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Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

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Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#111

Post by INTPenis »

I've always been a control freak. Long before ABP I used ipfw to block ads at home. I remember having to use Opera on my poor laptop because Firefox was becoming too bloated to run.

And Opera at that time had ads in the INTERFACE of the browser. So blocking those at the router level left big blank spaces in the interfaces that were more satisfying to me than ads.

So I'll give this guy credit because I used his plugin, but not too much credit when you sell out to the people you've basically made a business model out of blocking.

Like many others I've switched to ublock and I'm a control freak so I also use noscript extensively.

For many years now the browser has been the number one threat to the average internet user so I firmly believe in noscript.

You should in fact take it even further and use qubes os.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#112

Post by angelsl »

sli wrote: post #58
QAPereo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add in uMatrix for the ideal experience IMO.

Just not on Windows with Firefox. There's still a major rendering bug that makes uMatrix mostly unusable. You can't get to the XHR or frame columns, meaning things like reCAPTCHA aren't usable unless you simply turn off uMatrix for that site. The current workaround is to open the log and allow/disallow from there. But you can't get to the log button 99% of the time because of the rendering bug. Not sure if it only af…

This is a Firefox issue, although uMatrix works fine on Windows for me.

Firefox limits the size of popups to 800x600 CSS pixels, which in theory should account for high DPI (are you using a high DPI display?).

Not sure what is going on here. What is your display resolution, zoom, and font size?

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#113

Post by DonHopkins »

toyg wrote: post #51
jameskegel wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good hypothesis, but I suspect it is because of the search algorithm matching words

Yes, but "adblock" wasn't a word before AdBlock appeared, that's my point.

However, "adblock" was a word before "AdBlock Plus" appeared.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#114

Post by madmax108 »

Fnoord wrote: post #28
mgbmtl wrote: post #21

Many comments are bitterly unfair against ABP. Wladimir/Eyeo changed how we use the web, gave us means to fight back against abusive advertising. They built a business model to make the extension sustainable and find a strategy to legitimate themselves, fight in the courts, etc. Not to mention that ABP never tried to close the market. Alternatives were easy to build thanks to EasyList. Today there are many alternativ…

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

Comments like this is why us developers can't have good things. Just like we hated dropbox because it's oh so trivial to replicate the functionality [1]. ABP took ab blocking mainstream to the level where many non-technical friends started adding ABP as the first addon when they installed Firefox/Chrome, and that's saying a lot.

Is uBlock better? Yes, but uBlock probably wouldn't exist if ABP had not established the market and highlighted the need for ad blocking extensions.

Happy uBlock user (and happy former ABP user).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#115

Post by rvern »

ilikepi wrote: post #98
rvern wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, you can't create a rule in uBO to allow only image requests from google.com to googleusercontent.com. Sure you can: google.com googleusercontent.com image block See https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-ru... . The only reason you'd use uMatrix is if you create rules that can't be done with the matrix frequently enough.

That doesn't work for me. If I enter that rule into the "My rules" editor, and click the "Save" button, the rule is immediately deleted. Also, the documentation you link to entirely confirms my assertion that you cannot combine type-based and hostname-based rules. For example: Note that with type-based rules, the destination hostname is always *, meaning "from anywhere".

Oops. I was wrong.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#116

Post by Fnoord »

UncleEntity wrote: post #97
Fnoord wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know its strange in 2017 and for youngsters in general (and that's NOFI; its a general observation and zeitgeist; I don't know your age nor am I interested in such) but it is important to note that "for free" doesn't equal "go use my PII for profit" or "go help others receive my PII" or "I will allow you to use my computer as part of your cloud without my consent". Glad we're getting GDPR in EU. I hope other countr…

> I know its strange in 2017 and for youngsters in general (and that's NOFI; its a general observation and zeitgeist; I don't know your age nor am I interested in such) but it is important to note that "for free" doesn't equal "go use my PII for profit" or "go help others receive my PII" or "I will allow you to use my computer as part of your cloud without my consent". Which is why you should use some due diligence b…

Lets draw an analogy with the physical world to see how it works there (often terrible, cringe worthy analogies, I admit!). If I buy a product, I should have to read the manual, sure. Afterwards, before using it. If some tool has a dangerous side effect or important feature I should take into account the salesman would have to tell me about it. Beforehand. If I buy a CD, but I can only play it on computers and not on discman or CD player, it has to be advertised as such. Well, at least it was that way in the 90s in my jurisdiction.

In the previous century I did not expect any tool to send back data about usage (including my private data). Back then it was called phoning home [1]. It was very much frowned upon. Although, as the internet took off, it started to become more rampant as a way to verify software. For example, I remember a personal firewall trying to phone home to verify it was licensed which you could block with... itself. Later they fixed that, but you could just use a hex editor to fix that.

Nowadays we've migrated from pay to use model (proprietary software) to service for your privacy model (SaaS). We get disillusioned that things are free when in reality they're not. In the physical world, but more so in the digital world. We don't know how we are paying, and that's a problem. [2]

> I see this like those people who go and buy a house next to an airport then go crazy complaining to the city about airplane noise, they benefit from cheaper prices (because most people don't actually want to live next to an airport) but then feel entitled enough to feel everyone else should bend over backwards for their personal preferences.

No, those people knew beforehand what they were buying. We don't, else we'd change those settings right away. Claiming that people consent to their privacy being discarded is dishonest. They don't fully understand the effect of their actions. The developers do know, but they don't care, maybe cause they're aspies who can keep distance from that --I'm not sure.

