https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?promoted=re...
Some quite informative discussion on Firefox subreddit when I discovered and posted the above list there a few months ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1pyvx2v/complete_a...
The Recommended Extensions program description: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-...
Yes, it kinda gives more control to the platform, but so far, iOS extensions that use this API worked surprisingly well for me
Please, correct me if I am wrong and uBclock can already work in this restricted mode
And the last thing, if people really want to give someone a full page content access, they surely should be able to do that, so kudos to Mozilla
[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...
I've always wished extensions had more granular permissions though (a la phones, but more so). I think automated ai security checks sound promising soon.
So maybe more developers could do a all sites and manually select sites option?
¹BPC extension
They could save themselves the trouble if Firefox simply baked in its own ad-blocking, but since Google basically owns them, we all know that will never happen.
Ladybird browser is going to be awesome.
And Mozilla did develop anti-fingerprinting tech, but they can't enable it by default because it breaks lots of websites and when a website doesn't work they're not going to appreciate Mozilla for protecting them, they're going to be pissed that it doesn't work.
Firefox with Gecko is a different engine entirely and that sometimes causes compatibility issues or different behaviour, that websites have to account for.
That's how IE 6 was killed.
Also FE devs using all new Chrome shinny APIs, and their Electron junk are also to blame, and they aren't going to throw their toys away.
Which in practice means "switch to using a Firefox extension which fakes looking like Chrome, and just to selected shitty sites like ours".
https://web.archive.org/web/20070817224229/http://whyfirefox...
Ironically, if I fake instead a chromium to be on Windows (UA and Sec-CH headers), I am allowed most of the time even though my TCP fingerprint must mismatch then.
It's annoying to see what the normal web has become. Can't even read news anymore.
Ironically, all these bot defenses make it easier for bots to scrape their website, but make it harder for actual users to use them.
The only bot defense web app firewall that still works with Firefox seems to be Anubis. Pretty much all others autoflag Linux users as bot users, which feels insane if you think about less web developers must know about how botnets work.
I get this with Chrome on MacOS.
I'm becoming more convinced that Cloudflare is the bane of the internet.
If you really mean reCAPTCHA (the one with a “select all squares that have X” kinda challenges), then Cloudflare hasn’t used that for quite a while now. archive.today uses a Cloudflare-looking (old style) page with a reCAPTCHA (and they do serve it quite often), but I don’t think I’ve seen other sites do that.
Fortunately if projects like Ladybird gain enough momentum, websites might be forced to cater to it. Time will tell.
If you want to inherit all of Firefox's flaws, I suppose.
> and don't need to make a new one from scratch that'll never get past Cloudflare?
Considering Cloudflare is a sponsor of Ladybird, something tells me they're going to grant an exception for it.
People on here love to moan about Firefox because Mozilla did one thing at some point in the existence of the company they didn't like. But then just cede the Internet to Google and chromium clones because at some point when they were a crappy junior JS dev, Chrome had some better tooling over Firebug so they just got used to testing in one browser. Maybe they also like to remember how Firefox, a decade ago, couldn't handle 1000 tab sessions.
I hope Firefox keeps up the fight but HN loves to crap all over them for not being perfect.
Entirely possible that this is an issue specific to NixOS or my machine, but because of that issue I switched over to Brave.
I would like to go back to Firefox at some point. Maybe I’ll see if I can make a patch to fix video acceleration on NixOS.
I'm being tongue-in-cheek here because it seems most people just give up on safari/firefox if one thing doesn't work and go to some chromium-based browser as their default driver. That's sad.
I have never had chrome on windows 10 or 11; nor chromium.
For a year chase.com wouldn't allow me to login from Firefox. Dumb.
They will have to pry with significant force firefox with ublock origin from my old dusty finger bones... fuck the rest for selling us all out.
Even if it won't move the needle a bit, I can look at myself in the mirror in this specific regard and be content that I didnt bow my head like bland masses did and didnt work towards massive enshittification of our global society from now on.
Because thats what its all about, nothing less. With our choices, we shape future for our kids and grandkids. Shame on you, all you rich faangs who are directly helping this. Godwin's law is never too far in such cases and history wont be kind to you, no reason to be
Regardless, I don't want baked-in Firefox adblocking in part because I don't trust Mozilla with that task either. They'd absolutely end up allowing their own "acceptable" telemetry and ads. Even if they didn't, it would be unlikely to ever be as effective as Ublock Origin. Much like how Chromium browsers' built-in adblocking is barely anything in comparison, even on Manifest V2.
And yet, for now, Firefox and Mozilla is by far the lesser evil. I like a few of the Chromium browsers well enough, but they are ultimately at the mercy of Google.
I hope Ladybird does well, too.
> Regardless, I don't want baked-in Firefox adblocking in part because I don't trust Mozilla with that task either.
This is in a thread about how we should be happy that FF is vetting code for us. Do we trust them or don't we?
