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I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing, and one that makes millions of lives easier by making
by aluren 7y ago
I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing, and one that makes millions of lives easier by making their web experience bearable at all, all of this depends on one single person, working for free.
Now there's also the list maintainers, who also work for free. Still makes you wonder about how the world works. There's probably many other similar instances. In any case, I think these people deserve more recognition than they currently do and we shouldn't take anything they do for granted.
- foepys 7y agoThe biggest and most important lists (Easylist and its localizations) are heavily maintained by eyeo GmbH, the company behind AdBlock Plus. It might be a community project but in reality it's more like Chromium or Go.
- feanaro 7y agoHow would this make the uBlock Origin project like Chromium? The lists work and if the bigger lists choose not to block everything you'd like, you can simply enable additional lists. It's just a data source.
- earenndil 7y agoNot really, no. The lists themselves are ultimately less interesting than the technology used to run them; there are other lists, and if easylist soured, a community-sourced alternative could be made relatively easily.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoDoesn't that argument work for the plugin too. I mean most people using uBlock Origin probably started with Adblock (and maybe moved to ABP), or uBlock. You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers. Back in the day I used a local proxy tool, Proximator or something. AFAIK uBo isn't doing anything particular unique technologically (which doesn't mean I'm not grateful, nor that anyone could make it).
- gorhill 7y ago> You can achieve similar results with pihole, or hosts file managers. You can't. uBO has contextual information for each network request, something not available to external content blocking solutions. For example, many filters are meant to apply only on specific domains or whether they are 1st- or 3rd-party, and for this to work you need to know from which origin a network request is fired. Also, uBO has an advanced-user mode that let you create rules to override filters in static filter lists; allows to work in default-deny mode; or even allows to work with no static filter lists at all. Contextual information is key to advanced-user mode features.
- danShumway 7y agoI use element filtering to strip Google News links off of the search page on the offhand chance I can't find something on DuckDuckGo and have to go back to it. www.google.com/search*tbm=nws^$document www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Top stories)) www.google.com##g-section-with-header:has(h3:has-text(Videos)) www.google.com##div[role="tab"]:has(a:has-text(News)) It's a great feature that would be impossible with something like pihole. `has-text` is very powerful.
- foepys 7y agoI actually doubt that. Finding the right rules is quite a bit of work and hobbyists will only look for such stuff for so long until they get bored. Programming can be fun but adding the nearly but not exactly the same rule to a filter list for the 2,000th time will eventually get tedious. Especially if you are playing a cat and mouse game and you are the (unpaid) cat and the mouse has quite strong incentives to get paid.
- gorhill 7y agoEasyList/EasyPrivacy and other lists are maintained by volunteers, not by Eyeo GmbH.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ehsankia 7y agoThere are definitely a few OSS that don't get anymore as much love as they deserve. VLC and OBS are two example of programs that are so damn good, even paid alternatives hardly can compete.
- benoliver999 7y agoVLC is what got me interested in the free software biz to begin with. I wondered how it was even possible, found out they made whole OS-es in a similar manner, been a linux user for over 15 years now.
- mindfulhack 7y agoMaybe the lack of human resources is offset by the lack of managerial bottleneck (you can just get stuff done and solve problems immediately with your keyboard without the need for weekly meetings or approval from some non-caring boss)? I've always been astounded too.
- drited 7y agoThe end of the book 'The PayPal Wars' gives fascinating context on how development just completely dies in a corporate environment. They went from being able to roll major new features in a weekend to requiring months just to schedule a meeting to discuss a font change. It's a fascinating read when we now look back at how PayPal just stagnated under Ebay's ownership.
- dmix 7y agoI’ve also long wondered what Twitter’s thousands of software developers do all day. Their product certainly hasn’t gotten any better.
- novok 7y agoI think twitter is a few thousand total employees, a fraction of that is engineers. And a good chunk of it is maintaining & improving a large throughput backend system that is one of the top 10 in the world in terms of size and data volume. And on top of that, an even smaller fraction is the people who think of and implement new front end things that you would interact with and think of the app changing. Like a lot of companies, it's probably a 10:1 ratio as far as backend:frontend people there are at the company. As to why twitter changes so little, the company itself doesn't really understand why it's successful, so there is a lot of conservatism inside of it to not screw with the golden goose.
- de_watcher 7y agoWell, if something is distributed for free but developed by someone who doesn't work for free then it serves the interests of the one who is paying.
