141–150 of 169 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, I'm much more in favor of this API because of its privacy features than performance. I think it's a little bit faster, but it has a much bigger benefit on the trust side because extensions no longer run arbitrary JavaScript in every page I visit.
It does not have any privacy benefit. Extensions can still do that
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, I'm much more in favor of this API because of its privacy features than performance. I think it's a little bit faster, but it has a much bigger benefit on the trust side because extensions no longer run arbitrary JavaScript in every page I visit.
It's very improbable the few popular ad blocking extensions could slide in something sinister and avoid public scrutiny for a long time. You have much more reason to be worried about your privacy from Chrome than from uBlock Origin, since Chrome and Google provably violate it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then google will be the only one who can innovate in the area in adblocking abilities.
There is innovation above the api level. And if new api features are being requested by adblockers, who is really innovating? The way I would put it is that Google becomes the gatekeeper for some low-level adblocker features.
> And if new api features are being requested by adblockers, who is really innovating?
Right now, adblock developers are speaking out, in droves, requesting that they don't remove the API features Chrome already has, and Google is saying "nah."
They are wiping out the current diversity of ad-blocking techniques and saying "This is the way you can build an ad-blocker now." There is also the obvious conflict of interest that many of the ads in question are served by Google in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safari pre-compiles the blocking list into some internal representation that is faster than a raw regular expression, and the matching operation is performed many times per page. So I do think it's possible to notice a small performance benefit?
To filter URLs, you have to parse them, check if the domain is blocked using a hash table and then search for thousands of substrings in the path and query parts of the URL. If you use a regex for that, most of the filtering will already run in native code. I guarantee you that this gives you a tough to beat baseline with almost no room for improvements. Looking at the WebKit implementation, the authors are shipping…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 driv…
That is true, but if the more free/open alternatives were never at the same starting point in the first place, you were probably screwed that way too. Neither option let you start in a good place and then move in a good direction, and this is the unfortunate reality I was commenting on above.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difficulty is that many of those examples are also doing useful things that the more open/free alternatives aren't. We are developing an unfortunate dichotomy between commercially supported, closed ecosystems with lock-in and rapid update cycles that provide superior functionality and more community-driven, open ecosystems with standards and future-proofing but inferior functionality. If the open versions aren't…
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.
Yes it is, but the reality is that if almost everyone is making the other choice, we stand to lose a huge amount by not following the crowd. That's not a price that most people are willing to pay, which limits the interest in and contributions to the open alternatives, and thus the vicious circle is closed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
Like the comment you made?
In case it helps, moderation comments are even more tedious to write than they are to read.
Sounds like Google will still move towards what they were planning but will likely just take a bit more time and more versions to get there (as the outrage subsides). From my perspective, the biggest improvement in their proposal would have been the increased privacy and security users would receive with adblockers that use the proposed scheme. Under the current scheme, any Chrome adblocker can see all of the pages t…