Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

pcworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 752 posts

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#281

Post by culi »

eahm wrote: post #76

Wtf, simply not true: Brave: chrome://flags/#brave-extensions-manifest-v2 > brave://settings/extensions/v2 > Enable uBlock Origin (Brave-hosted, even better). Helium comes with uBlock Origin pre-installed. Edge even still has it https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/ublock-ori... And I'm sure others ...I personally only use/test Brave, Brave Origin, Helium and Firefox.

Edge is dropping support. Helium is not a major browser.

Brave is the only one that might be considered a valid point. However, because of Chromium dropping support they've had to implement a custom bypass to support Manifest v2 and they are also hosting a version of uBlock Origin for Chromium on their own servers.

It's really questionable how long this state of affairs can go on for. Brave has said they will support it "as long as they are able" but Google could easily just remove the `webRequest` API from Chromium or the engineering burden to keep it alive might just get to be too much

Unfortunately, I think it has an expiration date on any Chromium-based browser.

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#282

Post by jochem9 »

matgessel wrote: post #123
cykros wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ads on YouTube?

I got a Android tablet...I can't recommend it. YT has gotten pretty toxic with the dark patterns. There are the usual interstitial ads, but after you skip and go full screen there's another ad widget in the lower left of the video. You have carefully navigate a popup menu to dismiss it without triggering an ad popup. If you pause or double-tap to -10s the video it restores down and shows an ad on the right side. The…

On Android you can still patch the YouTube apk with Revanced and get rid of ads (and you can enable sponsorblock, etc).

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#283

Post by culi »

tech234a wrote: post #122

Haven’t tried it but apparently there is an unofficial port of the full version of uBlock Origin to work on manifest v3, the largest challenge being that, on manifest v3, the webRequestBlocking permission is only available to enterprise sideloaded extensions: https://github.com/r58Playz/uBlock-mv3

Great but as soon as Google decides to completely strip the `webRequest` API from the codebase, it's game over. Now that it's deprecated it's only a matter of time. This also means Brave, the last Chromium-based browser to support it, will also be unable to support it

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#284

Post by Anoian »

SoftTalker wrote: post #265
Gud wrote: post #241

I was shaking my head when my fellow developers, and some hackers, moved from Firefox to mostly Chrome. “It has better dev tools you see”, “it’s so much faster you see”, and a boatload of other excuses. But what about the remonopolization of the web? I remember how much it SUCKED when internet explorer had 95% of the web thanks to Microsoft’s illegal practices. I saw the same behaviour from Google, the ad company and…

Yep. Chrome is the new IE. Zero difference. And Chrome was created to break the grip that IE had.

Chrome became popular in the time where firefox was already more popular than IE.

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#285

Post by culi »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #268
imglorp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. The web is completely unusable without UBO+FF. Any time I have to use a clean browser, I feel assaulted and dirty, plus wonder what malware just got injected into my machine. If it were to go away, I would probably accelerate retiring to an analog, offline life.

I mean did you try with Chrome and Ublock Original Lite? Because I have and there's literally no difference at all.

It's different under the hood. The crux of the difference is the webRequest API which is only available in Manifest v2. This allows uBlock to strip all tracking data from the requests themselves. So while Chrome w uBlock Lite is hiding almost all the same ads from you, it's not protecting you from tracking

The Lite version also relies solely on filter lists that require you to update the extension itself while the MV2 version can do so dynamically. Additionally, it lacks CNAME Uncloaking which I imagine will become much more commonplace soon enough which will make it impossible to block those ads

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#286

Post by jimmydorry »

glenstein wrote: post #259
jimmydorry wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying that because Google didn't completely up-end the security model and break almost every extension in the one-go, we should have no-progress towards a more secure extension model? uBlock Origin via declarative blocks is almost as powerful as the original. While I would trust gorhill with almost unfettered control over my browser, I don't trust EVERY extension owner (no do I trust uBlock Origin in perpe…

>So you're saying that because Google didn't completely up-end the security model and break almost every extension in the one-go, we should have no-progress towards a more secure extension model? A funny argument to make because the thing that would make such a measure ridiculous as you rightly point out, is exactly what already makes the Manifest changes ridiculous in the first instance. They were making a rhetorica…

I think a big step forward, towards a better security model, was overall a good thing, even if it meant that a good extension no longer had unfettered access to everything your browser saw. I don't think this change is ridiculous at all. And I don't want them to stop here either! v4 should close more of the avenues that malicious extensions are abusing! Extensions should declare everything up-front, so it's easy see if abuse is occuring.

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#287

Post by cookiengineer »

dralley wrote: post #99
swed420 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension. They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen. Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.

Websites already can barely be assed to care about supporting Firefox users, doing adblocking by default is a great way to get websites to start putting up banners that say "our website does not work with your browser, please switch to Chrome" en-masse. And Mozilla did develop anti-fingerprinting tech, but they can't enable it by default because it breaks lots of websites and when a website doesn't work they're not g…

With a normal Firefox on desktop on Linux, I get unsolvable recaptchas all the time, especially on cloudflare pages.

Ironically, if I fake instead a chromium to be on Windows (UA and Sec-CH headers), I am allowed most of the time even though my TCP fingerprint must mismatch then.

It's annoying to see what the normal web has become. Can't even read news anymore.

Ironically, all these bot defenses make it easier for bots to scrape their website, but make it harder for actual users to use them.

The only bot defense web app firewall that still works with Firefox seems to be Anubis. Pretty much all others autoflag Linux users as bot users, which feels insane if you think about less web developers must know about how botnets work.

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#288

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

loeg wrote: post #273
windowliker wrote: post #154

I often forget how browsing the web looks for most people. Can't understand why they put up with it, or do they just think that it's part and parcel of the internet to have every page look like a slot machine from hell?

Chome with uBlock Lite looks, uh, pretty similar to Firefox with uBO.

Try visiting YouTube.

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#289

Post by globular-toast »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #34
timetraveller26 wrote: post #11

Firefox, after 20 years, once again has an advantage over the other browsers. Let's hope for new generations to get tired of so many ads to finally ditch chrome.

Unfortunately, new generations seem to be completely fine with this. People in general, they're just so completely captured by the dark patterns that I get the impression they cannot even imagine a world without them. I install uBlock Origin on every browser I come across. Everybody notices. The internet just feels better, somehow. People can't quite explain what changed, but they know.

And now you'll no longer be able to wake people up and show them the real world.

Re: Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin

#290

Post by akimbostrawman »

KingMob wrote: post #248
swed420 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firefox is also the only browser that vets uBlock's code on every update to make sure the developer hasn't inserted spyware or malware into the extension. They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen. Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.

[flagged]

[flagged]
Post reply on HN