Tildes' conciseness is admirable. A related, pleasant surprise for me was that it works with uMatrix without any adjustments to rules: everything it loads is entirely within the tildes.net domain.
Tildes' conciseness is admirable. A related, pleasant surprise for me was that it works with uMatrix without any adjustments to rules: everything it loads is entirely within the tildes.net domain.
I'm a heavy uMatrix user as well (with all scripts blocked by default), so this was an explicit goal of mine. Except in rare cases where it's the only option, I don't want to have any third-party...
From a privacy perspective, this means that when people are using Tildes, they're only communicating with my server(s) directly, not sending data to a bunch of other companies hosting javascript/analytics/fonts/etc. whenever they're using the site.
Is this going to be scalable? Eventually you'll be creamed with requests and rather than scaling up and just increasing costs to handle load, why not let a CDN do some of the heavy lifting?
Is this going to be scalable? Eventually you'll be creamed with requests and rather than scaling up and just increasing costs to handle load, why not let a CDN do some of the heavy lifting?
CDNs aren't free either, but it's something that we can worry about when we need to. It's pretty easy to start using a CDN if it ever becomes necessary.
CDNs aren't free either, but it's something that we can worry about when we need to. It's pretty easy to start using a CDN if it ever becomes necessary.
~~ This may be a dumb question: can you explain what exactly is uMatrix and why one would use it? ~~ Nvm, figured it out. For those who had the same question, it's a fancy interface for blocking...
~~ This may be a dumb question: can you explain what exactly is uMatrix and why one would use it? ~~
Nvm, figured it out. For those who had the same question, it's a fancy interface for blocking network requests like JS, CSS, ect. This helped make it clearer for me.
uMatrix is a browser extension that gives you very fine-grained control of what you're allowing a site to do and run. It works as a grid (a matrix) where you can specifically block or allow a...
uMatrix is a browser extension that gives you very fine-grained control of what you're allowing a site to do and run. It works as a grid (a matrix) where you can specifically block or allow a bunch of different types of things, based on the domain they're associated with.
Along the left are all the different domains that reddit tries to include something from in the page, and along the top where you see "cookie", "css", "image", etc. are the different types. Then you use the grid to block or allow certain things - for example you can see that there's a square on the "www.redditstatic.com" row in the "script" column (with 19 in it) that's a bright green, that color means that I've explicitly allowed it. Specifically, that means that I'm allowing 19 scripts from www.redditstatic.com to run (these are needed for reddit's functionality).
However, you can also see that all of the scripts from amazon-adsystem, google-analytics, etc. are blocked - the domains themselves are bright red on the left, that means those domains are explicitly blacklisted. I've also explicitly blacklisted an XHR (that's a background request done by javascript) to sendbird.reddit.com - that's their new chat system and I don't want to use it, so I've blacklisted the domain and uMatrix prevents any communication with it at all.
It's a bit confusing, especially if you're not really familiar with web technology, but hopefully that kind of makes sense. As a contrast to the reddit grid I showed above, here's what uMatrix looks like when you're on Tildes: https://i.imgur.com/7EKKXSX.png - there are no other domains involved at all.
It definitely is, I like it a lot. I used to use NoScript for similar purposes, but I think they ruined NoScript a bit during the transition to the new style of Firefox extensions. That sent me...
It definitely is, I like it a lot. I used to use NoScript for similar purposes, but I think they ruined NoScript a bit during the transition to the new style of Firefox extensions. That sent me hunting for other options, and I ended up on uMatrix, which I think I ended up liking even more than old NoScript.
adblock, ublock and ghostery all generally use blacklists (crowdsourced and curated) that are highly targeted to get rid of third-party tracking and advertising HTML elements and scripts. uMatrix...
adblock, ublock and ghostery all generally use blacklists (crowdsourced and curated) that are highly targeted to get rid of third-party tracking and advertising HTML elements and scripts. uMatrix gives you much more control over what gets run on your browser by using a whitelist method for all the common network requests/scripts being used on a site, but as a result generally requires a fair bit more work on the user's part to get websites functional... especially since so many use shady tactics so their site doesn't even function unless you accept their internal tracking scripts. E.g. reddit through redditstatistics.
If you just want third-party tracking gone, use ghostery. If you just want ads gone, use adblock or ublock. If you are security/privacy conscious and want complete, total control over what you allow to run on your browser... uMatrix is the one you want. NoScript works similarly too but their new UI is just abysmal IMO.
p.s. I use uBlock + uMatrix... they go hand in hand since even though I can manage the scripts better using uMatrix, uBlock does better at dealing with ads, especially since it modifies page rendering meaning missing ad elements don’t leave a gaping hole where the ads used to be.
