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uBlock Origin 1.41

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Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#91

Post by matheusmoreira »

progx wrote: post #53
NelsonMinar wrote: post #37

What a wacky industry we are in. 90% of the websites people like us build are primarily there to show us ads. And then there's this one addon maintained by one guy (and an army of helpers) for free that removes those ads and makes the web more usable again.

The problem are not ads. The problem is the huge amount of ads, bigger bigger bigger, animated, with sound, tracking and and and... Nobody has a problem with small decent ads without tracking, but that was not enough for big companies.

> Nobody has a problem with small decent ads without tracking

I do. When I want to see products, I'll explicitly ask for them. Nobody is allowed to grab my attention unsolicited. I have attention deficit, it's hard enough to focus as it is and I really don't need entitled company thinking it's okay to just hijack it at their convenience. I really couldn't care less about their "legitimate business interests" or whatever.

When email users do it, we call it spam. When applications do it, we call it focus stealing. Advertising is just yet another form of abuse that should not be tolerated under any circumstances. If they won't stop, we'll make technology that will make them stop. We don't need to apologize for it or try to reach a compromise with them. Their business model is unacceptable, period.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#92

Post by ravenstine »

sleepless wrote: post #69
ravenstine wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm sad to say that Mozilla really lost its way, but Firefox is still the most libre browser I know of, thus I will continue to use it until it becomes otherwise.

”Lost its way“ is non-actionable and unsubstantiated criticism that reflects poorly on the person making such statement. What specifically do you disagree with? I actually feel the opposite way. Finally after years of ignoring macOS Firefox feels more at home and the UI changes make it much more pleasant to use.

This is a discussion forum, not an academic debate. The core of my statement is that Firefox has qualities that make me want to continue using it despite how I disagree with how Mozilla operates. I don't owe anyone actionable criticism or evidence to backup my sentiment.

> What specifically do you disagree with? I actually feel the opposite way. Finally after years of ignoring macOS Firefox feels more at home and the UI changes make it much more pleasant to use.

Mozilla owns Firefox, but Mozilla is not Firefox. Firefox, for the most part, is fine. The text input I'm typing this in is being rendered by Firefox.

As far as specifics go, Mozilla can hardly be considered well managed by any objective sense. The market share of Firefox has been declining rapidly for years, and Firefox is the product everyone knows Mozilla for. Why then has Mozilla not done anything meaningful to course correct? Why do their executives of a non-profit foundation still get raises when their core product is losing? (to be fair they don't make much compared to for-profit salaries) Why are they more interested in selling other products in a space where there's already massive competition, and using Udemy's pricing trickery to convince you that you're getting a good deal? Why did they abandon Servo? Why did they integrate a commercial service, Pocket, into Firefox and make it opt-out? Did they really need to make Brendon Eich leave because he committed the deadly sin of... being against gay marriage? Do they really need to be blogging about political activism that has nothing to do with the web?

These are all facts you can look up easily.

Yeah, I don't like them. They're not well managed, and they pretty much only exist in their current form because Google needs them to exist. If Google stopped giving money to the Mozilla foundation, lots of people would be laid off, Firefox would go into a tailspin, and they'd be left with a VPN service nobody really wanted. Maybe if money spent on Mozilla VPN clearly went to making Firefox better, more developer friendly, and more prolific, then it would be a somewhat different story, but whether that is actually the case isn't obvious. Even then, it's debatable to what extent any VPN service isn't snake oil.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#93

Post by agumonkey »

npteljes wrote: post #90
agumonkey wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

couldn't we cap the donations and anonymize it ? maybe find other ways to thank or help gorhill.. his work is too much of a gift

I suggest to take the goodwill elsewhere. This person actively don't need it, but a myriad of other causes do.

I already do that.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#94

Post by npteljes »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #60
progx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem are not ads. The problem is the huge amount of ads, bigger bigger bigger, animated, with sound, tracking and and and... Nobody has a problem with small decent ads without tracking, but that was not enough for big companies.

