This app fixes this problem!

(In general, an adblocker is one of the most valuable things I have installed. I wish EasyList had a subscription option; I'd happily pay to help support its maintenance.)

For about 5 years now I've been actively going back to web pages for things.

Example: I no longer have the BBC News app installed. Instead I have a bookmark on my mobile home screen that goes to the BBC News web page.

What I've found is:

1. Most apps didn't need to be apps, there's nothing that they need access to that their web equivalent cannot already do.

2. The web pages are easier to control... i.e. Firefox on Android and ad-blocking is a joy.

3. Most of the web pages get richer experiences sooner than an app (if it ever gets an update), i.e. minisites on news sites around elections.

4. The web experiences are considerably faster on poorer networks.

5. The DNS logs show a massive reduction in tracking frameworks... even though the web is bloated, apps appear to also be bloated, but the web you can more easily control.

6. Better battery life across the board, probably due to nothing running in the background and no notifications being processed - also improved mental health as the device is now on my terms, pulling content when I want rather than being pushed it when an app wants to.

It's overall a far better experience.

Sadly, adblocking and web in general is restricted in apple devices.

On my iOS devices I used the NextDNS app to provide DNS blocking via a VPN layer.

I would think that for something like a newsletter, explicitly opting in would end up being more profitable, since if you’re sending an email with eg sendgrid it’s not free.

Can someone shed some light on the economics of newsletter spam?

Super super super super stupid. Like why block /r/popular from the web and force it to use the app?

And Reddit is indeed one of the worst offenders here.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.ccrama.redditslide/

While not an extension, the DuckDuckGo browser app on iOS has exactly this feature. Maybe Firefox should consider building it in too!

The internet must be more than two proprietary app stores.

https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pvvi83/googles_amp_p...

The program is opensource.

https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion

Most recent public fork I found is now mirrored here: https://github.com/3nprob/Amplosion

> Safari extensions require your permission to run, so in the interest of transparency I wanted to make the app completely open source.

[...]

> License: This is open source in the interest of transparency, and I hope this doesn't need to be said but please don't take this as an opportunity to reupload the code and call it your own. This is the equivalent to the GitHub "No License", so you're more than welcome to inspect the code and audit it, but you do not have permission to repurpose it as your own.

Mainly:

- No AMP

- If I quote a string, you better be goddamn sure it’s present on the pages that you show me.

- One ad per query. These days the organic results are after the page fold. This is unacceptable for something that’s supposed to be a search engine.

—-

The second one gets little attention but it’s infuriating to me. I mean, I’m explicitly telling the engine what I want. If it’s not including it in the results, I might as well not even be here typing. Just show me whatever it thinks I want based on everything it knows about me. And no, unfortunately verbatim doesn’t always help.

This is symptomatic of the fact that the users are not Google's customers. Google search is intended to direct you to the pages which are most profitable to the company. If you happen to find what you're looking for, so be it. If you don't find what you're looking for (because it's obscure and unprofitable) and instead get distracted by something Google would prefer you to see (because it's profitable) then all the better.

The fact that you're a power user puts you in the minority of (likely unprofitable) users anyway, so Google doesn't mind inconveniencing you. They seem to have a pretty fierce anti-power-user culture, as evidenced by all of the (power user/ hacker popular) products and features they've killed over the years.

We've got a lot of work to do if we're ever going to bring back the web we all remember from the old days.

I'd pay significant money for this (20-30 USD/month), plus very few search operators that actually make sense (i.e. and, or, not).

But yeah, we got AI instead ... (pure crap IMO)

Paid search engine that I switched to last month. Best feature is no ads. You can hook up your private data silos (Notion, Slack, Google, Dropbox etc) and all results appear directly in regular search.

I don’t ever see myself going back to whatever the fuck Google has morphed into over the years.

Update: I'll answer my own question. They didn't even let me sign up.

Then google+ hijacked that and never gave it back.

It's like they both just want to add something to the results, instead of saying "can't find anything else".

You usually don’t even need to remember them, for most somewhat popular sites you can just guess the bang, and it searches there.

And of course Google's own promoted results which are usually only vaguely related to the topic (for example if I search something programming-related, I'll get ads for Udemy or whatnot, but not even a specific course)

I should try the opposite though: when Google SERP is useless, try others.

I would gladly switch to a search engine that just got it all right in the way that Google pre-2010 did.

I don't have an example query, but it happens all the time. I put a query in quotes and google gives results that neither have the quote in the page blurb on google nor on the destination page.

