6 ms·

“Stylish” is back, and you still shouldn't use it

110 points by based2 8y ago

jyrkesh 8y ago
Quick FYI, if you "backup" your Stylish themes when migrating, it comes out with a file that ends in `.json,.bin,.dms`. Just drop it to `.json` and Stylus will be able to import it just fine. Thanks to the author and submitter. I had no idea, been using Stylish for years. Very disappointing, but I'm glad there's an easy alternative.
- hpbd 8y ago
  And how do we know Stylus won't go the same route?
  - nambit 8y ago
    It's open source. You can install from source.
    - hpbd 8y ago
      All extensions are open source. Just download the xpi/crx and decompress. Doesn't help much unless you are willing to read all diffs, or never update them (and be exposed to bugs which could lead to other security issues.)
      - bastawhiz 8y ago
        You're right, we should never install software ever again unless we wrote it ourselves.
      - Grangar 8y ago
        You could (and should) minify JS for builds, which essentially renders it useless for editing purposes. Heuristically you could still find parts that phone home and disable those but getting further than that is going to be a pain.
      - amingilani 8y ago
        You're confusing 'source available' for 'open source'. Source available is where you can look at the source but don't have any right to do anything with it. Open source is libre software.
  - shadowfacts 8y ago
    We can't know for certain that they never will, but right now, I have more faith in the open-source community than an adtech company.
cco 8y ago
The older I have gotten the less I'm willing to install, either in my browser, my phone, or my local machine. It's come to the point that it seems reasonable to assume that anything you install will pull every iota of data available to it. I think this grew out of a good place, at least I hope, where early pioneers assumed good intentions and generally most software was designed with "open" as a core philosophy. However it's very clear that we're very far removed from that, it boggles my mind that if an expense app on my phone needs to take a picture of a receipt my only option is to allow it not only permanent use of my camera but also access to all of my photos and videos. Why is the default not to launch a sandboxed camera app that only exists to take the receipt photo, and then disappears taking with it any permissions the app needed to carry this out?
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  > it boggles my mind that if an expense app on my phone needs to take a picture of a receipt my only option is to allow it not only permanent use of my camera but also access to all of my photos and videos. THIS! Seriously, it angers me so greatly that I have to deal with such stupidity as all or nothing permissions. If I want to allow a single photo, but not all photos, no such luck. If I want to allow access to save photos, but not read photos, tough. Etc etc If Apple really cared about privacy instead of using it as a marketing ploy, this would be mandated already.
  - anyfoo 8y ago
    Access to Camera is different from access to Photos.
    - jsjohnst 8y ago
      You entirely missed the point, but thanks for stating the obvious.
      - dang 8y ago
        Personal swipes aren't allowed and will get your account banned here, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
eternalny1 8y ago
I've been using Stylus for many months now, it works exactly the same but is open source. That, combined with "Dark Background + Light Text" with custom colors makes Firefox a beautiful sight in my personal night mode. "Dark Background" for the majority of sites that don't have good dark Stylus themes, disabled on the ones that do. This one is nice: https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-DarkTheme https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-DarkTheme
- theclaw 8y ago
  DarkReader is great if you just want want dark-mode. It automates what used to take me ages overriding CSS in Stylish. I’m fairly confident it’s not spyware.
amarshall 8y ago
Alternatively, Firefox provides similar functionality built-in with userContent.css [1], which avoids needing a third-party extension at all. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-to-override-the-css-of-a-site-in-firefox-with-usercontent-css https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-to-override-the-c...
- ChrisGranger 8y ago
  And you can edit Firefox's UI, using userChrome.css in the same location.
btown 8y ago
From the article: > I’m surprised that SimilarWeb finds the personal browsing data that it siphons off via Stylish so valuable. The data almost certainly feeds into SimilarWeb’s main product, the SimilarWeb platform, a tool that provides reports on the aggregate usage statistics of websites and apps... But data collected via Stylish will surely be riddled with so much sampling bias that it becomes worthless... A giant stew of miscellaneous, unattributed scraps of data can’t ever turn into a representative sample, no matter how much salt and machine learning you add. I'm not surprised at all. It's important to note that SimilarWeb sells its data to non-statisticians. Imagine this scenario: Marketing analyst has a gut feeling that the product would be popular with millennials on Reddit, but old-school marketing execs barely know what Reddit is. Analyst sneaks a SimilarWeb subscription into the budget. Analyst gets Stylish-based data that is heavily biased towards Reddit. Analyst may know this. Analyst doesn't care. Analyst uses the data to "prove" that the company's users are on Reddit and justify the Reddit ad spend they wanted anyways. Campaign is a success. Pretty much everyone wins (kind of): Reddit users get more relevant ads. Analyst advances their career and reputation. SimilarWeb gets paid. Stylish extension can be maintained and polished. SimilarWeb maybe even affords to hire for their security team, who makes sure that the data is anonymized at rest. At the end of the day, adtech is a beast that grows because it tells people what they want to hear, and remains silent when it can't find that answer. p-hacking and survivorship bias are the way of the world. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. But... if this sounds like a bubble to you, all I can say is that you should diversify your holdings outside of tech stocks.
shmerl 8y ago
I've been Stylus instead of it just fine.

