9 ms·

Have fun in Lynx. that's probably the only browser that wouldn't do something like this. Well maybe Safari, not because Apple wouldn't, but because they just d

by zie 9y ago

Have fun in Lynx. that's probably the only browser that wouldn't do something like this. Well maybe Safari, not because Apple wouldn't, but because they just don't care enough about ad revenue. Chrome: They leech everything they can get away with, granted it goes only to Google, but you know it's just to feed their never-ending ad-revenue goal. MS: They bypassed IE only ads, and went on to build ads into the entire OS.

kuschku 9y ago
You can also use good old Konqueror, they also won’t do this.
cjsuk 9y ago
Gopher. That was content focused and so inflexible that it was hard to be a dick with it.
- smacktoward 9y ago
  The original WWW was too. (It didn't have cookies, for instance, so there was no way to track a user from one page to another.) When it got popular, smart people started bending it to make being a dick possible, which is how we got the Web of today. I don't doubt the same would have happened to Gopher, if it had been the one to get popular.
geofft 9y ago
I'm running Firefox via Debian, and I intend to continue running Firefox via Debian - I trust that the outcry in the Debian community would be so huge if the Firefox maintainer (or any other maintainer) allowed this sort of code from upstream through.
- zie 9y ago
  Well FF did just get caught with their pants down, installing a Mr.Robot (tv show tie-in) Add-on(extension) to FF users, without their consent. Since it was an Add-On that was pushed after a debian install, Debian devs wouldn't have been able catch it before it reached end-users. That said, I still use FF, but I do make sure I keep all the opt-in telemetry and stuff off, since it was one of these settings that "let them" get away with installing the add-on without consent. Granted the add-on by default didn't do anything unless you enabled it, but still.....
  - geofft 9y ago
    The Debian package of Firefox is not supposed to pull any code directly from Mozilla - whether security updates, marketing tie-ins, updated SSL libraries, whatever. Like all Debian packages, code is supposed to go through Debian. The only Debian programs that are supposed to fetch code on their own are ones where you explicitly tell it to do so (e.g., you're running `pip install` or something). So the only way this code would end up on my machine is one of two ways: 1. The Debian Firefox package is pulling code from Mozilla without the maintainer's review (which is definitely possible, given how complex Firefox is and how there's approximately one person packaging updates including timely security updates), which would of itself be seen as a serious problem 2. The Debian maintainer specifically picked up this code as part of the tarball from Mozilla, and shipped it without noticing (also definitely possible!) or decided it was worth including For what it's worth, I do not have this plugin in about:addons, and Debian unstable hasn't picked up a Firefox update since December 1, so as far as I can tell the system is working properly.
pweissbrod 9y ago
Software companies are like music bands. You might like their current album but next year they could totally sell out and go pop :) Me, I keep it underground (qutebrowser at the moment) but I'm constantly in search of something better
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  At the moment I'm using waterfox, but also uzbl, netsurf, otter.
  - pweissbrod 9y ago
    yo thanks for the tip i'll check waterfox out for sure
feelin_googley 9y ago
The truth is that there have been other text-only browsers both before and after lynx. I have tried every one I could ever find, since the 1990s. Some of them seem to have been forgotten. IMO, whatever is in todays package collections is not a true representation of all text-only browsers ever written. Most times when someone cites "lynx", as is common on HN, I interpret this as a signal they are not too familiar with text-only browsers. IMO, lynx is relatively big, slow and clunky with too many options; definitely not the best text-only browser I have used. I happen to like text-only browsers for viewing HTML (e.g HTML tables), tcpclients like netcat for making TCP connections, and my own software for generating HTTP requests. Almost all websites work[FN1], with zero "loading time" as one may experience when using "modern" browsers to do these tasks. I can easily get the content I want (text, with option to download images, PDF, video, etc.) and skip the stuff I dont want. No autoloading of resources. I choose what I want. Surprisingly, the web is actually getting more, not less text-friendly. Today I can often get text encapsulated in JSON, Markdown, etc. instead of wrapped in HTML, making parsing even easier. There is heaps of Javascript written by others available on the web today but as a user I have little interest in running it. I would rather write my own. FN1. "work" means I get the body the page that contains the content.
- nix0n 9y ago
  Which is the best text-only browser?
- thanatropism 9y ago
  Beside elinks, something newer?
- bigbugbag 9y ago
  The browser is not even needed with stuff like weboob[1] (WEB Outside Of Browsers). [1]: http://weboob.org/ http://weboob.org/
- zie 9y ago
  I agree, I just used lynx there as a stand in for all text based browsers, since it's the most well known, and easiest to get running. I'm not sure I agree the web is getting more text-friendly.. it is getting more JSON friendly, mostly, but actually visiting web-pages where JS isn't required is becoming increasingly rare. I've yet to find a text/console browser that can actually run JS. (I know there have been some experiments, but none that actually work last I checked)..
justizin 9y ago
> Well maybe Safari, not because Apple wouldn't, but because they just don't care enough about ad revenue. Truthfully, this is why I use Safari. Apple makes money by selling me devices and services, Mozilla and Google are both driven by ad revenue. Even good actors within these companies are working within a framework where the customer is the product. .. also Safari saves like 15% on battery.
- Sylos 9y ago
  Christ, are you seriously arguing that Apple, who does operate an ad network, is less driven by ad revenue than Mozilla, a non-profit, who at best will get to continue working on Firefox, if there continue to exist search engines that make revenue.
bigbugbag 9y ago
what about otter ? waterfox ? uzbl ? poseidon ? netsurf ? falkon ? k-meleon ? Iron ? Iridium ? Liri ? Min ? To cite some of the browsers you overlooked in your snarky comment.
- lsh 9y ago
  Vivaldi! +1 for mentioning Otter though - those guys are doing amazing work https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/ https://otter-browser.org/ https://otter-browser.org/
- zie 9y ago
  It was definitely snarky, but I did try to qualify the snark to be useful-snark, and not just plain snarky. As for all these browsers, all of them(unless I'm mistaken) are based off of one of the big 3(Chrome, FF, Safari) so you still have to trust the big 3 to run these, for the most part, as they are all single-developer or maybe a very small team, and would be very hard pressed to catch underhanded attempts from any of the big 3 to embed any nastiness.
  - anjbe 9y ago
    For the record, of that list NetSurf is an independent browser with its own rendering engine (and is correspondingly less… full‐featured).

