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How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

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Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#61

Post by kazinator »

rydre wrote: post #27
IshKebab wrote: post #4

> a website allowlist Ridiculous. It's even called whitelist in the code snippet.

Why do you want to fight over a word if you're able to understand everything and good people are trying to reduce bias in human life? Every word that is commonly or uncommonly used has a physiological impact on perception that is not directly measurable and causes biases. In this case, whitelist = white = allow = positive. Blacklist = black = block = negative. Do you want peoples brain to subconsciously associate wor…

> Do you want peoples brain to subconsciously associate words like that?

A well-dressed man doesn't want an ink stain on his crisp white shirt, even if he's black.

When people get cavities, those are black spots on white enamel regardless of race.

Sorry, the white-substrate-black-stain metaphor isn't going to die any time soon.

Also, the absence of light looks black. Daylight will continue to be white and nighttime black; people will continue to stumble in the dark and be afraid, regardless of their skin color. Violent crime will continue to prefer the cloak of darkness.

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#62

Post by gorhill »

SeanDav wrote: post #29

> "DDG Privacy Essentials does a simple object property lookup based on the request domain, an operation that is practically instantaneous" This sounds interesting. A bit of searching is not providing much enlightenment - anyone care to explain in a bit more detail? Also, if it is so fast, why aren't all the filter add-ons doing it?

Content blockers in the same class as uBlock Origin ("uBO")[1] have the added burden of having to enforce generic filters which are independent of the request domains, they have to find a specific pattern in the request URL, including with support for wildcards.

Even though, and despite this added burden, I will point out that uBO is almost as performant as DDG Privacy Essentials as per this report.

Furthermore, uBO contains WASM modules but they are not used in the Chromium version of the extension since this would require to add a `wasm-eval` directive to uBO's extension manifest, something I prefer to avoid for the time being, I fear this would cause more lengthy validation of the extension by the Chrome Web Store.

* * *

[1] Able to enforce EasyList, EasyPrivacy et al.

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#63

Post by pbhjpbhj »

a_imho wrote: post #46
rhythmofrest wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox does. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

It blocks some tracking, but is it a good content blocker? Last time I checked I still needed to install ublock or equivalent for acceptable performance. How hard it is to incorporate something an extension already provides?

Not hard at all, they could include uBlock add-on by default (as they did with Pocket) except allow people to disable it this time.

They do rely on Google's advertising revenue for multiple $100M of funding; so they presumably don't want to be too successful in democratising ad-blocking.

Eich used to be a controlling influence on FF (as Mozilla CEO), since he was ousted he heads Brave browser which includes content blocking by default (and a content revenue model).

In short perhaps FF/Mozilla are curtailed by financial considerations.

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#64

Post by catalogia »

gizmodo59 wrote: post #54
crazygringo wrote: post #53

Utterly fascinating article. The main takeaways seem to be that 1) extensions in general wind up massively increasing CPU time (by 5-20x) when loading "example.com", and 2) ad blockers wind up massively reducing CPU time (by 4-20x) when loading a "WCPO news article". Which makes me happy that I use uBlock (edit: Origin, thanks below), and sad that I have to use LastPass. HOWEVER -- I feel like both these metrics are…

In mac, there is sort by energy usage in activity monitor and Chrome always takes the top spot (at least for me).

Besides energy usage reported by the activity monitor, there is also the matter of how long the a user can stay on battery power. For laptop users, energy usage can be a huge deal for their overall satisfaction, even if the user isn't quite sure where they're gaining or losing anything.

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#65

Post by pbhjpbhj »

tempodox wrote: post #51
joshmanders wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave Browser is Chrome with that built into it.

... and that inserts its own spam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442027

Can you back that statement up. You're saying that Brave inserts spam content in to pages? Do you have examples?

Never seen that myself in my time using Brave.

FWIW I quite like the BAT and affiliate link model and was made aware of both prior to my install.

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#67

Post by pbhjpbhj »

traspler wrote: post #42

It seems like the included pw managers like LastPass & Dashlane also impact page loading drastically. Is there even an alternative with less impact?

Isn't that weird - not a programmer but ... surely the only code they need to run on every page load is to add an event handler for forms to check if a login form has been focused? (At which point their add-on runs). What else are they doing?

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#68

Post by catalogia »

kazinator wrote: post #61
rydre wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to fight over a word if you're able to understand everything and good people are trying to reduce bias in human life? Every word that is commonly or uncommonly used has a physiological impact on perception that is not directly measurable and causes biases. In this case, whitelist = white = allow = positive. Blacklist = black = block = negative. Do you want peoples brain to subconsciously associate wor…

> Do you want peoples brain to subconsciously associate words like that? A well-dressed man doesn't want an ink stain on his crisp white shirt, even if he's black. When people get cavities, those are black spots on white enamel regardless of race. Sorry, the white-substrate-black-stain metaphor isn't going to die any time soon. Also, the absence of light looks black. Daylight will continue to be white and nighttime b…

It seems likely that kids and some adults will always have an irrational fear of the dark, since thousands of years ago nocturnal tigers used to eat our ancestors. The light/dark association is probably baked into our DNA due to this selective pressure; it's an unfortunate coincidence that similar words can be used to describe skin tone.

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#69

Post by notRobot »

crazygringo wrote: post #53

Utterly fascinating article. The main takeaways seem to be that 1) extensions in general wind up massively increasing CPU time (by 5-20x) when loading "example.com", and 2) ad blockers wind up massively reducing CPU time (by 4-20x) when loading a "WCPO news article". Which makes me happy that I use uBlock (edit: Origin, thanks below), and sad that I have to use LastPass. HOWEVER -- I feel like both these metrics are…

Just to clarify to readers who aren't aware, you should be using uBlock Origin and not uBlock.org: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin

Re: How the most popular Chrome extensions affect browser performance

#70

Post by mercer »

gizmodo59 wrote: post #54
crazygringo wrote: post #53

Utterly fascinating article. The main takeaways seem to be that 1) extensions in general wind up massively increasing CPU time (by 5-20x) when loading "example.com", and 2) ad blockers wind up massively reducing CPU time (by 4-20x) when loading a "WCPO news article". Which makes me happy that I use uBlock (edit: Origin, thanks below), and sad that I have to use LastPass. HOWEVER -- I feel like both these metrics are…

In mac, there is sort by energy usage in activity monitor and Chrome always takes the top spot (at least for me).

I've been in power/battery-constrained situations and it's crazy how much Chrome drains my battery compared to Safari. I still use it when I'm sure I'll be able to charge soon, but I've gone as far as converting some of my home-made extensions to Safari for situations where I need to conserve what I can.
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