From what I can tell, it's basically a firewall for your browser. It allows you to block certain types of requests, e.g. you can have a website not allow third-party JavaScript. You can think of...
From what I can tell, it's basically a firewall for your browser. It allows you to block certain types of requests, e.g. you can have a website not allow third-party JavaScript. You can think of it like a general-purpose uBlock. As for why you might use it, it could be good for privacy or security concerns, e.g. preventing websites from loading Facebook scripts that could track you as you browse.
The convenience of uMatrix is that it allows user control over network requests in a quick enough manner that it isn't particularly inconvenient to block most requests by default, and allow...
The convenience of uMatrix is that it allows user control over network requests in a quick enough manner that it isn't particularly inconvenient to block most requests by default, and allow whatever is necessary. Thus, for example, google and facebook requests can be blocked entirely, and yet if a site wants to embed some youtube videos, it is easy to allow them, and if for some reason I want facebook scripts to load, it would only take a few seconds to enable them on a one-time basis.
It's not particularly hard, but it can be time-costly if you want a "nice" .onion address. I've only done it for strictly static sites, but since there's no 3rd party assets it should work fine...
It's not particularly hard, but it can be time-costly if you want a "nice" .onion address. I've only done it for strictly static sites, but since there's no 3rd party assets it should work fine for this site as well. I'd personally like to see more love for eepsites as well.
Very commendable indeed. I wish more of the web ran according to the philosophies which @Deimos has made clear are integral to the design and implementation of tildes.
Very commendable indeed. I wish more of the web ran according to the philosophies which @Deimos has made clear are integral to the design and implementation of tildes.
It's refreshing, especially since the new Reddit has doubled-down on the Single Page Application UI which has made it borderline unusable (yes there's old Reddit but who knows how long that will...
It's refreshing, especially since the new Reddit has doubled-down on the Single Page Application UI which has made it borderline unusable (yes there's old Reddit but who knows how long that will be allowed to survive). SPA has definitely its place but it's been way overused in places like forums or blogs where the focus is on text and interaction is minimal.
I'll wager they kill off old.reddit within a year of the 'official' launch of the 'new' reddit. That's going to be D-Day for tildes and every other link aggregator on the web, it'll trigger a mass...
I'll wager they kill off old.reddit within a year of the 'official' launch of the 'new' reddit.
That's going to be D-Day for tildes and every other link aggregator on the web, it'll trigger a mass exodus.
I'm not sure it'll be a "mass" exodus. Most humans don't really care how they get their content, they just want gratis content. And they can get that with the new Reddit as well. From my...
I'm not sure it'll be a "mass" exodus. Most humans don't really care how they get their content, they just want gratis content. And they can get that with the new Reddit as well. From my experience, the average person really doesn't give a shit whether the site they use is a technical marvel.
Yeah I think reddit will do just fine... there are more than enough people in the world who only want/care about memes and instant gratification. But all the users who do care about quality...
Yeah I think reddit will do just fine... there are more than enough people in the world who only want/care about memes and instant gratification. But all the users who do care about quality content and in-depth discussions will search for greener pastures. Hopefully ~ can fill that niche.
Tildes' conciseness is admirable. A related, pleasant surprise for me was that it works with uMatrix without any adjustments to rules: everything it loads is entirely within the tildes.net domain.
I'm a heavy uMatrix user as well (with all scripts blocked by default), so this was an explicit goal of mine. Except in rare cases where it's the only option, I don't want to have any third-party scripts or assets on the site at all: https://docs.tildes.net/technical-goals#zero-third-party-scriptsassets-during-normal-use
From a privacy perspective, this means that when people are using Tildes, they're only communicating with my server(s) directly, not sending data to a bunch of other companies hosting javascript/analytics/fonts/etc. whenever they're using the site.
Is this going to be scalable? Eventually you'll be creamed with requests and rather than scaling up and just increasing costs to handle load, why not let a CDN do some of the heavy lifting?
CDNs aren't free either, but it's something that we can worry about when we need to. It's pretty easy to start using a CDN if it ever becomes necessary.
~~ This may be a dumb question: can you explain what exactly is uMatrix and why one would use it? ~~
Nvm, figured it out. For those who had the same question, it's a fancy interface for blocking network requests like JS, CSS, ect. This helped make it clearer for me.
uMatrix is a browser extension that gives you very fine-grained control of what you're allowing a site to do and run. It works as a grid (a matrix) where you can specifically block or allow a bunch of different types of things, based on the domain they're associated with.
So for example, here's what the uMatrix interface looks like when I'm on reddit: https://i.imgur.com/E4B19ko.png
Along the left are all the different domains that reddit tries to include something from in the page, and along the top where you see "cookie", "css", "image", etc. are the different types. Then you use the grid to block or allow certain things - for example you can see that there's a square on the "www.redditstatic.com" row in the "script" column (with 19 in it) that's a bright green, that color means that I've explicitly allowed it. Specifically, that means that I'm allowing 19 scripts from www.redditstatic.com to run (these are needed for reddit's functionality).
