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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

#81

Post by bhaney »

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…

At that point I'm just going to have my ad blocker block the entire "inner browser." No website that would employ such a lovecraftian horror is worth visiting anyway.

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

#82

Post by simondotau »

jameslk wrote: post #78
simondotau wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need “new features” not available in Safari in order to run an ecommerce website, I’m fairly confident that you’re doing it wrong. (Of course usually when one delves into exactly what features Safari is missing, specifically the ones which piss off web developers, it’s push notifications. And to that I salute Apple for bravely holding the line against that nonsense.)

No, for me they have more to do with web performance. Look up how to track Largest Contentful Paint in Safari, for example. Many other types of ways to optimize websites are not available in Safari. IIRC push notifications are supported in Safari.

The absence of LCP reporting doesn’t affect your ability to build a website that works in Safari. My suggestion is to stop embedding eighteen third party performance metric platforms and your website will be faster than any of those platforms could ever make it.

I work in this field too and I’ve heard it all before — and 99% of it is bullshit. Web performance is a solved problem and has been for a decade, unless you build some ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine of libraries atop libraries.

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

#83

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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…

The next step in the arms race is to provide hosted ad blocking, where the action happens (however nested) in a headless server and an AI looks it over and relays only the stuff that looks like content into a cleaned up session for the user. It would eventually start looking like a CDN where the ad blocker caches the content so it doesn't have to bother contacting the underlying site so often.

I would pay for such a service.

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

#84

Post by tshaddox »

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…

> 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 measure and you kill DNS-based ad blockers too.

I'm confused how the "inner browser" meaningfully helps you accomplish this. How is this any easier or more effective than just having a website that hosts its own advertising assets (or proxies them) and obfuscates/randomizes its DOM structure to make ads difficult to target with simplistic ad-blocking rules?

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

#85

Post by cyanydeez »

kgwxd wrote: post #65
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…

The internet advertising industry needs to move past insisting that user machines have to be involved in a business relationship they have nothing to do with and no legal, or ethical, obligation to uphold. All other forms of advertising work that way. The advertiser and host need to figure out how to keep each other honest without involving passers-by.

Thing is, internet adtech involves a rock paper scissors evolution.

It's not just a advertisement and a viewer, it's also the bots.

Adtech is where it's at now just cause it wants you to see it but because a industry of faking viewership built up around it.

No other advertisement has really had to deal with how ads are bought on per viewer basis.

All the targeting tech is equally a response to "personalization" as it is to "fraudulent botters"

You can then understand that if ads reverted to the old static billboard or tv commercial state, there's probably be little incentive to harass the user.

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

#86

Post by tshaddox »

bhaney wrote: post #81
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…

At that point I'm just going to have my ad blocker block the entire "inner browser." No website that would employ such a lovecraftian horror is worth visiting anyway.

Presumably the worry is that the big ad companies would get approximately every website in the world to use this technique, which is already the only reason web advertising is such a big problem.

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

#89

Post by ilyt »

tshaddox wrote: post #84
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…

> 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 measure and you kill DNS-based ad blockers too. I'm confused how the "inner browser" meaningfully helps you accomplish this. How is this any easier or more effective t…

Well the idea is stupid and makes no sense but

> How is this any easier or more effective than just having a website that hosts its own advertising assets

advertisers REALLY don't want you to do that because it's far too easy to cheat.

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

#90

Post by Terr_ »

cangeroo wrote: post #75
Terr_ wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Electron... when I start my Slack client for work, there are a series of processes where at least one reports 1.130 terabytes of virtual memory. (Shown in top as "VIRT".) Now, maybe that's just a potential usage that trust-me-bro it'll never actually try to use or access in RAM or on disk... but how on earth is that number for a chat client so much bigger than either Firefox with 100+ tabs or even Java-ba…

Virtual memory is allocated for isolation reasons. See v8 isolates.

> v8 isolates

Javascript engines aside, that sounds like a great sci-fi movie macguffin material.

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