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

"Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

developer.chrome.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 490 posts

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#201

Post by immibis »

pipo234 wrote: post #188
freedomben wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed on hoping this is the inflection point, but only partial agreement that it's about adblock. For sure Google wants adblock to die, but I think it goes even deeper than that. I think it's part of a much bigger trend in tech in general but also in Google: Removing user control. When you look at the "security" things they are doing, many of them have a common philosophy underpinning them that the user (aka device…

> To all the engineers working on this stuff, I hope you're happy that your work is essentially destroying the world that you and I grew up in. I recently quit my job, developing among others the means to "protect" media using DRM. While this was not a primary motivation, I'm glad to somewhat clean my hands. The technology (dubbed Common Encryption) is a bunch of smoke and mirrors that a childishly easy to hack aroun…

That's a good job - people who don't like DRM (you) get more money, and the bad DRM is a distraction that delays the implementation of good DRM.

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#202

Post by x0x0 »

undercut wrote: post #61
Rychard wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The widespread adoption of Chrome was largely driven by word of mouth, people like you and I installing it on our friend's/relative's computers and telling them it was safer/faster/better. Nothing stops us from doing the same thing again. I've been recommending Firefox to all my family/friends/colleagues for years (ever since I've seen the writing on the wall for Chrome). While Firefox isn't perfect, it's in a much b…

>The widespread adoption of Chrome was largely driven by word of mouth No, it was driven by having a banner in the most privileged spot of the Internet, Google.com (the most visited site in the world with 0 ads on the homepage) saying that was faster and more secure than the alternatives. In fact Firefox benefited from some free ads on Google.com against Internet Explorer before Google developed Chromium.

Early chrome was driven by the fact that firefox was a piece of garbage. Firefox 3 was not good software, and had an unpleasant habit of totally crashing the entire browser regularly. Your only other popular choice was ie8. Also not great.

Later Google's ability to buy installs and put it on google.com came into play, but for at least the first 5 years and probably longer, chrome was a far faster, more secure, and more reliable choice. They also pioneered the multi-process model to isolate different components of the browser.

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#203

Post by sunshowers »

greenie_beans wrote: post #47

can i just setup dns blocking on my network to block the ad requests? especially on youtube, ublock origin stopped working a few weeks ago.

So yes... but the issue with DNS blocking is in the exceptions.

First, exceptions are at the domain level. So you can't say "allow this domain on this site", you have to blanket-allow a domain or not.

Second, the UX for making exceptions isn't great. With uBO it's just a couple of clicks. With something like Pi-hole it's more complex: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-do-i-whitelist-or-blackl...

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#204

Post by immibis »

crazygringo wrote: post #86
sho wrote: post #25

Hopefully this is the inflection point for Chrome. Despite all their made-up "security" reasons, everyone knows this is solely about making adblock less effective. For many users, adblock is what makes chrome bearable - and if they make it unbearable, then those users will leave. Slowly but surely. Google seems much too sure of itself making this change. I hope their arrogance pays off just the same as Microsoft's di…

> everyone knows this is solely about making adblock less effective I thought I knew that. Then I switched from uBlock Origin to uBlock Origin Lite in Chrome, which is compatible with Manifest v3. I was prepared for the horrible onslaught of ads, expecting at least a quarter would start getting through, ready to switch to Firefox... ...and didn't notice a single change. Not a single ad gets through. And at the same t…

The same Google that's currently in legal hot water for always hiding its true motivations so effectively that even lawyers can't get any relevant documents?

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#205

Post by kuhsaft »

sunshowers wrote: post #200
kuhsaft wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, MV2 used onBeforeRequest which let extensions see what requests you were making. They could then take that data and use it for malicious purposes. MV3 doesn’t allow extensions to know what requests are being made, so extensions can’t use your data maliciously. Requests to ads that are blocked are blocked. I think you’re thinking of Privacy-preserving ad measurement which is an option in Firefox and S…

Doesn't onBeforeRequest still exist in Manifest v3? The thing that's been removed is the ability to block on it, not the ability to register handlers for requests.

It still exists, but now “ad blockers” can’t use the blocking API to record and forward metrics on hits. Ad blockers don’t even need the webRequest and webRequestBlocking permissions anymore.

Now, if an ad blocker has webRequest permissions it’s a red flag.

For example https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/concept... uses webRequest to send telemetry back to some remote server.

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#208

Post by cma »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #171
cma wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Android version of Firefox still doesn't have working keyboard shortcuts after 13 years or a way to delete individual history items to prevent broken auto complete. The money is going into lots of other things than the browser.

I'm not sure keyboard shortcuts for a version designed to run on an OS for devices without keyboards will ever be a priority. You can use a keyboard on an Android device, but the vast, vast majority of Android devices are phones that never get used with keyboards. I don't expect there's much priority to adding that feature. I agree that a lot of money is going to things other than the browser though.

Many people use tablets and foldables with keyboards

Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"

#209

Post by therein »

echoangle wrote: post #179
EasyMark wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my knowledge the “big” chrome engine alternatives aren’t either. I know that Vivaldi and Brave plan on keeping around v2 as long as it is economically feasible

This sounds like Android phone manufacturers making fun of apple for removing the headphone jack and then doing it themselves a year later. Are they seriously going to maintain V2 support for a relatively small percentage of Powerusers which probably are mostly already using Firefox anyways? The point of being economically infeasible is probably in a month or so.

I think it comes down to how aggressive Chrome will be at changing the internal APIs that it uses. They could choose to make it a very expensive patch to maintain. But I think they would have to go out of their way to do that.
Post reply on HN