uBlock Origin 1.20
github.com
github.com
Now there's also the list maintainers, who also work for free. Still makes you wonder about how the world works. There's probably many other similar instances. In any case, I think these people deserve more recognition than they currently do and we shouldn't take anything they do for granted.
You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers.
Back in the day I used a local proxy tool, Proximator or something.
AFAIK uBo isn't doing anything particular unique technologically (which doesn't mean I'm not grateful, nor that anyone could make it).
You can't. uBO has contextual information for each network request, something not available to external content blocking solutions.
For example, many filters are meant to apply only on specific domains or whether they are 1st- or 3rd-party, and for this to work you need to know from which origin a network request is fired.
Also, uBO has an advanced-user mode that let you create rules to override filters in static filter lists; allows to work in default-deny mode; or even allows to work with no static filter lists at all. Contextual information is key to advanced-user mode features.
www.google.com/search*tbm=nws^$document
www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Top stories))
www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Videos))
www.google.com##div[role="tab"]:has(a:has-text(News))
I wondered how it was even possible, found out they made whole OS-es in a similar manner, been a linux user for over 15 years now.
And a good chunk of it is maintaining & improving a large throughput backend system that is one of the top 10 in the world in terms of size and data volume.
And on top of that, an even smaller fraction is the people who think of and implement new front end things that you would interact with and think of the app changing. Like a lot of companies, it's probably a 10:1 ratio as far as backend:frontend people there are at the company.
As to why twitter changes so little, the company itself doesn't really understand why it's successful, so there is a lot of conservatism inside of it to not screw with the golden goose.
I wish someone would campaign a bit for the devs and support the development of OBS with all that money made from streaming with OBS.
Pretty much every top streamer uses it. I wouldn't be surprised if OBS was responsible for generating over $75 million worth of earnings for just the top streamers on Twitch in the last few years, then there's Twitch's cut on top of it. That's going by 1 article saying just the top 10 streamers alone earned $20 million last year alone.
OBS is one of those products where I bet if they put up a Kickstarter asking for support they would end up raising a few million. Come to think of it now, I wonder if Twitch has tried to buy / fund OBS in the past.
It’s amazing software and I would like to see the developers and the organization thrive and be sustainable for the long term.
MPC-HC only works on windows, so it's not comparable. mpv has also a lot of target platforms, but not as much as VLC. It's really nice though, and I think a bit of competition is good.
I think it's fine to compare projects when going beyond "which one is the bestest".
AFAIK that's exactly why the primary developer of uBlock forked uBlock (from it's rough new owner) into uBlock Origin and chose not to seek donations.
...to not have any obligations regarding the community.
It's just that in this case, the owners intention to have a great content blocker does seem to align with the needs of many other users.
Keep in mind that it's a product, not a service and open source, so no lock-in. The project being rarely forked shows the satisfaction of its users.
There's also, I believe, a regular firefox for android which I think does do extensions.
I always mention it to neighbors (who still don't use one..)
Massive thanks to everyone involved
uBlock Origin seems to have ~15 million active users between Chrome and Firefox (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_Origin). If it only spared us 10 seconds a day on average (probably a super conservative estimate), it would save the equivalent of an average human life (~70yrs) every 15 days! (And given that probably at least 70% of users don't use an ad blocker, it's infuriating to think what's the "human" cost of ads on the web alone...)
I fully expect google to decouple the YT ad free portion (they already decoupled YT Red), but until then it's a reasonable value prop.
https://github.com/omarroth/invidious https://invidio.us/ (one of the hosted instances)
The fact that there is no easy way to make this into a money project probably led to his relying so much on such a maintainer.
Part of the issue seems to be that the devs that actually value an OSS project don't have any way to persuade the company they work for to contribute to the project. If there was some way to be able to create a tier where a company would pay $12/month and be able to "something which benefits the company ?? bugfixes ??" - something support related or somehow, many of these projects (timezone, adblocker, ssh, even things like Matrix) could be funded.
Like a VPN service, or such.
Having adblocker extensions was one of the things that allowed Google to get Firefox users to switch at the time.
Ever wonder why Mobile Chrome doesn't have extensions or adblockers? Because it didn't have to compete with Firefox to gain marketshare.
[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/
Thanks you so much!
(not on mobile, so not sure which one I'm using)
As more people switched to contextual ads, the ecosystem for it would also improve and rates would hopefully increase (for smaller sites).
With non-surveliance based ads, they can make the ads completely indistinguishable from normal content in their CMS and make it look like first party content and server side based. And since the user info will be minimal beyond an IP, it will mostly be content based vs. user based. They can even do things like podcasts & youtubes videos do with sponsorships that come with the content.
They don't do it because it doesn't make as much money as the current status quo and would require more work to integrate if it was offered.
ive moved to bitwarden a few months ago and it is far superior and a lot less bloated than lastpass.
I use FF Nightly with uBlock Origin on my Pixel 2 XL in addition to Blokada, and it works just fine.