- fwn 7y agoYes, but in a good way. AFAIK that's exactly why the primary developer of uBlock forked uBlock (from it's rough new owner) into uBlock Origin and chose not to seek donations. ...to not have any obligations regarding the community. It's just that in this case, the owners intention to have a great content blocker does seem to align with the needs of many other users. Keep in mind that it's a product, not a service and open source, so no lock-in. The project being rarely forked shows the satisfaction of its users.
- nocture 7y agoI send a small mental thanks to Raymond almost every day - his impact is stunning when you think of it
- agumonkey 7y agoyeah, because of him, everytime I use ublock-less chrome on android I get angry, thanks a lot gorhill ! ;)
- skovorodkin 7y agoI suppose you know it, but Firefox on Android supports add-ons! It's amazing.
- lsiebert 7y agoFirefox focus is worth a try. built in ad blockers, the ability to block javascript, private browsing is the default. Good stuff. There's also, I believe, a regular firefox for android which I think does do extensions.
- exceptione 7y agoTrue, it is fantastic imho. I run ith with ublock Origin.
- agumonkey 7y agoI do use focus as my default browser :) it's indeed lovely
- ducttape12 7y agoGive Brave a shot. It's Chromium with an ad blocker, privacy blocker, and HTTPS Everywhere built in!
- jraph 7y agoDon't, especially because it's Chromium and because it's from an ad company.
- agumonkey 7y agoFirst thing I install in any browser. I always mention it to neighbors (who still don't use one..) Massive thanks to everyone involved
- panta 7y agoYes, this. uBlock Origin seems to have ~15 million active users between Chrome and Firefox (source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock_Origin). If it only spared us 10 seconds a day on average (probably a super conservative estimate), it would save the equivalent of an average human life (~70yrs) every 15 days! (And given that probably at least 70% of users don't use an ad blocker, it's infuriating to think what's the "human" cost of ads on the web alone...)
- anoncake 7y agoDon't forget the added stress adverts cause.
- ehonda 7y agouBlock saves my laptop battery and CPU when web browsing, by a lot. It has an older core2 CPU that can easily churn at 40% just staring at a page where some ads aren't blocked. That and the cpu fan spins up to high. Turn on uBlock, and CPU use goes to zero. uBlock saves electricity and is therefor good for the environment. I'd say we're all obligated to use it ;)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- GrumpyNl 7y agoTry to watch a playlist on Youtube without a add blocker. Its insane the length and amount of commercials. A add blocker save you much more then 10 secs a day.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoFwiw, "ad" is short for "advertisement" which has one "D".
- dmitriid 7y agoBut it adds to the viewing time :)
- sam_goody 7y agoIf I recall correctly, he trusted one of his maintainers too much, and that is the reason he no longer contributes to uBlock (his original project), but rather created uBlock origin. The fact that there is no easy way to make this into a money project probably led to his relying so much on such a maintainer. Part of the issue seems to be that the devs that actually value an OSS project don't have any way to persuade the company they work for to contribute to the project. If there was some way to be able to create a tier where a company would pay $12/month and be able to "something which benefits the company ?? bugfixes ??" - something support related or somehow, many of these projects (timezone, adblocker, ssh, even things like Matrix) could be funded.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoSomething like uBlock I'd imagine it's worth supporting for some brands just to be associated with by name. Like a VPN service, or such.
- jannes 7y agoWe should also thank Firefox for having adblockers at the time when Chrome was released. Otherwise Google wouldn't have felt the need to add an adblocker extension API in the first place. Having adblocker extensions was one of the things that allowed Google to get Firefox users to switch at the time. Ever wonder why Mobile Chrome doesn't have extensions or adblockers? Because it didn't have to compete with Firefox to gain marketshare.
- gbrown 7y agoFirefox mobile on Android with uBlock origin is currently a vastly superior experience to Chrome.
- m-p-3 7y agoAnd the Redirect AMP to HTML [1] addon, I enjoy my AMP-free life. [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/
- mr_custard 7y agoThank you! I didn't know this AMP redirect extension existed. Installing immediately!
- trobertson 7y agoAnd you can redirect any website (say, a news site to an archive.org copy) with the Redirector addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector/
- skrowl 7y agoThis is an amazing find. I hate AMP sites. Thanks you so much!
- vanderZwan 7y agoThere are also a couple of link-cleaning add-ons that are really nice if you want to reshare links opened through, say, Facebook (not on mobile, so not sure which one I'm using)
- rvnx 7y ago"for free". There are at least two revenue sources on uBlock Origin... The software is free-to-use yes, but it doesn't mean that gorhill won't put money in his pockets.
