Coincidentally Chrome 72 upgrade seems to break adblockers so that they can't block google analytics, and maybe other ads/tracking as well, if web page uses a service worker: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19185637
Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
131–140 of 169 posts
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#132Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder why people make such bold wrong claims.
I think in this case it’s probably because the person in question is simply mistaken. The other possibility is that they are some kind of Rust evangelist and they are actively trying to deceive people. I doubt it. Could we please approach each other with the benefit of the doubt? Could we please gently, constructively correct errors? I see no need to be so aggressive, especially in our current social/political climat…
What current social/political climate? Moreover, the problem is that he claimed without research. And this is what bothers me. How can people be certain of something they have never seen confirmed anywhere.
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the choice we each have to make for ourselves. Be a serf in corporate walled garden for short term convenience, or help build and improve the open ecosystem so it can catch up.
> Be a serf in corporate walled garden for short term convenience... There is a spectrum from the cathedral to the bazaar. And there are only so many hours in the day. You could become a serf to principles, spending time others have for social activities or relaxing instead on maintaining a purely libre work flow.
There's a fundamental difference between you owning your tools and somebody else loaning them to you. You can save some time in the short term. However once the company starts going in a direction that doesn't work for you, then you end up getting screwed. I've been burned enough times over the years that I'd much rather use open source tools whenever possible. The beauty of open source tools is that they're not driven by need for profit. As long as there's a community of users who want to use a tool then it's going to keep being maintained and working the way the users want. It doesn't need to be profitable or grow it's market share.
So I'd much rather be a serf to principles and have control over my life than be a serf to a bunch of companies with their own goals and agendas. That's just me though.
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#135Google did NOT backtrack on ANYTHING. From the new thread: > Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3. In particular, there are currently no planned changes to the observational capabilities of webRequest (i.e., anything that does not modify the request). We are also continually listening to and evaluating the feedback we’re receiving, and we are still n…
Well quite frankly, I dont care what google does. I am doing if old school since forever, squid proxy doint mitm. And it works for all my OSes from android to linux laptop. It is not as easy to set up as in browser ads blockers, but is completly out of control of browser and ad blockers or OS vendor. Anyway there is firefox too, while for chrome, as everything from google, I can only say - I told you so (10 years bac…
> squid proxy doint mitm. And it works for all my OSes from android to linux laptop. It is not as easy to set up as in browser ads blockers
I use Pi-Hole, but I also use uBlock Origin since Pi-Hole cannot block ads that require more advanced heuristics to block, like YT ads for example.
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#136Google did NOT backtrack on ANYTHING. From the new thread: > Another clarification is that the webRequest API is not going to be fully removed as part of Manifest V3. In particular, there are currently no planned changes to the observational capabilities of webRequest (i.e., anything that does not modify the request). We are also continually listening to and evaluating the feedback we’re receiving, and we are still n…
Well quite frankly, I dont care what google does. I am doing if old school since forever, squid proxy doint mitm. And it works for all my OSes from android to linux laptop. It is not as easy to set up as in browser ads blockers, but is completly out of control of browser and ad blockers or OS vendor. Anyway there is firefox too, while for chrome, as everything from google, I can only say - I told you so (10 years bac…
To do a mitm with squid you have to setup a trusted root cert on all of your machines right?
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#137Not seeing any comments here about the most interesting part of the OP: how Ghostery ran tests disproving Google's claim about the length of ad blocking lists causing noticeable performance degradation. Yet in the mailing list announcement from Google that instigated this article they doubled down on that claim:
Increased Ruleset Size: We will raise the rule limit from the draft 30K value. However, an upper limit is still necessary to ensure performance for users. Block lists have tended to be “push-only”, where new rules are added but obsolete rules are rarely, if ever, removed (external research has shown that 90% of EasyList blocking rules provided no benefit in common blocking scenarios). Having this list continue to grow unbounded is problematic.
Yet, if there's a limit it will also be problematic. The lists only grow in size because of the cat-and-mouse game caused by ad blockers existing in the first place. If there's a size limit, that immediately gives a win to the ad servers because they will find a way to subvert the known limit.
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#138Dear Google, you have a chance to do so much good! Don't fritter that opportunity away for easy dollars! We know ads are your cash cow currently, but you seriously have enough cash and talent to generate cash flows from less annoying (and perhaps, useful) things. Have some faith in your people. And above all, please don't be evil, and don't fib.
Dear DuckDuckGo, please can you focus a little less on search, and more on a producing a high quality browser? Seriously, I feel if you want to rid the world of Google's stranglehold, you don't need to make a better search engine, but a better browser. Google has bloated Chrome enough that any alternative that is lightweight, cross platform, with a solid password manager and dev tools would make me jump ship in a flash. Be sure to support PWAs too. And shorten your name - duckduckgo as a name is a bit weird - your new domain, duck.com might be worth doubling down on. Thanks!
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
A better example of how this could be done is iOS keyboards. They’re run in a sandbox (by default), and they have no internet access. An ad blocker could be sandboxed like this. Sure, such a sandbox can be bypassed by intentionally leaking bits through keyboard input or, in the case of an ad blocker, exactly which requests are blocked, but that would be very obvious nefarious behavior.
I like that idea, but it would be hard to pull off. The extension API, for example, allows for messaging between background scripts and content scripts. So you could make a proxy of sorts. And messaging is not the only hole you can poke. They would essentially have to redesign the whole extension API. To the point where no interesting extensions would be possible.
that's the big issue with extensions : most of those that are interesting (to me at least) are also huge privacy holes.
Re: Google backtracks on Chrome modifications that would have crippled ad blockers
#140Every year Stallman sounds less crazy. I used to think it didn't matter what tools I chose as a lone developer making consumer tech products and DSP audio applications. But over time, I saw that consumers rely on frontier-makers more than you think, even though they may lag behind by a few years. I reluctantly switched to Firefox because it still has add-ons and since Chrome's web tools are so good. With Mozilla's Ru…
Rust is slower than C++. Firefox got faster because it got optimized, not because of Rust.
> Rust is slower than C++.
That's a bold claim to make without any justification!