Remove AI garbage from your web browsing experience with the uBlockOrigin Huge AI Blocklist

https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist

Install this blocklist using the instructions on the GitHub page. For Firefox, you will need to install uBlockOrigin for this. Google Chrome no longer allows the uBlockOrigin extension, so I'm assuming you're at least primarily a Firefox user - or about to be (see browser alternatives below).

For Google Chrome or mobile browsers, this will work with uBlacklist. See the GitHub page for full details on compatibility.

Remove AI Widgets:

If you go to your uBlockOrigin Filter lists page, you can select to filter out AI Widgets - this should completely remove the 'AI Mode' widget/button from your Google search page, in addition to the work done by the Huge AI Blocklist.

Using the uBlockOrigin Huge AI Blocklist filter has made my Google searches look like they used to, and gives me genuine search results.

Look at this. It's beautiful. It's informative. It's not a heap of burning trash bloated with fake information made up by a hallucinating chat bot.

We can go even further: return to the old school search results.

Now, the above results are great and should be free of generative AI junk, but some people would rather not see any of the summary widgets or 'people also ask' box at all. Fear not! You can remove all that by using the 'Web' mode in the Google search bar. Click the 'More' drop down menu and select 'Web'.

Huzzah! Incredible. It's like a functional search engine again.

You can make this the default Google search mode in Google Chrome using Method 1 from this page (https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/). Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a way to do this in Firefox too. This is why for the most part I still use DuckDuckGo (see below) as my default search engine, and only use Google to supplement my searches on the rare occasion I'm just missing something.

Remember, if you clear your cookies, your search engine preferences will reset, including any settings you enabled/disabled to avoid AI. This applies to DuckDuckGo as well; check your settings every time you clear your browser!

Extra filters (optional):

I've also added four filters (their order doesn't matter) to the My Filters page. Full disclosure: I'm not sure they still work, or may only work on Chrome, but I'm keeping them anyway, just in case.

google.*##div[jscontroller]:not(:has(div[jscontroller].YzCcne)):has(.YzCcne)

www.google.com##.Beswgc

www.google.com##.olrp5b

www.google.com##.hdzaWe

Make sure you hit the apply changes button when you add filters.

Browser alternatives: escaping Google Chrome.

If you haven't jumped ship from Chrome yet, I'd recommend doing so. Sometimes Chrome outperforms Firefox for niche purposes or because a website doesn't bother to fully support non-Chrome browsers, but the days of Chrome being the superior browser are long gone — by about 10 years. If you're trying to escape Chromium browsers, beware that a lot of the popular Chrome alternatives are just Chrome in a different hat.

Firefox has been the most popular non-Chromium browser for years, and for good reason. However, the company running Mozilla Firefox has annoyed their users, me included, by refusing to take an anti- generative-ai stance, and even included AI features in the Mozilla Firefox browser. Most Firefox users specifically use it because they hate Google's enshittification and want a privacy-focused, clean browser that doesn't hog their RAM and CPU for no reason. So, you can imagine that Mozilla's attitude has pissed us all off recently. You can turn off the AI features in Firefox with the built-in settings, but the company has recently steered straight into the burning garbage heap by saying they want to make the browser based on AI.

Waterfox and LibreWolf:

There are really good alternatives based on Firefox (open-source) which are not affiliated with Mozilla (the company), if you don't like how it operates. Waterfox and LibreWolf are even more trimmed down and privacy-focused than Mozilla's Firefox, and don't use AI. Anti-ai statements: Waterfox and LibreWolf.

From this page: https://programming.dev/post/42546774

I've heard good things about both of these browsers and will investigate them further to decide whether to personally switch from Mozilla Firefox.

DuckDuckGo:

I would also recommend installing the DuckDuckGo extension to your browsers and setting it to be your default search engine.

I've had DuckDuckGo installed on my browsers, Chrome or Firefox, for like 10 years now. It is a good search engine, it's unobtrusive, and blocks trackers, cookies, and does not save any data about you. I've also used it as my default mobile browser for years, along with Firefox mobile, which you can add the AI Blocklist to (see again the GitHub page). I haven't tried the DuckDuckGo desktop browser yet, but I imagine it works just fine like the mobile version. I think DuckDuckGo's browser is also Chromium-based, at least indirectly. I use Firefox with the DuckDuckGo extension so I can have a widely-supported, non-Chromium browser, but include all of DuckDuckGo's anti-tracking features.

