Proxy Chrome extensions are not going to be usable in MV3(bugs.chromium.org) |
Proxy Chrome extensions are not going to be usable in MV3(bugs.chromium.org) |
No, the gp said:
> while pretending they weren't supporting google's Chrome monopoly
Monopoly means Google's interests will be served rather than the user's. This means taking away things that are of value to users / users losing control over features / etc. Like proxy extensions, yes.
Especially for Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc.
I mean right now I bet a lot of people will simply not update to MV3 and continue using the last known MV2 build into perpetuity until certs break or something else. I sure intend to.
No, especially not if you want to watch videos, the DRM plugin is a binary blob that only Google approved browsers get to run.
Then there are all the Google services that will break in unexpected ways in your browser, sometimes just because your user agent isn't identical to Chromes if past reports from Firefox users are any indication. Basically expect to be shit on by the biggest internet giant around at ever possible corner.
I'm going to repost a previous comment here.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32741481
> I used to refuse Chromium for the Same reason.
> But honestly it already happened, Firefox is already irrelevant.
> Mozilla is mis-managed organization that is funded to avoid anti-trust investigations, they dont fully push for privacy because they are afraid of google, do out of touch changes, and focus on political advocacy.
> Compare that to brave, which builds its own independent search engine, ad network, and has privacy by default in its products.
>There is no hope that Mozilla and Firefox will change the status-quo anytime soon, Firefox is losing users at crazy rate, and Mozilla is absolutely failing to do anything to change Firefox's destiny towards irrelevance.
> Brave is almost everything Mozilla should've been.
> Actually do what they sey, no hidden google analytics in their products, no unique ID for each installer downloaded, push for privacy by default and independence from big tech, not being shy from google, because they are their only income.
> I would argue, that if Mozilla wants to turn its course around with their "limited resources" it should drop gecko, and anything irrelevant to the users experience.
> Fork Chromium, the best web engine out there by a mile, and remove any anti-privacy / anticompetitive code, while still taking advantage of the huge development resources directed to chromium from many parties, and maybe Mozilla can also influence Chromium's development.
> Start pushing privacy by default, its the reason brave is gaining users at such a rapid pace, its a browser I recommend to everyone, as just by installing it they already are much more private than with chrome.
> What matters is the users experience, its why brave is growing
> Brave will support uBO and uMatrix so long as Google doesn’t remove underlying V2 code paths (which seem to be needed for Chrome for enterprise support, so should stay in the Chromium open source). Will Google Chrome Web Store really kick them out over V2? We will host if needed.
https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1534905779630661633
> > I’d be interested to hear a plan for Brave on what will happen if upstream removes the code paths needed for pre-v3 ad blockers.
> We could fork them back in at higher maintenance cost. No point in speculating — I don’t write checks of unknown amount and sign them, and Google looks likely to keep V2 support for a year (thanks be to “enterprise”).
Brave ads aren't even enabled by default.
They aren't specifically maintaining anything. Brave's CEO doesn't "write checks of unknown amount[s] and sign them".
> No, especially not if you want to watch videos, the DRM plugin is a binary blob that only Google approved browsers get to run.
So it might be better to say that you don't need to be locked into Google's browser (or a fork of its OS base) in order to consume a wide variety of online content, and you can thus avoid this issue with Chrome extensions entirely. And at least with Firefox it is just a plugin, so presumably could be replaced with a binary blob from someone else if Google's influence became worrisome enough (and I do wonder, isn't it already worrisome enough??).
New extensions that use MV2 have been prevented from being added to the store since last January [1] and this has already affected some extensions which, as a result, have to be installed manually [2][3]
The time to switch to Firefox is right now.
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/mv2/
[2] https://github.com/libredirect/libredirect/issues/45#issueco...
They are fundamentally misaligned with your interests on the net.
dotproto from the Chrome team commented on May 27 [2]:
> @mon-jai, the short answer is no, I don't have any updates to share. That said, I'll reaffirm that we plan to support userscript managers in Maniest V3 before the Manifest V2 deprecation.
But the deprecation is approaching and the Chrome team hasn't released any more information about this AFAIK. These extensions are going to require large refactors to support MV3 and they can't meaningfully start until the Chrome team elucidates how script injection will work. With MV2 deprecation coming so soon, I worry there won't be enough time.
[0]: Manifest V3: examine the effects · Issue #644 · Tampermonkey/tampermonkey: https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644
[1]: Migrate to Manifest V3 · Issue #1821 · brookhong/Surfingkeys - https://github.com/brookhong/Surfingkeys/issues/1821
[2]: https://github.com/Tampermonkey/tampermonkey/issues/644#issu...
