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This is the reason I've stopped surfing the web and stay on news aggregate sites. It's madness how many dependencies sites have. Having Little Snitch on and not

This is the reason I've stopped surfing the web and stay on news aggregate sites. It's madness how many dependencies sites have. Having Little Snitch on and not allowing general port 80/443 will make you perfectly aware.

kowdermeister 8y ago
Why don't you use a blocker extension?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  I trust ublock well enough, but it's a risk - Adblock Plus on the one hand basically started collecting advertising data and selling whitelisting to advertisers, and plugins generally have an evergreen auto-updating system. It's happened hundreds of times that a plugin was bought and malicious tracking, ad-injecting and/or cryptocurrency mining code was injected without the user being made aware or the party responsible for delivering updates (Google, Mozilla) taking action against these practices or at the very least warning their users. TL;DR: Blocker extensions are easy but they can be compromised.
  - mtreis86 8y ago
    https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix is opensource and is basically a firewall built in a browser extension
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    Everything can be compromised. Going outside of the building is a risk. In case of uBlock it would probably turn out pretty quickly if something fishy is going on. My point is that the benefits are greater for me than the risks. You could actually roll your own uBlock extension: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock then write a script that updates it in your browser. Is that safe enough? :)
- isodude 8y ago
  Because I should not have to avoid it. Then it's broken by default and we should vote by not visiting.
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Please don't stop surfing the web, that is insane. You are staying locked in your news aggregator sites like someone with agoraphobia, that is even more unhealthy than whatever beasties you think are out there waiting for you.
- isodude 8y ago
  Maybe I'm starting to show grandpa syndrome, but I tend towards getting news from public channels/radio here. The amount of click bait articles that's in ad-based sources are just astonishing. Trying to keep the head space clean, and there is only so much time at my disposal with caring for a family. So at the same time I got pissed about how much deps sites rely on, I discovered that there wasn't much to miss either. It's like dropping facebook, just a relief. To be fair I'm talking about news outlets mainly. I was there when we had the BBS with dial-up modems. HTML was sweet, but it got quite boring when it faced reality. It's easy for people to share now, but just how easy can it be for people to care about what they share and how? (Like caring about how much tracking there is etc.) My wife and I strongly disagree, she lives in the real world and actually like how well she can communicate and I'm just overwhelmed instead and care about the technicalities.
- vertexFarm 8y ago
  The certainty with which you make this statement seems undeserved. There are situations when extreme deviations from cultural norms is perfectly healthy. Like abstaining from tobacco in the 1950s or something to that effect. The jury's still out on the health effects of our digital culture. It's too strange and too young to really get clean long-term results on it. But I would be utterly floored if it was having no significant effect on our well-being and culture. There's probably some positive and some negative, but hey--cigarettes help aid digestion, after all.
  - isodude 8y ago
    For me at least the digital life have a bad effect. But I'm sure that's related to my specific personality. I've written about it here before, but leaving the digital life completely for periods is easily the most healthiest things I've done.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I do all of my browsing through HN with reader view on by default. Have yet to see an ad, pop up or anything annoying. Gave up on desktop browsing entirely as some sites do not offer reader view.
- isodude 8y ago
  I should really start using RSS again, but I do remember the amount of news that you had to sort through everyday. HN does that in a fairly good fashion. There's just to much info to handle. Reader view is a good option, for avoiding answering on GDPR questions as well :)

kowdermeister 8y ago

Why don't you use a blocker extension?

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
I trust ublock well enough, but it's a risk - Adblock Plus on the one hand basically started collecting advertising data and selling whitelisting to advertisers, and plugins generally have an evergreen auto-updating system. It's happened hundreds of times that a plugin was bought and malicious tracking, ad-injecting and/or cryptocurrency mining code was injected without the user being made aware or the party responsible for delivering updates (Google, Mozilla) taking action against these practices or at the very least warning their users. TL;DR: Blocker extensions are easy but they can be compromised.
- mtreis86 8y ago
  https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix is opensource and is basically a firewall built in a browser extension
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  Everything can be compromised. Going outside of the building is a risk. In case of uBlock it would probably turn out pretty quickly if something fishy is going on. My point is that the benefits are greater for me than the risks. You could actually roll your own uBlock extension: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock then write a script that updates it in your browser. Is that safe enough? :)
isodude 8y ago
Because I should not have to avoid it. Then it's broken by default and we should vote by not visiting.

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

Please don't stop surfing the web, that is insane. You are staying locked in your news aggregator sites like someone with agoraphobia, that is even more unhealthy than whatever beasties you think are out there waiting for you.

isodude 8y ago
Maybe I'm starting to show grandpa syndrome, but I tend towards getting news from public channels/radio here. The amount of click bait articles that's in ad-based sources are just astonishing. Trying to keep the head space clean, and there is only so much time at my disposal with caring for a family. So at the same time I got pissed about how much deps sites rely on, I discovered that there wasn't much to miss either. It's like dropping facebook, just a relief. To be fair I'm talking about news outlets mainly. I was there when we had the BBS with dial-up modems. HTML was sweet, but it got quite boring when it faced reality. It's easy for people to share now, but just how easy can it be for people to care about what they share and how? (Like caring about how much tracking there is etc.) My wife and I strongly disagree, she lives in the real world and actually like how well she can communicate and I'm just overwhelmed instead and care about the technicalities.
vertexFarm 8y ago
The certainty with which you make this statement seems undeserved. There are situations when extreme deviations from cultural norms is perfectly healthy. Like abstaining from tobacco in the 1950s or something to that effect. The jury's still out on the health effects of our digital culture. It's too strange and too young to really get clean long-term results on it. But I would be utterly floored if it was having no significant effect on our well-being and culture. There's probably some positive and some negative, but hey--cigarettes help aid digestion, after all.
- isodude 8y ago
  For me at least the digital life have a bad effect. But I'm sure that's related to my specific personality. I've written about it here before, but leaving the digital life completely for periods is easily the most healthiest things I've done.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

I do all of my browsing through HN with reader view on by default. Have yet to see an ad, pop up or anything annoying. Gave up on desktop browsing entirely as some sites do not offer reader view.

isodude 8y ago
I should really start using RSS again, but I do remember the amount of news that you had to sort through everyday. HN does that in a fairly good fashion. There's just to much info to handle. Reader view is a good option, for avoiding answering on GDPR questions as well :)