1) People in charge of these features know objectively how pissed off some of their users are. It's done for one simple reason - it brings more advertisement revenue. Google employs some of the smartest people on the planet and they have the demonstrable capacity to build what savvy users like yourself (and me) like.

2) Vast majority of the people are ambivalent and apathetic to these things. The scale at which Google operates is absolutely mind bogglingly massive. Savvy users are the extreme edgecase.

I just don't see any reason to expect a mass-market product or service to serve savvy users. There is a fundamental mismatch in expectation and requirements.

I use dark reader on chrome for computers. They also have a safari extension that surprisingly works just as well.

https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader

https://darkreader.org/safari/

I'm concerned, though, whether these extensions work the same as chrome extensions.

Can they view and potentially upload your browser passwords/bank info/etc?

Is there some limitation that prevents this in the implementation?

I assume Apple doesn’t permit this so you’re kinda limited with an iDevice. (he says from his iPhone)

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

Still the same a year later..

Google of course will never include such a thing

https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search

If DuckDuckGo did smarter results like this, I'd quit Google. Heck I'd even throw in a few bucks.

So does DuckDuckGo; here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/6nCNGZk

> ii) it does match right on the search page.

What do you mean by "match" here?

> match

meant to say math.

I don't know how much longer that will continue to work though. Many sites ignore it and show the mobile version anyway.

#1 most popular "tools" app in the App Store.

Google: Take the hint, please.

There was a time in my life when I believed working for Google was the highest indication of talent. Now, I marvel at how a $1.6 trillion dollar company can’t even serve a page of text and images without fucking it up.

I don’t like amp for various reasons (not the purpose of this reply) and I expect Google can calculate an AMP bounce rate — they tend to serve ads on the page anyway.

This app allows me to communicate with Google in a language they value: data.

- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/amp2html/ - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/redirect-amp-to-ht...

It's the plain fact that if this were a problem on Windows or linux, a free script would be available, but because it's Apple, it's a paid plugin or add-on, as it is with everything you need to customise an apple device.

It's a matter of developer culture, where you develop things for a fun, and to solve a problem. Not to make a quick buck.

- can’t tap menu bar to scroll back to the very top of the page

- can’t find anything on the page because it breaks built in search (unless you’re lucky enough to have the string visible on the viewfinder )

- old man argument, I’ll admit, but I want the site I’m visiting to be the domain I’m seeing in the address bar. This is the Web, not some Google sub domain.

- scrolling is janky on older iPhones.

Oh, and messes your cookies so you’re never logged in. You need an extra tap to redirect you to the site you actually pay for. And probably a whole lot more I’m not remembering.

That’s my list anyway.

I wouldn't mind if it made things better or at least, not worse.

Does such a thing exist?

Fuck your "colloquial definition"

https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion

https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pvvi83/googles_amp_p...

The author also created a popular app for Reddit called Apollo.

https://apps.apple.com/app/apollo-for-reddit/id979274575

https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/787rtu/introducing_a...

But sure, I’ll cave. What would be a better term for this?

I am physically able, yes, but I am not legally allowed to. Since I am not given any permission (i.e. license) to do that.

> And the source is open, so you can check it out.

The term “open source” is used in two ways: the intelligence community reportedly uses it to refer to information sources which are publicly available, as opposed to secretly gathered information. The other use of the term “open source” is as defined by the OSI, who pioneered this new use.

The usual term for source code which is merely available for reading, and not much, if anything, else, is “source-available”¹.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-available_software

We agree, then :) If they’re anxious regarding the privacy implications of using this extension, they can build it themselves.

> The term …

Alright, I agree, that was a misuse of the definition on my part, and I should have said “Source-available”. I was unaware of this definition, so thanks!

Open-source means that the source code can be freely modified and redistributed. This is explicitly forbidden by the license of Amplosion. The proper term for this kind of licence is “source-available”. The description and the website are misleading and should be updated.

https://github.com/christianselig/Amplosion/issues/1

And to be clear about that. That's from github docs

"You're under no obligation to choose a license. However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work. If you're creating an open source project, we strongly encourage you to include an open source license" [1]

And in the developer last comment in the issue he closed he quoted that also to explain that it is not allowed to do anything except seeing code for transparency purpose.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-reposi...

Three dollars to disable this OS feature. Another three to not use passwords. A few more for bypassing another feature tomorrow. One day we will be paying for an OS that doesn't actually do anything. But isn't that exactly what happens every time I buy a laptop? I am paying for an OS that I am going to bypass/dump/replace the moment I open the box!

If Apple charged you to not use ScreenTime or something, sure, but that’s not the case.

Plenty of people pay extra to have a slimmed down version of something, ask Apple users.