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Comment by dessant | Hacker News Reader

This is your cue to remove the extension from your browser immediately. I've been developing extensions for years, and I've never seen an extension acquisition done by a company like Avast not transform the extension into a data harvesting operation.

Judging by the size of the user base the author was paid at least 100k USD, all for an open source project that is free to fork. Avast has acquired you, the user, and the original maintainer continuing to work on the project is just a ruse, the new owners prefer to do it this way to reduce user loss until the business end of a future extension update is pushed out to your devices.

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Oh, I think in this case it's a match made in heaven. It's an extension for people who don't care about data harvesting.

I use it to dismiss the popups, and the cookies get deleted after. So actually I do care about data harvesting, but I also care about a popup free internet.

There exist uBlock origin lists to block most of those popups from ever popping up if you want a safer approach.

A lot of sites are non-functional till you either accept or reject the cookies.

For example, video embeds rarely work because they need to know if you accept cookies before deciding which preroll ad to play.

When I see a youtube embed, the frame for which is blocked by default using umatrix, I right-click it and open it with mpv. With my configuration, mpv performs better at video playback than any browser, saving me battery life. It also lets me use keybindings I'm familiar with, easily screenshot the video with a single press of the s key, and make video clips of the video too. This also bypasses youtube's age gating, without requiring me to have an account.

The same works for vimeo, dailymotion, etc. Even if the video embed doesn't even get created in the first place because I didn't run that page's javascript (I only run javacript on a whitelist basis), I can usually watch a video that would have been embedded in it by simply directing mpv to the hosting page itself. This even works for most local news websites (which seem to be the trashiest sort of pages on the web.)

> I right-click it and open it with mpv

That's a super neat feature - where does it come from? uMatrix?

Just drag the URL into an open MPV window. VLC can do the same.

Nothing "just" about that. Right click -> open in MPV is low friction. Launching MPV, arranging your windows so that both MPV and the browser is visible at the same time and then doing a drag-and-drop is much higher friction.

Well, there are ways to do even what you're talking about, it just takes some set up: https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/d3m0fz/how_to_open_lin...

From a quick Google on how to open URLs with mpv.

I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send-to-mpv-p... for this (can also be configured to use other media players). My only complaint is that the extension looks for video elements (when invoked for the active page rather than on a link) and if it finds any it sends those URLs to mpv instead of the page URL. This is great when you need to run some JS to get to the URLs which yt-dlp? does not understand but mostly is just annoying because it manages to break things when mpv with just the page URL works fine.

The "element picker" feature of uBlock Origin makes it generally easy to manually remove these sort of annoyances too. It can also do things like remove floating headers that follow you when you scroll down the page, covering article text you're trying to read (such as the one that is on the OP blog post.)

I use an add-on called "nuke anything" which lets you just rightclick on anything you don't like and get rid of it. Works great for most things, but element picker works well too.

I found that "I don't care about cookies" blocks a lot more popups, especially from German websites. Maybe because the developer is based in Europe.

I use Remove Sticky bookmarklet (so not even an extension) - https://lolfi.com/posts/removesticky/

the bookmarklet in question is:

```

javascript:(function()%7B%20let%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3B%20for%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7B%20if(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed'%20%7C%7C%20getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'sticky')%7B%20elements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%20%7D%20%7D%20%7D)()

```

Bookmarklets are an under appreciated part of web browsing. Here's one to tell you if the current article you are reading is posted on HN so you can read the comments:

    javascript:(function(){window.location.href = "https://hn.algolia.com/?q=" + window.location.href;})();

Do you know a good article explaining and showing examples of Bookmarklets?

I don't but they're pretty easy to explain. Create a new bookmark. Give it a name. In the url field instead of a standard url in the form "https://website.com" you put JavaScript in the form "javascript:(function(){...})();

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookmarklet

They're bookmark buttons that execute Javascript on click. You need to put semi colons at the end of all lines since they don't preserve new lines. Bookmarklets should validate the URL if they are specific to a website or page. For larger ones, keep a source file since editing a single line of Javascript is not fun.