Note: DuckDuckGo has included AI in its browser product, however you can opt-out of all AI features with the built-in settings and they will not push it on you like Google does. I hope they remove AI features entirely in the future, but for now I am comfortable with the barriers in place to keep AI out of my face. Firefox also has AI features like Chrome does, which you can turn off with the built-in settings.

There's also noai.duckduckgo search, an alternative version of its normal search engine which removes AI-generated images and turns off AI results/assists by default. Even though DuckDuckGo's inclusion of any AI features annoys me, its policy to make these features 100% optional builds trust with this browser/extension/search engine.

You can always use Google search if you need to, but with uBlockOrigin and the AI Blocklist filter added on, at least you shouldn't have AI-altered search results or the AI overview anymore.

Other browsers exist, probably:

There are certainly more non-Chromium alternatives out there, but Firefox, Waterfox, and LibreWolf are the top three recommended to me. That link to alternatives, plus this ComputerCity page are the best lists I could find in a brief search. If you google "non-Chromium browsers" you'll get a lot of mixed results which require a bit of digging to realise they're not really recommending you what you looked for at all.

I've heard about Ecosia over the years, and while I like the idea of a search engine that plants a tree for each query, I don't think that's actually what happens — at least, that's what they used to be reputed to do, but I believe that's an unsustainable business model which has likely changed. In 2026, Ecosia says it uses 100% of its profits for the planet and runs its search engine off clean energy. That's cool! It's still Chromium-based. And it also uses generative AI for chat bots, so I don't trust its principles on environmentalism. I need to do more reading on this to form a stronger opinion about it.

I hope this post has helped at least some of you have a better experience browsing the web and googling your questions.

The Huge AI Blocklist really has been an amazing tool to keep my internet life free and clear of a lot of generative AI rubbish. I'm not a tech expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm savvy enough to understand what genAI is and does, and that the more I learn about it, it's even worse than I thought. I truly hate it, and I hate the enshittification of all our experiences, even those as simple and innocent as googling "snow leopard" or "how to cook pasta" or "what is a phascogale" (go ahead and test your freshly-cleaned search engines out with that one hehe).

holy shit okay may have found a game-changer for web searches...with duckduckgo it's easy to turn off the ai features permanently, but regardless of engine there's the increasing problem of the search results themselves leading mostly to ai-generated articles on random ghost websites that say a lot without any information, and then the information they do give is contradictory or otherwise just wrong. this is especially a problem for me when trying to search for, e.g., a current list of the best products in a certain category.

finally searched for a solution and there IS in fact a giant hand-curated list of sites containing this content. it can be imported to ublock origin on desktop or mobile, and even can be used on iOS via the ublacklist extension in the safari app. it's updated regularly, and importing via the link as described should allow those updates to go into effect automatically.

i've only tested it a little bit, but after importing the list and repeating my duckduckgo search for backpack recommendations, my top results now lead to websites that appear to be linked to actual organizations in some form, with an "about us" page and the name of a founder and everything. the text is still often a bit wordy and SEO-optimized, but it now has actual recommendations that are relevant to the query. BIG IF TRUE???

please do not start talking about The Definition Of Art on this post, or Whether Human Creations Have Souls. i am very tired.

once I added this it took me 15 minutes to find a backpack that met my needs and order it with free shipping. I feel reborn

Also, please do not listen to how people talk about cover letters on this site. Cover letters are important, and in many industries you can be damn sure they'll be read. And no, they're not 'fanfic about working in your office', or just re-stating the resume contents in a fancier guise. If you treat them like that, then of course they're not doing much for you. That makes you sound like a syncophantic windbag, and it's not doing anything else to help.

I was trained in the dark arts of the cover letter by my mother, who is a hiring manager. And her training has paid off: I've been consistently told my cover letters are excellent. Let me pass on the wisdom.

