Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#641

Post by mwill » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:15 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

I use firefox as my daily for a few years now, I switched for panorama view, and almost switched back to chrome when the extension was broken, but stuck it out until it was fixed.

Quantum improved it, but I still have lots of issues with Firefox on Linux. To name a few: (For reference I'm running Firefox 67 on NixOS, xmonad, no DE, 7700K, 64GB RAM, RTX2070, only extensions I use are uBlock Origin, Panorama View, but I've run into all the problems below in safe mode also)

* Still slower than Chrome if you use lots of tabs and windows (generally 100+ on 3 windows depending on current jobs). It's much faster than it used to be but I can't deny when I have to switch back to Chrome for some things, I'm surprised at the (slight) speed difference.

* Visual glitches with lots of tabs the tab bar will occasionally spasm, sometimes all the text will disappear etc.

* Sometimes a window will just stop working. All the tabs are still there, but they all show blank white pages, new tabs are also blank. Different windows will work and a new window will work. Restarting firefox, the same window will be all blank pages. The only solution I've found is open a new window and copy the tabs you want to save one by one to the new working window.

* Bunch of websites just don't work in Firefox. In particular several of my governments payment portals don't work in Firefox on Linux but work fine in Chrome.

* Sometimes I get crackling audio from Firefox that can only be fixed by restarting pulse, never had it happen in Chrome.

* Some streaming websites choke firefox out, for example ufc.tv PPVs are sometimes entirely unwatchable in FF, the audio and video fall out of sync after a few minutes, sometimes it can makes other tabs sluggish. Never have a problem with Chrome, will usually just open a chrome window to watch live streams.

I chalk most of these up to Linux weirdness, but I do quite often find myself annoyed at FF considering its running on a moderately well specced machine, and its literally the only app I run regularly that gives me heartache.

That being said I've stuck with FF over Chrome and still prefer it for various reasons and recommend people try it. I just disagree with the idea I see floating around that there's nothing wrong with FF at all and its just as fast and stable as Chrome. It's not been my experience.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#642

Post by zwaps » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

rocqua wrote: post #591

zwaps wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not allow blocking Google\any tracking and Google ads, essentially, and gives the Ad industry (and malware) a way to circumvent the blocker with modern tech, because it is a non smart ad blocker but a dumb filter list from 2002. This is fully intended to give Google the ability to use sophisticated scripts to serve ads and track you despite blocking. Everything else Google says about this is bull! They probab…

> It does not allow blocking Google\any tracking and Google ads As per the article, you can still use a rule set to block. Whilst undoubtably less powerful, I would expect that could still be used to block Google stuff.

Why would you expect that? It seems to me that Google does this precisely because they have tech to circumvrnt dumb- style list blocking, but not more advanced heuristics.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#643

Post by collyw » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:19 AM UTC

Does this affect Chromium?

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#644

Post by drilldrive » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

arrivance wrote: post #640

drilldrive wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I currently use Firefox, and recently (likely owing to multi-processing) Firefox eats up 2G of RAM for me[0]. I have ~700 tabs open so that may be a factor as well. Other than this the browser works great for me, and I have always used Firefox as my main browser. [0] https://i.imgur.com/O8vvwUC.png

Did you say ~700? Shit, I have way higher memory usage and I'm only 15 tabs open (not that I complain - the overall RAM impact for me is nothing).

Yeah it was a higher total than I expected myself, but I do use a fair portion of the tabs fairly frequently, as I can witch to the tab I want by typing into the address bar.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#645

Post by chris_wot » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:26 AM UTC

feanaro wrote: post #547

chris_wot wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'm about to ditch Chrome altogether now. I gritted my teeth and just handled a few of the more bone-headed changes the Chrome team made, but this latest change is a deal breaker. The truth is, I actually don't need Chrome for anything. Firefox is faster now, gives me more freedom and has less corporate affiliations. I'll stick with Mozilla.

Out of curiosity, what would you say was the thing that still kept you on Chrome even though all of the things you said apply? Inertia due to habit?

