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by JustSomeNobody 2515 days ago
Can we just not post anything from TechCrunch? Their website is horribly anti-user.
2 comments

Heh on my HN client for Android (Material) I never could open TechCrunch articles with the built-in browser. I gave up on using the built-in browser as a result. I wouldnt outright ban TechCrunch but I agree it can be entirelt unusable.

Sidenote: Wondering if anybody outside of Google offers an embedded browser component for Android like Mozilla and co. They might be able to provide a better experience.

Mozilla has GeckoView[1]. They also distribute a set of helper components for building browser-like applications on Android called Mozilla Android Components[2].

[1] https://mozilla.github.io/geckoview [2] https://mozac.org

Aside from that I'm also using this client on my phone, and I stopped using the built-in browser as well. I've configured the app to use my native browser which means I now get all the benefits from that when reading articles in Material (like having uMatrix on).

RE: Sidenote

I think the FF preview works as webview?

Techcrunch pages seem to have the highest number of adware/spyware scripts and links attached to them. I'd be amazed if the site hasn't also got a huge number of GDPR breaches in its workings.
Oath does have that truly awful preferences dialogue that pops up on first visit. It's frankly enough to make me navigate away most times.
The linked page displays surprisingly well when visited with JS off, although it's ~10KB of article text embedded in 365KB of other (inline) crap. There's not even a nag to goad you into turning JS on.