TPU Site issues 2016/17

[R-T-B]

Except this is not primarily a "hardware review site".

I would disagree with that assertion, but I guess that's in the eye of the beholder.

Either way, this is probably something that can be fixed. I was just stating my feelings on the matter. It still seems like a bug, feelings aside.

 

[BiggieShady]

I keep getting intermittent 404s for article images. For example:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Corsair/LAPDOG/images/corsair-lapdog-box.jpg
Visiting this link randomly gives a 404.
To reproduce, follow the link, refresh with F5 several times ... there will be random 404s and image.

Looks as if there are several machines behind a load balancer, and not all of them have that image on that path.

 

[AlienIsGOD]

@W1zzard any reason the TPU android app redirects forums to chrome? it used to stay in app til about a week or 2 ago.

 

[bubbleawsome]

Any sort of adblock seems to break the forums. There aren't any ads to block, but it seems to be triggering AdBlock and this erases the quick reply box. Obviously I can disable adblock, but I thought it was interesting, and it is also new.

 

[R-T-B]

For the record, Firefox's built in "tracking-only" ad blocking works fine with the forums.

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard any reason the TPU android app redirects forums to chrome? it used to stay in app til about a week or 2 ago.

Because of the redirect to https that we've introduced recently. I've just gotta find some time to fix the app

 

[W1zzard]

I keep getting intermittent 404s for article images. For example:
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Corsair/LAPDOG/images/corsair-lapdog-box.jpg
Visiting this link randomly gives a 404.
To reproduce, follow the link, refresh with F5 several times ... there will be random 404s and image.

Looks as if there are several machines behind a load balancer, and not all of them have that image on that path.

can't reproduce, keep an eye on it and let me know if it occurs again.

the lb for this kind of image doesn't do any caching and uses a network filesystem to acsess the file

 

[R-T-B]

can't reproduce, keep an eye on it and let me know if it occurs again.

the lb for this kind of image doesn't do any caching and uses a network filesystem to acsess the file

I can reproduce it right now. Not sure if it's a big deal though as it never happens to me on the front page, or even the reviews.

 

[W1zzard]

I can reproduce it right now. Not sure if it's a big deal though as it never happens to me on the front page, or even the reviews.

Confirmed, working on a fix for the underlying issue (Docker overlayfs doesn't support inotify which we use to update a file on the server, which contains a list of non-public reviews, so people can't guess image urls)

Edit: Fixed by using /dev/shm for inotifywait

 

[dorsetknob]

Just had to disable Adguard ad blocker Site worked with it on yesterday
Today no not a chance ( nothing has updated as far as i know )
Same problem no active Reply area when its turned on
Works with Adblock plus ?

 

[W1zzard]

Just had to disable Adguard ad blocker Site worked with it on yesterday
Today no not a chance ( nothing has updated as far as i know )
Same problem no active Reply area when its turned on
Works with Adblock plus ?

Nope, doesn't work with ABP either

 

[qubit]

@W1zzard any reason the TPU android app redirects forums to chrome? it used to stay in app til about a week or 2 ago.

Because of the redirect to https that we've introduced recently. I've just gotta find some time to fix the app

Yes, this is the thing I've reported a couple of times already on here.

Anyway, not a show stopper, so the way I deal with it is to let the tabs build up to about 30. Then I tap the tab number to get the tabs view. I then click on the three dots at the top right hand corner and select delete all tabs. Of course any tabs that were open for other sites will get closed down too, so I just use Firefox for general browsing.

 

[Caring1]

Just had to disable Adguard ad blocker Site worked with it on yesterday
Today no not a chance ( nothing has updated as far as i know )
Same problem no active Reply area when its turned on
Works with Adblock plus ?

I have ABP and the site here works fine for me.

 

[P4-630]

I have ABP and the site here works fine for me.

Then you ABP probably hasn't been updated yet.

 

[BiggieShady]

To disable ABP only on forums, add this filter in ABP settings:

@@||www.techpowerup.com/forums^$document

Might as well whitelist the whole domain because @W1zzard cleverly fooled ABP in a way there is no general workaround for an author of ABP sans realtime image processing to see if the image is an ad, or web crawling the links ...

I suspect this is what he did:

step 1) host all ads on your own server on the same domain as the main site
step 2) wrap those ads into links that link to what seems to be a png image (but it's not, there is no png)
step 3) write couple of rules in web server config to redirect to advertiser's page whenever this special kind of "png image" url is visited

As far as ABP is concerned those are just regular images linking to other regular images all on the same domain as the main site, so ABP decides there is no reason to block them.

