Do older versions of Nova have any security flaws which preclude using them?
I've been using this app for ages and it's been essentially feature-complete for several years. A part of me wants to switch launchers for no other reason than "it is supported and not tracking me", but it is possible for software to be finished, and I believe Nova falls into that category. If there's no meaningful vulnerabilities in it, there's really no reason for me to switch away, at least not immediately.
Those threads appear to be stoking the drama more than anything. HN's stated goal is to satisfy intellectual curiosity, and even if the post topic itself is of interest, if the discussion isn't substantive then the system is probably working as intended (regardless of whether it's the flamewar detector or a manual downweight).
NJ Transit uses QR codes for all train tickets and it works well enough. It's not quite as seamless as a tap card but NJT has moved largely to mobile ticketing and they're in the odd position of having to scan tickets both at turnstiles and by train crew (handheld scanners); cards would be awkward in the latter case. The paper tickets used to have magstripes but once they adopted QR codes for the mobile app, the tickets lost the magstipe and gained a printed QR code.
So the central server model is practical. The user's device has to have an internet connection at some point to activate the ticket within a reasonable period before using it but the connection doesn't have to persist after that. I don't know how their handheld scanners work in the Hudson River tunnels where there is no cell service but they do, so long as the user activates their ticket before the train departs.
Do you mean it would be hard for staff to scan cards? Here in the Netherlands both qr and cards (travel cards + bank cards) can be used at stations, and are read by the staff on the train.
This is really cool, thanks for pointing it out! I have used Eruda and keep it in Tampermonkey in Firefox for use in a pinch but it's hacky. It's impressive that it works at all, but it's very difficult to do any actual work.
I already had Kiwi installed and it's neat to pop it open and see this feature hiding in plain sight. I can definitely see myself using it regularly, although I won't use it as a daily driver since it selectively blocks adblockers on a hardcoded list of domains which is just untrustworthy. https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src/blob/master/extensions/re...
I’ll do a change in Kiwi edition 116 to make it selectable in the UI (it’s almost a full rewrite of Kiwi and it will go out in about 10 days).
Most likely to add a setting to make it optional.
The main issue we had was with search partners, if we allow adblocking by default, then search engines still pay for the request, and this means… we pay. And by we, I mean “I” pay :)
One solution that some competitors found is to integrate Adblock Plus (when you develop a browser they pay you for that) or AdGuard and let them do the whitelist (so in appearance the blame is on them, but I am fine to take the blame myself).
Some browsers don’t allow external adblockers so they don’t have this issue at all; you can’t block their ads anyway (not 100% sure but I think Google, DuckDuckGo, Brave, etc are like this).
Yandex who was the pioneer of Chromium extensions on mobile (before Kiwi) has similar mechanisms, except they fully block the extension, instead of whitelisting it on certain URLs.
It’s currently possible to go around the whitelist, just by loading manually an extension.
And yes it’s logic that Google Chrome doesn’t block Google search ads by default unless you load a workaround.
The same that Kiwi doesn’t block Microsoft search ads when our main funding is Microsoft Bing, and to be fair, getting funded by search is the cleanest business model a browser can have.
As a user of Kiwi Browser I find this to be a reasonable approach, and I understand the needs here. I would, however, think that it would have been nice to have a warning for users that are installing one of these extensions along the lines of "This extension might be restricted on certain URLs. Click to learn more". I would find that helpful, paired with the ability to disable it.
This is just because when people install a third party ad blocker, they are expecting a certain type of behaviour, and quietly changing expectations can have bad results for users who require specific functionality.
On an unrelated note, I would appreciate adding a toggle to disable the "Pull to refresh" gesture on Android. I find myself reloading accidentally during scrolling very often, which can result in data loss.
Wow are you the author of Kiwi? If so I want to say thank you for the great browser. Initially when I heard about a Chrome-like browser on Android with full extension support I was skeptical, it sounded too good to be true. But it turned out to be exactly that good.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought they walked back on that? And I think the source code repo is now : https://github.com/kiwibrowser/src.next ? Maybe that's just the chromium rebase repo though.
That is pretty sketchy. Thanks for pointing that out! I've started using Kiwi as my main mobile browser after I got fed up with some issues I was having with Brave.
If you are really really in a rare situation where you want to use Bing and block Bing search ads:
kiwi://extensions
Press: + (from zip)
Load uBlock Origin
Finished.
Not that dramatic + auto-update works.
It would be sketchy to offer an out-of-the-box experience that blocks the search pages of Microsoft and Yahoo (they pay us).
Remember the fact that if a browser has an established and visible business model is way better than a browser where you don’t know how they make money.
With Kiwi, if you use Bing or Yahoo, Microsoft and Yahoo share with us the costs and the revenues (both ways).
Simple model and no need to sell crypto, fake VPNs, user history or whatever some others do.
Would this still result in creating unnecessary costs for Kiwi Browser? Above I believe it was mentioned that the reason these extensions were disabled was to prevent users from racking up costs for requests to search engines (?) with adblocking enabled
Compliance is one thing. It's atrocious how many have an IDGAF attitude toward hazardous waste -- vending machine recyclers claiming that magically all the refrigerant had already leaked out before they touched it, warehouses "accidentally" losing a hundred barges full of deet, ...
I've been using this app for ages and it's been essentially feature-complete for several years. A part of me wants to switch launchers for no other reason than "it is supported and not tracking me", but it is possible for software to be finished, and I believe Nova falls into that category. If there's no meaningful vulnerabilities in it, there's really no reason for me to switch away, at least not immediately.