by zie 9y ago

kuschku 9y ago

You can also use good old Konqueror, they also won’t do this.

cjsuk 9y ago

Gopher. That was content focused and so inflexible that it was hard to be a dick with it.

smacktoward 9y ago
The original WWW was too. (It didn't have cookies, for instance, so there was no way to track a user from one page to another.) When it got popular, smart people started bending it to make being a dick possible, which is how we got the Web of today. I don't doubt the same would have happened to Gopher, if it had been the one to get popular.

geofft 9y ago

I'm running Firefox via Debian, and I intend to continue running Firefox via Debian - I trust that the outcry in the Debian community would be so huge if the Firefox maintainer (or any other maintainer) allowed this sort of code from upstream through.

zie 9y ago
Well FF did just get caught with their pants down, installing a Mr.Robot (tv show tie-in) Add-on(extension) to FF users, without their consent. Since it was an Add-On that was pushed after a debian install, Debian devs wouldn't have been able catch it before it reached end-users. That said, I still use FF, but I do make sure I keep all the opt-in telemetry and stuff off, since it was one of these settings that "let them" get away with installing the add-on without consent. Granted the add-on by default didn't do anything unless you enabled it, but still.....
- geofft 9y ago
  The Debian package of Firefox is not supposed to pull any code directly from Mozilla - whether security updates, marketing tie-ins, updated SSL libraries, whatever. Like all Debian packages, code is supposed to go through Debian. The only Debian programs that are supposed to fetch code on their own are ones where you explicitly tell it to do so (e.g., you're running `pip install` or something). So the only way this code would end up on my machine is one of two ways: 1. The Debian Firefox package is pulling code from Mozilla without the maintainer's review (which is definitely possible, given how complex Firefox is and how there's approximately one person packaging updates including timely security updates), which would of itself be seen as a serious problem 2. The Debian maintainer specifically picked up this code as part of the tarball from Mozilla, and shipped it without noticing (also definitely possible!) or decided it was worth including For what it's worth, I do not have this plugin in about:addons, and Debian unstable hasn't picked up a Firefox update since December 1, so as far as I can tell the system is working properly.