We discussed Chromium's current plan to support user scripts managers in Manifest V3 during our WebExtensions Community Group (WECG) session at TPAC[1] last week. The notes for that meeting haven't been merged yet, but there's an open PR[2] and when they are they will live here[3].
In short, the current plan in Chromium is to require end users and extension authors to opt into execution of arbitrary scripts via a Chromium UI setting and new permission, respectively. During the meeting Firefox folks raised some questions/concerns about this plan and it's probably best to try to align with them on next steps if possible.
And typing this out is making me realize we don't have a great tracking issue for this in the WECG repo. Just threw together a placeholder issue[4] to track discussion in this area.
[1]: https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/7bbba4a3-8305-45cd-a998-6...
[2]: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/pull/277
[3]: https://github.com/w3c/webextensions/blob/main/_minutes/2022...
This is all on top of the many other issues with MV3 that Google is pushing under the guise of "improving performance".
> I'm temporarily restricting comments to keep comments from turning into +1s while this is trending on Hacker News. If you have additional thoughts that you'd like to share with the Chromium team regarding this issue, please return in a few days to leave a comment (and apologies for the inconvenience).
> As a Chromium contributor that shares information about our progress on extensions issues, I sincerely apologize to extensions developers affected by this issue and the broader community for not sharing an update until now. I'm currently working on a "known issues" document for Manifest V3 that touches on several outstanding issues (including this one), but given the attention on this issue now, I'll quickly share our current thinking on this issue.
> We have always intended to provide support for this functionality in Manifest V3 (for both user-installed and force-installed extensions), and have been iterating on different possible approaches. Our tentative plan (which is not yet finalized) is that the Manifest V3 version of this capability will require extensions to request a new permission scoped to intercepting authentication requests, but will otherwise allow extensions to handle these requests in a similar manner to how they do in Manifest V2.
> The permission string and end user facing warning string have not been finalized yet. Also, we have not yet finalized how this new permission will interact with other permission grants, but extensions that currently have the webRequest permission and broad host permissions will likely not require an additional grant for this permission.
> Finally, I want to note that before we can pursue this capability, we first need to resolve issue 1024211 (now formally marked as a blocker). We are actively working on 1024211 and aim to resolve both that issue and this one before January 2023.
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113549...
That time has long since passed.
I know, I switched from Firefox to Chrome and used it for a couple of years, but Firefox got better and Chrome got worse, so I've been back on Firefox for many years again now.
If Chrome doesn't do what you want or what you like, use Firefox. It does everything Chrome does, and more.
Here's a new profile, just default zoom set to 150% (ublock origin installed system-wide)
https://i.imgur.com/Z3MO8sr.png
https://i.imgur.com/hgscGrb.png
https://i.imgur.com/07QI1IU.png
https://i.imgur.com/owZm12J.png
What is even going on?
Are you saying it has unusual default settings, and that 150% zoom is one of them? For what it's worth in my experience of installing Firefox which are probably done half dozen times in the past year or so on various devices, I haven't experienced anything like this.
Now I'm even more curious to see how badly Chromium bangles this migration to V3.
I'm also curious as to why big internet advocacy organizations such as the EFF [0] have been quiet on this move.
--
Edit: It appears the EFF has spoken out about this a couple of times.
[0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-st...
Time to settle with Firefox.
Could they be afraid of a surge in proxy Adblock extensions since they are trying to cripple the local ones?
That is completely incorrect. A proxy extension routes requests through a proxy server. It does not rewrite anything.
I always have a hard time with chrome. because where firefox has a config area to set the proxy chrome wants to use an environment variable. so do these proxy extensions fill this missing config gap?
The proxy we all use at work is SwitchyOmega. Been using it for years and it's fantastic.
As far as I understand, after MV3, ad blockers won't be able to use a long list of ads to remove them.
How about using a simple ML algorithm to detect whether the request is a genuine one or an advertisement? I am sure that getting training data wouldn't be too hard (all the ad lists that will get useless after MV3 are good data).
I don't make chrome extensions so I don't completely know how MV3 will cripple ad blockers.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
Sure, there are still going to be some work arounds that still allow extensions to read and change what a user sees, but anyone looking at this honestly can see what the intention is.
Throwing ML at this problem doesn't make sense at all as reading and then rewriting requests is exactly what Google doesn't want extensions doing anymore.
extends v2 from January 2023 EOL until June 2023
January 2023
Chrome stops running Manifest V2 extensions
Enterprise policy can let Manifest V2 extensions run on Chrome deployments within the organization.
June 2023
Manifest V2 extensions no longer function in Chrome even with the use of enterprise policyWhat I ended up doing and found to be better is to connect to the proxy over a wireguard IP. I can recommend this solution to individuals and people who don't need granular authentication.
