Härteres YouTube-Vorgehen: Hunderttausende Nutzer haben Adblocker deinstalliert
Das Durchgreifen von YouTube bei Werbeblockern veranlasst Zuschauer zu Experimenten mit dem Austausch verfügbarer Lösungen. Auch Microsofts Browser ist gefragt.
Meanwhile, over on my Windows machine (which I've almost completely moved off), Microsoft is force feeding AI into the Edge browser. #AI#Microsoft#Edge#Browser#AIpocalypse
#Edge ist ja übel. Da braucht man ihn zwei drei Wochen nicht mehr und beim nächsten Start sieht er aus wie ein Trojaner-verseuchter #Windows95#InternetExplorer ...
I've been using the @Vivaldi browser on my windows and linux desktops for a month or so, and love it. I have no other browsers on the desktop now. Today I finally nuked #Edge from my #Android phone, as Vivaldi works perfectly there too. All devices nicely sync'd.
@jon@Vivaldi shit like this is so bad that I literally yeet all the Browsers except @mozilla#Firefox and I really think we need a new #Speedrun category:
"Windows11 Firefox% noEdge"
Basically install Firefox without ever opening #Edge!
So, I was thinking about this video on Chrome/Edge accessibility. Basically, it shows that the memory and CPU hog isn't the screen reader, it's the browser/accessibility pipeline. And honestly, it shows how, once again, being disabled is expensive. Not only are we told from a young age that we'll need to work twice as hard as abled people in order to get to the same level as the abled person, and then get a job that pays about $9 an hour for factory type work, or $20 per hour for highly specialized tech knowledge work, we have to buy expensive technology that can allow us to give that 200% of ourselves to our job and lives. Like, you see us buying an iPhone 15 or 14? That's not, for almost all circumstances, as a status symbol. That's because accessibility is so unoptomized that it slows our devices down. Because we have to have modern devices, a good 8 GB RAM (minimum) on a laptop, or a modern A-series chip, or, hell, probably an M-series Mac, just to keep up. I'm not sure about the M-series Mac part as I've not spent enough time with one to see how it compares to my 2019 Intel Mac.
We see this a lot with Android phones. A sighted person may be able to get by with a $250 Samsung phone. But when I worked with one, I felt the lag with TalkBack acutely. We may be able to blame the phones, or the PC's, or Intel Macs. But then why does an Intel PC run just fine with NVDA? No, digital accessibility is all about software. If it can run well for a sighted person, it should run well for a blind person. And that's why I always say that the OS is at the root of all digital accessibility, followed of course by whatever you run above that stack, like the browser. So we have to work 200% more, buy a good 200% more expensive, and we're still slowed down. Do not praise us for overcoming these things. Help us by eliminating the need to overcome them in the first place!!
I hate to sound like a fanboy, but I guess I am. I tried to use #Mozilla#Firefox again the other day, because I'm in agreement with the philosophy behind it. But I was back to #Microsoft#Edge within a couple hours. The ability to quickly switch between personal and work profiles, better syncing, automatic image descriptions, translation that doesn't require multiple clicks every single time a new page loads, a vastly better reader mode, the ability to have copilot summarize a page: all of these things have changed the way I browse the web. I just can't live without them. Other than reader mode, you can't even get these things from Firefox addons. Heck, I even appreciate Microsoft shopping; it's saved me money in the past. Maybe I just want my browser bloated, because it's the application I live in. No privacy for me, I guess. Now if only Edge could detect when I make a purchase and follow my packages the same way it can follow creators and notify about updates.
You know, I really dislike ad blockers from the security perspective. They need exceptionally broad permissions that make the extension a juicy target for attacks. Pop one of the maintainers' Google or Github accounts and own hundreds of millions of people overnight - their email, bank accounts, social media identities, and all that.
The consequences of simple coding errors are similarly disastrous - and I bet that there are some good UXSS bugs lurking in all that JavaScript.
For these reasons, I resisted ad blockers for 20+ years, and I endured countless cookie prompts, subscription interstitials, "sponsored results", and unskippable ads. But around 2020, the anti-user patterns on the web have gotten unbearable. And I say this as a person who grew up in the era of auto-playing Flash-based pop-under ads.
I'm not a security absolutist. It's all about trade-offs: the convenience of using a modern web browser, for example, generally outweighs the risks of living with its massive attack surface. But in the case of ad blockers, you gotta take a hit just to continue to browse in peace. It blows.
@lcamtuf
One can minimise the risk by using a multi-browser strategy.
One browser. Preferably #Firefox, set to not accept cookies at all. #Whitelist as you go. Use for email, banking and #ecommerce
One browser. Maybe #edge or #safari. Use for general browsing. Install as many extensions as you like to remove ads, cookie permission notices, etc.
Clear #cookies when it becomes slow.
"Like a replicant dying in the rain, memories fading, some of these are the games I hope no one forgets. As such, my number one pick from 1993 until now is System Shock.” Harvey Smith (Deus Ex, Dishonored)
Just reading the latest #EDGE anniversary issue 390. It has a well curated "100 greatest games of all time" list - worth checking out. I feel very fortunate that I have played many of these games.
I don't usually make rants, but this felt SO outrageous #edge#teams
I don't have Edge as my default browser, so this morning I was a bit surprised when all the links from Teams were being opened in Edge.
I double checked, and Edge still wasn't my default browser. So I digged a bit deeper, and found that there's a new option in Teams (defaulting to Edge) which only purpose is to override your OS preferences (even if it is Windows!!) and force you to use Edge. And I say this is its only purpose because literally there's just TWO options, Edge or whatever your OS default is, not even trying to show up other browsers.
Looks like Microsoft has released patches against CVE-2023-4863 and CVE-2023-5217 vulnerabilities for Microsoft Edge, Teams and Skype. The patches revolve around the vulnerable the libvpx & libwebp open source libraries used by these products. Update now!
When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the #enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.
--
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
"The company has become so dominant and cemented its position so thoroughly as the default search engine across every platforms and system..."
It isn't, though? Aren't most things besides phones still #Windows systems, where the defaults are #Edge and #Bing ? I know on my Windows laptop (an ASUS), where the only thing I've intentionally used Edge for is to install #Chrome , the OS itself still opens things in Edge and sends queries to Bing even though I'd rather it didn't.
#Google doesn't seem to be the default search anything like everywhere?
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not in Ads or Search, and I'm not much of a cheerleader. But in this case the anti-Google claim seems just flatly mistaken?)
AEW DYNAMITE Discussion Thread 10/10/23
It's Wednesday Tuesday, you know what that means…...
AEW: DYNAMITE! Discussion Thread 10/04/23
IT'S WEDNESDAY, YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!...