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Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

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Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#281

Post by Aerbil313 »

mhuffman wrote: post #248
matheusmoreira wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully that will be literally illegal due to accessibility concerns. Doesn't matter either way. Can't wait for AI-powered ad blocking. Just imagine it. AI parses content and filters out ads, brands, even subtle PR text from pages automatically. Not just textual content either. It also kills ads in audio, video, images. If I can imagine it, it must be possible. I'm sure someone much smarter than me will create this…

>Doesn't matter either way. Can't wait for AI-powered ad blocking. It would seem that it is just as likely that browser producers would add AI "watchers" to the browser to make sure you are not using any ad blocking! AI doesn't see any ads or marketing copy for 30 mins, sorry browser temporarily unusable ... unless you have a business account, then no ads for 8 hours.

Then AI Adblocker should be processing screen output...

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#282

Post by EvanAnderson »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #236
jimbobimbo wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Render the inner browser on canvas. Good luck with blocking anything, it's just a picture.

You still can't bypass the outer browser's network stack, so any request based ad blocking is still possible.

The inner browser is doing websockets w/ certificate pinning to its server. It's network access is totally opaque.

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#283

Post by extra88 »

Intralexical wrote: post #266
alreadyhere2 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happened already: https://earth.google.com is a Flutter app that's entirely drawn in a canvas. Its accessibility sucks. Things that you use to be able to copy and paste like names of places or phone numbers etc you no longer can. It's horrifying. Accessibility or translation extensions have nothing to look at. It's also the new flash since like flash it's just a bucket of pixels. Like when say VisionOS comes out…

Hell, even Google Docs suite is just one big Canvas these days, last I checked.

Yes, and it has to recreate a lot of what a browser does (given semantic code) to preserve keyboard-only operation and usability with a screen reader.

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#284

Post by akoboldfrying »

TheMode wrote: post #278
akoboldfrying wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't it mean that you are paying for the ads you see? I don't follow, sorry. By "you", do you mean the end-user, sitting in front of their browser? I'd agree that that person is paying Google with their attention (hopefully in exchange for other valuable content nearby in time or space). But it's the companies trying to advertise stuff that pay Google cash (in exchange for that attention). Google then pays a cut…

Companies pay Google with the money they got from you. They aren't getting "attention" they are getting future potential sales which will fund the next advertising round. > I don't think Google would have ever gotten off the ground if you had to pay cash to search for stuff -- do you? If online advertisement became illegal, Google or somebody else would have gotten off by selling search as a service. I am not saying…

>Companies pay Google with the money they got from you

You talk as though this has already happened, but that's not the case. Companies pay Google with money they hope to recoup from you via your purchases, but whether or not you choose to buy the thing advertised is completely up to you. Advertising is an investment with uncertain returns, like any other.

>If online advertisement became illegal, Google or somebody else would have gotten off by selling search as a service.

It's possible, but I just don't think there's enough of an appetite to pay small amounts of cash for this. It will be interesting to see what happens with Kagi (though I acknowledge that if it fails, that would not be definitive, since it has to compete with ad-supported services, and massive, entrenched ones at that).

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#285

Post by matheusmoreira »

lelanthran wrote: post #277
matheusmoreira wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're arguing dictionary definitions now? > define rape > The act of seizing and carrying off by force; abduction. > "the rape of Europa by Zeus." > The act of pillaging or plundering. > "the rape of the city by the invaders." > Abusive or improper treatment; spoiling or abuse. > "the rape of the land by polluters." Who knows? Maybe one day there'll be a "rape of the mind" dictionary entry in there.

> Who knows? Maybe one day there'll be a "rape of the mind" dictionary entry in there. Well, when there is you can claim your argument doesn't trivialise rape. Until then your claim is baseless.

> Abusive or improper treatment; spoiling or abuse.

Seems to fit well for my intended purpose. I see no reason to avoid using the word.

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#286

Post by SllX »

Aerbil313 wrote: post #281
mhuffman wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't matter either way. Can't wait for AI-powered ad blocking. It would seem that it is just as likely that browser producers would add AI "watchers" to the browser to make sure you are not using any ad blocking! AI doesn't see any ads or marketing copy for 30 mins, sorry browser temporarily unusable ... unless you have a business account, then no ads for 8 hours.