Could very well be better now... I've tended to try FF on most platforms about once a year as my main browser. I do tend to test in it for dev though. My current app doesn't really have a mobile target (mainly deals with scanned images, so desktop is primary).
There are at least two revenue sources on uBlock Origin... The software is free-to-use yes, but it doesn't mean that gorhill won't put money in his pockets.
Maybe he could make $thousands per month spending serious time on self-marketing begging effort, but I wouldn't blame him if he wasn't interested in that
You can say that again
"Ublock collaborators gorhill and Deathamns leave the project" (2015)
If anything, the split was because one of the uBlock contributors tried to monetize it for his own benefit only.
Also it's recommended[0] to install uMatrix[1] or eMatrix[2] side-by-side with uBlock Origin.
[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827
I get the frustration, but shouldn’t we be working towards models that allow for better compensation for creators rather than ... well I’m not exactly sure what you’re advocating for here ...
It'd be really cool to see more barriers to entry limiting people's ability to access some tech, and limiting the size of businesses that are built around it. The internet was much better when it belongs to and was embraced by nerds, and not the general public, for example.
Our modern world is too complicated for most folks and now we have to build things so overly simplified that it is nearly impossible to be a power user or do advanced tasks when everything is reduced to single-button, shitty-app solutions in the cloud maintained by megacorps with more money than God
Such a stupid move by the do no evil company! Now they do no stupid too.
EDIT: Here is link... https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/06/16/micr...
"we occasionally hear requests for a built in ad blocking experiences in Edge. For most users, we find that extensions (combined with strong defaults around tracking prevention) are the best option here because you can choose from a variety of experiences and defaults, but we absolutely want to hear from you if you think this should be built in."
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c094uf/hi_reddit_were...
“There are a couple components I want to touch on here - As mentioned elsewhere, we're still evaluating the adblock Manifest V3 changes, so we're not quite ready to commit to a statement one way or another on that issue.”
And:
“Second, we're committed to a strong extension ecosystem, including ad blocking. We're still evaluating some of the latest changes here in Chromium, but we're committed to the customer scenario as a principle. To be clear, we will not artificially restrict ad blocking for business reasons related to advertising.”
Philosophically, defining “evil” requires defining “good” first, and a definition of “good” depends entirely on one’s notions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny — one’s worldview.
In google’s case, it’s probably better business to simply remove the motto than to risk offending large groups of people in the quest for philosophical rigor.
> And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!
Philosophically, yes. But moral relativity does not hold well due to the existence of culture. For western countries, no one can defend the morality of slavery or genocide. While those are pretty extreme, we have also collectively (democratically) decided that screwing over customers for your own profit is also not moral and should not be allowed. That's why antitrust law exists.
My only issue is that chrome is great bec I can have multiple profiles on the same windows user account, but that’s kinda anathema to the paradigm of how Microsoft wants us to use Edge.
I use chrome profiles the same way ppl use Firefox containers, my only hope is that edge builds something similar.
I’ve also been using Vivaldi, I love it but I’m worried about using duh a small project that is still dependent on chromium.
And, the business concept of blocking other people's ads and showing you their own is pretty despicable in its own right.
I do since years and here are the tips you may find useful if You would also like to run FreeBSD on the desktop.
https://vermaden.wordpress.com/freebsd-desktop/
... and please stay away from Project Trident or TrueOS or Lumina, they are from from being ready.
... eventually GhostBSD is quite OK.
... sorry for hijacking the 'Brave' thread but I am not able to reply to the original comment (time).
I've swapped to Edge Beta on my PCs and Brave on my Android.
Well if you had asked your typical HN developer a few years ago whether they'd be using a Microsoft code editor ...
+ Microsoft Public/Private Git Hosting :-)
Seriously guys, if the last time you used Windows was a few years ago it is time to give it a another shot.
What's the point? They do it all the time when things start going bad. It'll turn to garbage as soon as they have enough of mindshare. Why be among the ones who run back and forth?
It's still awful.
Microsoft also keeps a copy of your full-disk encryption key. <https://theintercept.com/2015/12/28/recently-bought-a-window...
IIRC they lessened it by some ε > 0 in 1803. [1]
> As far as I remember, it is absolutely overreaching, collecting your name, email address, browsing history, searches, application usage and more.
Some of these seem more alarming than others. Where are each of these pulled from? If you have a Microsoft account they already have your name and address. Most people use Chrome and I assume Windows isn't sending that info to Microsoft (although this does make me worry for those who use IE/Edge). Searches and application usage I haven't heard explicitly but those would worry me more.
> Microsoft also keeps a copy of your full-disk encryption key.
Wasn't this only when you had a Microsoft account or something? We can debate how they shove MSAs down users' throat (I want to punch my computer when they do that too), but as far as the FDE key is concerned, I feel like those who don't want this also wouldn't want to use a Microsoft account for their logins to begin with?
But to respond to your overall point, there are probably hacks around each of the things I've mentioned, but the point is that I don't feel like using an OS that does these things is a reasonable alternative for me. Particularly because who knows what other kinds of aggressive changes are being concocted for the future. I try to make this point to my family and friends too and they seem to agree.
