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uBlock Origin 1.20

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Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#261

Post by fencepost »

stevekemp wrote: post #65
pmoriarty wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bright side of Google's anti-ad-blocking efforts is that ad-blocking is clearly no longer just an insignificant blip on their radar. There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line. There might even be a critical mass of people who are against advertising to attempt to make some legal headway on this issue in Washington. Just as there has been legal action against…

> There must be enough users of ad-blockers now to start to significantly affect their bottom line. I host a bunch of websites, and about five years ago I stuck adsense adverts on them. Due to the decent traffic I was earning about £80/month and that was stable for 3-4 years. This year, and last year, I instead earned about £100/year, despite having much more traffic/visitors, and more "aged content". When I get a ch…

Is it definitely ad blockers or have rates also dropped?

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#262

Post by asark »

ec109685 wrote: post #67

It's crazy how good uBlock is and everything it blocks. What happens if more of the Internet learns about this extension? Subscriptions for all sites? Some other business model?

Lots of ad-supported sites and services could/would be replaced by something free and volunteer-driven—and in some cases probably a little worse, in others, a little better, than their existing commercial counterparts—if ads just went away tomorrow. There's low motivation to do so now because you're "competing" with deep-pocketed ad-supported orgs for users, but if a gap opened up due to ads no longer being viable, it'd be filled. In some cases the alternatives already exist, they're just not well-trafficked and are somewhat neglected. Maintainers/supporters and users would flow in and they'd quickly grow and improve if the commercial alternatives died.

We've seen the open web and protocols stagnate because capturing users to spy on them is so lucrative, and open protocols make it harder to capture them. The open web would be revived without all the ad money and (consequent) developer time going into that capture effort.

For the rest, yeah, probably subscriptions.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#263

Post by ballenf »

darepublic wrote: post #253
cyborgx7 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blocking on android really is Firefox's killer app. I'm surprised it isn't more popular just because of this.

From a selfish POV isn't it better as an adblock user that other users don't use adblock? Then they unwittingly subsidize your pleasant ad free experience.

I get what you mean, but I wish more people used Adblock so that more sites would be forced to switch to contextual non-surveillance advertising. I'd get to support sites more while maintaining privacy.

As more people switched to contextual ads, the ecosystem for it would also improve and rates would hopefully increase (for smaller sites).

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#264

Post by red_admiral »

aluren wrote: post #54

I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing, and one that makes millions of lives easier by making their web experience bearable at all, all of this depends on one single person, working for free. Now there's also the list maintainers, who also work for free. Still makes you wonder about how the world works. There's probably many other similar instances. In…

For a while, openssl was maintained almost for free. That truly boggles the mind.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#265

Post by thomas »

FabHK wrote: post #198

Does anyone know about the status of the Safari port? That hasn't seen a release since 1.16 in April 2018. https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/releases

I've found the same. I honestly can't get uBlock Origin to work well on any of my browsers lately.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#266

Post by superkuh »

icebraining wrote: post #167
michaelmrose wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre quantum being unsupported and therefore by dint of lacking security updates insecure will end up with 0.1% marketshare. This is probably why nobody cares. You are of course free to maintain a fork for you and the other 28 users.

gorhill is such a trooper that he's actually still maintaining a Firefox-legacy version, latest release just a couple of weeks ago: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/firefox-legac...

Wow! I happily eat my words. I'm wrong. This is excellent. Thank you.

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#267

Post by dvdgsng »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #216
app4soft wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing Also it's recommended[0] to install uMatrix [1] or eMatrix [2] side-by-side with uBlock Origin . [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827 [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix [2] https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=21561

I have used uMatrix for quite a while and honestly it's a huge pain in the ass. I wind up just opening a different browser for certain web pages

I've disabled uMatrix for private windows, so it's just a regular right click -> "Open Link in Private Windows", done. uBlock still blocks the most obvious stuff, but the site is displayed "as intended".