I HATE the 'modern-web' it is x10 worse on mobile. You usually have to wait for the trackers, ads, popups, accept-popups,newsletters signups etc. I basically cant view 60% of the webpages google recommends for me ony android mobile. The other 40% is usually just super thin seo content :/ I just finished reading the Gemini Protocol specs. I really hope something like this takes off and there will be a second 'silo/com…

You can just say "web" - for 20+ years it has been looking like this.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#95

Post by lazlee »

lazlee wrote: post #50

I find it funny that when HN loaded for me, the post below this one was "How I changed my mind about advertising." Not here - ads begone. Wuthout UblockO the net is ugly and insufferable.

Now if only somebody made a decent ad blocker for phones. I haven't been able to find one (android) that works decently.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#96

Post by npteljes »

lazlee wrote: post #50

I find it funny that when HN loaded for me, the post below this one was "How I changed my mind about advertising." Not here - ads begone. Wuthout UblockO the net is ugly and insufferable.

Link to the discussion: "I changed my mind about advertising" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30270450

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#97

Post by CamJN »

_x5tx wrote: post #76

Ever since I heard about AdGuard Home I never looked back. I have a raspberry pi 4 serving all dns requests from every electronic at my house for 215 days of uptime now without any issues. Browsing the web seems faster and cleaner ever since.

Well, all dns except that over ipv6, DOH, DOT, software using a separate resolver hard-coded to a specific ip... The amount of work to force dns to your dns server these days is nuts.

I use a pi-hole and these days I have to:

- block dns advertisement of my ISP's dns server for ipv6 (which, there's no UI for that on my router so i have to edit the config by hand) - maintain a list of dns over https ips and block them in my firewall (since mitming this traffic is a huge pain) - force all traffic to port 853 to my pi and setup a masquerade for that traffic so the client doesn't know - force all traffic to port 53 to my pi and setup a masquerade for that traffic so the client doesn't know

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#98

Post by kmlx »

npteljes wrote: post #87
sherr wrote: post #52

Thank you Raymond and all others involved with uBlock Origin. It makes the internet bearable for me and other family members. Every time I use the "YouTube" app on my elderly relatives TV and see how often it is interrupted with adverts I count my blessings that this add-on exists.

I mean, YouTube at least offers a subscription that makes the ads go away. Which is not the case with the cesspool that's the rest of the internet basically. It's such a privilege that a software like this exists, and is offered for free with no strings attached.

yes, this. but this practice is less common than i would have assumed at first.

there are websites out there that even after paying their subscription they still put up ads.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#99

Post by arrosenberg »

kazinator wrote: post #86

Block Element is a quite a useful feature of uBlock Origin. You can right click on individual things in a website's UI and make them go away using the "Block element ..." context menu command added by uBlock. This is useful for not only getting rid of ads, but anything that distracts you or tricks you into clicking on it. For instance, in Reddit, if you find yourself accidentally clicking on switching to New Reddit (…

FYI, all of the things you block wind up in a text list within the settings of the app, so it's super easy to copy/paste/edit/add elements that way if you need to.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.41

#100

Post by thiht »

Retr0id wrote: post #84
sherr wrote: post #52

Thank you Raymond and all others involved with uBlock Origin. It makes the internet bearable for me and other family members. Every time I use the "YouTube" app on my elderly relatives TV and see how often it is interrupted with adverts I count my blessings that this add-on exists.

PSA: If it's a recent-ish LG TV, you can root it and install an ad-free youtube app in just a few clicks. That said, one might be afraid of potential future breakage/maintenance burden from installing homebrew software for a relative. https://rootmy.tv/ https://repo.webosbrew.org/apps/youtube.leanback.v4

On Android TV there's SmartTubeNext that I've installed without root access. It's such a joy to use. It's honestly better than the official Youtube app (it handles multi accounts properly) and even embeds SponsorBlock by default! And it doesn't show the comments, which is another feature as far as I'm concerned.
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