Thanks for the link though, I'll take a look.
You can remove them easily enough from a Microsoft account.
There's also a few custom installers/scripts that people have written to disable the telemetry via PowerShell that are floating around, but I think their up-to-date-ness varies from author to author.
This is no different than with windows. Except that more vendors sell you windows compatible pre-built systems. With macos the situation is far worse.
If you want more Linux enables hardware it will help to vote with your wallet and buy hardware from manufacturers that do provide support for Linux.
very funny
If I need to do serious work, I'll snap the keyboard on and open WSL, but for anything else, I'll detatch the keyboard and just browse the web with Edge.
It's not a great selling point. Not everyone thinks it's productive to switch operating systems once in a while.
# name that assumes no other apps exist, check
# randomly freezes, check
# doesn't produce a log without jumping through hoops, check
Seriously though, I only just started using it, looks great ;o)
IE9 improved on it with what I think is one of the most impressive feature to this day. It had a heuristic tracking protection that block trackers once it's detected at a certain re-occurrence counts that you can config. So in theory it doesn't need to subscribed to an ad list like all browsers do today.
IE took a lot of crap deservedly so, but that overshadowed a lot of pioneer works that later browsers adopted.
[1]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/iegallery
[2]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/collinbarrett/FilterLists/...
There might even be a critical mass of people who are against advertising to attempt to make some legal headway on this issue in Washington. Just as there has been legal action against telemarketers, there might be something on the legal front that can be done against online advertisers, who could be considered just as much or even more of a nuisance than telemarketers ever were. In addition, online advertising has repeatedly been a vector of malware, and perhaps companies which try to circumvent or forbid ad-blockers could have some legal consequences -- and, if not, perhaps laws could be introduced to make such consequences a reality.
IANAL, and this is just a pipe dream of mine at the moment -- but plenty of pro-consumer legislation has been made over the years. Perhaps the dawn of an unsolicited-advertising-free world is upon us.
How sweet would that be? Friend gets a car, I make a copy of it at zero cost!
I guess the standard answer to that would be "but you're depriving the manufacturer of money to cover the costs of providing the car in the first place"
Which is reasonable, but I'd have to question their business model if their manufacturing costs are so high and yet I can copy it for free ...
In hopes it'll one day turn into a catchphrase: no one is entitled to have a particular business model working for them forever.
What irks me is that such a gracious outlook leaves me open to being gouged by profiteers.
So copying it is!
People clearly care about net neutrality, and they would/do also care about browser ad blocking. At this point it's clear to people what the issue is and how it affects them. Taking something away from people is much more painful than preventing them from getting it in the first place.
Even if there could be enough lobbying pressure to seriously propose such a law, it would be deeply unpopular and have difficulty passing.
I think the issue is that shareholders want to see significant year-over-year growth, something that isn't sustainable in the long-term. We're merely being seen as an untapped market than can keep the needle moving for a few more years.
I like capitalism, but I think it's entirely unreasonable for shareholders to expect such gains in perpetuity. After all, there's a finite amount of money that can be extracted from any user. The trendline will inevitably start to level off after a period of time, and I'm frustrated by the fact that this eventuality has negative connotations associated with it.
I host a bunch of websites, and about five years ago I stuck adsense adverts on them. Due to the decent traffic I was earning about £80/month and that was stable for 3-4 years.
This year, and last year, I instead earned about £100/year, despite having much more traffic/visitors, and more "aged content". When I get a chance I'll rebuild all the sites and drop the adverts. Adblockers - which I use myself - have rendered them almost pointless.
So now it costs me to run it (excluding time considerations of course) whilst before it paid for itself.
Also with sites like Stack Exchange I tend to use them for what I blogged before (computer fixes mainly), so most of my new content nowadays is UGC on other people's sites too. Personal stuff goes on Facebook, on the whole.
That's not entirely true. Troy Hunt had (and still has) that[1], and his banner got added to EasyList none the less.
[1]: https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem...
This is the whole point of those filter lists. Otherwise I would have to remove his ad manually, which is undesirable.
AdBlock should be about making the internet tolerable again instead of the cesspit it's slowly becoming, but it's exasterbating the problem.
Troy made a step in the right direction.
Simple solution for you then: Don't visit sites with advertising. By repeatedly visiting sites with advertising, you're basically saying, "I want all this content but I'm not willing to support them financially."
On what grounds and by what rationale could adblockers be possibly outlawed? If you cannot answer this question reasonably, then please don't even mention this as a reasonable possibility.
I personally don’t think it’s very likely, for one thing I expect most of the staff at the likes of Google run an adblocker.
My guess is we will see much more sponsored content as a response to this.
Watch any new movie or TV show, and it’s unbearable to see the videography just to catch a car logo or drink logo. Shame. There’s even been full on descriptions by the actors of a car’s features, basically a commercial within the dialogue of the media.
My solution is to stop consuming it, not that I consumed a lot to begin with, but there’s no other option.
