Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

Google has not provided any reason to not include "block request" functionality. And that the super bad faith underlying fact that poison their "reasoning".

A website being rendered by opaque, per-site web-assembly code, is not going to be amenable to uBlock, Greasemonkey or any other user-empowering extensions.

> I have a couple of popular extensions on the line, and I no longer see a way to stop Google without immediate government intervention

As the developer of extensions that are impacted by Google's anti-competitive actions, you can report how this impacts both you, and the market as a whole, to the competition and antitrust divisions of the government. I've posted links to forms and sites that you can use to report to the relevant state-level and federal-level regulators on HN here[1].

If you aren't in the US, the US also has antitrust legislation that applies to US companies operating in foreign countries, as well as a myriad of antitrust treaties and agreements with other nations. It might be worth it to also report it to the government of the country you reside in, as well.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28176193

> Embedded devices are already "game over". You don't own them (even if you paid for them).

Ugh, seriously. I have a Chromecast, and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't play things on my local network (via DNS names set up in my router's resolver). Turns out Google hard-codes their own DNS servers and doesn't allow you to change them.

The fix was to give the Chromecast a reserved IP address, and then set up some iptables rules on the router to redirect requests from it to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 on port 53 to my router. I'm surprised that Chromecast is using old-school port-53 DNS and not DoH.

I've been using Firefox for as long as I've been on the internet, but I got really tired of using it just because "It's not chromium". Mozilla been doing really stupid and frustrating decisions that made me feel like I'm in an abusive relationship. I've been eyeballing Vivaldi for a long time, and Firefox breaking compact mode finally broke the camel's back for me earlier this year.

When I switched to Vivaldi I felt like it's 2003 again, and I've just switched from IE to Firefox. Every single thing Mozilla removed from Firefox over the years is here, and most of the stuff I used hacky addons that would often break is here too! In the core browser, as first-class features, without the need to fiddle with userChrome.css or look through obscure flags. It really is a breath of fresh air and it puts into perspective how many excuses I've made for Firefox over the years. It's not worthy of being my browser, simple as.

Mozilla took my fundamental addons that separated Firefox from other browsers, they took my RSS reader, they took my cool Torrenting and Email clients that were a part of the browser itself. The TreeStyleTab requires you to go through obscure and hidden config files that often break with updates and the extension itself is not stable and fiddly. On top of that, I had way more Firefox extensions that aren't even different from Chrome extensions in major ways. In Vivaldi, I just get a nice panel with RSS, Calendar, Translator, Email client, Notes, whatever I want! The adblocker is built-in, the privacy features are built-in, you even get to put your tabs wherever you want. It has theming support that is as good as Firefox Colors, and it has custom search keywords that replace DuckDuckGos bangs for me more often than not. It even has the dark mode among other page filters, a screenshot tool, web page tiling! All the things that would turn my Firefox profile into a slow extension pile that barely works and longs for death.

Mozilla's "goals" of removing key features meant for people who actually would want to use a "google alternative" are laughable, and it's as bad on "privacy" axis as Chrome is because you have to use something like LibreWolf to get the actual privacy from it, very much like you have to use ungoogled-chromium with Chrome. If they think that turning the browser into a Chrome clone with some bumper stickers that say things like "Proud not to use Blink" and "We do say privacy a lot", then it's already dead to me.