6 ms·

This is a tragic loss, I can't be grateful enough to the author, such a fantastic tool. I even started installing it in my parent's computers (not advanced use

by pa7x1 6y ago

This is a tragic loss, I can't be grateful enough to the author, such a fantastic tool. I even started installing it in my parent's computers (not advanced users), reducing to 0 the amount of time I had to intervene to fix their computers. The trick is to configure it in blacklist mode, instead of whitelist. This way it only blocks requests from domains in the blacklist and frame elements. Just with this change you get non-power users out of trouble in their surfing habits and impacts negligibly their use. I have taught them that if a web is blocked or doesn't work properly is most likely not a web they want to use but that there is also the possibility to turn it off using the on/off button (that they should use very judiciously). In this mode it is not too different from setting up Hosts file but they can understand better what's going on and how to turn it off if needed. EDIT: fixed typos

ffpip 6y ago
> The trick is to configure it in blacklist mode, instead of whitelist. Or you can use it in whitelist mode, but with all things like Cloudflare and ReCaptcha globally whitelisted. It's good that way too. But yes, for your parents, black list mode would be good. It would be like uBlock Origin.
- 02020202 6y ago
  > Or you can use it in whitelist mode, but with all things like Cloudflare and ReCaptcha globally whitelisted. those two specifically are always the first entries in my blacklist :D
  - josephcsible 6y ago
    Most people want to block annoyances like advertising or tracking without breaking the pages they want to visit. What you're suggesting does the opposite.
    - daveFNbuck 6y ago
      If that's your goal, why would you use uMatrix and not ad and tracking blockers?
      - fuzxi 6y ago
        Granularity.
        daveFNbuck 6y ago
        How does the granularity help block trackers and ads if you're not doing enough of it to regularly break sites?
  - e1ghtSpace 6y ago
    Why do you blacklist them?
    - liability 6y ago
      Because fuck them. Recaptcha in particular is abusive to non-chrome users with their "slow fade" tiles which are specifically engineered to frustrate to real humans (bots do not experience frustration, and if it were simply a matter of slowing down bots they would have simply added a timer, not spend five seconds animating a tile with fade transitions.) Fuck any site that requires this hostile bullshit. 9 times out of 10 when I see recaptcha that site is dead to me. Very few sites are worth tolerating that sort of abuse from.
      - asquabventured 6y ago
        Agree this is hostile behaviour, but there are technical hacks[1] that a user could find that overrides google being a dick. [1] https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/382039-speed-up-google-captcha/code https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/382039-speed-up-google-cap...
      - meowface 6y ago
        I get the same slow animations with Chrome. I don't know what the point of it is, since it's apparently trivially bypassable, but I don't think the goal is to annoy people. Also, the web would be much more annoying to use without captchas. (Not necessarily recaptcha, but just the concept in general.) If you've ever been an administrator of a site that's prone to spam, it's usually one of the only effective options. Other trade-offs would generally involve blocking huge ranges of potential users, with tons of false positives, or laborious manual approval which isn't feasible past a certain scale if it's just you or a few people.
        a1369209993 6y ago
        > Also, the web would be much more annoying to use without captchas. (Not necessarily recaptcha, but just the concept in general.) This is a non sequitur; we're talking about Google's abusive faux-captcha (which is not actually recaptcha; that's the two-word OCR challenge captcha they replaced with said faux-captcha), not about any actual captcha or captchas in general.
- iudqnolq 6y ago
  But for eg cloudflare to work it also needs first party js
- dm319 6y ago
  Any pointers on how to do this? I run into problems with online purchases, and find out easier to switch to chrome than try and authorise various sites on the fly.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    It's fairly easy to determine what's breaking things. With something like online purchases, one of the domains will be for a payment processor that you've probably heard of, accept things from them and it will likely work. More generally, you can often find a domain that calls itself a cdl, and those are usually needed. And sadly, if the site doesn't seem to work at all it probably needs google. Oh, and it is basically never something in dark red.
  - pa7x1 6y ago
    If you want to replicate that kind of configuration that is as painless as possible you just have to go into the extension options/configuration. Head to the "My rules" tab and you will find a rule, towards the top of the rule list, that says: "* * * block" This rule acts as a default blacklist. If you switch it to: "* * * allow" it will allow everything by default (except the blacklisted domains, which overrule this). Then in the "Assets" tab you can configure your blacklists, I can recommend Steven Black's lists. He curates and consolidates several of the most famous ones: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts He maintains several variants according to themes you may want to ban (adware, malware, fakenews...). Choose the combination that suits you.