Just so I get it right: Adding this javascript into the URL of a bookmark, then saving the bookmark, will remove cookies popup on any page going forward?? I am missing how this works.

I use the "close tab" feature, which saves me a lot of time I'd otherwise spend reading or watching low-quality content, which I have found to correlate with cookie popups and newsletter modals.

Nah I love coverage from the Guardian for example, who have terrible pop-ups that cover entire screens, but the writing quality is high.

That link is dead for me, but the sticky remover bookmarklet seems to be here: https://lolfi.com/posts/browsingdeez/

The addon possibly accepts tracking of all kinds, not just tracking via cookies.

If you agree to the GDPR "cookie" popups you generally also agree to other data harvesting that requires consent but which you cannot clear because it is not stored locally.

Which makes me wonder, if you use the multi-container and cookie autodelete extensions do you need to be concerned about this acquisition, even in the advent of Avast harvesting data?

Not necessarily. I use an other extension to delete cookies and data from every website and uBlock Origin blocks connections to trackers. So all I used to get with this extension was a way less cluttered user experience. I will now replace it with a simpler uBlock list.

It's kinda sad what the browser extension ecosystem has become.

Seems like a neat hobbyist / handy tool space that quickly turned into a sorta predatory space.

It's not just browser extensions, but any popular software project that has no stable funding source. This extension has been maintained for years, and it requires a lot of effort to keep updated because it interacts with websites.

These developers are then offered funds for perhaps a new home, and they can hardly be faulted for taking the deal. This issue can only be solved by finding better ways to fund the development of popular software projects that serve the public good.

https://armin.dev/blog/2019/08/supporting-browser-extension-...

So true.

Rando popular freeware suddenly has an installer from hell and so on.

I actually prefer the funding model where occasionally these free software developers do receive a big payday without any shame or stigma and a fork of their project is almost instantly launched under different branding. So Avast gets a one time user network buyout but the functionality of the tool persists in availability. Better funding for the project while it remains free is never a bad thing though, if you get a lot of value out of some free software you use please never forget to tip or even patreon/other-subscription-payment-plan its continued development!

Would you still feel the same way if you were hacked because of such a sale?

Linux distros manage fine without such sales - and this kind of behaviour would get a maintainer kicked and probably marked for life. Too bad that Browsers have chosen a free for all store model instead a maintained distro model. Meanwhile Mozilla keeps locking down installing extensions outside their store for "security".

> would get a maintainer kicked and probably marked for life

For trying to cash out and retiring for maintenance they'd be excluded from ongoing development? This is precisely what I meant by not shaming people for selling off their product.

There are a lot of assholes out there that are far more worthy recipients of your ire - I'm sure this extension wasn't acquired for 1.2 billion.

For selling out users they'd be excluded from positions that require user trust, yes. I'm all for rewarding open source developers and maintainers but let's not destroy the software in the process.

And yes, there are always bigger assholes - that's never an excuse.

How would you reward open source maintainers? Donations can rarely sustain a project, so my own solution was to also start selling my work on app stores, but that may not work for everyone.

This is why I generally only use ones that are approved by mozilla that I have researched. Of course I currently have 5 extensions because I'm pretty cautious.

Yep. Just import their filter list to uBlock Origin, and move on.

And then switch to Firefox, apparently, since uBO filter lists are likely about to break on chromium.

Hell, switch to Firefox anyways. It's pretty nice!

Thanks for the tip, I didn't realize this was possible. Even if the extension wasn't sold, I'm still happier running one less extension.

For those looking for the list, here it is: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

Amazing. Thanks to you and parent poster for this. Seems to work well.

Unfortunately this does not work for many websites... it requires additional clicking which is done via javascript or something.

I think the IDCAC extension would probably not even exist if it was just a simple filter...

I just turned of auto update for the "I dont care of cookie" addon, just as a precautionary measure to see how this ends and until there is an good replacement.

Me too.

You can still use the official IDCAC list or another one in uBlock. It’s not as good in big companies’ websites (like google) that show their own interactive multi page banners bc the filters can’t simulate clicks, but it’s still good enough for an uncluttered navigation in most websites.

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