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

261–270 of 490 posts

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

#261

Post by ragnese »

ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #248
ragnese wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but we saw this coming a mile away (as in, people have been saying this about Chrome for about a decade). People--especially tech nerds--didn't have to switch to the closed source, conflict-of-interest, browser. But, everyone did, and this is what we get for it. We now have proprietary DRM built in to the web standards, and all kinds of other bullshit, because a bunch of people decided to not learn any lessons…

> tech nerds you would be surprised how many devs these days have drunk the big tech coolaid. leetcode all the time and dream of working at google and using chrome and writing javascript. if the tech nerds took a stand and used firefox en masse, we wouldn't have this problem. unfortunately it is now normie season. we have to travel through these dark times.

There's still hope. I would like to draw a parallel to Microsoft Windows, with my own narrative added over.

Tech nerds mostly knew that Windows was not a good server operating system. It was also not a fantastic software development environment unless you were using a big, all-inclusive, IDE that was probably aimed specifically at developing Windows libraries and applications.

But, Windows was (and still is) the choice for normies by a WIDE margin.

The tech nerds continued to mostly ignore Windows for server stuff, and more and more ignored it for other dev stuff, too (many migrating to Macs, some to Linux, etc).

If you have a lot of users, but no developers on your platform, you're playing a dangerous game. Eventually Microsoft found a way to have Linux running in Windows. I don't know or care if that "saves" Microsoft or Windows or whatever, but I do see that as a win for the tech nerds.

All we have to do is get the tech nerds to stop using Chrome. Chrome can't survive forever if the nerds stop using Chrome, if we stop optimizing our web pages specifically for Chrome, and if we stop writing and maintaining extensions for it.

Eventually, they'll probably cave and put back more stuff to make the nerds happy, in order to bring them back to the platform and save their normie userbase. Either that or Chrome will die. Both are fine with me.

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

#262

Post by kuhsaft »

tyingq wrote: post #238
kuhsaft wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it’s a different permission. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41812416 If you are really privacy conscientious, ad blocking extensions should be able to exist without any access to web requests now.

I feel like we're losing the plot here. Removing the cancel capability of onBeforeRequest didn't improve security much. It did, though, hobble ad blockers to just dealing with static lists if they want to prevent an ad from downloading in the first place. Removing the onBeforeRequest redirect didn't add much security either, since you can just ask for permission B instead of permission A and just inject code. Though,…

It’s insane to think that an extension with the ability to snoop on all your requests is more privacy oriented than one that can’t.

It’s insane to want extensions to snoop on all your requests in an attempt at more privacy.

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

#263

Post by shbooms »

surajrmal wrote: post #94
bdcravens wrote: post #75

Anyone using a PiHole to block on their network? I've been aware of it, but honestly, ad blocking was good enough that I didn't go down that route. Is PiHole good enough? Is there a big problem with false positives?

Id argue pihole is roughly equivalent to what you can do with manifest v3 based afld blockers. I use it as my primary ad blocker as well, and don't really understand why folks are upset about losing V2 that much. It seems like removing root in favor of more granular permissions which is generally a good thing.

I agree that more granular permissions is better (in terms of dictating which sites an extension has access to) but I think the main problem as I understand it is that this is an entirely seperate issue from the one that nukes uBO.

V3 introduces a hard limit on the total number network filters an extension is allowed to set and it's a laughably low number. Far below what uBO uses even on a barebones, default setup

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

#265

Post by genocidicbunny »

ragnese wrote: post #259
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google made something better than what existed with Chrome, it was obvious it would capture the market significantly especially among more technical people. I don't think the fact that Chrome is (was) better is the question, it's a question of how they got here. Google took tons of money and threw it into Chrome and therefore developed something better. It's better because Google put more money into it than anyone el…

It was only true that Chrome was significantly superior (performance-wise, anyway) for a little while. Firefox had to play catch up and it took several years. It was (mostly) called the "electrolysis" (a.k.a., "e10s") project. It was considered complete by 2018, and had already offered significant performance and stability improvements for years before then. I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome still performs better on…

> I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome still performs better on Google-owned web sites, for obvious reasons.

Most websites (except for those doing some really fancy stuff with new experimental web apis) tend to work just fine in Firefox. Google's sites are the only ones I regularly encounter that perform terribly and leak memory continuously.

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

#266

Post by knowitnone »

bijection wrote: post #206

I've finally switched (back) to firefox today. I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up. Everything old is new again!

their dev environment is still pretty bad

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

#267

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

surajrmal wrote: post #89
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not enough, especially since your browser may weasel out of it by using its own DNS via DoH.

Are you aware of any that do this? I've been using pihole for years and have no complaints. I've only seen smart TVs seem to do this, although it's usually configurable.

One example that I was remembering was Chromecast. It needed Google DNS to work at all.

In general, though if an app sticks to "known good" DNS over HTTPS and pins its certificate to boot, it will bypass DNS-based adblocking very easily, and additionally will punish you by not working at all if you try to do any firewall/routing trickery.

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

#268

Post by knowitnone »

ttt3ts wrote: post #244
bijection wrote: post #206

I've finally switched (back) to firefox today. I switched from firefox to chrome for their superior devtools a few years back, but hopefully firefox has had time to catch up. Everything old is new again!

IMO they are still not as good although they have improved. I just develop in chrome and use Firefox for everything else.

Same. I use Chromium for dev and firefox for browsing

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

#269

Post by knowitnone »

chlorion wrote: post #234
bad_user wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security and possibly performance, which is the selling point of MV3.

Yup, the MV3 version requires zero permissions and in theory should be faster. These are real benefits that for some reason nobody will admit exist. Saying anything positive about MV3 or the lite extension seems to get you downvoted without explanation though, which is a nice example of how absurd this site is when it comes to anything related to Google. Sometimes I think downvoting should require leaving a comment a…

you get to downvote?

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

#270

Post by mort96 »

ragnese wrote: post #243
echelon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we need to break up Google. Google is a de facto monopoly. They own the entire web. The gateway, the browser, the protocols, advertising, discovery. Google is too big.

Sure, but we saw this coming a mile away (as in, people have been saying this about Chrome for about a decade). People--especially tech nerds--didn't have to switch to the closed source, conflict-of-interest, browser. But, everyone did, and this is what we get for it. We now have proprietary DRM built in to the web standards, and all kinds of other bullshit, because a bunch of people decided to not learn any lessons…

Meh, the "slightly abrasive" stuff Mozilla is doing is stuff like buying up ad analytics companies and adding features to help ad tracking companies track users. Fuck Mozilla, and fuck Google even more.

I admire your optimism by the way that a few technologists saying "stop using Chrome, Google is evil, use Firefox" is enough to overcome the market dominance of a monopoly like Google's, but I sadly don't share it. People have been saying it (and similar things, like "don't use Windows, Microsoft is evil, use Linux") for decades with little success. Even the few people who do get swayed will switch back after a few instances of "I was late for my important meeting/was unable to open this important document because the website didn't work with Firefox".

Most people's tech choices are deeply pragmatic and based on familiarity. And to expect anything else is honestly foolish, in my opinion.

This is coming from a Firefox and Linux user by the way.

Post reply on HN