The job of a cover letter is to give a prospective employer strictly more information than is on the resume. This is where you take the resume contents and put them into context. You look at the job requirements (you are looking at the job requirements before applying, right?) and look at your resume and ask the question (in your head) "why would a person think this candidate would be good for this job?" and your cover letter is the answer to that question. If you don't answer that question, the hiring manager is going to have to do it themselves, and you have way more information to work with than they do.

This is especially important if you're moving from one industry to another, because then the relevant connections aren't obvious. It's also very important if you're overqualified, because then you can use the letter to say "I know it looks like this job would be too entry-level for me, but I'm interested to pursue it for reasons x, y, and z". You can also use this space to explain away something that might otherwise be disqualifying, like job-hopping or a long break in employment. The tone to strike here is always matter-of-fact and constrained to topic - don't go into detail about health stuff or personal tragedy, just tell them what they need to hear: that this period of your resume was affected by [bad thing] but that it's now in the past and you're looking forward to the next chapter. Remember, one of the things they're trying to learn is whether you'd be content in this role, or whether you'd be miserable and leave after 2 months, which would force them to do all the work of hiring again. You're trying to establish that you will fit right in and not cause problems. Knowing what drew you to this job in particular (and don't just say 'money', that's true for everyone) helps with that.

And the other mistake? Everyone writes cover letters that are too long. One page is fine. Two is the absolute maximum, and that's if you have a lot of specific things to say. It's a waste of your time and theirs to pad it out with fluff. Of my two most recent successful cover letters (i.e. jobs for which I was interviewed) one was 390 words and the other was 550. That's the length of this post. How long did it take me to write this post? About 15 minutes to write, 5 to proof and edit. That's how long you should be spending on a cover letter, maximum.

My list of useful Spanish resources

Warning: This is a long list. Please don't feel pressured to do everything all at once—you are not supposed to. Experiment with different resources one at a time and see what works best for you.

Complete Spanish Step by Step:

An absolute gem of a textbook. It covers almost all the grammar a non-native speaker would need, and the selected vocabulary (especially the verbs) is excellent.

McGraw-Hill Language Lab App:

An app for all McGraw-Hill textbooks (including Complete Spanish Step by Step). The interface is a bit clunky, but it does include flashcards and listening/pronunciation resources.

LACartoons:

Feeling nostalgic? Want to rewatch cartoons from your childhood, lament the good old days, and improve your Spanish? Say no more, fam! (I literally just finished rewatching Death Note yesterday lol.)

Language Transfer (Spanish):

An awesome course that offers an alternative perspective on language learning. It draws a lot of parallels between Spanish and English and teaches useful shortcuts and tricks.

Dreaming Spanish:

A large repository of videos from different Spanish-speaking countries and creators, covering a variety of topics. Content is available at super beginner, beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels.

Duolingo & Duolingo Podcasts:

Coupling Duolingo with the textbook worked wonders for me. I'd learn a concept from the book, then reinforce it on Duolingo (or vice versa). The podcasts are interesting, though I personally wish they were entirely in Spanish (I think I only listened to about 15).

Cram:

My favorite flashcard tool! It supports batch uploads and provides audio pronunciation for almost all the words you add

Recommended YouTube channels:

Recommended reading:

Pick up a school or university textbook on a subject you know well. You'll be surprised how easily you can figure out unfamiliar words just from the context.

Recommended Series/Movies:

EVERYTHING WITH TONY DALTON LOL. Or just pick a favourite Spanish-speaking actor and watch their filmography. The list includes:

And ofc, TONY DALTON!!!!!

2. Sr. Ávila: Four seasons of TONY DALTON!!!! Won Emmy for Non-English Language US Primetime Program. Has English subtitles and TONY DALTON!!!!

Fun fact: Tony said in an interview that playing Lalo was refreshing after four years of portraying a character "with the personality of a wall." While Ávila himself is kind of punchable, the series has some really interesting characters.

3. Pinky and the Brain (Pinky y Cerebro): Always loved this cartoon, and it’s super fun to (re)watch in Spanish. The dub is excellent. You can find it on LACartoons.