If it catches on (and it could since it'd be free and fast), maybe some big sites would evolve to advertise themselves as 'virtous'.
So I meant it looks like a lost battle. And it may be better to reboot to a smaller, nifter browser that a small team/community can handle.
edit: and of course cut all ties with Google financing.
I think it wants to implement all of JS eventually though.
it wants to implement all of JS
Also small JS engines already exist, like QuickJS.
More recently, Ladybird, which was discussed last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32809126
For example it looks like you could use a lambda function with the Auth info pre-bound...
They've been doing false advertising for years on every channel, making consumers pay for absolutely useless products.
We're also in the space, I don't think we're selling useless products, or falsely advertising.
Our customers use our proxy servers to test applications that use your IP address to show you localized content (IP Location, GeoIP, etc). We're in 80+ countries 250+ locations globally.
Being able to switch your location with a browser plugin makes it just a few clicks, and _much_ faster than switching VPN endpoints. You also get to proxy just your browser traffic (or even just traffic against a few specific domains) rather than all the traffic on your machine. So your Spotify/Slack/Outlook connections can all run normally, and you're only proxying the site you want to test from somewhere else.
This change is terrible for us. Especially so because users flipping around between different proxies is a major use case. A user needing to re-enter their credentials for each unique proxy server is much worse than just once.
[1]: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=113549...
>Sorry no updates yet. Please star the bug if you wish to see this fixed sooner.
Okay Google, we've starred the bug. Please fix now.
Translation: my manager is blocking this; please star this so have a better chance of changing his mind.
"I'm temporarily restricting comments to keep comments from turning into +1s while this is trending on Hacker News. If you have additional thoughts that you'd like to share with the Chromium team regarding this issue, please return in a few days to leave a comment (and apologies for the inconvenience)."
"As a Chromium contributor that shares information about our progress on extensions issues, I sincerely apologize to extensions developers affected by this issue and the broader community for not sharing an update until now. I'm currently working on a "known issues" document for Manifest V3 that touches on several outstanding issues (including this one), but given the attention on this issue now, I'll quickly share our current thinking on this issue."
"We have always intended to provide support for this functionality in Manifest V3 (for both user-installed and force-installed extensions), and have been iterating on different possible approaches. Our tentative plan (which is not yet finalized) is that the Manifest V3 version of this capability will require extensions to request a new permission scoped to intercepting authentication requests, but will otherwise allow extensions to handle these requests in a similar manner to how they do in Manifest V2."
"The permission string and end user facing warning string have not been finalized yet. Also, we have not yet finalized how this new permission will interact with other permission grants, but extensions that currently have the webRequest permission and broad host permissions will likely not require an additional grant for this permission."
"Finally, I want to note that before we can pursue this capability, we first need to resolve issue 1024211 (now formally marked as a blocker). We are actively working on 1024211 and aim to resolve both that issue and this one before January 2023."
Man, Google sucks.
edit: Apparently I've hit my HN rate limit so I can't reply! Thanks Dang.
As for the proxying, obviously something has to rewrite the address that the request is going to. Depending on the type of proxy (ex: HTTP CONNECT) you may also have an x-forwarded-by header set. It sounds like Chrome never allowed you to do this manually, cool TIL.
https://developer.chrome.com/docs/extensions/reference/proxy...
And that API does not change the request, either. That is not how proxying works.
> We could fork them back in at higher maintenance cost. No point in speculating — I don’t write checks of unknown amount and sign them, and Google looks likely to keep V2 support for a year (thanks be to “enterprise”).
Yes of course, but that probably represents less than 10% of the customers (I'm being extremely generous on purpose, it's probably 0.1%) of your usual NordVPN and co.
> don't do false advertising such as Windscribe
"Stop tracking and browse privately" and "block annoying advertisers from stalking you online" proves you wrong. VPNs don't stop trackers.
> don't do false advertising such as Mullvad
"Evade hackers and trackers". Sure.
> don't do false advertising such as iVPN
Hey looks good actually, they indeed don't claim to block trackers or anything else, just change your IP / geolocation.
Lol how did you come up with 10%? Did you just make it up?
> VPNs don't stop trackers.
Windscribe (and other VPN's) can block trackers. https://blog.windscribe.com/how-r-o-b-e-r-t-works-76d6274460...
Add FoxyProxy to that list of no false advertising, please
Look at things like Firefox's Pocket integration, or like all of Gnome.
Surely you can see the difference between the font sizes for the ublock origin popup, and the enormous fonts on the settings page.
It's totally broken?
The only things correctly sized are the page and the hamburger menu.
Do you not see the oversized tab-bar, the tiny icons on the tab-bar and address bar, the tiny ublock origin dialog, and the huge settings page?
