appstore VS uBlock

I have good news for you: https://apps.nextcloud.com

Nextcloud is nothing more than a collection of small apps. You can disable even core things like sharing.

Anyway, I'm sure you would have found this by using your favourite search engine. Nextcloud is pretty popular. And you'll find much more integrations on the Nextcloud app page or on /r/nextcloud.

Nextcloud allows us to keep our personal files in sync across devices. I use it to sync files between my desktop, laptop, and phone. This means I can work on the same file from anywhere. I leverage a separate file server to store backups, installation kits, legacy documents, iso files, roms, and other things that I want to keep, but do not need direct and immediate access to on the regular. Nextcloud is purpose built. You can access your files through an installed client or through its web interface. Nextcloud has a lot of add-on apps as well which can really extend its functionality. Nextcloud also has an "instant upload" feature which uploads your photos from your phone to your Nextcloud instance. This can be very helpful as it is easier for me to view/edit photos from my desktop. You can also share files between users on the same Nextcloud instance. it's very similar to Dropbox or Google Drive, except you can host it yourself and keep your data, your data.

It is overkill for this only, but if you want to host many more small services like this easily, you may be interested in Nextcloud. Once you have it, you can add any app available on https://apps.nextcloud.com/ with one button, in particular the bookmark app. Bookmarks can then be synced to your browser with the open-source addon https://floccus.org/

Can you reach https://apps.nextcloud.com/ from your network?

By default it does the usual expected things like file and photo syncing, notes, calendar, contacts, to-do lists, etc. Because it's open source, it can be extended by other people who make "apps" for it that you can install, of which you can see an exhaustive list here. Notable entries include office software, password managers, RSS readers, chat services, and plenty more.

Like KDE, Gnome, and Nextcloud?

Nextcloud has support for far more features than just file serving if you look at all these apps.

I agree with you. It seems like the self-hosting community is getting a decent amount of attention right now, and the ability to deploy browser-based applications is the way to go for many FOSS projects.

I think NextCloud [0] has a few apps that do G Suite-type stuff, but I don't have experience using them. Etherpad [1] also seems really good, I've used it in a few Zoom calls and the experience was smooth.

[0] https://apps.nextcloud.com/

Check out uBlock Origin's per site switches [1]

[1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Per-site-switches#no-...

If ads, in particular on YouTube, are the problem, anything Chromium-based is probably only going to get worse and worse (see [1] and [2]). So that basically leaves you with Firefox and Safari.

I work for Mozilla (speaking for myself, of course), so I'll leave you to guess which I'd recommend :P

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Or if on mobile, it is well worth it to look up adblock options for the browser you use.

What are the compelling advantages of Chrome nowadays?

Chrome is working to limit the capabilities of ad blockers:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2023/11/chrome-pushes...

Whereas a compelling advantage of Firefox is that uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Advertising networks have often been vectors for malware. Using an ad blocker is an important security measure. Even the FBI recommends ad blockers:

https://www.malwarebytes.com/malvertising

https://theconversation.com/spyware-can-infect-your-phone-or...

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

> It allows for 30,000 dynamic rules

That is not what we mean by dynamic filters. From https://developer.chrome.com/blog/improvements-to-content-fi...

> However, to support more frequent updates and user-defined rules, extensions can add rules dynamically too, without their developers having to upload a new version of the extension to the Chrome Web Store.

What Chrome is talking about is the ability to specify rules at runtime. What critics of Manifest V3 are talking about is not the ability to dynamically add rules (although that can be an issue), it is the ability to add dynamic rules -- ie rules that analyze and rewrite requests in the style of the blockingWebRequest permission.

It's a little deceptive to claim that the concerns here are outdated and to point to vague terminology that sounds like it's correcting the problem, but on actual inspection turns out to be entirely separate functionality from what the GP was talking about.

> Giving this ability to extensions can slow down the browser for the user. These ads can still be blocked through other means.

This is the debate; most of the adblocking community disagrees with this assertion. uBO maintains a list of some common features that are already not possible to support in Chrome ( https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b... ) and has written about features that are not able to be supported via Chrome's current V3 API ( https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/wiki/Frequently-as... ). Of particular note are filtering for large media elements (I use this a lot on mobile Firefox, it's great for reducing page size), and top-level filtering of domains/fonts.

> "Its happened before"

> That's not an argument

It's a subheading to "2. Browser engine monopoly". The subsection's purpose is describing how bad things were during the IE monopoly to reinforce that it's something to be avoided.

> in fact you could counter-argue that IE left a lot of technical debt

That would be agreeing with the article, unless I understand what you mean.

> On top of that, the internet was very different back then.

In a way that now makes it harder for truly new competing engines to pop up due to increased complexity of the web.

> I'm still not convinced, why would I change my browser?

The points made in the article are:

* Increased privacy, opposed to willingly giving your data to an ad-tech company

* Helps avoid a browser engine monopoly which would effectively let Google dictate web standards

* It’s fast and has a nice user interface

Onto which I'd add:

* Content blockers work best on Firefox (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...), doubly so when Manifest V3 rolls out

* Allows more customization of interface and home page

* UX improvements, like the clutter-free reader mode, aren't vetoed to protect search revenue as with Chrome (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37675467)

Advertising networks are vectors for malware:

https://www.cisecurity.org/insights/blog/malvertising

https://www.malwarebytes.com/malvertising

https://theconversation.com/spyware-can-infect-your-phone-or...

So if you're concerned about security then you want the browser with the best ad blocker.

uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...