4. Disney animated movies: No explanation needed :D You can find 50 of them (50 Clásicos de Disney) on LACartoons.

CoPilot in MS Word

I opened Word yesterday to discover that it now contains CoPilot. It follows you as you type and if you have a personal Microsoft 365 account, you can't turn it off. You will be given 60 AI credits per month and you can't opt out of it.

The only way to banish it is to revert to an earlier version of Office. There is lot of conflicting information and overly complex guides out there, so I thought I'd share the simplest way I found.

How to revert back to an old version of Office that does not have CoPilot

This is fairly simple, thankfully, presuming everything is in the default locations. If not you'll need to adjust the below for where you have things saved.

This will roll you back to build 17726.20160, from July 2024, which does not have CoPilot, and prevent it from being installed.

If you want a different build, you can see them all listed here. You will need to change the 17726.20160 at step 4 to whatever build number you want.

This is not a perfect fix, because while it removes CoPilot, it also stops you receiving security updates and bug fixes.

Switching from Office to LibreOffice

At this point, I'm giving up on Microsoft Office/Word. After trying a few different options, I've switched to LibreOffice.

You can download it here for free: https://www.libreoffice.org/

If you like the look of Word, these tutorials show you how to get that look:

If you've been using Word for awhile, chances are you have a significant custom dictionary. You can add it to LibreOffice following these steps.

First, get your dictionary from Microsoft

Next, add it to LibreOffice

If you use LIbreOffice on multiple machines, you'll need to do this for each machine.

Please note: this worked for me. If it doesn't work for you, check you've followed each step correctly, and try restarting your computer. If it still doesn't work, I can't provide tech support (sorry).

The Kids just aren't being taught how to write a cv or cover letter huh

I've seen ones today including photos, dates of birth, place of birth even!

And also several formatted like they were writing a message to a friend! Full of exclamation marks! This is a formal document!

this one is formatted like a powerpoint presentation. to be clear I'm not in charge of any descision making I'm just going through redacting identifying/potentially biasing info but like...some of these formatting decisions are also potentially biasing

Yeah, I remember getting some wild ones when I was hiring manager

So many women feel the need to mention their young children in their cover letters and CVs. Some young people slip in that they can't drive, a sort of pre-emptive "but it's okay I have a bus pass". So many people go and shove their mental health issues with anxiety and depression in there.

I remember one girl had clearly been told that she needed to explain any gaps in employment in the cover letter (terrible blanket advice), and so had described how she had developed depression after a traumatic miscarriage and spent a year in a terrible spiral getting worse and worse before getting on a new medication that, and I quote, "seemed to be finally starting to work." There are ways she could have written that information if she was desperately wanting to include it (I cannot stress enough that she should not have included a word of it), but the way it was written was almost literally a description of how she would be a horrendously unreliable employee who could dip out at a moment's notice and would never be seen again, while also demonstrating that she cannot determine appropriate professional communication.

(And for the record, the latter is the actual issue. I have no problems at all hiring employees with mental health issues, and did several times hire people in recovery to help them get back on their feet. Only once did that not work out; all others were amazing, and two became some of our best employees - one is now a manager there, in fact. But if an employee can't be trusted not to over share personal information with customers or colleagues, particularly triggering topics... That's a different issue. She did herself no favours at all there, and nor did whoever told her employers will always need employment gaps explaining in a cover letter).

Another guy once wrote in his cover letter "I want this job because after years of messing about I now have a little girl, so I need to sort my life out for her, and if I can't do it even for her then more fool me." Which, like, I admire the drive and passion. But again. Why are you telling an employer that you're a flight risk. Why are you telling us this.

One 18 year old volunteered, unforced, that he was gay. Just right in the cover letter. That he sent to a future employer.

And then, of course, the thousands that send in CVs and cover letters that are horrendously mis-spelled. Again, as an employer, I care dick-all if you're dyslexic or what have you; but I do care that you didn't think it was important to get someone to proofread a professional document for you before submission. That tells me quite a big thing about the level of professionalism I can expect from you in the role. It wasn't massively relevant for the job I was hiring for (escape room game master), but if we'd had slightly different job duties (e.g. writing official soc med posts), that would be the difference between getting an interview or not.

