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

Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

bugs.chromium.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 779 posts

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#111

Post by beezischillin »

devoply wrote: post #64
sixothree wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.

It fast. That most important thing.

Yeah, even with all the speed increases from the rewrite, Firefox still feels awkward and slow at times when compared to Safari and Chrome. Every time I decide to try and switch over from Safari, I get pages where scroll performance is a lot slower than what I'm used to and then I get bothered by it and switch back.

It annoys me because I really want to use it. I'm very happy that we have it and I hope that the wider community will hold Mozilla to account every time they try something shady to protect the best free and open browser we have. If we lose Firefox, we lose the Internet to corporations.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#112

Post by QML »

sixothree wrote: post #33
metalliqaz wrote: post #4

Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.

I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.

Firefox just doesn’t have enough advantages yet that would convince someone comfortable with Chrome to switch over. While privacy is an ever growing concern, it isn’t a strong enough feature for most people.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#113

Post by kossae »

QML wrote: post #94
metalliqaz wrote: post #4

Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.

Someone correct me, but can’t ad blockers just be installed through the OS and not be dependent on the browser? I recall this is what I had to do for Safari since there wasn’t a supported extension for the new browser yet. This would lessen our dependency on a browser for ad blocking in this ongoing browser war.

I think it can be done through /etc/hosts or similar yes? The downside is maintaining the blacklist, but I believe it’s still doable.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#114

Post by dragonwriter »

The design doc — the part quoted in the note linked here even — explicitly notes that it will probably be required to retain some degree of the existing functionality slated for eventually removal until the new API and other replacements cover all use cases; the response linked here appears to (not improperly, in the context of making a case for why much of the functionality is needed) ignoring that and treating the planned intent as removing all of the existing WebRequest API functionality that is not observational for a hard cutover to the new API which does not immediately supports large swath of currently used functionality.

I think the response is appropriate, energetic advocacy, but the HN headline is hyperbolic.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#115

Post by foob »

swypych wrote: post #37

You can read the spec here "In Manifest V3, we want activeTab-style host permissions to be the default, with a number of extra options. Instead of being granted access to all URLs on installation, extensions will be unable to request , and instead the user can choose to invoke the extension on certain websites, like they would with activeTab. Additional settings will be available to the user post-installation, to all…

Yikes! I'm one of the maintainers of the Remote Browser open source project [1]. It's a cross-browser compatible automation framework which heavily leverages the power of vanilla JavaScript and the Web Extensions API to offer features comparable to those of Selenium (without the legacy cruft). Removing the ability for extensions to interact with arbitrary pages would effectively break Remote Browser's compatibility with Chromium/Chrome overnight. I have a feeling that there are a staggering number of interesting extensions that will break due to the various V3 manifest changes. Hopefully the outrage over uBlock Origin will push Google to reevaluate this decision.

[1] - https://github.com/intoli/remote-browser/

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#116

Post by fantyoon »

metalliqaz wrote: post #80
greymeister wrote: post #23

... and yet another downside to Microsoft moving to Chromium.

Why would Microsoft be driving this change? Google is the company with the huge advertising business.

I assume they meant that with Microsoft moving to Chromium there is less competition and thus less reason to fear that the change will hurt Chrome.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#117

Post by AnaniasAnanas »

sixothree wrote: post #33
metalliqaz wrote: post #4

Another reason to be glad that Firefox is still standing.

I really just don't understand the obsession with Chrome, especially in hacker communities. Sorry Google, I feel "icky & gross" when I use you.

I am pretty sure that most of the people using firefox right now are from the hacker communities though.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#118

Post by O1111OOO »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #40

I don't understand the technical details of this - could someone explain it to an idiot? - Is the change specifically to block ad blockers, or uBlock specifically? Or is it just a new extension API? - Could ad blockers adapt to the new version to work again? I am reminded of the new version of (Mac) Safari, which features a new extensions API. It took a while for them to appear but there are now good ad blocking exte…

https://www.ghacks.net/2019/01/22/chrome-extension-manifest-...

ghacks does a great job of explaining this (saw it first here).

Paraphrasing the article: Basically, they are limiting filters (used by ad-blockers) to 30k. Lots of blocking lists use more than 30k.

This is part of (possible) removal of blocking options from the webRequest API and the (possible) move to declarativeNetRequest to handle blocking requests.

Re: Google proposes changes to Chromium which would disable uBlock Origin

#119

Post by lubujackson »

tivert wrote: post #92
LeoPanthera wrote: post #40

I don't understand the technical details of this - could someone explain it to an idiot? - Is the change specifically to block ad blockers, or uBlock specifically? Or is it just a new extension API? - Could ad blockers adapt to the new version to work again? I am reminded of the new version of (Mac) Safari, which features a new extensions API. It took a while for them to appear but there are now good ad blocking exte…

I would defer to someone more knowledgeable, but here's my take: 1. Google is proposing to limit the API uBlock Origin uses, and replace it with a less capable one. 2. Google also plans to put artificial limits on the new API (30,000 rules or something), which will make it even more difficult to make an effective ad blocker. That's not even enough to implement current blocklists. 3. The new API is inflexible, so it w…

Not to mention, once adtech gets the carrot dangling in front of them they will all overload their code with a ton more variations to escape the broad net of the top 30,000 rules. Which means the worst actors would be the ones most likely to escape filtering.
Post reply on HN