I don’t know if it’s just me, but browsing virtually any mainstream website without an ad blocker or with alternative frontends is becoming harder and harder to justify. It’s getting to the point where adblocking isn’t an optional luxury - it’s a requirement to effectively get basic information about things.
Yesterday, I was trying to search some information about Ghouls from Fallout. This lead me to this Fandom wiki page which had ads on almost every corner of the website, autoplaying video in the corner, asking for my age as soon as I clicked on the site, injecting polls and random unrelated videos into the communty wiki content and being incredibly slow to browse. A query that in the past that took 5 seconds now takes 50, for what? Money?
I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate, but the sheer level of degrading quality is not OK. This is just one example of how services are completely barreling towards the shitter at 100+ MPH with no brakes or airbags. I feel some guilt for using content blockers, but that guilt is being wittled away every single day because of websites like this.
online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate
A 40kb HTML page packaged with 450MB of JavaScript, AJAX, and streaming video costs a shitton for some reason.
“We hate ads, too!” — some window asking me to turn off my adblocker
No, you don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be showing me this notice asking me to turn off my adblocker. Either that or I hate ads way more than you do.
Fuck fandom
https://getindie.wiki and the Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension
I tried that, and for some reason it redirects me to an outdated version of the wiki I’m trying to browse.
Logopedia especially is one of my favorites, I just wish it moves out of Fandom. Using Indie Wiki Buddy, it pretends the current date is a few months back, which is kinda odd.
That is odd. Something must be broken for the wiki you tried. It’s most useful when there is a real alternative like for the various minecraft wikis. Here is a full list of alternatives: https://getindie.wiki/listings/
Sometimes you just have to check
wikiafandom because they are the only ones with an up to date page. But I’d rather avoid it.It really sucks that I have to continue relying on Fandom for one of my most visited wikis.
Becoming? I think we are past that stage. What grinds my gears is how hostile the net is to adblockers where users are either barred from the site entirely or guilted into turning it off.
Worse yet is if you try to take back your privacy thru a VPN you are instantly deemed a bad actor or a downright threat!
I have always used ad blockers and whatnot. I used a friends phone to show them something and was blown away by the web. Wtf happened? I knew it was bad but damn. It’s like playing a fucking minigame to use the web.
At home I’m hardcore. I use noscript to essentially white-list the things I want to see.
What really pisses me off is when sites tell me to disable it. It’s my computer, I’ll choose what extensions I run. Fuck you.
Discounting temporary tech issues, I haven’t browsed internet without an adblocker for a single day in my entire life. Nobody is entitled to abuse my attention; no guilt, no exceptions.
I have but only because in the late 90s and 2000s they didn’t really exist, partially because the problem wasn’t present that they were designed for. Been using once consistently since probably around ‘08 tho
Did you not use popup and redirect blockers and AV/AM programs, though? Sort of the same problem, just evolved to be embedded.
All those toolbars and “helpers”, man.
Becoming?
I’ve been using ad blockers since the early 2000’s. Ads with noise is what did it for me. Pop-ups too were super annoying. There was also malware in some ads back in the day. So yes, ads poisoned the internet a long time ago and I absolutely refuse to browse the internet without one. Or two.
yeah that part confused me at well… never used the internet without ad blockers since popup ads were a thing.
Lol I was thinking the same thing.
Ive used ad blockers since 2011. And when mobile browsing got to shit, I got a pi-hole because fuck that noise.
I don’t even browse on mobile much anymore, “oh wow a paywall guess I’ll have to live without whatever this is” 🤷
I get that online services cost a shitton amount of money to operate
They don’t, though! Pages of static HTML are tiny and cost almost nothing to serve; they bring the cost upon themselves by ballooning the page with multiple megabytes of ad-injection and tracking scripts. That claim is like 99% self-serving lie.
I like how angry they is about this, because I relate to this.
Not to mention blind people will never see that shit, but they don’t see any of your shitty shit.
Lmao
I think I am in love with whoever wrote this site.
@thebarrytone. Don’t tell his mom
It really depends on the content being served. Even with JS, a website is just a bunch of text on its own and should be pretty cheap to serve, but a website with just text and no media is out of the ordinary and very limiting. You expect wikis to have a fair few pictures and some sites even have legitimate reasons to be serving videos. The sites that autoplay some random bullshit video when you open them absolutely are bringing those costs on themselves, though.
There’s javascript and then there’s Javascript. A page with a few dozen lines of inline script to do form validation is one thing; a page that wants to load the entirety of React because it has delusions of grandeur about being an “app” is entirely another!
Haha true. That’s kind of also self-inflicted.
Everything you described is static content which can be expensive with big videos.
The cost is way higher when you have accounts for your users and they can search/query for data.
Most of the visitors on those awful sites come from google and are people who don’t have accounts.
https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki
Don’t use Fandom
And now the gas pumps blather at you while filling your car. Marketing ruins everything.
Second or third button down on the right side will sometimes mute it. (I always mute it before I start filling because FU advertisers!)