However, you can also see that all of the scripts from amazon-adsystem, google-analytics, etc. are blocked - the domains themselves are bright red on the left, that means those domains are explicitly blacklisted. I've also explicitly blacklisted an XHR (that's a background request done by javascript) to sendbird.reddit.com - that's their new chat system and I don't want to use it, so I've blacklisted the domain and uMatrix prevents any communication with it at all.
It's a bit confusing, especially if you're not really familiar with web technology, but hopefully that kind of makes sense. As a contrast to the reddit grid I showed above, here's what uMatrix looks like when you're on Tildes: https://i.imgur.com/7EKKXSX.png - there are no other domains involved at all.
Huh. I might use this. It seems a lot nicer than 0.0.0.0ing domains in a host file.
It definitely is, I like it a lot. I used to use NoScript for similar purposes, but I think they ruined NoScript a bit during the transition to the new style of Firefox extensions. That sent me hunting for other options, and I ended up on uMatrix, which I think I ended up liking even more than old NoScript.
I'm using adblock origin that has a similar thing but only for scripts.
Is this any better?
adblock, ublock and ghostery all generally use blacklists (crowdsourced and curated) that are highly targeted to get rid of third-party tracking and advertising HTML elements and scripts. uMatrix gives you much more control over what gets run on your browser by using a whitelist method for all the common network requests/scripts being used on a site, but as a result generally requires a fair bit more work on the user's part to get websites functional... especially since so many use shady tactics so their site doesn't even function unless you accept their internal tracking scripts. E.g. reddit through redditstatistics.
If you just want third-party tracking gone, use ghostery. If you just want ads gone, use adblock or ublock. If you are security/privacy conscious and want complete, total control over what you allow to run on your browser... uMatrix is the one you want. NoScript works similarly too but their new UI is just abysmal IMO.
p.s. I use uBlock + uMatrix... they go hand in hand since even though I can manage the scripts better using uMatrix, uBlock does better at dealing with ads, especially since it modifies page rendering meaning missing ad elements don’t leave a gaping hole where the ads used to be.
From what I can tell, it's basically a firewall for your browser. It allows you to block certain types of requests, e.g. you can have a website not allow third-party JavaScript. You can think of it like a general-purpose uBlock. As for why you might use it, it could be good for privacy or security concerns, e.g. preventing websites from loading Facebook scripts that could track you as you browse.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong here!
The convenience of uMatrix is that it allows user control over network requests in a quick enough manner that it isn't particularly inconvenient to block most requests by default, and allow whatever is necessary. Thus, for example, google and facebook requests can be blocked entirely, and yet if a site wants to embed some youtube videos, it is easy to allow them, and if for some reason I want facebook scripts to load, it would only take a few seconds to enable them on a one-time basis.
I'd definitely like to do that, I just don't know anything about it at all. Is it difficult to set up, or pretty straightforward?
It's not particularly hard, but it can be time-costly if you want a "nice"
.onionaddress. I've only done it for strictly static sites, but since there's no 3rd party assets it should work fine for this site as well. I'd personally like to see more love for eepsites as well.To expand on this, hidden service
.onionaddresses are a hash of an RSA public key, so you need to brute force your way to getting a "vanity" address.Very commendable indeed. I wish more of the web ran according to the philosophies which @Deimos has made clear are integral to the design and implementation of tildes.
It's refreshing, especially since the new Reddit has doubled-down on the Single Page Application UI which has made it borderline unusable (yes there's old Reddit but who knows how long that will be allowed to survive). SPA has definitely its place but it's been way overused in places like forums or blogs where the focus is on text and interaction is minimal.
I'll wager they kill off old.reddit within a year of the 'official' launch of the 'new' reddit.
That's going to be D-Day for tildes and every other link aggregator on the web, it'll trigger a mass exodus.
I'm not sure it'll be a "mass" exodus. Most humans don't really care how they get their content, they just want gratis content. And they can get that with the new Reddit as well. From my experience, the average person really doesn't give a shit whether the site they use is a technical marvel.
Yeah I think reddit will do just fine... there are more than enough people in the world who only want/care about memes and instant gratification. But all the users who do care about quality content and in-depth discussions will search for greener pastures. Hopefully ~ can fill that niche.
I doubt it will go that quickly - the various old mobile/"compact" sites are still accessible, and have been for several years IIRC.
I think they have a hunger for tracking revenues now. I'm expecting that will be the impetus to drop support for all the 'old' stuff.