Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

feverzsj•about 1 hour ago

They messed up basic color scheme, making it almost unusable.

[0]: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/1532

[1]: https://github.com/imputnet/helium/issues/1850

duskdozer•about 1 hour ago

This is mostly an argument for full user customization. I'm willing to bet some people prefer the current scheme. Presumably the developer(s).

willtemperley•about 1 hour ago

In the same sense that a blockchain can be forked by using software that only accepts certain types of block, is it possible to fork the WWW in a similar manner? e.g. with changes that neuter the ad-mongers.

For example coming up with a way to get rid of these god awful cookies. Maybe ad-monger sites could be allowed in the same way an insecure connection is allowed behind a series of warnings?

vitally3643•about 1 hour ago

The internet is literally just a pipe. There's no limitation binding us to HTTP. You can use any protocol you want over the internet, anything at all.

bastawhiz•17 minutes ago

Not sure I'd call it just a pipe, but maybe a series of tubes.

willtemperley•42 minutes ago

Well quite. So why are we living in this surveillance hellscape?

pogue•about 2 hours ago

How are they going to be adding uBlock Origin to Chromium going forward if manifest v2 gets completely deprecated/removed entirely?

feverzsj•about 1 hour ago

Nothing. It will be a huge burden for them to maintain all the removed code. Their only choice is to integrate brave's adblocker.

pogue•about 1 hour ago

This seems to be the only way forward from what I can figure. Helium's main selling point is that it's essentially degoogled chromium + a few miscellaneous patches & full uBlock. But once Google completely strips all that out of Chromium project, that won't be a tenable option.

I'm not sure what Opera/Vivaldi/et al. use for their native adblocking, but Brave's rust adblocker makes the most sense to me. Really it's uBlock's filtering lists that keep the whole thing working anyway.

gruez•about 1 hour ago

AFAIK some of the other chromium forks (brave and/or edge?) were committed to backporting manifest v2 (or more specifically the webRequestBlocking API) for future chromium versions.

mrbluecoat•about 2 hours ago

> cause havoc, and put people first

An odd pairing

willtemperley•about 1 hour ago

Not really. Every activist that made a real difference for the good caused some kind of havoc.

Transparency efforts behind the Helium Browser

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Discussion (12 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews