331–340 of 523 posts
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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.
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Funny, I see the possible future differently. I am inclined to predict that the option to use ad blockers may come to an end because browsers and other software financed with online ad-derived revenue have full control over what extensions users are allowed to run. They have full control over that system for extending the functionality of their software. Whereas the system for supplying software with IP addresses sho…
It's ironic that the browser that presents the biggest red flag for removing user control of DNS is Firefox, with their push for DNS over HTTPS. It's true that you can turn it off (for now), but until Firefox baked DoH in, DNS was a sacrosanct user control switch mostly unimpeachable by corporate meddling.
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I think the future is machine learning based blocking. Ads are obvious, they have to be for users to see them. You could probably use text classification and object recognition to filter ads effectively. And you could do it from the view layer where nothing on the page can tell they've been blocked. This is also my tinfoily theory for why Chrome restricts the API's used by ad blockers. It's to prevent more effective…
I don't think so. Machine learning is generally poorly suited to dealing with an intelligent adaptive adversary capable of an unpredictable universe of inputs.
Ads are highly tuned for click through rates. Even if the model isn't 100% accurate, it would force advertisers to use less effective ad text to avoid filters.
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It's ironic that the browser that presents the biggest red flag for removing user control of DNS is Firefox, with their push for DNS over HTTPS. It's true that you can turn it off (for now), but until Firefox baked DoH in, DNS was a sacrosanct user control switch mostly unimpeachable by corporate meddling.
Firefox cannot remove that option to use system-provided DNS API instead of own implementation of HTTPS DNS. Doing that will prevent using it with intranets.
Wow, what an awesome dive into some of the technical aspects behind one of my favorite tools for using the web. And I do think of it that way these days, it's fairly stunning on some sites to switch off all the block and see how they become genuinely unbrowsable. I remember seeing Gorhill discuss a few times over the years some of the reqs for uBO during certain times (like why it could no longer work with Safari fol…
Funny, I see the possible future differently. I am inclined to predict that the option to use ad blockers may come to an end because browsers and other software financed with online ad-derived revenue have full control over what extensions users are allowed to run. They have full control over that system for extending the functionality of their software. Whereas the system for supplying software with IP addresses sho…
They are starting to do that. Therefore, better web browser must be written, with the user having full control, and not having things that the user cannot override (assume the user knows what they are doing; you must have enough ropes to hang yourself, and also a few more just in case).
Such a shame uMatrix was discontinued. uBlock Origin comes close, and surpasses in some ways (I used both for that reason) but lacks separate control of cookies, images, scripts, etc. So you can't accept a particular third party's images without also accepting its scripts, cookies, etc. I mention it mainly in the hope that we can popularise its maintained fork 'nuTensor'. After trying uBlock (as in attempting to also…
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…
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I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome. I also recently started using Firefox full-time on my work machine despite IT strongly mandating that all our tools only work on Chrome and everyone should use that. Have had zero problems (and we use every Google service under the sun).
> I have been using Firefox as my daily driver for 3+ years now. Haven't encountered a single case of sites working any worse than on Chrome. Really? It happens to me all the time. I can't log into my U.S. Bank account in Firefox, I can't submit a delivery order on Doordash in Firefox, and (just this morning) I couldn't validate a credit reporting form in Firefox. Now, despite those and many other examples, I continu…
[0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-is...
> At browser launch, Firefox will wait for uBO to be up and ready before network requests are fired from already opened tab(s). > This is not the case with Chromium-based browsers, i.e. tracker/advertisement payloads may find their way into already opened tabs before uBO is up and ready in Chromium-based browsers, while these are properly filtered in Firefox. > Reliably blocking at browser launch is especially import…
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There is also no way to rearrange your containers aside from deleting them and making new ones in the desired order. Since I am using this for o365 administration it is a little annoying that I can't keep them in alphabetical order to find them easily.
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…
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My guess is that it’s much harder to review WASM bytecode to make sure it doesn’t do anything sketchy.
The approval process differs for extensions published to the Firefox and Chrome stores. When submitting to the Firefox store you need to send them your un-minified, un-obfuscated source, along with step by step instructions on how to build. If you get big enough they do review the code in surprising depth. The hash of the compressed file pushed for release, also needs to match that of the compressed file the reviewer…
Minified maybe, but obfuscated is against the rules, for over 2 years now: https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-no-longer-allow-chro...
Chrome also does check the code manually, not sure if it's on the same level as Firefox though.