Guys this content was by boomers for boomers

Tom's Hardware sold out looong ago, sold in 2007 to some faceless consortium. The original "Tom", Thomas Pabst, who is GenX and not a boomer btw, has had nothing to do with the site since.

The editor of this article looks to be a millennial btw.

I'm not worried about data loss. Honestly, the only feature I actually care about from sync is open tabs and recent history, since I'll often open something on one device that I was using on another. I don't really use bookmarks or saved passwords.

My main concern is security. I don't want my machines to be susceptible to malware, and with browsers being very complex, I want to make sure the dev team is very responsive in shipping security updates.

The main reason I use IronFox on my phone is that it works with FDroid, which is important because I don't have Google Play running on my main profile (I use GapheneOS). If the flatpak is updated within a few days of Firefox consistently, that's good enough. But if it takes weeks or more, that's too much.

FreeTube is a FOSS youtube frontend.

FreeTube occasionally has issues on videos with preroll ads where the video fails to play because the ad won't be fetched. This can sometimes be mitigated by running an ipv6 rotator script and blocking freetubes access to ipv4. The one I run reassigns my ipv6 address once every 5 seconds to a new randomly generated valid address.

Sometimes even this doesn't block the ads (again causing the video to fail to play) in which case selecting the share icon from the freetube interface and clicking "open invidious link" will open a web browser pointed to whichever invidious instance is set to your default.

The freetube folks are working on implementing DASH, which should eliminate the need for these workarounds once successful.

FreeTube is a FOSS youtube frontend.

FreeTube occasionally has issues on videos with preroll ads where the video fails to play because the ad won't be fetched. This can sometimes be mitigated by running an ipv6 rotator script and blocking freetubes access to ipv4. The one I run reassigns my ipv6 address once every 5 seconds to a new randomly generated valid address.

Sometimes even this doesn't block the ads (again causing the video to fail to play) in which case selecting the share icon from the freetube interface and clicking "open invidious link" will open a web browser pointed to whichever invidious instance is set to your default.

The freetube folks are working on implementing DASH, which should eliminate the need for these workarounds once successful.

I too am intererted in your rotator script

Where can I get such a rotator script?

Maybe it is a regional thing? I was watching YouTube 30 mins ago with no issues and haven't ever had any unless I open a new tab but don't try to watch until the next day. Then I just need to refresh and it is off to the races.

The internet hasn't noticed yet

Says article on the internet shared with others on the internet and linked to from many internet places.

Article titles are fucking garbage. At least it didn't pul the "Here's why" bullshit.

The workaround: Switch from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin.

ABP has had random issues that break it often for years now. It's crap.

Honest question, but what makes librewolf BETTER?
In firefox you can easily toggle off the studies telemetry bullshit in the settings. Librewolf is just firefox with those things ripped out right?

iOS and Mac users have Vinegar, if you want to spend like $2 and support an indie developer.

The workaround

Quit using YouTube directly and proxy your request through an Invidious instance.

Your requests are mixed in with everyone else’s, ad’s are blocked and most importantly only 1 machine touches YouTube directly and that’s the server hosting Invidious.

Not a solution for most people, unfortunately...

Could you elaborate on why not?

You see how often growing youtubers complain about more than 85% of their viewers are not subscribed to the channel, or how just some videos have more views than their main content? The issue is that Invidious doesn't have the algorithm Youtube provides to everyone, and that not a lot of people really watch their subscribed page.

Could you elaborate on why not?

FreeTube is a FOSS youtube frontend.

FreeTube occasionally has issues on videos with preroll ads where the video fails to play because the ad won't be fetched. This can sometimes be mitigated by running an ipv6 rotator script and blocking freetubes access to ipv4. The one I run reassigns my ipv6 address once every 5 seconds to a new randomly generated valid address.

Sometimes even this doesn't block the ads (again causing the video to fail to play) in which case selecting the share icon from the freetube interface and clicking "open invidious link" will open a web browser pointed to whichever invidious instance is set to your default.

The freetube folks are working on implementing DASH, which should eliminate the need for these workarounds once successful.

Why not just use the invidious instance directly?

I like freetube ¯\_(ツ)_/¯