Everybody sells out in the end...

They do? I haven't despite a fair few opportunities throughout my career.

But yes you are right, even open source projects sell out. The best one I can think of is that XML-based POS WURFL. That was built open source and loads of developers contributed to it and produced version in every possible language. Then the twat (Massimo or something like that) took it closed and teamed up with some marketing 'osser and now it is a very niche product used by mostly bottom-feeding companies. It had passed its sell by date once responsive web came along.

Even Demis sold his soul. Look at him now, CTO of AI for Google or something naff like that. Look at his face. You can see the differences before and after. Demis looks terrible and is much less confident in his vision.

Luckily, there are still quite a number of people who have the intellectual capability of doing work that benefits others without being rewarded financially or with fame and tiresome interviews with tech mags and the celebraty circuit.

Never sell your soul. They don't do a buy-back like Cashies does. Many think they can sell now and once they get the power they can get their soul back using that newly empowered ... power.

Because even when they do try to do good to get their keys to heaven - so to speak - it ends up being bad. Bill Gates and his pharma racket is a prime example.

I'm confused by this. Why would you intentionally nerf Firefox by using uBo lite just to have the same blocker as on Chrome?

Why would you intentionally nerf Firefox by using uBo lite just to have the same blocker as on Chrome?

I think it's more a case of AlphaGoo nerfing Chrome so it's more ad-friendly. Can't think why they'd do that. Currently uBlock Origin works fine for Firefox, but requires people to STOP USING CHROME!

So solution is simple, at least until AlphaGoo leans on Mozilla to nerf Firefox as well. ABP is pretty much useless, especially as it also tries to push users to paying a subscription. I know some folks that swear by Brave broswer instead of swearing at Edge or Chrome, but haven't tried that one.

But Liam seems to be suggesting there's some reason to use uBo Lite over regular uBo on Firefox simply to have the same addon as Chrome.

That's what's confused me too. Why can't the two coexist on the Sam system? They work on different programs!

One reason why Chrome must be taken out of the hands of Google, #1 browser and the #1 ad slinger working side by side and not for the benefit off the consumer but to monetize them. Chrome should be handed over to Apache Software Foundation on a 100% open source, no profit licence. Will it happen, I doubt it as Google has paid off too many politicians to ever get broken up, but you never know maybe the EU will have a set and force the issue.!

of #2 ad slinger. Chrome is a cash cow, people. Why would you buy it if not for making (huge loads of) money ?

It would be tricky but possible to do.

Correction : "Chrome should be handed over to Apache Software Foundation on a 100% open source, no profit licence"

Yes. Imagine that. We could all work to make it better confident that it isn't going to be sold off in the foreseeable future.

We have chromium. Why isn't everyone using that?

If chrome went to an open source group, without the consumer push, and adverts, you'll end up with Edge becoming the dominant browser.

Chromium still has to keep itself compatible with Chrome, just can't rip out everything, same problem with Edge had and Microsoft surrendered, as just too time consuming and costly to maintain your own fork.

If you want a Chrome-based browser, Vivaldi is an excellent choice. The developers say they will keep Manifest V2 until June 2025, so uBlock Origin will still work. Not sure what will happen after that. Vivaldi's own blocker works quite well, too.

Have they made the Source Code available yet?

All this would matter less if it weren't for the fact that web developers - ore, more likely, the developers of the frameworks they use have forgotten the KISS principle. In search of bells and whistles the idea of a universal platform and applications has been lost. Many sites (and it bugs me no end that my own NextCloud server is one of them) will only work with a limited number of browsers.

I also run NextCloud, and I haven't noticed any browser issues, but I use Firefox the majority of the time. I suppose it's possible that I have never tried a Chromium based browser, or maybe I haven't used the specific NextCloud functionality that would expose the issue in Firefox?

If only there were some sort of standard...

Pi Hole isn't just for Raspberry Pi devices anymore - I run it on a repurposed Mac Mini with Debian 12. Very straightforward to install and it updates itself once a week with any patches and new blocklists.

Not so on Win and don't start that nonsense about better computers. Pi-Hole doesnt block pre-roll ads on YouTube. That is top if you have a smart TV. They seem to have neglected (or I have missed it) the most common use of ad blockers: stopping them on your TV. All the other devices are a piece of cake and there are lots of reasonably simple solutions out there.

Does your PiHole block pre-roll YouTube ads?

For your TV, if you can, install smarttube. The ability to log in, use like/dislike/playlists etc. No ads, sponsor block, loads of other stuff, and a developer who listens to, and acts on, feedback.

open source too

[1]https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

[1] https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTube

Opensense with Adblock does everything but YT ads and something I have to live with, as I only watch YT in private mode anyway to try and keep as private as possible.

I love Pi Hole, been running it for years. Does an awesome job blocking trackers and other garbage. Don't forget to turn of DoH in your browser though - they have been trying to sneak around DNS network level filtering.