It didn't spoil the movie though, and in fact the bare-facedness of it even added some humour (-:
I don't think product placement is soooo bad. It's up to you if you're making a movie to make it fit. If you don't it detracts from the quality of your movie which to me seems a good enough motivator to get it right.
here the state law defines ANY unauthorized access to any computer system as felony, that includes snooping unsecured systems or MANIPULATING FUNCTIONALITY.
Microsoft is a much older company who recently transitioned from being a proprietary software company selling licenses to a company who sell that but who also do services such as cloud (Azure) and who also do all kind of FOSS and tracking (Windows 10).
I fear the future is going to be that the poor are paying with their privacy/time/focus (as a result of advertising and tracking), while the rich buy licenses to pay off the licenses. Heck, it is already like that. My Scrabble clone application (Wordfeud) costs ~3 EUR in the Play Store. The free version costs nothing, but shows ads (not sure about tracking). I figured 3 EUR is a good deal for me for a perpetual license to never see ads. However, 3 EUR for me could be a lot of money for someone who's more poor than me.
Why not using Firefox?
>> Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
google recently changed the way photos synced with drive
that and the aggressive android push
https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/12/google-drive-google-phot...
So went with the Norwegian Jottacloud. Looks quite good, performs well even from down under - uploaded 1.1TB in just a few days.
I have a lot of RAW images; their photo browser displays them fine, however they could do well to update the navigation a bit as it is cumbersome to jump say 15 years back in time.
Edit: It's still amazing to see my collection of NEFs and phone dumps (I clean our phones once or twice a year by moving all photos to the NAS) organised by time, extracted from the dark depths of my NAS drive folder hierarchies.
They might as well just scrap the free API completely, because its now worthless.
As things stand, though, if I gave Google any money, I'd be essentially wasting my time, because all I'd get in return would be dubious 'premium' features.
https://gsuite.google.com/security/?secure-by-design_activeE... "Google does not collect, scan, or use your data in G Suite services for advertising purposes and we do not display ads in G Suite. We use your data to provide G Suite services, and for system support, such as spam filtering, virus detection, spell-checking, capacity planning, traffic routing, and the ability to search for emails and files within an individual account."
there doesn't seem to be any google earth replacement around but then again its not really that important to have one, not for me anyway as its mostly something i just browse for entertainment every now and again
Anyone here uses Safari as their main browsing tool and has a good alternative? I mean 1.16 seems to do the job just fine, but if it falls behind too far...
Not OP, but FWIW I'm just using standard lists (you asked, I'm not sure what use it is): https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/h... https://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/justdomains http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/blocklist.php?download=domainbl... https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_tracking... https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_ad.txt
https://github.com/2ndalpha/gasmask
(And btw, uBlock origin can do more than block certain IPs)
That hasn't seen a release since 1.16 in April 2018.
What happens if more of the Internet learns about this extension? Subscriptions for all sites? Some other business model?
We've seen the open web and protocols stagnate because capturing users to spy on them is so lucrative, and open protocols make it harder to capture them. The open web would be revived without all the ad money and (consequent) developer time going into that capture effort.
For the rest, yeah, probably subscriptions.
Running a website has costs. Even if it can be run by a single person in their spare time, servers and bandwidth costs money.
> Nah, I just remember what it used to be like.
A lot of "what it used to be like" worked because the Internet had a much smaller audience. In the late '90s and early '00s, social media barely existed at all. There was a time when most of the people online were techies, now everyone with a phone made within the last 10 years has access to the Internet.
Just speculating, but reddit would probably be replaced by several sites (hundreds of popular ones, perhaps, thousands of less popular ones), many of which might permit login or shared feeds or something via the aforementioned means. RSS is still a thing, for that matter. You can also get by with much leaner sites even without going as far into old-school territory as HN and Craigslist, when you're not chasing marketing fads and adding tons of tracking JS and all kinds of other junk, so payload sizes don't need to be as large as they are.
And again, protocols could evolve. Something new similar to IPFS (though probably not actually IPFS) might reach production-ready status fast if there were a real need to distribute load. There are half-formed solutions to a lot of this waiting in the wings, just without much interest outside people who are into them for their own sake, because there's no audience for a somewhat-worse, much-less-addictive, spyware-free Facebook or Twitter, for instance. Community-driven alternatives have a nigh-hopeless battle while they're up against a money-spigot of ad dollars. Lots of developers who might help out with them don't, for that reason.
I mean hell chat was pretty decent and kinda mostly open for a while, but now it's fragmented into private services again, driven largely by the data-hoarders. Less open than even the AIM/ICQ days. Google's trying to do the same thing to email and the Web itself, largely in the name of "saving" them. Take away the ad dollars, the demand will shift away as those services shutter or start charging money, and open standards and enthusiast sites will take back over. Governments, in some cases, maybe (maps/navigation seems like a good one). No apocalypse, just a hiccup. Except for the dragnet spying companies.
Thanks to the team (and especially Ray) for keeping us free of performance bogging, malware delivering scripts.
It is much harder to get the site whitelisted once it has been compromised since it is on the same domain.
