Like many others, the ability to run uBO is the main reason I use Firefox. Otherwise I'd use Chrome or Safari.
If Mozilla killed andblocking extensions I’d switch to Helium Browser in a heartbeat since they’re maintaining manifest v2 support for uBO and even ship it OOTB.
The web is unusable without a proper Adblock.
It's a privacy nightmare as well. Few people reason how much data they give away to a host of shady companies just by letting ads display.
There is server-side now (and previously) hosted by the site owner.
It’s a lost cause to fight this. I admire you all for using FF because uBO just for the experience, but it’s only a partial data block. Serverside and thumbprinting- you can’t be anonymous even with Tor, VPN, etc.
Imagine all the data Cloudflare vacuums.
(JS has few good uses, but is too excessive. Less code is always better - and an art.)
(- it's kind of behavior extension on tag level, yet has JS - and it's orthogonal, like CSS or XSLT (BTW. see that hack: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41245159), unlike JS which is.. untamed and invasive; i.e. there is video (any) tag but you could (+)DIY not touching the document - like custom playing with MPlayer or VLC as a plugin there for all AV formats or sorting filtering editing whatever, all aside custompacks? :)
- or, what about the other way, like a firewall ??
Right, that could be nice use of AI to extract only the good parts - or, at least, to adjust the rules for https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/requestcontro... by function.
There are community-made forks which fix the cookies problem, like nuTensor.
Not my experience at all. I run uMatrix on every computer I have and it is awesome. Still annoyed it was replaced by uBo which is quite good, but nowhere as nice as uMatrix. Luckily uMatrix still works great.
I wish they'd just scrap the uBo interface and replace it with the uMatrix interface which is far superior.
By the way, I realized that most of the tabs where I'm logged into something run inside their own tab container, so that limits the damage that any bug on handling cookies can do.
[0] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/develop/migrate...
Yeah but they haven't and they're not going to, so what's the point of fantasizing about what you would do in that situation? It's like tough guy syndrome, where a person constantly fantasizes about what they would do in the imaginary situation where one of their friends or family is disrespected, or doomsday preppers who spend their life imagining what they would do in an apocalypse that never comes.
That stuff belongs on archiveofourown.com, not news.ycombinator.com.
And for the record, as a Firefox user, count me in with the others who would switch and just use Safari on my Mac if they went through with it!
I think the only person fantasizing here is you, about what random strangers on discussion forums do all day when not responding directly to topics at hand.
I'm all for fanfiction, but as I noted before, it seems that these days archiveofourown.com is where people publish that stuff, not Hacker News. It's easy to sign up and if your fiction is creative people will give you positive reviews. But you might need to spice it up by implying a conspiracy to cooperate with Google or something.
whenever i'm off my home wifi network, i have wireguard configured to connect home and get me that ad blocking. it's so nice.
yes, i prefer to use brave for personal stuff and i use edge for work stuff (reasons,,, don't ask)
These days I’m using AdGuard on iOS and ublock origin with Firefox on everything else.
It amazes me that every link the kid's school sends is a tracking link, and not always the same tracker.
Unusable for the commenter perhaps, based on his choices, but not unusable in an absolute sense
For example, I have been using the web without an adblock for several decades.^1 I see no ads
Adblocking is only necessary when one uses a popular graphical web browser
When I use an HTTP generator and a TCP client then no "adblock" is necessary
When I use a text-only browser then no "adblock" is necessary
Websites that comprise "the web" are only one half of the ad delivery system
The other half is the client <--- user choice
Firefox is controlled and distribuited by an entity that advocates for a "healthy online advertising ecosystem" and sends search query data to an online advertising services company called Google in exchange for payment. Ex-Mozilla employees left to join Google and start another browser called "Chrome"
These browsers are designed to deliver advertising. That's why an "adblock" extension is needed
When one uses a client that is not controlled and distributed by a company that profits from advertising services, that is not designed to deliver advertising, then an "adblock" may not be needed. I also control DNS and use a local forward proxy
The web is "usable" with such clients. For example, I read all HN submissions using clients that do not deliver or display ads. I am submitting this comment without using a popular graphical web browser
1. Obviously there are some exceptions, e.g., online banking, e-commerce, etc. For me, this is a small minority of web usage
The web is usuable with a variety of clients, not only the ones designed to deliver ads
So you browser as if it were 1999? Yup, no ads back then.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_blocking#History
[2] https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/exhibitions/web-banners-in-t...
I even still use the original line mode browser and other utilties in the 1995 w3c-libwww from time to time
The "modern" protocols are handled by the local forward proxy not the client
TLS1.3, HTTP/2, QUIC, etc.
You know that your long-winded and patronizing response in no way is a solution to the problem that you claim it is for the audience you're talking about.
Why do you pawn off an obviously non-solution as a solution? What does this get you?
If you’re happy with it, carry on. But you are using the equivalent of an ad blocker.
There are some web users who are online 24/7
There are others who may prefer to stay offline
A wide variety of people use the web for a wide variety of purposes
HN commenters are a tiny sliver of "all users" and "all purposes"
As such, HN commenters are not qualified to opine on behalf of "almost all users" as almost all users do not comment on HN or elsewhere on the web. Almost all users prefer to express their opinions about the web, if any, offline
I make HTTP requests with a TCP client
There are no "false positives"
I only request the resources that I want, e.g., the HTML from the primary domain, JSON from the API domain, etc.