110 points by based2 8y ago

Quick FYI, if you "backup" your Stylish themes when migrating, it comes out with a file that ends in `.json,.bin,.dms`. Just drop it to `.json` and Stylus will be able to import it just fine. Thanks to the author and submitter. I had no idea, been using Stylish for years. Very disappointing, but I'm glad there's an easy alternative.

hpbd 8y ago
And how do we know Stylus won't go the same route?
- nambit 8y ago
  It's open source. You can install from source.
  - hpbd 8y ago
    All extensions are open source. Just download the xpi/crx and decompress. Doesn't help much unless you are willing to read all diffs, or never update them (and be exposed to bugs which could lead to other security issues.)
    - bastawhiz 8y ago
      You're right, we should never install software ever again unless we wrote it ourselves.
    - Grangar 8y ago
      You could (and should) minify JS for builds, which essentially renders it useless for editing purposes. Heuristically you could still find parts that phone home and disable those but getting further than that is going to be a pain.
    - amingilani 8y ago
      You're confusing 'source available' for 'open source'. Source available is where you can look at the source but don't have any right to do anything with it. Open source is libre software.
- shadowfacts 8y ago
  We can't know for certain that they never will, but right now, I have more faith in the open-source community than an adtech company.

cco 8y ago

The older I have gotten the less I'm willing to install, either in my browser, my phone, or my local machine. It's come to the point that it seems reasonable to assume that anything you install will pull every iota of data available to it. I think this grew out of a good place, at least I hope, where early pioneers assumed good intentions and generally most software was designed with "open" as a core philosophy. However it's very clear that we're very far removed from that, it boggles my mind that if an expense app on my phone needs to take a picture of a receipt my only option is to allow it not only permanent use of my camera but also access to all of my photos and videos. Why is the default not to launch a sandboxed camera app that only exists to take the receipt photo, and then disappears taking with it any permissions the app needed to carry this out?

jsjohnst 8y ago
> it boggles my mind that if an expense app on my phone needs to take a picture of a receipt my only option is to allow it not only permanent use of my camera but also access to all of my photos and videos. THIS! Seriously, it angers me so greatly that I have to deal with such stupidity as all or nothing permissions. If I want to allow a single photo, but not all photos, no such luck. If I want to allow access to save photos, but not read photos, tough. Etc etc If Apple really cared about privacy instead of using it as a marketing ploy, this would be mandated already.
- anyfoo 8y ago
  Access to Camera is different from access to Photos.
  - jsjohnst 8y ago
    You entirely missed the point, but thanks for stating the obvious.
    - dang 8y ago
      Personal swipes aren't allowed and will get your account banned here, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

eternalny1 8y ago

I've been using Stylus for many months now, it works exactly the same but is open source. That, combined with "Dark Background + Light Text" with custom colors makes Firefox a beautiful sight in my personal night mode. "Dark Background" for the majority of sites that don't have good dark Stylus themes, disabled on the ones that do. This one is nice: https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-DarkTheme https://github.com/dparpyani/HackerNews-DarkTheme

theclaw 8y ago
DarkReader is great if you just want want dark-mode. It automates what used to take me ages overriding CSS in Stylish. I’m fairly confident it’s not spyware.

amarshall 8y ago

Alternatively, Firefox provides similar functionality built-in with userContent.css [1], which avoids needing a third-party extension at all. [1] https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-to-override-the-css-of-a-site-in-firefox-with-usercontent-css https://superuser.com/questions/318912/how-to-override-the-c...

ChrisGranger 8y ago
And you can edit Firefox's UI, using userChrome.css in the same location.

btown 8y ago

From the article: > I’m surprised that SimilarWeb finds the personal browsing data that it siphons off via Stylish so valuable. The data almost certainly feeds into SimilarWeb’s main product, the SimilarWeb platform, a tool that provides reports on the aggregate usage statistics of websites and apps... But data collected via Stylish will surely be riddled with so much sampling bias that it becomes worthless... A giant stew of miscellaneous, unattributed scraps of data can’t ever turn into a representative sample, no matter how much salt and machine learning you add. I'm not surprised at all. It's important to note that SimilarWeb sells its data to non-statisticians. Imagine this scenario: Marketing analyst has a gut feeling that the product would be popular with millennials on Reddit, but old-school marketing execs barely know what Reddit is. Analyst sneaks a SimilarWeb subscription into the budget. Analyst gets Stylish-based data that is heavily biased towards Reddit. Analyst may know this. Analyst doesn't care. Analyst uses the data to "prove" that the company's users are on Reddit and justify the Reddit ad spend they wanted anyways. Campaign is a success. Pretty much everyone wins (kind of): Reddit users get more relevant ads. Analyst advances their career and reputation. SimilarWeb gets paid. Stylish extension can be maintained and polished. SimilarWeb maybe even affords to hire for their security team, who makes sure that the data is anonymized at rest. At the end of the day, adtech is a beast that grows because it tells people what they want to hear, and remains silent when it can't find that answer. p-hacking and survivorship bias are the way of the world. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. But... if this sounds like a bubble to you, all I can say is that you should diversify your holdings outside of tech stocks.

shmerl 8y ago

I've been Stylus instead of it just fine.