Of course now there are new pumps with full screen video that may or may not have a mute button. It would almost be too much to bear if not for the refreshing taste of an ice cold Coca-Cola.
They fucking blather at my when I walk past on the footpath.
I feel some guilt for using content blockers
Please don’t. The advertisers “defected” decades ago with popup windows (and probably before that, but popups in the late 90s/early 2000s stand out in my mind). It’s only gotten worse since then.
“Our studies have shown we can fill up to 80% of a user’s visual field with ads before it induces seizures.”
What a movie!
What movie?
Isn’t that from Ready Player One?
Yep
Let me just step back here, away from the fact that they’re obtrusive, annoying, and waste your time you didn’t sign away.
Malvertising is a serious risk these days. Every week we see new malware kits, phishing and increasing complexity. Now, Google’s search algo source code has been leaked. You can bet your shiny ass that the attacks will get more dangerous and even harder to discern.
Block the fuck out of ads, JavaScript, frames, xhr. Use a secure browser that doesn’t have ad revenue at their forefront and use hardened configs where possible.
This isn’t tin foil hat, and it’s not hard. Plenty of people out here want you safe and for corpos to eat shit.
I can attest to this. I’m a security analyst / incident responder for a large organization. 9 out of 10 times we get a “malware domain” hit on our network sensors, it’s due to malware being pushed in ads. It’s real and it’s dangerous. Our entire organization runs adblockers.
It’s gotten worse I feel like, I had a post in infosec somewhere talking about how hovering over google sponsored results don’t even show the first level url - they resolve them
Using a DNS for blocking some ads I’ve noticed often the first couple links on Google are unusable, literally won’t pass me through lol
Yeeeeah, I find dns is hit or miss - so easy to stand up a new one or use an open resolver to skip around
Ultimately it’s up to preference but I find blocking at the browser level to be most effective
Yo hire me. I can’t get a job because I don’t have experience… I can’t get experience because I can’t get a job.
employers hate this one simple trick: lying
It’s deeply frustrating to see how easily someone can land a very technical job via a very unsophisticated HR process.
Hack your way to the goal - start small at a place that’s expanding their tech team and buckle up for a bumpy ride. Get that foot in the door
But like… Life balance holds me back. I make more than an entry level and support my family, thus cannot dedicate the time for a second full time job.
I am destined to remain in role and climb a corporate ladder that I do not enjoy because money
Where there is a will, there is a way.
You might not be able to use the same beaten paths as everyone else, but you can always hack a new path.
At the end of the day, I can’t speak for the entire industry, but when I look for new employees, I care less about resume experience and more about education, drive, and creativity. Once they’re in the role, I can show them the ropes. We also (hopefully many others, if not a majority) invest in serious training and learning platforms to keep people updated.
Infosec is about continuous learning and curiosity. You don’t have the luxury of learning the skill and being done. Security, arguably, changes the most out of all the tech spaces and you need drive and curiosity above all else.
If you’re serious about infosec, you sometimes have to hack it to make it. A -> ? -> B
If you don’t mind me asking, what field are you in rn?
Thank you dude! I appreciate you.
I work retail right now as a manager and although I have a skillset for it, have made great strides, and have changed the company in a few ways for the better, it’s not my desire to stay in this path.
P.s. You say the things I say to others. It’s good to have it thrown back at me lol
Of course man - the world is your oyster. Not everyone is as privileged as me though, so I try to help out where I can to give ‘em a boost. Not everybody knows what they wanna do on the first shot and that can be tough
This isn’t tin foil hat, and it’s not hard.
It’s an escalating game. 95% of the shit is dealt with by a native browser feature or extension. But that last 5% can get very ugly very quickly.
And the longer the escalation game goes on, the more likely you are to make a casual mistake - clicking on the wrong part of a screen or getting fooled by a deceptive link or being sucked by an ad or just feeling curious/horny enough to finally see whether there’s really pussy in that bio.
For folks who pirate, it can be even more dangerous, depending on how malicious some counter-piracy agency wants to get.
Fuck Fandom, find alternative wikis whenever possible.
Me and my homies HATE fandom
Oh fuck yes. I’ve been looking for an extension exactly this a couple of times in the past. Never found anything. Probably because google is shit nowadays.
It’s kind of a selfish feeling but I’m always so bummed to find the only wiki for an indie game on fandom. Yeah, I could put the work in to make a different one elsewhere…but I’ll probably beat the game before I’m done copying the info over.
I’ve recently witnessed people creating a new fandom wiki twice. Both times I warned them, sent them stuff explaining why Fandom is shit, they shrugged their arms and created it. People are dumb.
Pretty sure they C&D or whatever, so you have to modify the content before using it on another website.
I’m not sure if they do, but that’s some hypocritical shit since they blatantly rip off content from independent wiki’s (you can see this whenever the Terraria wiki is updated).
They’ll claim “we didn’t do it, one of our users did it, and we aren’t responsible for them”.
Fuck Fandom
My bad if they don’t, I’m regurgitating half remembered facts from a video I watched about it.
Fuck fandom.