Not that I'm complaining, just giving kudos for inventiveness.

 

[qubit]

To disable ABP only on forums, add this filter in ABP settings:

@@||www.techpowerup.com/forums^$document

Might as well whitelist the whole domain because @W1zzard cleverly fooled ABP in a way there is no general workaround for an author of ABP sans realtime image processing to see if the image is an ad, or web crawling the links ...

I suspect this is what he did:

step 1) host all ads on your own server on the same domain as the main site
step 2) wrap those ads into links that link to what seems to be a png image (but it's not, there is no png)
step 3) write couple of rules in web server config to redirect to advertiser's page whenever this special kind of "png image" url is visited

As far as ABP is concerned those are just regular images linking to other regular images all on the same domain as the main site, so ABP decides there is no reason to block them.

Not that I'm complaining, just giving kudos for inventiveness.

A website doing this is pretty fucking annoying when it displays animated ads that one can't block, even when they should filtered out by the wildcard.

In this case, it was one of these sliding ads that move to a new picture every few seconds. Drove me up the wall so I soon abandoned the article even though it was interesting* and am never coming back to that site again. Backfired on them big time with me. I wouldn't be surprised if it does more harm to their pageviews than good and hope it does so they stop doing it.

*Sure, I could have copied the text and read it separately from the site, but I couldn't even be bothered with that, they'd ticked me off so much.

EDIT: Just looking at a review and see that TPU is also doing it with animated ads. It's easy to block, but the fake picture link changes every once in a while so it has to be re-blocked and that's annoying. Gonna try that filter you suggested.

Just give me a static ad and I'll happily look at it all day.

 

[natr0n]

I'm back in business. I'm using ublock origin, I disabled for tpu.

 

[Caring1]

I'm glad ABP is still working as it should, for me.
I detest ads in forums, if I want something, I go look for it, I don't need it shoved in my face.

 

[BiggieShady]

Gonna try that filter you suggested.

That filter disables adblock plus when you are on TPU forums ...
For ads on TPU main page, can't really write universal filter for this or detect it as ad source or detect it as animated (gif):

<article class="gfhfgjtuvc">
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.techpowerup.com/htrzhrevwdv/249.png" target="_blank">
<span><img alt="" src="//www.techpowerup.com/htrzhrevwdv/97c2c2cc.jpg"></span>
</a>
<span class="8d67ef1dda6f92ad2a87286b1c8ab90b"></span>
</article>

Everything in bold is pseudo-randomly (hash algorithms from cryptography) generated, processed by server side script and that jpeg gives content type: image/gif and does not really exist in the file system at that path (gif at different unknown location). 249 is probably integer ID for an ad record in the database.

What you can do:
a) ask w1zz not to use gifs
b) ask ABP creator to add a learning mechanism into ABP

Option b) is interesting ... if ad block could pick up what parts of the page stay the same in few short consecutive page refreshes, rule could say: show only parts of the page that didn't change their content. Of course you would have to re-teach your adblocker when anything in the html structure drastically changes.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Alerts now show by just moving the cursor over the tab like it used to, vs having to click on it the last few days. So I had hopes the ad block thing was fixed, but I still cannot post unless I disable it, which I refuse to do just for this one site.

 

[Frag_Maniac]

Weird, after making a post with it disabled, I can edit it with it enabled, and even post this response. Yet the forum goes back to being non functional with it enabled if I try to post in other threads.

What the hell is going on here?

 

[Caring1]

I disabled ABP and the reply box appeared, I just noticed it had gone, although it was there earlier, also Spoilers show without clicking on them, and when I hover the cursor over the spoiler it goes grey as if to hide it.
Just noticed, with ABP re-enabled I cannot edit my post, and when I thank a contributor for their post I get directed to a confirmation page to confirm I want to thank the post.
This has only happened within the last few hours for me.

 

[Xzibit]

I disabled ABP and the reply box appeared, I just noticed it had gone, although it was there earlier, also Spoilers show without clicking on them, and when I hover the cursor over the spoiler it goes grey as if to hide it.

Same here. Site viewing and especially forums & user menu/options don't work properly when ABP is enabled. This is just recently since this is the first time I've had to disable it for TPU EVER!!!

 

[P4-630]

The site is a little slow here today.

 

[Assimilator]

ABP issue is making forums unusable. I've now whitelisted the forums using BiggieShady's filter, but not sure why ABP is detecting the "Quick Reply" box as an ad?