pweissbrod 9y ago

Software companies are like music bands. You might like their current album but next year they could totally sell out and go pop :) Me, I keep it underground (qutebrowser at the moment) but I'm constantly in search of something better

bigbugbag 9y ago
At the moment I'm using waterfox, but also uzbl, netsurf, otter.
- pweissbrod 9y ago
  yo thanks for the tip i'll check waterfox out for sure

feelin_googley 9y ago

The truth is that there have been other text-only browsers both before and after lynx. I have tried every one I could ever find, since the 1990s. Some of them seem to have been forgotten. IMO, whatever is in todays package collections is not a true representation of all text-only browsers ever written. Most times when someone cites "lynx", as is common on HN, I interpret this as a signal they are not too familiar with text-only browsers. IMO, lynx is relatively big, slow and clunky with too many options; definitely not the best text-only browser I have used. I happen to like text-only browsers for viewing HTML (e.g HTML tables), tcpclients like netcat for making TCP connections, and my own software for generating HTTP requests. Almost all websites work[FN1], with zero "loading time" as one may experience when using "modern" browsers to do these tasks. I can easily get the content I want (text, with option to download images, PDF, video, etc.) and skip the stuff I dont want. No autoloading of resources. I choose what I want. Surprisingly, the web is actually getting more, not less text-friendly. Today I can often get text encapsulated in JSON, Markdown, etc. instead of wrapped in HTML, making parsing even easier. There is heaps of Javascript written by others available on the web today but as a user I have little interest in running it. I would rather write my own. FN1. "work" means I get the body the page that contains the content.

nix0n 9y ago
Which is the best text-only browser?
thanatropism 9y ago
Beside elinks, something newer?
bigbugbag 9y ago
The browser is not even needed with stuff like weboob[1] (WEB Outside Of Browsers). [1]: http://weboob.org/ http://weboob.org/
zie 9y ago
I agree, I just used lynx there as a stand in for all text based browsers, since it's the most well known, and easiest to get running. I'm not sure I agree the web is getting more text-friendly.. it is getting more JSON friendly, mostly, but actually visiting web-pages where JS isn't required is becoming increasingly rare. I've yet to find a text/console browser that can actually run JS. (I know there have been some experiments, but none that actually work last I checked)..

justizin 9y ago

> Well maybe Safari, not because Apple wouldn't, but because they just don't care enough about ad revenue. Truthfully, this is why I use Safari. Apple makes money by selling me devices and services, Mozilla and Google are both driven by ad revenue. Even good actors within these companies are working within a framework where the customer is the product. .. also Safari saves like 15% on battery.

Sylos 9y ago
Christ, are you seriously arguing that Apple, who does operate an ad network, is less driven by ad revenue than Mozilla, a non-profit, who at best will get to continue working on Firefox, if there continue to exist search engines that make revenue.

bigbugbag 9y ago

what about otter ? waterfox ? uzbl ? poseidon ? netsurf ? falkon ? k-meleon ? Iron ? Iridium ? Liri ? Min ? To cite some of the browsers you overlooked in your snarky comment.

lsh 9y ago
Vivaldi! +1 for mentioning Otter though - those guys are doing amazing work https://vivaldi.com/ https://vivaldi.com/ https://otter-browser.org/ https://otter-browser.org/
zie 9y ago
It was definitely snarky, but I did try to qualify the snark to be useful-snark, and not just plain snarky. As for all these browsers, all of them(unless I'm mistaken) are based off of one of the big 3(Chrome, FF, Safari) so you still have to trust the big 3 to run these, for the most part, as they are all single-developer or maybe a very small team, and would be very hard pressed to catch underhanded attempts from any of the big 3 to embed any nastiness.
- anjbe 9y ago
  For the record, of that list NetSurf is an independent browser with its own rendering engine (and is correspondingly less… full‐featured).