How do regular folks stand browsing the modern web? I have a VM for opening random links with no javascript or ad blocking. When I open certain news sites my laptop fans spin 100% loading all the ads, and it's almost impossible to read the actual story.
@kyle I use
https://adnauseam.io/
it's like uBlock (I think it shares some code), but instead of not-loading ads it cliks everything, doing (allegedly) the most damage to data capturing
@kyle even websites without ads are still crippled by “full stack” dependency on garbage from top to bottom. I see this a lot on corporate sites. Abysmal performance that comes from using the latest tech rather than the most well suited, and then doubling down on copypasta of StackOverflow solutions to tricky topics rather than trying to understand a best practice or approach.
@kyle This is pretty much exactly what @feonixrift has been on about here:
https://hackers.town/@feonixrift/106939683907651514
I'm more in the "open in an isolated browser session or Tor browser" stage, though that's because non of my principle daily drivers do VMs all that well presently.
But yeah: The Web Is Overtly Hostile. It's a mistake.
Sites should function at a minimum level of complexity (no JS, no images, no markup past a very minimal HTML tagset), or GTFO.
Of course, enforcing that is a fool's errand, though a hyperbolic discounting / downrating through search engines might help.
The migration to social web is probably negating even that power as we speak.
@kyle Case in point: https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1435827240286109702
The Web as experienced by tech nerds is completely different thing than the Web as experienced by other people. Even browsing big social media is not as hostile, so no wonder that they are "the Web" for increasing amount of people.
@KekunPlazas @kyle @tbernard that was kind of my intent with Ephemeral but I would love that to be built into browsers.
@cassidyjames @kyle @tbernard I'm pretty sure the maintainers of Epiphany would be on board with that.
@KekunPlazas @kyle @tbernard
Yes, the later. Any browser auto-spawn from url should open private tab. Only explicit launch should be normal (so not former).
@ruff @KekunPlazas @kyle @tbernard
That sounds pretty good. Perhaps some "whitelisting" mechanism would make sense. Simplest way would be to remember the sites you opened in regular mode.
Problem: Some obnoxious sites now tell you to leave private mode to read an article.
So, an ephemeral, untrusted profile that is cleared on closing the tab, might be a useful addition to private mode.
@KekunPlazas @tbernard This is one big reason why I've been experimenting so much on the side with running browsers inside bwrap so I could have a persistent but externally-sandboxed browser for more trusted browsing, and a disposable sandboxed browser that erased its sandbox when the window closed, for untrusted browsing (like opening URLs from external sources).
The implementation is pretty simple, it's just a matter of maintaining bwrap rules long-term.
@KekunPlazas @kyle @tbernard Firefox Focus does that, and regular Firefox can be configured to clear everything when closed too. It also turns up the anti-tracking protection when in private browsing.
@kyle and so many sites dont't work when ads and trackers are blocked. The web is so broken.
To elaborate, this is a disposable VM just for opening random, possibly untrusted links other people send me. I do most of my own browsing in a different VM with ad and javascript blocking in place. It's always jarring to see just how bad the web is without all of that in place.