Posts made by pogue972

I was trying to use the AI Benchmarking tool at https://www.devicetest.ai and I can't seem to get it to work. I downloaded the Opera Developer version, then I navigate to the URL, but I don't get any message about downloading local models or anything of the sort, it just says To get started, download the latest version of Opera Developer on the page.

I went through all the settings and have no ad blocking on, I switched to Cloudflare DNS, but the page never changed. I searched around and read some articles on what's meant to show up and happen but I'm not seeing that. What am I doing wrong?

Opera One (version: 134.0.5952.0)
Update stream: developer
System:Windows 11 64-bit
Chromium version:150.0.7846.4

OS:
Windows 11 Pro 25H2
OS Build: 26200.8655
Experience: Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.315.0

I was just trying out the Aria AI image analysis tool for Opera Android and it worked amazingly! I had to generate ALT tags for vision impaired people on social media with the prompt "Can you give me the alt tags for this image?" and then "Can you transcribe all the text in this image?". It worked flawlessly.

However, I wanted to give feedback for the way Opera allows for you to select images to send to Aria. The app has permissions for Camera, but I cannot seem to give it permissions for Photos and Video as it's not an option. This is at least how it is on Samsung.

So, when you use the media picker, it gives you an entire huge list of all your photos, but I cannot search it. When you click the three dots on the media picker, it only has an option for 'Cloud Media app'. Whereas it should give me an option labeled 'Browse' where I can use My Files or the Gallery app to choose any picture I have saved on my device.

This is what the media picker looks like in Opera.

However, it should let me choose browse as shown below.

I am using a Samsung Galaxy S23+ on Android 14 OneUI 6.1 on Opera Android 85.2.4500.81896.

Thank you!

I really like Ghostery. It works as a great adjunct to uBlock Origin for ad and tracker blocking. I think it's much better than the competition, like Disconnect. You want to make sure when you set it up to set trackers to "all".

Here is how I have mine configured and it works perfectly for my needs. Obviously some sites I will trust because having it block trackers breaks the website. I have quite a few anti-fingerprinting/privacy/security extensions in Opera, and here is a list of them:

Anti Fingerprinting + Privacy & Security Browser Extensions

I really like tab snoozing as it saves me a lot of memory, as I am one of those people who have way too many tabs open at once.

However, I think there should be an option under tab snoozing so that you can whitelist certain tabs you don't want to snooze, such as your email or other certain websites that might be updating regularly and you need to go back and check them?

Thanks,
pogue

bump

I was recently asking about the default search engines that are built into Opera and complaining that you can't change the default one or it's parameters.

A mod had me 'create a new search engine' from Google, and by default, it had all this junk code in it that's obviously for tracking/identification purposes.

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&hs=3w7&sxsrf=ALeKk00-9-US4IDAL--6S_N8-XwNwvANEw%3A1615562784092&ei=IIhLYNGYBeig_Qa404G4Cw&q=%25s

I changed it to https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=%25s and it worked fine.

https://forums.opera.com/topic/47770/does-opera-use-google-s-rlz-identifier-and-why-can-t-you-change-the-default-google-browser-strings

I don't believe Yandex does anything unless you select it as a search engine. What's leading you believe it sends data to Yandex?

I just came across this video on YT about how researchers have discovered that favicons can be used to be tracked and used to ID you across the net, if they choose to do so.

I couldn't post a link to the original study because it was behind a YT URL, but I downloaded it and uploaded it to Mediafire so people can read it (or they can click on the description in the link of the video).
https://www.mediafire.com/file/ecpvpafngppld2m/favicon_study.pdf/file

The New Web Tracking Method Using Favicons, Explained

You can clear Opera's favicon file with CCleaner, but it appears Firefox is the only one with a built in favicon deleter.

Opera needs to look into this problem before it starts getting exploited in the wild!

Thanks,
pogue

@leocg Yeah I know, but it's much easier when you are able to set it as default. Opera, for all it's customizations and claims of privacy has really fallen short on this one, IMO.
Can I send an email to the engineering team or anything to let my feelings be known?
Thanks.

@leocg said in Does Opera use Google's RLZ identifier and why can't you change the default Google browser strings?:

@pogue972 Custom search engines can't be set as the default one, only those pre-defined.

Well, that's useless then.

@leocg Alright, I changed it to
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=%s

And that seems to work fine. The problem now is I can't set it as my default search engine.

@leocg said in Does Opera use Google's RLZ identifier and why can't you change the default Google browser strings?:

@pogue972 I have no idea, maybe some code added by Google. What is the original string?

That is the original string.

@leocg Ok, I did that, now I have all this Goobldy Gook in my search field. I don't mind knowing the client is opera since that probably helps them make money to fund the browser, but what's all this other stuff? Can I strip it out?

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&hs=3w7&sxsrf=ALeKk00-9-US4IDAL--6S_N8-XwNwvANEw%3A1615562784092&ei=IIhLYNGYBeig_Qa404G4Cw&q=%s

@leocg Yeah, that's why I like startpage.com instead.
But, I still think we should be able to edit the Google search parameters.

I suppose I could make a new Google Search and use on my own strings to do the search, but I don't know how to do that.

The RLZ identifier is a search string added to Google Search by Chromium to identify where the browser was downloaded.

I followed the directions in the article, but Opera doesn't let you change the parameters of the Google search. You can't even see the full text of the search parameters, just https://www.google.com/search?client=
I'm guessing Opera has a deal with Google where they get paid a commission for all searches, but as much customization that's allowed in Opera, I'm frankly surprised we can't edit this under settings.

I'd like to propose we be given the ability to edit this option.

Thanks,
pogue

I can't find the developer to contact them, but I would like to ask for more browsers that show up as Android. Currently, there is only Firefox for Android. I'd like to see Chrome & Google show up as Android browsers.

Otherwise the addon is great and shows a random User-Agent every time to you sign into a website, further making it harder for them to track you.