It's hard to understand what you think is unusual. Everything in the browser is displayed normally. The page is different because you used a different zoom, and it zoomed the way Page is normally do.
Are you suggesting that the browser tab bar and settings pages should also grow or shrink if you zoom in or out on a particular web page inside of a tab?
I think you're not fully appreciating how unclear you're being with all of this.
I run a 150dpi screen.
What the problem with running a "96dpi" application on a 150dpi screen?
The text is overall too small.
What text?
Literally all the text in the entire application is too small.
What do I want?
I want to make the text bigger, so I have an easier time reading it.
Is there an application that does what I want?
Yes, Chrome does what I want.
What does Chrome do?
I set the default zoom level to 150% and it makes all the text bigger.
What text does it make bigger?
It makes all the text bigger, and the icons too.
What's the problem with Firefox?
I set the zoom level to 150% and some of the text is fine, some of it is way too small, some of it gigantic.
Why is that a problem?
I have a hard time reading text that's either too small or too big.
What's the problem with the tab bar?
It's too tall.
What's the problem with the icons?
They're too small!
This is just a you problem?
Surely fucking not. Surely I am not the only person running a web browser above 96dpi (on x11).
Is this a X11 problem?
No, Chrome works fine.
Is this a really complicated problem?
No, making fonts the correct size for comfortable reading isn't complicated.
Firefox is not just perceived as 'counter-cultural', its importance lies in the fact that not using Chrome and similar browsers is also a vote not to support a browser monoculture online.
It would be interesting to consider their business values on proxies too; while on the abstract level, it dilutes tracking data quality (I don't really live inside a data centre in Stockholm?!), it might improve the value of their more broadly aggregated data (we've seen this user's fingerprint elsewhere, so we can give you a more accurate location than Geo-IP lookup does)
Kinda glad they disallowed the extensions that had near unfettered access to browser internals.
I'm a happy firefox user, and I'm pretty sure it was the right choice IMO, as firefox is certainly much more stable and fast now than it was before. But it was certainly a very, very rough process and left some very popular extensions broken without alternatives for months and even years before the necessary APIs were added to webextensions to bring them back.
In any case, I checked out Chromium, and the equivalent setting is labeled "Page zoom" and affects extension popovers as well. As far as I know, extension popovers are not web pages, so your expectation (and Chromium's behavior) seem to be a bug - either in the settings UI, or in the way the zoom setting affects extension popovers.
the Microsoft antitrust trial original verdict was reached in 1999 by the way (appeals kept it alive a bit longer, though, into 2001). you are probably referring to the 1990s Microsoft, I imagine.
I still can't leave firefox due to multi containers tho :(
When a website wants to load an ad, it uses javascript[0]. The website can call a function in the included javascript file and tell AdSense "hey load an ad". If you simply block the JS file the website can break due to trying to call functions that don't exist.
uBlock (supposedly, I haven't verified this) instead of blocking the JS instead replaces it with it's own version. That version just basically says "yeah sure cool" whenever the website tries to display an ad, but doesn't actually do anything.
And there's also a product C, D, E but when you check them out you realize they are essentially clones of product A?
Do some Google websites perform worse on Firefox? Sure, but the entire reason that's because people don't use Firefox enough i.e. some websites are worse on Firefox. You just go around and around. If the audience of HN is not able to make that sacrifice (not use some of the GOOG's website) then we deserve the monopoly of Chrome.
Other than that, I also think we need a third alternative for Browsers. Ladybird is in the news these days, and if you're a dev and care about this issue, we should all be contributing to it.
I agree about your clone comment ala Brave, and so on.
The audience of HN is unlikely to make a difference here.
Besides, we are not some political party who all need to vote in one way together. Each person individually here makes their own choices.
Personally I think making my life harder with pointless sacrifices is not useful. I ask myself, am I making this sacrifice to make myself feel good, or because I actually think it can make a change? In this case, I don't think it would make any difference and it wouldn't make me feel good so there's no utility in using Firefox, for me.
This subject - browser monopoly, and related things like OS or app store monopoly - needs to be tackled with regulation, not personal sacrifices.
im a relatively happy firefox user, but at this point to say mozilla significantly mitigates googles monopoly is as plausible as when microsoft claimed that BeOS somehow mitigated theirs.
The audience of HN and devs in large, are the ones who've contributed to the monopoly of Chrome. Us only testing and creating applications for Chrome led to this.
I never said that people don't make their own choice. Of course they do. My point was that if we are going to complain about Chrome, then Firefox is a perfectly fine alternative and is currently the best way to change GOOG's ways is by voting with our feet.
Would regulation be nice? Sure. I doubt it's coming though so for the moment, our only alternative to not living in a ad-infested hellscape is to use Firefox.