Definitely inertia, but also the company I work for uses it extensively. But lately on my own personal devices I've been sticking to Firefox.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#646

Post by chris_wot » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:27 AM UTC

josteink wrote: post #565

chris_wot wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I'm about to ditch Chrome altogether now. I gritted my teeth and just handled a few of the more bone-headed changes the Chrome team made, but this latest change is a deal breaker. The truth is, I actually don't need Chrome for anything. Firefox is faster now, gives me more freedom and has less corporate affiliations. I'll stick with Mozilla.

> Yep, I'm about to ditch Chrome altogether now. I keep seeing people write stuff like this, and I just don’t get it. What’s keeping you? Why haven’t you switched already? I mean... it takes minutes at most.

I tend to have to use it at work. The reason I haven't shifted at work is a ridiculous one really - it's the way you can tear off tabs and move them to another screen - it doesn't tear the same way as Chrome. Like I say, ridiculous.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#647

Post by guuhv » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

frenchy wrote: post #457

hannasanarion wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has several experience-breaking bugs for me. One where on websites that don't explicitly set their form background to white, which is the default on most browsers, Firefox paints them the color of the user's desktop theme, even when the theme is dark. Black text on black background. This bug had been known about for almost 20 years and is marked "won't fix" because the devs still assert that universal user th…

> Firefox paints them the color of the user's desktop theme I don't think that's not the default. Are you sure you didn't change that? (It's configured under "Colors > Use system colours")

It's the default on Linux, "use system colours" is on by default, and the default background colour for widgets on Linux is usually not white.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#648

Post by dmos62 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

nh2 wrote: post #440

ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

Firefox has significant performance and correctness problems. * Multi-second UI jank/freeze ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1546847 ) * HTTP2 is broken, infinite-stalls and internal errors surface if you upload enough files ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1540574 ) * WebGL is very slow on Linux ( https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1010527 ) * High CPU on Linux even when in the…

> High CPU on Linux

Provided this is anecdotal evidence, in my experience it's the opposite. I gained an enormous amount of performance-related comfort after switching to Linux Firefox from Windows Firefox/Chrome (where a JS-heavy web site that I use frequently would cause memory overflow and would stall the laptop). I've not experienced any problems with CPU usage since. I've not experienced the other problems either, though I don't use WebGL. You make it sound like Firefox is heavily broken for everyone. That's not the case.

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#649

Post by eitland » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #289

ljm wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it’s so unfortunate and frustrating that people are depending so much on Chromium/Blink. Electron, various browsers that are just skins over the embedded framework... We were still dealing with legacy IE6 (and IE 7/8 by that point also) in 2013! Almost a decade since we got Firefox and the first version of Chrome. The web has empirically suffered through homogeneity and the lack of strong competitors in t…

> “Only works in Chrome,” is poor engineering for anything more than a prototype or proof of concept. Can't we, developers, do the opposite? Like introduce a small annoyance, like showing a pop-up, when visitors use Chrome? It could say something like "today is free web day, upgrade your browser to Firefox or any other libre browser"

> It could say something like "today is free web day, upgrade your browser to Firefox or any other libre browser"

Love it!

I'd suggest a small change: It could say something like "today and every other day is free web day, upgrade your browser to Firefox or any other libre browser"

Re: Google to restrict modern ad blocking Chrome extensions to enterprise users

#650

Post by nothrabannosir » Thu, May 30, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #269

Slightly off topic, I'm finding it very disingenuous that people in this thread(and any other threads that come up about Firefox) have actually had significant performance issues with Firefox. No bugs that are noteworthy, sans that fiasco with the expired certificate that disabled addons briefly. I've been using Firefox since "quantum" on both my MacBooks(one of which is old AF) and on Linux. I've yet to have problem…

I've been using Firefox every day on the same mbp 2015 with the same addons for almost 4y now. It might be uBO, but either way: FF drains battery. The Energy tab in Activity Monitor is very clear about it. When I switch to Safari (also uBO, fwiiw), fans stop spinning, the browsing experience feels like I upgraded to broadband and I get 2h more out of a charge.

Before quantum, during quantum rollout, since quantum, doesn't matter.

I've just accepted that slightly increased privacy comes at the cost of being plugged in to the mains. That's fine, I accept it, but I hope it's hardly disingenuous.