In my job, we had a site domain that was falsely flagged as malware-infected and it took about a few days before it was confirmed as removed (it is not automated apparently). It was never made clear why it was flagged in the first place but it scared us and we had to isolate any downloadable files (installer, ads, etc) away from the main domain as much as possible.
I don't remember third party domains being problematic to remove compared to the first party stuff?
It could be argued that self selection from advertisements makes ad campaigns more cost effect per impression/click. If a person wants to block ads they might be less influenced/willing to purposefully click on adverts.
The other end of the stick is that website owners cant be trusted to self report metrics which influence payout.
Adblockers also do CSS blocking. Look at how uBlock origin blocks the (included in the page HTML) ads on google.com.
if ( self.browser instanceof Object ) { self.chrome = self.browser; } else { self.browser = self.chrome; }
Instead of using a polyfill like that one https://github.com/mozilla/webextension-polyfill?
Often, a little copy is better than a little dependency.
More often, a little copy is better than a large dependency.
Using a full well-written* dependency for something not part of your "core competency" (even something seemingly trivial) is often a better choice in my opinion. That dependency will often know the "unknown unknowns" to you since their "whole purpose" is solving that one issue.
In this case, and from what I can see from my VERY small glance at the code, I'd argue using a polyfill would be a better choice in this situation. The polyfill has cross-browser tests, ensures compatibility, continually tests against new browser versions and will alert you and shield you from things if they change, download size is less of a worry for extensions and most of it no-ops away in 100% supported browsers, and it's maintained by mozilla.
Obviously there might be additional reasons why the uBlock origin developer isn't using it, it might be super overkill for his needs, he might consider the browser API part of his "core competency" and therefore shouldn't be relying on 3rd party code for it. I'd trust him more than myself here since I know so little about the domain. And I had a similar question to the GP commenter of why he decided to avoid the polyfill.
Your little saying isn't a useful answer, and the dig at "modern javascript developers" is not only unnecessary but also a real annoyance for me because it's used to dismiss just about every opinion while providing no real reasoning why you think that way. If you think a little copy is better, explain why! Don't just put down a group and leave without giving out any useful information!
* A "well written" dependency meaning something well tested, has a solid development team or dedicated person, and has somewhat widespread usage. Obviously it will differ depending on your needs.
Yes, it makes tradeoffs that are different, and those tradeoffs are different in that they're better. Often, not always. That's the statement in a nutshell.
> Using a full well-written* dependency for something not part of your "core competency" (even something seemingly trivial) is often a better choice in my opinion.
If it's outside your core competency, you can't really judge if a dependency is well-written. Popularity is an entirely unreliable quality metric. "Well-tested" also means nothing, a lot of people write completely useless unit tests but still fail on integration. How much time are you going to spend researching and vetting the code and the development "team" for that "seemingly trivial" dependency? How about writing a few lines of code and building a little bit of understanding instead? You can still use other people's code as a reference, even copy parts of it.
> That dependency will often know the "unknown unknowns" to you since their "whole purpose" is solving that one issue.
Sure, a few lines of code may have unknown unknowns. You know what else has? Other developers. Unbeknownst to you, "the team" could be the left-pad guy, who turns out to be "political". "The team" could be the guy that just hands over an unmaintained repository to a cryto-thief from China. That one took several weeks to get noticed by the community.
You start with one little dependency for one use-case, you end up with hundreds if not thousands of dependencies. You realistically have no capacity to deal with this in a diligent manner.
One could argue that by using "modern Javascript" with its pathological reliance on micro-dependencies, one has already given up control to the hive of random developers anyway, so one more dependency wouldn't hurt. I probably would agree with that. That doesn't mean every Javascript program would be better off this way.
Of course you can. I can not understand the details of something like the webextensions surface area, but still can look at the polyfill and understand that it's well written, that the tests aren't useless, that the popularity isn't faked, and that the maintainer is worthy of trust.
Nothing is foolproof, but I'd be much more willing to put things that I don't fully understand into someone else's hands who claims to have a lot of experience and has a lot of support from people who do understand that thing. Especially when the alternative is to trust myself who verifiably doesn't understand the thing.
>How much time are you going to spend researching and vetting the code and the development "team" for that "seemingly trivial" dependency?
That's a really good question! For me it depends on the project. A core project which has access to a lot of PII or is an important part of our infrastructure, i'm going to spend quite a while vetting a dependency. I might see what else the author has written, I might see how they release, how long they've been in the game, how their tests look, past PRs and issues, release cadence, backwards compatibility, and more. For an extra utility that is not critical? I might spend like 15 minutes, or even less depending on what it is doing and how widespread it's usage is. Looking at the chances of me getting a malicious developer or a very broken update that I didn't test against or see is much smaller than the chances that I'll write a bug and not test it, or I'll not fully understand a domain and will add subtle bugs into it, and won't even know how to test it correctly.
>Other developers.
And that's a risk that many are willing to take quite often. You can't completely rid yourself of dependencies. You can't 100% vet all 3rd party code, and you can't run entirely on first party code. It's not possible. So you trust some things here and there, you lock down dependencies so they don't update unless you say to, you review things and limit the scope of permissions. All things you should be doing anyway. Yes, it's a tradeoff, but it's one that the vast majority of code I've written is more than safe to make, especially when the author of a library is also the author of the browser it will be running in...
