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

UBlock Origin

addons.mozilla.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 333 posts

Re: UBlock Origin

#181

Post by kbenson »

marrs wrote: post #161
untog wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute. If you really wanted to take a principled stand you just wouldn't use those web sites. Ad blockers are just lazy activism.

What has choosing what you download got to do with making a principled stand? It's like some people think that blocking ads is bad manners. I don't get it.

It is bad manners.

It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people. Every person that gets the paper without the advertisements affects the newspaper bottom line. It affects it in a small way, but all together they add up. The newspaper functions because advertisers pay them, and if there's no reason for advertisers to expect their ads are seen, then there's no reason to continue paying.

Re: UBlock Origin

#182

Post by danso »

Nadya wrote: post #180
VieElm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true, I'm perfectly willing to pay for content. I just don't want ads and I don't want to be tracked. Thanks to browser extensions I don't have to no matter how much that hurts your feelings. You say I'm entitled but it's actually you who isn't entitled to control how the software works on my computer. I'm perfectly willing to support business models that aren't terrible. Perhaps you might also consider us…

Shh... don't point out the hypocrisy of installing software but preventing the "Ask Toolbar" that it tries to install from installing. How dare you hurt their business model by preventing the program from installing spyware! You should be running IE with 12 different toolbars and Bonzi Buddy and the 90-day trial of McAfee.

OK, I'll answer this one. No software I own installs adware/spyware that I then uninstall or circumvent. This includes "free" commercial stuff like Chrome, Steam, the Kindle App, and Spotify. And then stuff I purchase licenses for, including Transmit, Sublime Text, Lightroom. The free consumer software that I do use, KeepassX and Handbrake, don't currently install adware/spyware. If they did, I wouldn't use them.

So no, I'm not being a hypocrite in the same way as the GP is being, unless he has restricted his consumption of Internet content to Wikipedia and pastebin

Re: UBlock Origin

#183

Post by bcg1 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #80
gpvos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Google Analytics is the main point of any blocker I would consider using.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

Sounds like those sites need a better architecture if those things are so strategic to their business.

Re: UBlock Origin

#184

Post by bcg1 »

andybak wrote: post #66
gpvos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Google Analytics is the main point of any blocker I would consider using.

Would you block any analytics tracker - even one that didn't share data with 3rd parties? (i.e. a tracker that was purely to enable to site owners to gain insight into their visitors)

Yes

Re: UBlock Origin

#185

Post by justabystander »

onli wrote: post #23
david_p wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: "uBlock Origin" (or "uBlock₀") is the version you want (maintained by the creator of the project, up-to-date) The original "uBlock" github repo was created by gorhill. Later, the repo was handed to a contributor of the project (chrisaljoudi) who did nothing good with it. Finally, gorhill forked chrisaljoudi's repo to create "uBlock Origin" and resumed development.

I don't think that this is actually true. Yes, gorhill started ublock and then handed it over, but chrisaljoudi just continued development and made some changes (like a call for donations). I'm not aware he did anything bad, and in the video he put up sounded just a bit unlucky, not like planning to do bad things ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D1TpddtVUA ). Or see https://www.reddit.com/r/ublock/comments/38lf1y/a…

> but chrisaljoudi just continued development and made some changes

Yeah, there's more to it than that. Gorhill started it as a free and non-profit solution to help. He gave a lot of the credit to people maintaining the block lists. When he got tired of dealing with it, he transferred maintainership over to one of the devs that showed interest - chrisaljoudi. Who promptly started to monetize it. Like how he stripped out the "No donations sought" part of the readme (https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commit/f256801344a517...). And many of his changes were done to make his own contributions seem far larger than they actually were in order to encourage donations.

The majority of chrisaljoudi's changes are churn to make the project look busier than it actually is. For example, many changes are just committing checksum updates (https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock/commit/bb340ac92cc6a8...). Which is already done internally from uBlock. And then there's the removal of other developer's attribution. Which he thankfully stopped after everything blew up. Or his personal site which initially gave the impression that he was the sole creator of uBlock. There was a lot of online drama following it after the maintainership was newly transferred (http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/33sl39/maintain...). I know Reddit's not really an unbiased place from which to review, but there's plenty of links on there.

I'm sorry, but people who ignore the contributions of others and immediately scramble for donations (https://donorbox.org/ublock) the moment they're made lead maintainer don't really give me a good impression. There's been a lot of discussion over the inflated amounts of those donations (http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/39quzj/chris_aljoudis...). He's cleaned up a lot of the problems people complained about, but it doesn't change the fact that his first priority upon receiving a position of authority in a large, free, open-source project was to strip out attributions and solicit donations. I'll give him credit for backpedaling and reforming, but not much. It's easy to apologize when you got caught.

Re: UBlock Origin

#186

Post by junto »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #80
gpvos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Google Analytics is the main point of any blocker I would consider using.

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to…

There is a very good reason why GA is free to use. It involves building profiles of your users for Google's benefit. Don't be surprised or upset if some of your users don't want to participate in that privacy shit storm.

Re: UBlock Origin

#187

Post by lucideer »

sbierwagen wrote: post #137
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree absolutely. That's why I use piwik on my sites. Unfortunately, uBlock blocks piwik all the same.

What? How? If Piwik just analyzes server logs, there should be no way for uBlock to touch it. But if by "uBlock blocks piwik" you mean "uBlock blocks the piwik javascript file" then that sounds like mission fuckin accomplished to me.

piwik is essentially a self-hosted GA. So it uses JS (like GA) but tracks to a DB on your own server so the data on your visit remains private between you and the site-owner (rather than also being provided to a third-party like Google)

Re: UBlock Origin

#188

Post by VieElm »

danso wrote: post #178
VieElm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true, I'm perfectly willing to pay for content. I just don't want ads and I don't want to be tracked. Thanks to browser extensions I don't have to no matter how much that hurts your feelings. You say I'm entitled but it's actually you who isn't entitled to control how the software works on my computer. I'm perfectly willing to support business models that aren't terrible. Perhaps you might also consider us…

OK, I'll bite. So what kind of Internet content have you paid for? And how do you pay for it without being tracked? Because you know, credit cards payments transmit your personal information. Or have you successfully transitioned to a Bitcoin-only currency lifestyle?

A recurring monthly payment doesn't track my activity does it. It just tracks that I've paid for something. Many sites offer PayPal so there's no personal information conveyed at all.

I pay for a lot of Twitch subs. I am currently subbed to like 7 channels. I've also payed for the NYTimes and Washington Post through Amazon's payment system. I've paid for Ars Technica. I pay for Pandora. I pay for Reddit gold. I also buy skins and mounts in free to play games like Heroes of the Storm and TF2.

I pay lots. Do I meet your approval now?

Re: UBlock Origin

#189

Post by wkw3 »

andybak wrote: post #66
gpvos wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking Google Analytics is the main point of any blocker I would consider using.

Would you block any analytics tracker - even one that didn't share data with 3rd parties? (i.e. a tracker that was purely to enable to site owners to gain insight into their visitors)

Radio Shack had that promise as well, until they went under.

Re: UBlock Origin

#190

Post by seanp2k2 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #137
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree absolutely. That's why I use piwik on my sites. Unfortunately, uBlock blocks piwik all the same.

What? How? If Piwik just analyzes server logs, there should be no way for uBlock to touch it. But if by "uBlock blocks piwik" you mean "uBlock blocks the piwik javascript file" then that sounds like mission fuckin accomplished to me.

Since I can't reply to the reply on this, piwik (the paid version) works just like GA and is offered as a SaaS where they store and analyze the data.

Edit: link: https://piwik.pro

Post reply on HN