Honestly, half of my role as a hiring manager was just... having to explain to the other hiring manager that she was being biased based on information neither of us should have had in the first place. And she wasn't a bad person, but bias gets you even if you don't want it to. Give yourself the best chance. Don't fuck it by sending in a dumbass cover letter.

I don't want to buy mass-produced garbage from a big box store so I go to etsy but half of etsy is now dropshipped mass-produced garbage or AI slop so I go to the local arts and crafts street market but a ton of those booths are also selling the same generic plastic objects or identical stickers or 3D printed dragons so WHERE do I buy real trinkets and art from sincere freaks

Mayhem Marketplace.

Like Etsy used to be except artists keep their money and the site is run off of a yearly fee for hosting stuff and some non invasive ads. There's other stuff, but the point is that the artists don't have to share a percentage on what they sell with the site.

It's part of a larger project called Mayhem Hub whose goal is to create a system that doesn't rely on corporations or the government to provide financial stability for artists. There are other aspects to the project, but the marketplace is the relevant part for this.

Ohhh interesting. I poked around a bit and randomly found this very pretty art piece that I couldn't resist.

Definitely going to keep this place in mind for gifts in the future.

hate hate hate how sites are increasingly trying to make right click saving images impossible. facebook, instagram, reddit (app), pinterest*, etc... all make you jump through hoops just to save an image. can you guys not please. how ddo i make them stop. can we get one of those EU regulations or whatever that makes them all comply, or are we going to have to wait for global socialism for that. ugh

oh look, the exact tool that would have saved me SO much time and energy trying to find images hidden in the source code 🙃

I miss the days when, no matter how slow your internet was, if you paused any video and let it buffer long enough, you could watch it uninterrupted

If you use Firefox, you can go to the about:config page, search for "media.mediasource.enabled" and double click on it to set it to false. After you restart Firefox, all youtube videos will load entirely even when paused! This also affects other streaming websites :)

There's more to do actually, now

go to About:config find media.mediasource.enabled and toggle it to false find media.cache_readahead_limit and change it to 9999 find media.cache_resume_threshold and change it to 9999

additionally if you'd prefer mp4 to webm

also in about:config, find: media.encoder.webm.enabled media.mediasource.webm.audio.enabled media.mediasource.webm.enabled media.webm.enabled and toggle them all to false

note! this will limit video to 1080p

and use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dont-accept-webp/ to kill WebP Fuck Google

We jailbreaking browsers now lmao

Welp. Google's AI horseshit has arrived. And I'm not complying. They can pry my ID out of my cold dead hands. I will simply go elsewhere. Remember folks, DO NOT GIVE THEM YOUR IDs. Do not comply. Resist, fight it, use other browsers or sources beyond youtube and google controlled services. Call them. Email them. Make noise. Fight back.

I've been using Google as my main mail service since 2006, and every single account or service I've ever signed up for was made with that address. For a long time I thought it'd be impossible to divorce myself from Google.

It took less than 5 minutes to switch to a ProtonMail account, less than 2 hours to download and/or offload every byte of data from my Google account, and less than 3 days to change every single account or service I've ever signed up for to the new address.

As of today, the only single one I have that's still tied to it is YouTube. It's the only thing I'd lose access to if I deleted my Google acount entirely.

They really, really want you to believe that it's a hassle to switch to a different email system. But it's not. Most websites and/or services allow you to change the email address associated with it.

I've been using Google for almost 2 decades and it only took a few days to move everything. It's not a painful sacrifice; it's an easy change that, frankly, has absolutely been worth it.

Proton Shoutout

You can and should switch to a free, encrypted Proton email account. You also get all of the below perks. For free. There is no trick. It is paid for by the people with paying plans. I am one of them. The (completely functional) free tier is there to entice you into getting a paid account with even more perks. (It worked on me.) But there's no penalty or pressure for staying with the free account.

Also get your stuff off the google drive and put it on Proton's drive. It is encrypted. Only you with your password can access it. Not even Proton can see what you put in there.

Switch everything away from Google. It's easy and it's important. Read above, click the link for Proton, download your gmail and switch.

Also, except for some few searches once every couple weeks, I just use Ecosia for every search and have been since 2019. And they plant treeeeees!

