uBlock Origin works best on Firefox • Hacker News Board

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#291

Post by tmp538394722 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #290

10000truths wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that it’s much harder to review WASM bytecode to make sure it doesn’t do anything sketchy.

Surely the ublock devs are not writing WASM directly? It would be possible to have the source code available for audit with some way of proving it generates the assembly that is being shipped.

Sorry anything is possible, but your comment is a bit hand wavy.

Reproducible builds are non trivial.

And then what - the reviewer is now supposed to build your software and verify some Hash?

Or were you thinking something else?

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#292

Post by Karunamon » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 1:47 AM UTC

kaba0 wrote: post #280

Karunamon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust Mozilla to not break my workflow or remove features I use or ignore debilitating bugs for upwards of a decade in some ham-handed attempt to "keep me safe". That sounds pithy, and it is, but Mozilla burned every ounce of goodwill they ever had with me over the last 5 years or so.

I never really understood this point of view. May I ask what browser do you use then?

So far, Brave hasn't done any of the things that caused me to abandon Mozilla. My browser is a tool, not a political statement. Mozilla has taken positive steps to make that tool less and less useful and waste more and more of my time.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#293

Post by perryizgr8 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

> Pre-fetching, which is disabled by default in uBO, is reliably prevented in Firefox, while this is not the case in Chromium-based browsers.

I really wish ubo wouldn't disable pre fetching. It has nothing to do with blocking ads. It just slows down the browser.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#294

Post by ooboe » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

wyuyva wrote: post #283

Nerada wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat. My main objection to uBO is the cryptic UI. I have no idea what the two columns to the right of a domain are as there's no column headings, or the two nested buttons in each column, one of which is grey (where I'd assume there'd be green to counter the red?), or the "+"/"++" that sometimes appear over said buttons... Or the green bars that creep in from the far left over the domain names, at sta…

All your questions can be answered by reading over the documentation in the uBo github wiki.

With the uMatrix UI, the answers were immediately obvious without reading a wiki.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#295

Post by collinmanderson » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:07 AM UTC

chillfox wrote: post #268

estaseuropano wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the issue with proxying is that the ad provider has less control/data and can't be sure whether views are genuine.

Unless the ad provider proxy the site instead of the ads. That way they get more control/data.

like AMP

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#296

Post by FalconSensei » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:18 AM UTC

quesera wrote: post #162

FalconSensei wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something that I don't like about firefox. They have a ton of cool stuff, but I feel that they are always lacking a few things. What I always give as an example, is how to add custom searches (Amazon, Reddit, HN, etc), you save the query url and add a keyword. Works very well to type `rdt something` and have the results. But: there's no option in the menu to see all keywords/search engines you have registered…

My workaround for this is to title the bookmark, e.g. "kw:rdt Page Title". Imperfect, but the convenience is worthwhile for the dozen-or-so keyword searches I use.

Yeah, but that's kinda the point: seems that there's always a need for a workaround. Also, I know I'm going to forgot to rename a bunch :/

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#297

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:39 AM UTC

chillfox wrote: post #268

estaseuropano wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the issue with proxying is that the ad provider has less control/data and can't be sure whether views are genuine.

Unless the ad provider proxy the site instead of the ads. That way they get more control/data.

It's only a matter of time before someone develops a wasm browser engine that renders to canvas and provides "trusted" delivery of ad assets over a websocket.

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#298

Post by newscracker » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:40 AM UTC

apozem wrote: post #125

I really, really wish Apple would update Safari for uBlock Origin. I’m about to publish a Safari extension (a NoScript equivalent) and the content blocking APIs are so limited. iOS is even worse than the Mac, too. On iOS AFAIK you can’t even reload the page for the user.

That will never happen. Apple moved several years ago to the “content blocking rules” mode on iOS, where all that any blocker can provide is a set of rules to match URLs with (to put it in simpler terms). Safari would lookup every request against the rules and block requests without the extension getting any information about which URLs were visited, which rules matched, and which ones were blocked. More recently, it moved to the same model in desktop Safari too (there’s a detailed post on the uBlock Origin issues/forum about why there will never be a uBlock Origin for Safari even though the browser has started supporting WebExtensions).

The way uBlock Origin and similar extensions on desktop browsers like Firefox work is by intercepting all requests, which means it can exfiltrate your browsing behavior and/or sell that. I’m confident that uBlock Origin doesn’t exfiltrate data, but the same cannot be said of other extensions in this space.

Apple, with its already restrictive content blocking model, will not allow a way for extensions to look at requests or manipulate requests. Chrome’s Manifest V3, whenever it’s adopted on the release version of Google Chrome, will also kill uBlock Origin (it allows requests to be seen, but not intercepted/modified).

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#299

Post by l3_ » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

pharmakom wrote: post #73

I love Firefox and I use it on principle. I don’t think I have a worse web experience, although that wouldn’t stop me. What does break websites is turning on anti-tracking measures. The number of times a site won’t work till I enable third party cookies shows the sad state of the web. Developers, do you only test in Chrome on Windows with default settings or something?

the tab containers are amazing

Re: uBlock Origin works best on Firefox

#300

Post by newscracker » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 2:43 AM UTC

consumer451 wrote: post #273

barrkel wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other side of the coin of content filtering is the possibility of snooping and data exfiltration.

> The other side of the coin of content filtering is the possibility of snooping and data exfiltration. I am relatively naive in this realm, but this is why I chose Firefox Focus as my iOS Safari context blocker. Firefox Focus also seems like a great browser to have set as the default in apps like Apollo.

On iOS, the content blocking model has never exposed one’s browsing history to the blocking extensions. Whether it’s Firefox Focus or some other content blocker enabled in Safari settings (you can enable more than one), the extensions can only provide a set of URL patterns that the underlying Safari browser engine (used by Firefox Focus and every other browser on iOS) will match with requests and block. No information —about which URLs were visited or matched with the blocking rules or which ones were blocked — is ever known to the content blocker app/extension.