Unfortunately it is only a DNS blocker. It does not block active code running within the web page on my browser. That is where UBlock Origin comes in.

So either YouTube or no YouTube given that Google changed it so the ads are served from the same domain now.

PiHole is still worth having for that security, but it is poor as an adblocker when then ads are embedded from the same domain (as many adslingers are doing these days).

So, how easy is Privoxy to use and update?

It sucks. Big time. Just wasted an hour trying to get it to work. After 30 minutes on their forums, I found that "debug 1/log" don't work when you scroll thru reams of commented text in the config file.

The logging is not enabled by default it seems so I don't know what the hell it is blocking or even what it is doing.

It does block on the host machine, but no chance of blocking other machines on the network using the server as a proxy. It is worse than configuring Win95 for dial-up. same with Pi-Hole really. Way way too technical and fantastically boring. Soz, but it 's a black hole of time wasting.

Im not spending my afternoon on this that is for sure. It got to the stage where root was no longer the owner of the config file and it was impossible to change the user so now changes cant be saved to the config file. I'm sure I can find the answer to fix that, but I know if I even look it will be a rabbit hole of a thousand other naffing high-level crap that spawns forth from the never-ending stream of errors, faults and general pain-in-the-arse.

If it gets to that level, forget it and walk away. Life is too short for that level of arcane punchcard-level computing. It is 2024 FFS not 1982. Can not somebody make a piece of software to do this without having to spend days setting it up and being dragged down to near assembly level.

Translation : "This extension may soon no longer be supported because it doesn't allow us to track you all over the web."

Now that Brave has lost it's aversion to pi-hole it seems to be an acceptable alternative.

Been using Brave for years, I didn't realize advertising on websites was still an issue. :-)

Been using Brave as my mobile browser of choice for ages. It just works and blocks ads.

You can go deeper into menus and find some half arsed cryptocurrency thing, but if you don't deliberately try to enable that stuff, it's great.

They recently tweaked Chrome to kill the most popular forms of streaming capture too.

> It's a snag, though, if like The Reg FOSS desk you habitually run both Firefox and Chrome and wanted to keep both on the same ad blocker.

Why would you want to downgrade your Firefox browser security so it matches the PoS that is Chrome? Your problem is not that uBlock Origin Lite doesn't work on Firefox, it's that Chrome won't let the original uBlock Origin run because it hurts Google's business model. Oh poor Google how will their billions cope.

"Chrome won't let the original uBlock Origin run because it hurts Google's business model"

Indeed. I guess the Reg have to use Chrome on occasion. Sometimes, rarely I have to use Edge and OMG what a horror show that is.

Firefox seemed to had a flaky period a few years back and their browser was much slower than Chrome. Now, I don't see any difference and Firefox is often faster as it is blocking all the crud.

Also, they seem to have stopped trying to jump on whatever bandwagon is rolling into town: not continuously flooding the browser with 'features' dreamt up by some Muppet in marketing to try and justify their wage.

Pocket was the last one that I can remember in that vein. And I like that they have avoided shoehorning AI into it. Keep AI in the search engines, thank you very much as it is useful there in its summary answers at the top of the page.

Using a Chrome-based browser feels like confessing all your sins in a police interview without your solicitor present.

I multi-browser regularly. I was a FireFox only user for years, before switching to Brave as my primary a few years ago. Kept FF as a static browser with a fixed set of home pages so I readily have certain pages available.

Unfortunately, FF is still experiencing the same flaky problem it had years ago. Every few days I will notice the CPU fan cranking, and sure enough, FF is chewing up the CPU. No new pages, nothing extra browsed, just sitting on the same home pages it loaded with. Kill the browser, and re-launch to the same home pages, and the CPU quiets down. I have to do this about every three days.

On certain systems I have noticed advertisements escaping detection on Brave. FireFox is slowly creeping back in to my usage as the primary browser on those systems.

"still experiencing the same flaky problem it had years ago."

Oh dear. I guess I am a lucky one then. I remember when it was like that for me and it was so annoying. Firefox on Win11 was terrible until about 2 months ago. Slow as hell. Fingers-crossed they keep it up but something tells me not.

I have Brave on my iPhone and yes ads are starting to slip through.

How has society became one that revolves around advertising? A whole epoch of civilization has defined their existence by the illusion of advertising. The internet has been effectively destroyed. YouTube without an ad blocker is a series a sickening belly drops as nearly EVERY video starts with an ad. You feel grateful and lucky if it is only a 5 second one, but even those are vomit-inducing. I cannot sit and watch even 5 seconds of them. And to have to develop the technique of; Open vid, see ads 45 secs, press back, click vid again, see 30 secs ads, click back and repeat until you are lucky enough to get a 5 secs one, and hit mute. I have become very skilled at it now and can get the BetFred 5 sec one nearly every time if I use the right forward/back trick. Madness.

I don’t come a knocking if I’m not a blocking!