Then AI Adblocker should be processing screen output...

And in this thread we have AI Arms Race Janken.

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#287

Post by Thorrez »

bluescrn wrote: post #265
krapp wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blocking is censorship. Censorship that many people, myself included, agree with (I don't believe all censorship is harmful) but it is clearly censorship. But the real problem is assuming everything an AI blocks will be an "ad." Why is this the only instance where the slippery slope doesn't apply? This is different than a normal ad blocker that uses specific heuristics to block specific elements - an AI will be em…

It’s only censorship if you stop other people reading/consuming the censored content. Choosing to block ads is more like choosing to not read a book. Or skipping a boring chapter to get to the action.

Well you didn't write the filter lists yourself.

It's kind of like someone creating a list of bad books, and you looking avoiding reading any books on that list.

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#288

Post by eternityforest »

alreadyhere2 wrote: post #263
EvanAnderson wrote: post #30

There's a product here that's been waiting to happen for awhile. I've been anticipating somebody cross-compiling another browser engine to WASM but this works, too. Deliver your site only to the "inner browser" (that the user has no control over because it's heavily obfuscated and tricked-out with anti-debugging code) and you eliminate all ad blockers. Throw some DNS-over-HTTPS w/ certificate pinning in for good meas…

It's happened already: https://earth.google.com is a Flutter app that's entirely drawn in a canvas. Its accessibility sucks. Things that you use to be able to copy and paste like names of places or phone numbers etc you no longer can. It's horrifying. Accessibility or translation extensions have nothing to look at. It's also the new flash since like flash it's just a bucket of pixels. Like when say VisionOS comes out…

I can't believe how many people seem to be excited about this whole WebAssembly Bring Your Own Everything stuff.

Every time there's an article about some kind of "Here's a really simple core to build stuff from scratch" technology people seem to get really excited.

I was hoping we'd be going the other way and building web tech into OSes!

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#289

Post by maxbond »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #172
akoboldfrying wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess we disagree on whether advertising goods and services to people should be considered a crime.

We do. I think advertising of all kinds should be illegal. I consider it to be a form of mind rape when they forcibly insert their brands and products into my mind without my consent.

Can we call it nonconsensual ideation? Maybe that can be workshopped into something less wordy? Mind rape is too off-putting to generate good discussion, imho.

Re: Shadow: New browser engine made almost entirely in JavaScript

#290

Post by TheMode »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #284
TheMode wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies pay Google with the money they got from you. They aren't getting "attention" they are getting future potential sales which will fund the next advertising round. > I don't think Google would have ever gotten off the ground if you had to pay cash to search for stuff -- do you? If online advertisement became illegal, Google or somebody else would have gotten off by selling search as a service. I am not saying…

>Companies pay Google with the money they got from you You talk as though this has already happened, but that's not the case. Companies pay Google with money they hope to recoup from you via your purchases, but whether or not you choose to buy the thing advertised is completely up to you. Advertising is an investment with uncertain returns, like any other. >If online advertisement became illegal, Google or somebody e…

> You talk as though this has already happened, but that's not the case. Companies pay Google with money they hope to recoup from you via your purchases, but whether or not you choose to buy the thing advertised is completely up to you. Advertising is an investment with uncertain returns, like any other.

It has already happened. Things you buy have an online/google advertisement markup whether you use youtube premium or not. You pay for the ads no matter if you watch them or not.

Free services aren't actually free, on a large scale they affect how much everything should cost.

> It's possible, but I just don't think there's enough of an appetite to pay small amounts of cash for this. It will be interesting to see what happens with Kagi (though I acknowledge that if it fails, that would not be definitive, since it has to compete with ad-supported services, and massive, entrenched ones at that).

This is because free services are a trap. People do not want to pay for search BECAUSE there are """free""" alternatives. If every services become paid people wouldn't be as reluctant.

Free services also create wrong expectations and change the way we should use the service. Take youtube, it is free so everybody expect everyone to be able to access the platform, and so people tend to only upload to youtube because "why would you be anywhere else". And now, when youtube obviously change its term you have a wave an angry people seeing youtube as a platform that must remain convenient or their world will collapse.

If video platforms were all paid, people wouldn't have the same expectations. Uploaded videos could only target users who also paid for the platform, and would instinctively understand that this is a temporary platform.

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