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Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

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Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#191

Post by musicale »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #129
wrigglingworm wrote: post #87

I wouldn't even mind ads if most sites weren't malicious with how they serve them. Do not make a new window pop up, do not try to download anything to my computer without my explicit instruction, do not make me click an x to view the content, do not interrupt the content to serve an ad. Why can't they just have a nice little ad on the left and/or right side of the page that doesn't interrupt my intake of their conten…

The entire point of ad is to make you notice. As you said you "don't mind", this is not something ads would want. It's a raising bar as people are starting to learn to ignore ads more and more subconsiously.

I actually enjoy reading ads in enthusiast magazines (those few that remain for computing, gaming, musical instruments and technology, etc.)

It's a shame that magazines are mostly dead at this point. If you ever look at old computing magazines on the internet archive, it's like stepping into a rather wonderful alternate timeline before the web asteroid hit. (The irony of reading those magazines on the web is not lost on me.)

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#192

Post by musicale »

guitarlimeo wrote: post #5
hedora wrote: post #4

Sounds like it might make sense to drop this early hints feature (whatever it is). I wonder how much longer it will be before the next major escalation happens with ad blockers. I can imagine mainstream browsers that fetch unmodified pages and click ads in the background (do subvert pay per click ad business models and make it harder to compute targeting metrics), but then display an ad/tracking-free version in a sep…

As far as I know, current ad blockers can't block ads from Widevine (DRM protected) streams, so I guess it's only a matter of time until Chromium team comes up with Widevine for webpages and then it's game over for normal consumers.

It's only a matter of time before I get an AI-fueled graphics overlay that eliminates anything that looks like an ad from my screen (click to reveal false positives), and then it's game over for advertisers.

Hopefully HDMI/HDCP splitters will add an adblock feature as well.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#195

Post by 3pt14159 »

dannyw wrote: post #189
3pt14159 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh really, that's news to me. I thought one could always read the video frames one at a time.

Nope, it gets access to its own framebuffer that’s composited in the GPU. OS sees a black viewport, and only a black viewport. The comms is encrypted on the bus using strong cryptography, so you can’t sniff it. All these software blobs are signed and encrypted, you can’t replace it without the signing key.

Thanks for letting me know! Really interesting stuff.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#196

Post by fennecbutt »

wrigglingworm wrote: post #87

I wouldn't even mind ads if most sites weren't malicious with how they serve them. Do not make a new window pop up, do not try to download anything to my computer without my explicit instruction, do not make me click an x to view the content, do not interrupt the content to serve an ad. Why can't they just have a nice little ad on the left and/or right side of the page that doesn't interrupt my intake of their conten…

Well also many sites are now just absolutely covered with ads. Like it went from one on a page to now banner above, banner left and right, pop up video that has to be closed, two to three interstitial ads in the main content, like 2 dozen shitty taboola or similar "articles" popped on the end. Ugh.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#197

Post by skrtskrt »

ericholscher wrote: post #106
skrtskrt wrote: post #89

Anyone know what happened to ethicalads.io? Website has been offline for over a month, but founders/engineers seem to be active on LinkedIn & GitHub still

Website is very much online. Can you share a curl or screenshot of what you see?

oh wow thank you for responding!

[edited] I'm stupid I needed to override the blocklist entry on AdGuard Home.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#198

Post by YetAnotherNick »

throw10920 wrote: post #183
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on how much do you want real users to spend per captcha in electricity cost? If say it is $1/captcha it would be untenable for real users. If it is 0.01 cent, it wouldn't hurt spammer's margins.

Yes, $1/captcha is clearly infeasible - it'd be far too slow, first of all. I don't have any knowledge of what spammers' financials are like, but it's possible that even 0.01c/captcha would still be impactful if the click rate is low enough. Probably the best way to start tuning the PoW difficulty is just by starting out with what users are willing to tolerate - e.g. 3s solve time on the median mobile device. The gap…

According to google search, captcha solving companies charges 0.3c per captcha[1], which basically translates to half an hour of PoW for digitalocean instance. So if the PoW is less than half hour, spammers would need to pay less with PoW.

[1]: https://2captcha.com/pricing

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#199

Post by throw10920 »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #198
throw10920 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, $1/captcha is clearly infeasible - it'd be far too slow, first of all. I don't have any knowledge of what spammers' financials are like, but it's possible that even 0.01c/captcha would still be impactful if the click rate is low enough. Probably the best way to start tuning the PoW difficulty is just by starting out with what users are willing to tolerate - e.g. 3s solve time on the median mobile device. The gap…

According to google search, captcha solving companies charges 0.3c per captcha[1], which basically translates to half an hour of PoW for digitalocean instance. So if the PoW is less than half hour, spammers would need to pay less with PoW. [1]: https://2captcha.com/pricing

Then I guess the value comes with the privacy and human-friendliness, then :)

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#200

Post by sircastor »

a_vanderbilt wrote: post #97
wrigglingworm wrote: post #87

I wouldn't even mind ads if most sites weren't malicious with how they serve them. Do not make a new window pop up, do not try to download anything to my computer without my explicit instruction, do not make me click an x to view the content, do not interrupt the content to serve an ad. Why can't they just have a nice little ad on the left and/or right side of the page that doesn't interrupt my intake of their conten…

Greed. Those kinds of ads pay more. Interrupting the content means they can sell the spot as something people will actually see because they are forced to.

More like desperation. The only real source of money online is ads sales. Nobody is making bank from putting ads on their site. They might be making enough for hosting.

Though I guess it could be described as greed on the part of the advertisers?

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