As for people who live near an airport, I happen to know a tad bit more about that with regards to the airport near Amsterdam (I live near Amsterdam). It all depends on the flight routes (the lanes for landing and take off). For example, I don't hear any airplanes except in the summer because then that specific route is used more. Not every 15 minutes though like my aunt who lives a few km from one lane in the Green Heart on a boat with a beautiful land. With, during the summer (winter etc less), planes going over. Low. Every. 15. Minutes. It would drive me nuts.

> Produce a digital wasteland IMHO...like the tariff wars that (partly) led up to the Great Depression.

How so? Look back at what I wrote here [2]. Don't you think the GDPR will make it very transparent to users because they have to give their consent?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoning_home

[2] See other [2]

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#117

Post by Fnoord »

madmax108 wrote: post #114
Fnoord wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, as if ABP innovated so much? ABP wasn't the first. I remember using an adblocker native in Firefox back around 2004 (and IIRC I even used on on Mozilla milestones). Back then, there were already /etc/hosts based alternatives (which also have always worked in Windows btw) as well, and a so-called personal firewall could also block ads. These existed for Windows 9x. We're talking end of '90s here. As for the c…

Comments like this is why us developers can't have good things. Just like we hated dropbox because it's oh so trivial to replicate the functionality [1]. ABP took ab blocking mainstream to the level where many non-technical friends started adding ABP as the first addon when they installed Firefox/Chrome, and that's saying a lot. Is uBlock better? Yes, but uBlock probably wouldn't exist if ABP had not established the…

Not sure what you're on about.

Dropbox innovated online storage, sure (my ISP already provided telent & SSH access in 90s and I could mount my homedir with SSHFS and WebDAV but sure, relatively small ISP in small country who didn't popularize it just like tons of other efforts did not). Dropbox caught the momentum. Who's to applaud for that?

Plus, first of all in order for the masses to use it securely it needs some kind of encryption for its storage. Other than that it was just a good UI for tools already in existence. WebDAV, SSHFS, rsync, or Coda (which you can see mentioned and ignored multiple times throughout the thread). For the encrypted content part, one could use GPG, but many other solutions exist as well. Now, if I was the NSA back in 2006, I'd invest in Dropbox via a proxy. Gives me free data to plow through which people otherwise store locally. And its data they want to save. Hah, I'll save it too! I knew about those risks before, so I wasn't raving about "the cloud" back in the days. Heck, I'm still skeptical.

What a lot of innovation has in common is that it succeeded to market itself. No, that's not something I have a lot of respect for indeed because I don't have a whole lot with things like marketing, sales, and popularity. Sue me. I'd like to look at the technical side of things and peek at the less popular gems (though on say Kickstarter I'm wary as well).

Parallel to that, it is often some kind of GUI which gets popular while it uses techniques from more abstract developments: libraries, smaller software research projects which got bought, CLI.

Which important features did ABP innovate? Seeing what it added to original adblock is lackluster. And even that original adblock isn't the first browser-based adblocker.

We're also talking about a time where the browser was the way to read the WWW and there wasn't a way to embed the browser in "an app" (an app? what?). Well, thinking a bit more about it, it was there (MSHTML for example). But it wasn't high quality. And you could block those ads via /etc/hosts

> Yes, but uBlock probably wouldn't exist if ABP had not established the market and highlighted the need for ad blocking extensions.

You mistakenly neglect to take into account that if ABP didn't exist, adblock wouldn't have been continued (ie. forked) by someone else. Parallel to that, if Linux didn't exist, the BSD lawsuit would've set that source code free, and it would've caught on from there. Its easy to say, in hindsight, "well that worked out well" but its equally easy to say "well if that didn't work out alternatively something else could've worked out". Without an in depth analysis on why that was so unique (we are talking about inventions then and patents more likely I am not going to buy your argument, sorry.

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#118

Post by brianwawok »

saagarjha wrote: post #83
brianwawok wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I think the Palm Pilot did that.

Maybe into your attention, but the majority of people probably have no idea what a Palm Pilot even is…

Sure they did. They were on TV for years. It was a sign of being important to carry some form of palm / blackberry device around. Just like when car phones first came out..

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#119

Post by Fnoord »

brianwawok wrote: post #118
saagarjha wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe into your attention, but the majority of people probably have no idea what a Palm Pilot even is…

Sure they did. They were on TV for years. It was a sign of being important to carry some form of palm / blackberry device around. Just like when car phones first came out..

Blackberry and Nokia also deserve mention wrt smartphone. This is the smartphone I've ever used: Nokia Communicator [1]. Though I didn't own one smile

Need to see products in their zeitgeist. Not easy for everyone. Nostalgia comes into play, some people just weren't there or were too young (or have passed away).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Communicator

Re: Taking a break from Adblock Plus development

#120

Post by DarronWyke »

epicide wrote: post #89
DarronWyke wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What facts are there that they sold out? They added an optional 'show some ads' feature, only allowing those ads that followed a very strict and well-defined list of parameters. It's very much optional, and not hidden at all to turn it off.

> [ABP] makes no secret that it charges big companies for whitelisting services – it mentions it right in its FAQ. From [1]. I'm not sure what better fits the definition of selling out. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-and-others-reported...

A self-citing piece is not a credible source in the slightest.
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