by pa7x1 6y ago

ffpip 6y ago

> The trick is to configure it in blacklist mode, instead of whitelist. Or you can use it in whitelist mode, but with all things like Cloudflare and ReCaptcha globally whitelisted. It's good that way too. But yes, for your parents, black list mode would be good. It would be like uBlock Origin.

02020202 6y ago
> Or you can use it in whitelist mode, but with all things like Cloudflare and ReCaptcha globally whitelisted. those two specifically are always the first entries in my blacklist :D
- josephcsible 6y ago
  Most people want to block annoyances like advertising or tracking without breaking the pages they want to visit. What you're suggesting does the opposite.
  - daveFNbuck 6y ago
    If that's your goal, why would you use uMatrix and not ad and tracking blockers?
    - fuzxi 6y ago
      Granularity.
      - daveFNbuck 6y ago
        How does the granularity help block trackers and ads if you're not doing enough of it to regularly break sites?
- e1ghtSpace 6y ago
  Why do you blacklist them?
  - liability 6y ago
    Because fuck them. Recaptcha in particular is abusive to non-chrome users with their "slow fade" tiles which are specifically engineered to frustrate to real humans (bots do not experience frustration, and if it were simply a matter of slowing down bots they would have simply added a timer, not spend five seconds animating a tile with fade transitions.) Fuck any site that requires this hostile bullshit. 9 times out of 10 when I see recaptcha that site is dead to me. Very few sites are worth tolerating that sort of abuse from.
    - asquabventured 6y ago
      Agree this is hostile behaviour, but there are technical hacks[1] that a user could find that overrides google being a dick. [1] https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/382039-speed-up-google-captcha/code https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/382039-speed-up-google-cap...
    - meowface 6y ago
      I get the same slow animations with Chrome. I don't know what the point of it is, since it's apparently trivially bypassable, but I don't think the goal is to annoy people. Also, the web would be much more annoying to use without captchas. (Not necessarily recaptcha, but just the concept in general.) If you've ever been an administrator of a site that's prone to spam, it's usually one of the only effective options. Other trade-offs would generally involve blocking huge ranges of potential users, with tons of false positives, or laborious manual approval which isn't feasible past a certain scale if it's just you or a few people.
      - a1369209993 6y ago
        > Also, the web would be much more annoying to use without captchas. (Not necessarily recaptcha, but just the concept in general.) This is a non sequitur; we're talking about Google's abusive faux-captcha (which is not actually recaptcha; that's the two-word OCR challenge captcha they replaced with said faux-captcha), not about any actual captcha or captchas in general.
iudqnolq 6y ago
But for eg cloudflare to work it also needs first party js
dm319 6y ago
Any pointers on how to do this? I run into problems with online purchases, and find out easier to switch to chrome than try and authorise various sites on the fly.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It's fairly easy to determine what's breaking things. With something like online purchases, one of the domains will be for a payment processor that you've probably heard of, accept things from them and it will likely work. More generally, you can often find a domain that calls itself a cdl, and those are usually needed. And sadly, if the site doesn't seem to work at all it probably needs google. Oh, and it is basically never something in dark red.
- pa7x1 6y ago
  If you want to replicate that kind of configuration that is as painless as possible you just have to go into the extension options/configuration. Head to the "My rules" tab and you will find a rule, towards the top of the rule list, that says: "* * * block" This rule acts as a default blacklist. If you switch it to: "* * * allow" it will allow everything by default (except the blacklisted domains, which overrule this). Then in the "Assets" tab you can configure your blacklists, I can recommend Steven Black's lists. He curates and consolidates several of the most famous ones: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts He maintains several variants according to themes you may want to ban (adware, malware, fakenews...). Choose the combination that suits you.