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#268

Post by vel0city »

_mghw wrote: post #122
victor9000 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's become a pattern across many Google assets. The massive price increase of the Maps API, the order of magnitude limitations placed on the YouTube API, and now the neutering of ad blocking on Chromium. Google built an empire, and now they're cashing in their chips. I can't say I blame them, but they are no longer a platform that enables innovation. So now my only question is what's next? Which Google product will…

The funniest thing is, I would happily pay Google a reasonable amount each month to have access to their service! Caveat being that they agreed to drop all tracking and adverts, of course. But I love Gmail, Drive, Youtube and, most of all, Maps and Earth! As things stand, though, if I gave Google any money, I'd be essentially wasting my time, because all I'd get in return would be dubious 'premium' features.

When it comes to at least Gmail and Drive, they do have a paid option with contracts preventing them from using your data for tracking, and it removes advertisements within those applications.

https://gsuite.google.com/

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#269

Post by flick »

ballenf wrote: post #263
darepublic wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a selfish POV isn't it better as an adblock user that other users don't use adblock? Then they unwittingly subsidize your pleasant ad free experience.

I get what you mean, but I wish more people used Adblock so that more sites would be forced to switch to contextual non-surveillance advertising. I'd get to support sites more while maintaining privacy. As more people switched to contextual ads, the ecosystem for it would also improve and rates would hopefully increase (for smaller sites).

What makes you think that ad blockers wouldn't also block contextual ads?

Re: uBlock Origin 1.20

#270

Post by gridlockd »

Klathmon wrote: post #222
gridlockd wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd argue that it's not exactly "better", but more that it just makes different tradeoffs. Yes, it makes tradeoffs that are different, and those tradeoffs are different in that they're better . Often, not always. That's the statement in a nutshell. > Using a full well-written* dependency for something not part of your "core competency" (even something seemingly trivial) is often a better choice in my opinion. If it…

>If it's outside your core competency, you can't really judge if a dependency is well-written. Of course you can. I can not understand the details of something like the webextensions surface area, but still can look at the polyfill and understand that it's well written, that the tests aren't useless, that the popularity isn't faked, and that the maintainer is worthy of trust. Nothing is foolproof, but I'd be much mor…

> Of course you can. I can not understand the details of something like the webextensions surface area, but still can look at the polyfill and understand that it's well written, that the tests aren't useless, that the popularity isn't faked, and that the maintainer is worthy of trust.

No you can't, at least not in the general case. You can trust Mozilla because it's Mozilla, but ultimately that's an "argument from authority".

> Looking at the chances of me getting a malicious developer or a very broken update that I didn't test against or see is much smaller than the chances that I'll write a bug and not test it, or I'll not fully understand a domain and will add subtle bugs into it, and won't even know how to test it correctly.

Perhaps, but unless the code you are writing is "safety-critical", those "low chances" are outweighed by the fact that a malicious actor can do far more damage than some bug you introduced.

Also, you have to multiply those low chances with the large amount of micro-dependencies that you might bring in through this attitude.

> You can't 100% vet all 3rd party code, and you can't run entirely on first party code.

Of course you can, unless you count the runtime environment as third-party code, which I don't.

> But we do! That's what dependency managers are for!

Yeah, well. Believe that if you must.

> Just like how you using a browser to post this comment which relies on a compiler which uses tools written in python which relies on a python interpreter which...

This is a slippery slope argument. I think there's a distinction to be drawn here.

CPython doesn't have a lot of dependencies, certainly no micro-dependencies. The amount of contributors is rather small and changes are extensively vetted. The standards for browsers are similarly high.

Your average NodeJS project, on the other hand, pulls in a thousand packages from a thousand authors, supposedly vetted by the community - but not really.

> don't just throw out statements like "a little copying is better than a little dependency". That's how you get dogmatism...

It's a proverb, I didn't make it up. I put in the "Often" just to make it sound less dogmatic. You took it out again, presumably so that your long diatribe doesn't look so misplaced.

Your mileage may vary.

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