDN service for code.jquery.com. We are currently investigating this issue with Sky.

    Edit: Just saw this: "It appears that the jquery CDN is unblocked once more on Sky connections where the phishing filter that is part of the parental controls system was enabled."

    We will continue to work with Sky to prevent this from happening in the future.

  • by maxcan on 1/27/14, 5:00 PM

    to be fair, teaching direct dom manipulation is far more harmful to children than any amount of porn or violence.

  • by taspeotis on 1/27/14, 11:41 AM

    Reminds me of some article I read about having some fallback mechanism for when whatever CDN is serving up your JS fails. "Who controls downtime? You do."