>You start with one little dependency for one use-case, you end up with hundreds if not thousands of dependencies. You realistically have no capacity to deal with this in a diligent manner.
But we do! That's what dependency managers are for! I can seamlessly replace dependencies, even several layers deep. I can scan and get diffs on changes, I can easily audit the dependency tree to determine if known vulnerabilities are found and either remove the library or update it. Again, it won't work in 100% of cases, but you aren't going to write 100% correct code yourself either.
>One could argue that by using "modern Javascript" with its pathological reliance on micro-dependencies, one has already given up control to the hive of random developers anyway, so one more dependency wouldn't hurt. I probably would agree with that.
Using 3rd party dependencies is a far cry from "giving up control to the hive of random developers". Just like how you using a browser to post this comment which relies on a compiler which uses tools written in python which relies on a python interpreter which itself relies on another compiler which relies on OS libraries which rely on more and more and more isn't trusting the "hive of random developers" either. There are checks, there are audits, there are tools to manage that at just about every step. Javascript has them as well.
There's being careful, and there's being paranoid. Sometimes paranoid is needed, and I do actually agree with a lot of your arguments if they apply (For the love of god don't use one-line dependencies, don't use dependencies written by an author with an agenda who has shown themselves willing to delete/maliciously-break packages, don't just add dependencies without any review or oversight or testing), AND I do agree that the JS ecosystem takes it a bit far (although I'm not fully on-board with if it's a bad thing entirely yet), but don't just throw out statements like "a little copying is better than a little dependency". That's how you get dogmatism which just swings the pendulum in the other direction and we end up with unmaintainable statically-compiled messes with vulnerabilities that can't be found and patched on any realistic timeframes.
No you can't, at least not in the general case. You can trust Mozilla because it's Mozilla, but ultimately that's an "argument from authority".
> Looking at the chances of me getting a malicious developer or a very broken update that I didn't test against or see is much smaller than the chances that I'll write a bug and not test it, or I'll not fully understand a domain and will add subtle bugs into it, and won't even know how to test it correctly.
Perhaps, but unless the code you are writing is "safety-critical", those "low chances" are outweighed by the fact that a malicious actor can do far more damage than some bug you introduced.
Also, you have to multiply those low chances with the large amount of micro-dependencies that you might bring in through this attitude.
> You can't 100% vet all 3rd party code, and you can't run entirely on first party code.
Of course you can, unless you count the runtime environment as third-party code, which I don't.
> But we do! That's what dependency managers are for!
Yeah, well. Believe that if you must.
> Just like how you using a browser to post this comment which relies on a compiler which uses tools written in python which relies on a python interpreter which...
This is a slippery slope argument. I think there's a distinction to be drawn here.
CPython doesn't have a lot of dependencies, certainly no micro-dependencies. The amount of contributors is rather small and changes are extensively vetted. The standards for browsers are similarly high.
Your average NodeJS project, on the other hand, pulls in a thousand packages from a thousand authors, supposedly vetted by the community - but not really.
> don't just throw out statements like "a little copying is better than a little dependency". That's how you get dogmatism...
It's a proverb, I didn't make it up. I put in the "Often" just to make it sound less dogmatic. You took it out again, presumably so that your long diatribe doesn't look so misplaced.
Your mileage may vary.
I'm not saying absolute trust, I'm saying I trust them to write a better polyfill for extensions than I will. An argument from authority is okay when the alternative is an "argument from ignorance". I know I don't know the details, and I'm trusting someone who literally writes the runtime to know it better than me.
>Perhaps, but unless the code you are writing is "safety-critical", those "low chances" are outweighed by the fact that a malicious actor can do far more damage than some bug you introduced. >Also, you have to multiply those low chances with the large amount of micro-dependencies that you might bring in through this attitude.
I'm genuinely curious about this, because from my point of view the number of times that I've encountered a malicious actor is extremely small and is often dealt with within days if not hours. The number of times that i've encountered my own vulnerable code is much more common. And with non-malicious bugs/vulnerabilities the number is similar. It could be just because I find my own bugs easier, but I really think there is something to relying and trusting that the community is going to be able to do something better, faster, and more correctly than I will be able to. Add on the npm audit system which is constantly scanning and notifying about known vulnerable dependencies means I'll be able to find and solve bugs and vulnerabilities much faster than if I had written even most of it myself.
I'd love to see some actual studies done that aren't just relying on anecdotes to see how things really shake out, but I'm not sure how that would even work as there are so many other confounding factors here that make it really hard to make a hard rule about these things (there is a lot of garbage code on the internet and across most package managers, any study would need to separate the "nobody should ever use this" from the "looks good at first glance" code, and at that point you're just making an automated code reviewer...)
>This is a slippery slope argument. I think there's a distinction to be drawn here.
