Why is this thread not on the first 4 or 5 pages of HN?
Down weighted? Happens when mods see too many comments and not enough upvotes.
Ah
"Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
291–300 of 490 posts
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#292Would it be possible to do an OS level ad blocker that works similarly to uBO?
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#293Anyone 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?
I'm using nextdns - happy with it.
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#294Would it be possible to do an OS level ad blocker that works similarly to uBO?
Seems unlikely with how many different ways ui elements are handles across an OS (including apps that do their own rendering). Though I bet you could block some subset of well known ones and block a lot of the network traffic that feeds ads.
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well, I would allow it for one specific extension that I feel does more good than harm for the capability. Call me insane.
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#296For people that have somehow missed the story, manifest v3 removed support for certain powerful network apis, severly limiting ad-blockers capabilities. uBlock Origin will not work anymore without manifest v2 (there's a v3 compatible lite version of uBlock Origin).
It's worth noting that the maintenance of the "lite" version is at some nonzero risk of burnout for its developers, ironically in part due to Mozilla being unnecessarily hostile: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco... discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41707418 - and while there's no plan yet to discontinue the Chrome MV3 compatible version, there are a million ways that this c…
I think everywhere that you used “nonzero” you could have also not and it would have still made exactly the same point.
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think any of that is accurate though. Manifest v3 blocks user tracking -- if the request is blocked, any tracking attached to it is blocked. I'm sure it's not 100% perfect, but it's certainly working well enough in practice. And what malware are you talking about? If a request is blocked, it's blocked. It doesn't matter if it's an ad or malware. Manifest v3 is better at #4, because the junk isn't loaded, and…
Explain to me how uBlock Origin can realistically go from 100,000 to 500,000 dynamic rules down to 30k rules(only 5k of those can be dynamic) in the Lite version without losing the ability to actually block everything? These limits are easy targets for ad networks to overwhelm or outmaneuver. That's what everyone was saying Everyone was saying that the new API is less capable than the old API at blocking things. Decl…
> Explain to me how uBlock Origin can realistically go from 100,000 to 500,000 dynamic rules down to 30k rules(only 5k of those can be dynamic) in the Lite version without losing the ability to actually block everything?
I don't know and I don't have to. All I know is uBlock Origin Lite is still blocking everything. So it seems like 30K rules is plenty? Like it's not a meaningful difference for end users if it's blocking 99.99% vs 99.9999% of ads?
> No one was saying that adblockers would literally stop working
That's sure what it sounded like. That it would literally be so bad you'd have to switch browsers because of how degraded the experience would be.
> What evidence would you actually accept anyway?
The fact that the adblocking experience was significantly degraded for the average user -- e.g. that now 10% or 25% of ads were getting through.
> And you want me to look at that and go, 'There's no direct evidence of malicious intention there... so perfectly normal and/or acceptable behavior...
Yeah, pretty much. As far as I can tell, security and performance seem to justify the Manifest v3 changes. Occam's Razor says you don't need anything else. If you think there's malicious intention, then the onus of proof is on you.
I was told, time and time again, than Manifest v3 would result in an adblocking experience so bad that people would start switching browsers because of it, that Google was cracking down on adblockers to neuter them. Now that it's here and my adblocking works just as well, maybe even better (if it's sped up page loading times) -- then sorry, as far as I can tell the malicious intention was made-up.
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox doesn't exist on iOS, it's just reskinned safari. It's not Mozillas fault that Apple won't let you install a different web engine.
Edge on iOS, which is also reskinned Safari, has AdBlock Plus integrated. So it IS possible.
Safari allows some ad blocking but nothing close to ublock.
Re: "Begin disabling installed extensions still using Manifest V2 in Chrome stable"
#299I'm years ahead of them. I disabled Chrome years ago.