Hi,
The forum seems no longer fully functional using Tor Browser (14.0.6, supplied by Whonix) if the security slider is set to “Safest”, i.e. it must be reduced to “Safer” to work. Otherwise only 5 animated dots appear as loading forever.
On t you can interact with the forum by email : if you are concerned
about this issue then that might be the best way to go.
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I know. That’s how I posted this thread.
However, it is not possible to control the user account/settings by email.
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Using tor browser in safest mode, I can browse the forum and read but not login.
I found an old thread from 2020 on discourse’s forum about such question, the developers are aware that javascript is a requirement and there were no plan back then to make it work without javascript. I’m surprised to read it was working for you until recently. Maybe the discourse forum used by Qubes OS was very old and received an update? 
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What do you want to do?
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
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Using tor browser in safest mode, I can browse the forum and read but not login.
I can’t open even the home page if JS is enabled.
Maybe the discourse forum used by Qubes OS was very old and received an update?
Or something in a recent update in Tor Browser. I notice that all Discourse based forums fail. Looking at browser console, there is always this:
Uncaught Error: cannot cast a SimpleElement(HTMLUnknownElement) into SVG
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What do you want to do?
Nothing in particular at the moment. Just saying that there are thing which need web login.
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Ironically, even the forums of Whonix and Tor Project have the same issue.
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I think the problem with safest is the JS being disabled. JS breaks a lot of the internet and it’s because of bad web development practices becoming popularized and standard. Hard to get a job as a web developer if you don’t follow those bad practices.
Can I ask why it’s important to be able to use the forum without JS? Sometimes we can’t fix the problem at the root (making all websites on the internet stop using JS) but we can find some partial solutions. For example JS is a security threat if the JS is malicious and knows of browser and sandbox vulnerabilities. But both disposables and whonix ws protects against this as you know. It was just an example.
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I think the problem with safest is the JS being disabled.
No. I explicitly make sure it is enabled in about:config. I can use other sites with Safest and JS enabled.
Can I ask why it’s important to be able to use the forum without JS?
The issue is the impossibility to use it with JS enabled and Safest setting.
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We need to find out which feature in safest setting is causing this problem.
Normally it’s recommended against to change config of tor browser because it makes you unique fingerprint. But it’s also the best way to check which feature is causing this problem. If you can get a list of the features that are added in safest which safer don’t have, then you can toggle those features on config one at a time to find out which is the one causing this problem.
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Seems like one or more resources being fetched by Discourse is attempting to render into an SVG file, but since it cannot due to the Security level set to Safest, Discourse fails to load.
"svg.disabled":
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Yes, it is svg.disabled and it also seems to be the same setting which breaks GitHub too. However, enabling that results in Safer setting too.
So:
- this used to work fine till recently (last week, IIRC), now it doesn’t
- the reported (and closed) issue is far older than 1 week
Something doesn’t quite fit. I don’t know what is the right thing to do.
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Maybe it’s related to the latest major release of Discourse?
See:
Simplified signup and login flow for community members
Now it’s too much “simplified” ! 
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Maybe it’s related to the latest major release of Discourse?
The more important question is what will be done about it.
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The choices I think are available:
- Discourse must make an update to fix this problem, if they care about tor browser users. But this is wrong place to get their attention.
- Qubes OS must stop using discorse and use another tool which supports tor browser on safest setting.
- You must browse on safer setting instead of safest.
- Stop using this forum.
#1 could happen but I don’t know what the probability is. #2 seems unlikely to happen. #3 Seems like the only real choice because #4 sucks and I hope no one stops using this forum, it’s one of the best on the internet.
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if they care about tor browser users
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Only #3 and #4 are valid choices at this point in time, with the caveat that #4 also affects other Discourse forums as well.
I don’t think qubes-os forum admins can do much about it. Why are you asking this here? Why not ask on the discourse project’s forums?
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Why are you asking this here?
Because this is the forum on which I found the problem initially, and the one which I use (mostly by email).
Why not ask on the discourse project’s forums?
- Tor Browser is not in Discourse’s list of supported browsers
- I have no account on those forums
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