I completely agree, but often drawing those distinctions is arbitrary. You may draw it at the runtime, I tend not to because a runtime (or the tools that make the runtime, etc...) often have much more ability to cause problems than any runtime library does. Counting "number of dependencies" is extremely hard, because like I said cpython does have quite a lot of dependencies, it just depends on where you draw the line. cpython's compilation depends on quite a lot of smaller tools, and the compilers they support and use depend on even more. As you get further down the stack things slow down and are often vetted much more, but that itself doesn't mean much as the "payoff" for a malicious actor to get into it is often equally greater.
And even if you do draw the line at the runtime or compiler, does that mean that the JS dependencies in my package.json that are dedicated to compilation and building don't count toward your numbers? And if you don't count the transitive dependencies for something like cpython, then it seems disingenuous to include them in your statements about how a node package pulls in thousands of dependencies. And if you draw the line at some dependencies being "okay" and others not based on number of authors, dependencies, the amount of vetting, and more, well you're doing exactly what I was advocating for above!
>I put in the "Often" just to make it sound less dogmatic.
That is fair, and I did remove it from the quote. But I started this whole thing because you didn't describe the reasoning behind why you felt that way, and without the why it is literally just dogmatism.
And to be honest I still don't feel you've given a great answer for it besides the idea that as the number of some dependencies goes up the risk of a malicious actor goes up. Which I don't necessarily disagree with! I guess I just draw the line at a different spot. For me the risk of a malicious actor is miniscule compared to the risk of not completing the project from having to write so much code to avoid dependencies, writing bugs in domains that I don't understand, or copying code into my codebase that I don't fully understand breaking the dependency link that I can use to do automated scanning of. Not in every project, but in most.
But that's not even the scenario here. You have the choice between bringing in a couple of lines of code you wrote yourself, or another dependency. Sure, in this case the vendor is entirely trustworthy and presumably competent. That's not the general case.
Let's say it was the general case, is it still worth increasing the complexity of your program for that little piece of functionality? Can you judge the runtime cost at all? What about bundle size? (Not applicable in this case, but still) Does the integrating the polyfill cause more work over a simpler solution?
Those are rhetorical questions, I don't want to keep on with the walls of text. The point is, the argument doesn't stop there.
> Counting "number of dependencies" is extremely hard, because like I said cpython does have quite a lot of dependencies, it just depends on where you draw the line.
CPython itself only has a handful of dependencies (libc, libffi, openssl, zlib, maybe a couple more) and almost all of them are optional. I'm drawing the line at actual dependencies of the program, not the operating system or the compiler (though neither GCC nor LLVM have a lot of dependencies either) or the basic build tools that ship with basically any UNIX-like system.
However, even if we added them all up I doubt we would have more "units" (programs, libraries) than in your average NodeJS project.
> And even if you do draw the line at the runtime or compiler, does that mean that the JS dependencies in my package.json that are dedicated to compilation and building don't count toward your numbers?
It doesn't matter, you're probably fucked either way.
However uBO's code base was primarily that of a Chromium-based extension (it predates Firefox WebExtensions), and Firefox extensions API does not require a polyfill to run Chromium-based extensions.
So roughly I just needed both `chrome` and `browser` references to access the same API, the long term goal being to opportunistically replace all instances of `chrome` with `browser` (I find the later more vendor neutral).
1. The job of Safari isn't to be everything to everyone.
2. Most tech enthusiasts just install Firefox or Chrome anyway.
3. Your web browser is by far the most critical aspect of computer security for most users. It controls the entire trust chain between yourself and your online bank. Your browser validates the security certificates. Your browser decides what to do with the passwords you enter. Your browser decides what to show in the address bar.
4. We know that most casual web users have suffered great privacy violations from dodgy add-ons, either by disguising itself as a useful tool or via drive-by installation. This isn't a hypothetical fear. It's very real.
5. Apple's unique selling point is privacy and security. Anything they can do to ensure that your grandmother's browser isn't compromised should be prioritised and applauded.
6. You can add untrusted extensions using the Extension Builder by obtaining a free cryptographic certificate from Apple. It's not trivial but it's just the right amount of onerous to stop your grandmother from being defrauded.
Isn't that exactly the sort of thing the Apple walled garden is supposed to protect against? Surely anything that functions as a key logger and browsing history recorder violates their terms of service?
I'm fairly confident that this doesn't happen in Mozilla's addons repository. As I recall from the Stylish incident (Stylish is a similar browsing history stealing extension) they were not allowed to put this extension in AMO with the history stealing code, but it was left untouched in the Google Play store.
Originally, Google wanted to max at 30k items, but after the outry, they increased it to 150k.
For comparison, my uBlock has currently 101k of net filters and 49k cosmetic filters.
Edit: I see it’s ublock, not ublock origin. What’s the difference?
If it's in the App Store, it's not even a fork, it's just some piece of software using the "uBlock" name.
That said, I've noticed more and more sites are starting to do the ad blocker detection and not allowing you to see the content until you white list them. It started with a simple body {overflow:hidden} and a modal box, but they are now truncating their content.
And I don't mind a site advertising, they have to make their money somehow, but I don't like how the modern ad-tech is so kludgy.