I also use custom filters written in C to extract the information I want from the retreived HTML or JSON and transform it into SQL or "pretty print"
There is nothing to "block" because I'm not using software that automatically tries to request resources I do not want from domains I never indicated I wanted to contact
And yet somehow most people in the world use it every day without an adblocker...
Now I'm back to Firefox again and nothing has died so far.
I like Firefox (for safety) and Vivaldi (Chromium browser, it's easier to use) on Android mobile. On iOS, Safari is simple and sufficient, but I would prefer UBO there, however we all know Apple will never allow extensions for Safari.
Ever since Google moved to Manifest v3, Chrome is a no go.
fwiw Safari on iOS does allow some extensions and uBlock Origin Lite is free in the iOS App Store.
Wherever I've worked as a dev in a decade I've always developed Firefox-first and let the testers turn up Chrome issues. So the products that I am involved with just work with Firefox all the time.
I know there are a lot of people like me, people who are passionate and engaged with technology but have problems with "big tech" and if they turn people like me away than it really will be a "niche browser that nobody tests"
But let's not kid ourselves. We're an absolute minority. For every one of us, there are hundreds, thousands of developers who literally do not give a shit so long as their paychecks hit their accounts. Actually they're likely to write Firefox off as some irrelevant niche market the company can afford to lose because it's less work for them if they do.
(2) It just takes one on the team to make the difference
(3) Practically compatibility with Firefox is pretty good. Maybe once a month I use an e-commerce site or other e-business site where I have to drop down to Chrome, Edge or Safari.
May our new AI co-workers put those thousands into the poorhouse for shoddy worksmanship.
I haven't compared it in years, but Firefox's bookmark sync is better than Google's, it is a reason why I have stuck with it.
I think Firefox manages hundreds of tabs better than Chrome does as far as memory usage goes. I haven't used Chrome seriously in years, but people continue to complain about how RAM hungry Chrome is so I assume it is still an issue.
But Mozilla has been doing odd things that makes me question them. I would move to some Chromium based browser if ublock origin was... blocked... pun intended... because the web does prefer Chrome over Firefox. If this 3rd party browser is able to integrate some of the functionality of ublock origin that Firefox chose to remove; I would use it over the reasons I listed above in a heartbeat.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...
The default settings are to allow it to acquire memory until memory pressure on the system reaches 5% free, at which point it will begin freeing memory. You can set a custom percentage or a specific amount of memory.
That or just run it in a cgroup with a memory limit.
Also, I have a ton of bookmarks and as I been slowly deleting them Firefox's performance has improved. This same giant size of bookmarks Chrome seems to sync out of order causing their placement to change.
Ublock origin also does slow down the browser a bit on websites that.. don't.. have ads.
Raymond got overwhelmed with managing an open source project of uBlock's size and let Chris Aljoudi take over. Adblock later purchased it from Chris.
Meanwhile, Raymond had forked uBlock, creating uBO, and continued to improve it on his own terms. After seeing what happened with Adblock, he has no intention of selling either uMatrix or uBO.
https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix
I don't know the implications of that, it's the only tool I've ever found that lets me feel in control of what programs my browser is executing.
But yeah, Raymond didn't have the resources to develop both at once and chose uBO which offered a more digestible, install-and-forget experience palatable to a wider audience.
Raymond basically said uMatrix was feature complete. But there could be bugs.
You're right, let me try to amend my statement: at the point uBlock Origin was forked, Raymond disowned the earlier uBlock, and it had become unrelated to him, hence "not the same author" (even if it was started by him). My point was that Raymond didn't want to become involved in the pay-per-ads-let-through scheme the commenter I was replying to mentioned.
You could always secretly continue helping the adblocking mission under a different name. Even if you signed a contract not to.
Thank you, gorhill! And thanks to all the people maintaining it and all the filter lists!
However, it leads to Mozilla's earlier weird design choice where you have to install addon if you only want to disable JavaScript on sites - or allow it from only the selected domains.
Years later I haven't found a sensible explanation why they ditched that choice.
I've understood that you can still do it in Chrom(e/ium) and combined with a good updated blocklist in /etc/hosts or like it would provide most of the functionality of an adblock.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
I found Chrome+adblockers NOT good enough. I like (and hate) Brave's shield, as I never figured out how to use wildcards to whitelist a whole domain / subdomain, it seems per-host. But that Brave shield WORKS.
Now people are going back to Chrome? Really?
The BAT stuff is definitely more controversial, but mostly only because Brave blocks others' ads in lieu of their own. It was an interesting idea to present an alternative method for a privacy-respecting ad-supported web. Personally, I wouldn't be as aggressive in blocking ads if they weren't so intrusive and didn't compromise my privacy or security. I look at that whole thing as a swing and miss. I'm not going to beat them up for trying something new when we can all see that the modern web is a cesspool.
You can still turn all that crap off, which is what I do when I use Brave, and you have a pretty solid browser.