- fanttazio 7y agoMaybe a good start could be sponsoring the maintainer since GitHub added the feature?
- Tepix 7y agoIt's not that people don't want to give him donations. He doesn't want any.
- Tepix 7y agoMy guess is if he were to start accepting donations he could do it full-time as his main job. Guess he doesn't want that.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoNah, he'd probably make enough to buy a few beers. Maybe he could make $thousands per month spending serious time on self-marketing begging effort, but I wouldn't blame him if he wasn't interested in that
- TheKIngofBelAir 7y ago> and we shouldn't take anything they do for granted. You can say that again "Ublock collaborators gorhill and Deathamns leave the project" (2015) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9308439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9308439
- Kurtz79 7y agoThis is the whole reason why we have uBlock "Origin" and not (only) "uBlock". If anything, the split was because one of the uBlock contributors tried to monetize it for his own benefit only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin
- TheKIngofBelAir 7y agoThat was after gorhill decided to pass the project to Chris.A, the real reason of the split was different. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ublock-a-lean-and-fast-blocker.365273/page-33#post-2476324 https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ublock-a-lean-and-fa...
- MattyMc 7y agoI'm hoping that Mozilla's upcoming paid browser will open a market for browsers and browsing software.
- lunchables 7y agoIs there a way to donate to the uBlock Origin project? If you want to imagine what the world would be like without uBlock, just try turning it off for a day. That's horrifying.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agogorhill refuses out of principle to take donations. This is a passion project for him, and he wishes to maintain the freedom to stop working on it at any time without feeling "obligated" to continue.
- app4soft 7y ago> I am dumbfounded that uBlock Origin, arguably the single most important extension in modern web browsing Also it's recommended[0] to install uMatrix[1] or eMatrix[2] side-by-side with uBlock Origin. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827 [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix [2] https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=21561 https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=21561
- sunaurus 7y agoRecommended why, and by whom?
- app4soft 7y ago[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17361827
- whamlastxmas 7y agoI have used uMatrix for quite a while and honestly it's a huge pain in the ass. I wind up just opening a different browser for certain web pages
- 292355744930110 7y agoYou can turn off uMatrix for a specific site.
- whamlastxmas 7y agoFor some reason it still blocks iframes even when off
- dvdgsng 7y agoI've disabled uMatrix for private windows, so it's just a regular right click -> "Open Link in Private Windows", done. uBlock still blocks the most obvious stuff, but the site is displayed "as intended".
- chongli 7y agoAlso keep in mind that the entire problem exists because it was created by thousands of people working in the advertising industry. It's frustrating how often people have to solve problems created by other people.
- danmg 7y agoJust like how we have to have to spend billions cumulatively on computer security related products, because some people are trying to make a few million ransoming workstations and sending spam.
- therealdrag0 7y agoAnd thousands of people are working in the ad industry because so many people want internet content for free.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- red_admiral 7y agoFor a while, openssl was maintained almost for free. That truly boggles the mind.
- tomc1985 7y agoThere used to be a rich history of one-man products maintained selflessly by their creators, even up until the early 2010's. Entrepreneurship and business assholes destroyed that -- we gave this up when we made tech so easy to use that every brother and their mother got on board. Now tech is too big, with too much money, that it cannot help but attract sharks that buy up these sorts of things and then destroy them
- jsloss 7y agoTech should just be for tech people! Mothers and brothers be damed! I get the frustration, but shouldn’t we be working towards models that allow for better compensation for creators rather than ... well I’m not exactly sure what you’re advocating for here ...
- tomc1985 7y agoBetter compensation for creators is not going to stand up to a multi-million or multi-billion-dollar buyout. Much of the western world has this crazy fascination with tech for the sake of tech, and it is that fascination and subsequent vulnerability that attracts the personalities that have been systematically pillaging all the great things that tech -- particularly lone-wolf individuals -- have built over the years. It'd be really cool to see more barriers to entry limiting people's ability to access some tech, and limiting the size of businesses that are built around it. The internet was much better when it belongs to and was embraced by nerds, and not the general public, for example. Our modern world is too complicated for most folks and now we have to build things so overly simplified that it is nearly impossible to be a power user or do advanced tasks when everything is reduced to single-button, shitty-app solutions in the cloud maintained by megacorps with more money than God