When I publish a new version of uBO, I deploy gradually, starting with 5% of users then increasing every day: 12%, 25%, 50%, 100%."
UPDATE
After reading the comments on the linked blog article, frantically hitting the "Update" button (in developer mode) many times indeed helps! I had clicked it quite a few times already, but "normally", going crazy and hitting it a lot and quickly indeed lead to the update occurring.
Wow, what a crazy user interface that requires users to go berserk on the buttons...
For the technical reasons read
https://www.howtogeek.com/335712/update-why-you-shouldnt-use...
For the interpersonal reasons please see the lead developer acting like a spoiled child here.
https://github.com/jasperla/openbsd-wip/issues/86
Friends don't let friends use a crappy, out of date, insecure, janky browser.
>For the technical reasons read
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?p=135424#p135424
>For the interpersonal reasons please see the lead developer acting like a spoiled child here.
(btw mattatobin is not a lead developer, get your fact straight please)
https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?p=134236#p134236
>Friends don't let friends use a crappy, out of date, insecure, janky browser.
The unofficial patches are presumably by definition not copyright the project considering they are written by a third party.
This is kind of how multiple source based packages work. Nothing is being distributed by the repo save instructions the end user does the fetching and building.
Normally people do a small amount of research before attacking volunteers who are providing free labor to make their package more broadly available.
An example dialog could have been opened like so.
"We at the Pale Moon project prefer that distributions package as close as possible to the default experience to ensure that all users have the same experience and aid in troubleshooting. Can we talk about the patches that are being distributed with Pale Moon to see if they are really needed for our product to work on your OS?"
If no agreement can ultimately be reached respectfully ask for it not to be distributed but use the know how generated to add a forum post "Building on OpenBSD" not burning any bridges AND actually profiting from the experience.
Instead Pale Moon devs appear to have learned nothing from the interaction.
I've noticed that you didn't bother to address the technical reasons whatsoever. Your browser is probably the best vector into your system and malware no longer just screws up your system. It's now common for malware to encrypt your files and hold them for ransom.
In effect an out of date firefox means that malware authors can use up to date firefox's security fixes to target users using old software that perforce is vulnerable to the same attacks. This needn't be specifically targeted at JUST palemoon users. All users of out of date firefox represent a possible victim pool with attractively low security.
It's right there, bellow the "crappy, out of date, insecure, janky browser" unfounded claims, open the two links I've provided and you'll see that ALL the technical reasons are covered extensively.
In fact, i also would use Vivaldi every day over Firefox. Mozilla has turned into a greedy sell-out developer with zero respect for power- or geek users!
Example Pentadactyl -> Tridactyl, noscript, ublock origin, stylus.
I'm not clear where you are coming from with the "greedy" accusation nor where you get off calling them sell outs. Based on what?
Your refrains betray "reduced to 180 characters" level of understanding of the matter and I strongly suggest you gain a more complete understanding of technical and business matters before attacking people who are producing so much value for the open source community.
— How quickly will serious vulnerabilities be patched?
Given the project is so small, I wouldn't trust their future response to be rapid even if they have been in the past. Right now most security fixes come in the form of merging upstream security fixes from Mozilla. As their code base becomes increasingly divergent to the Firefox head, merging in upstream security fixes will become increasingly difficult and increasingly cumbersome.
— How much do you really trust these developers?
I don't think many people realise just how important your browser is when it comes to trust. When you access online banking, your browser is in ultimate control of the entire trust chain. Your browser validates the security certificates. Your browser decides what to do with the passwords you enter. Your browser decides what to show you in the address bar.
— What's wrong with Firefox 67+ anyway?
The one thing everyone seems to cite when they say they use Pale Moon or Waterfox is that they still support the older extension system. The reality is all important extensions were unaffected. And while some genuinely useful extensions were lost in the transition (e.g. DownThemAll) most should be standalone applications anyway.
Also, my problems with the browser product itself are simple: the UI is awful and cannot be meaningfully fixed, and multi-process programs cause my computer to hang (so I set up a script to auto kill them). Pale Moon respects me as a User, not as an ad profile for Google.
I would never trust the judgement of the most important piece of software on my computer to a small group of tinkerers maintaining a fork of someone else's massively complicated and deeply outdated source code. I don't care who they are—if they don't have a big enough reputation on the line, there's no reason to trust them.
I'm sure your cousin is super trustworthy, but that doesn't mean anyone should put him in charge of the armoured vehicles division of a bank.
Besides, it's a lot easier for a microscopically small and individualistic outfit like Pale Moon to never disappoint you compared to a large, managed entity like Mozilla which has disclosure policies and hundreds of employees each with their own priorities and agenda.
But for a limited use program like a browser, yeah, I want the people who won't disappoint me.
Mozilla is morally wise a totally unacceptable developer. They have been on the good side in the past, but what is left is almost as disgusting as Google itself... the Google - which Mozilla tries so hard to become itself.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases/tag/firefox-legac...
and here's the uBlock Origin Updater https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/ublock0-updater/