I co-sign the Proton shoutout. Spouse and I got the twofer plan and we're happy with it. And in addition to Ecosia, there's also Qwant and Mojeek, and freaking WebCrawler still works.

In the maps front I've heard MapQuest's app is good, but I've yet to be able to unfuck my car so I'll get back to you on that one.

to all my researchers, students and people in general who love learning: if you don't know this already, i'm about to give you a game changer

connectedpapers

the basic rundown is: you use the search bar to enter a topic, scientific paper name or DOI. the website then offers you a list of papers on the topic, and you choose the one you're looking for/most relevant one. from here, it makes a tree diagram of related papers that are clustered based on topic relatability and colour-coded by time they were produced!

for example: here i search "human B12"

i go ahead and choose the first paper, meaning my graph will be based around it and start from the topics of "b12 levels" and "fraility syndrome"

here is the graph output! you can scroll through all the papers included on the left, and clicking on each one shows you it's position on the chart + will pull up details on the paper on the right hand column (title, authors, citations, abstract/summary and links where the paper can be found)

you get a few free graphs a month before you have to sign up, and i think the free version gives you up to 5 a month. there are paid versions but it really depends how often you need to use this kinda thing.

researchrabbit works similarly. you do need to create an account to use it, but it is completely free (as far as I know), meaning no limits to your collections/graphs.

When I was in grad school, one of my professors shared how to write a scientific paper (unsolicited, during a discussion on pelicans).

First, he said, you write the methods. You’ve been doing the methods for months, you know what goes there. You know what questions you’re trying to answer and how you went about answering them.

Now that you’ve done that, write the results. Do your analysis. Take some time to bask in having done that and chew it over.

Next: the introduction. What information do you need to set up the conclusion? Do you need to write the six worst sentences known to man as a draft conclusion so you can go back that up in the introduction? Do that.

Write that conclusion. Tie things up, you’ve done amazing. It’s looking good! Unfortunately. The hardest part is yet to come:

The abstract. An unholy melange of introduction, results, and conclusion. The thing that 90% of readers are going to stop after reading. The ultimate test of your ability to communicate your science. Thank goodness you have all this prep work done and aren’t trying to create it out of nothing! Thank goodness you didn’t try to write it first because it was the first thing on the page!

Anyway I’ve taken that approach to a lot of other kinds of writing since. I write the part I know (because of months of development) and then what that will mean, and then I work out what I need to support that, and then I write the part everyone will read.

deactivated

So thoroughly nuked that there isn’t even any record of their original blog url

The Forbidden Knowledge

not even any notes. I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a plot-advancing skeleton’s notebook

wikipedia no longer being anywhere near the top of search results when looking up anything feels eviscerating

#they really said “you can’t use wiki as an academic source-use our garbage AI that’s even less reliable”#and you can’t even opt out of it

no but you can FORCE it away. use ublock origin and copy paste the blacklist i made into the filters to be able to remove the bullshit AI overview that google forces. it also removes youtube's forced ads (at least until they fix it)

you can also use the ublacklist extension and use this blacklist of AI image generation websites to curate your google image results

there are ALWAYS ways around stuff. it's just a matter of looking into it and asking around

I'M FREE

FOR WIKIPEDIA!!!!

Never read Baldwin before?

Nonfiction

Fiction

BONUS

HOW TO TURN OFF GOOGLE AI in GMAIL:

My favorite job interview question to ask is "what do you do during downtime?"

If they say things like "cleaning, restocking" etc, that's a green flag. Normal busywork that's unavoidable and reasonable to expect during downtime.

If they say "we don't have down time" that's a yellow flag. That means they want you to look busy all the time, even when there's nothing to do. This will drive me insane as I dust the same shelf for the fourth time in a week

If they say "there's always something to do" but don't SPECIFY, that's a red flag hard stop. They're understaffed on fucking purpose and you are about to have your soul sucked from your body by this company. do not walk, RUN for the exit. Every time I get this answer, I've ended up with the "watch you like a hawk" type manager that annoys the hell outta me.

Also interviewers really like when you ask questions at the end of the interview. It makes them think and engage with the process more, which makes you more memorable in general. My go-tos are 1: how long have you been here? and 2: what's your favorite thing about this job?