> And yet, for now, Firefox and Mozilla is by far the lesser evil.
I'm instinctively tempted to agree, but the difference is so negligible at this point that the only sign I would is the fact I'm still using FF due to momentum (as well as Ladybird not being ready from prime time yet).
FF/Mozilla has proven itself to be controlled opposition, so I'm not very interested in games of "lesser-of-two-evils" abuser logic that has infected politics and many other spheres in a race to the bottom.
GP trusts them for reviewing external extension code, and ensure that it does not contain malware, but not for not inserting exception to their own telemetry if they wrote the code themselves.
Or, more likely, they feel that having two independent actors collaborating on the extension (one by writing and the other by reviewing) yields a more trustworthy outcome than either actor on their own.
Mozilla have given us plenty of reasons to not trust them, which makes it hilarious that anybody would think it's noteworthy they're reviewing the code of Raymond Hill of all people.
> Raymond Hill of all people.
As good as he's been, he's still just one person with a hobby project. Yes please review it!
And what if he gets hacked?
> This is in a thread about how we should be happy that FF is vetting code for us. Do we trust them or don't we?
Are you joking? You brought the claim to the table, and now that people see the flaws in it you deny them talking about it? You're some mental gymnast..
Yes, Firefox could do everything, but then it'd turn back into Mozilla. The whole point of the extensions framework is to allow modular extensibility. And it's much easier to vet for malware than to code afresh and maintain.
What stuns me is that most people still use browsers that cannot block ads, seem genuinely annoyed by ads, but don't want to even try switching to a browser that will easily block those ads. It's amazing how much crap people are willing to wade through when the alternative is trying something new.
No it's not.
> Yes, Firefox could do everything, but then it'd turn back into Mozilla. The whole point of the extensions framework is to allow modular extensibility. And it's much easier to vet for malware than to code afresh and maintain.
No, quite the opposite. FF has a history of adopting extensions as baked-in functionality if they prove useful/popular enough. There are tons of examples of this from the past for various features, which is great.
But that fact makes it even more absurd that they refuse to do the same for what is likely their most popular extension of all time: uBlock Origin
Edit: actually, it seems the underlying functionality was built by Mozilla themselves, just not exposed in the UI yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49309020
It's been 20+ years, nobody cares about that anymore.
Google has been trying to kill them since they moved the Chrome team into the same building as the now defunct SF office.
(Apparently they offered people a lot of money? There are some words I could use to describe people who do things they think are unethical for cash I'll leave unsaid.)
What I am surprised about is that none of the browsers or forks have created a specialist plugin API for adblocking and maybe other filtering. Provide what is needed and only that (keeping the surface tiny), and then evolve the general purpose API in the way they need. I don't think we need V2 of the API any more, except for keeping this one absolutely critical plugin working, do we?
It's not black and white, and your inability to see the larger context is disturbing.
You could, by the same logic, criticize Mozilla for not serving you coffee which is certainly a "user-oriented policy" "baked-in" or rather "brewed-in". But we must be realistic about how far UOPs can be stretched, Mozilla is better than the rest, which includes large corps with far more money than them. If you can do better than Mozilla, I'm all ears.
Next, an ad-blocker needs continuous maintenance - someone started a good one long time ago and apparently loves to improve it and maintain the various lists it uses - why should Mozilla strain to compete with one of their best contributors? - that would be both rude and dumb, and they'd be wasting resources too. There's absolutely no upside to your proposition but you keep insisting.
One would hope that's one of the more useful things an LLM could assist with if not now, very soon. In the meantime, there's no reason they couldn't have uBlock kept as an extension but bundled by default like they've done with other functionality over the years. Wait, never mind. There's one rea$on why they wouldn't, and it's already been $tated.
I hope many more debate nerds carry on his quest to engage young people with words, not fists."
If this statement - a urge to engage in peaceful debate, not violence - makes you hate him, then I see the problem rather with you. I mean seriously, do you like civil war? Because this is what happens when people don't talk anymore about their disagreements, but physically fight.
"will never be awesome" is missing some quantifier about US-centricity.
Andreas Kling is Swedish, DHH is Danish, fascism originated in Europe.
Considering enough developer on this very site "stan" Charlie Kirks assassin and other people that are violent towards anybody less left wing than them: "your boos mean nothing, i have seen for what you cheer"
1. pass paywalls clean.
2. Social Fixer
Or, just pay for journalism since it’s not free to do.
I will say however, it works remarkably well. I haven't seen a paywall in years!
That law doesn't apply to many HN readers
Also, Mozilla officially un-committed to not using sell this and any other data it collects from you:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/firefox-deletes-...
> We never sell your personal data. Unlike other big tech companies that collect and profit off your personal information, we’re built with privacy as the default. We don’t know your age, gender, precise location, or other information Big Tech collects and profits from.