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Comment by radamadah | Hacker News Reader

I use Adblock Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/), and I also have AdBlock installed (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-for-f...), just in case the first one doesn't work. They are two of the most popular adblock plugins on Firefox.

Or you could just use uBlock Origin on Firefox (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin)!

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Please stop using AdBlock/AdBlockPlus. Use uBlock Origin instead.

Agreed. My mainstay for some time has been Pi-hole coupled with browser running uBO, Privacy badger, Decentraleyes, Webmail Adblock, Tracking Token Stripper, Neat URL, Referer Control, and No Coin. I see nothing but pure content. I also like how uBO blocks WebRTC from leaking local IP addresses and blocks CSP reports.

Editing to say I've been reading on the fallout of the Chrome adblocking issue and many seem to think that DNS blocking is the way forward, but how long until it isn't? I've mentioned this before, but there has to be some way to do this without using browser-based solutions. I use them as well as a Pi-hole, but I dislike the browser-based solutions as a whole. What I'd like to see is a proxy, preferably web-based (cloud) that I can point my router and mobile devices to take advantage wherever I happen to be. Imagine a proxy that acts like /dev/null. It fools the sites into believing they are sending down ad data, but the proxy strips out that garbage. I know this does nothing for the bandwidth used, but I'm just thinking as I type. I understand HOW to do this, but my coding skills are not at that level. And I doubt this should be written in Python, although it likely could be. 20 years ago, I would be doing it in Perl, although those skills have fallen by the wayside since I have no real use case for Perl these days.

How come?

(I tend to use uMatrix.)

See:

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338#iss...

> eyeo GmbH (owner of Adblock Plus) is a business partner of Google (through its "Acceptable Ads" business plan), and its business share some the same key characteristics as the Google's ones above:

> It gets revenues from the displaying of ads with those with which it has a contract (Google, Taboola, etc.)

> It expressly names uBlock Origin as a risk factor to its business

uBlock Origin uses less RAM than AdBlock plus to do the same thing.

AdBlock plus also has the "acceptable ads" program that most people dislike but it can be easily turned off. The rest is mostly politics.

My understanding is that Adblock's blocking is purely visual? So the ads themselves actually load and get their tracking data like normal, just silently now.

Is less RAM really a selling point? I have a lot of spare RAM, I'd prefer it get used to cache more if it can speed things up.

Generally, yes. A little less so if you have spare but still important.

The main reason is, as you said, cache. The more unused RAM you have, the longer caches will be kept. It includes disk cache, browser cache, etc... But it can also make the CPU cache more efficient. L2 cache is about 10 times faster than RAM, and the less RAM you are using, the more cache will be used. L1 cache is even faster but here, access patterns matters as much as raw size, if not more.

ABP will use that extra ram to show you ads.

uMatrix and uBlock Origin are complementary. Specifically uBlock Origin has cosmetic filters which uMatrix doesn't have. Using both is quite handy in my experience.

Anything "Adblock" should be avoided. Borderline malware imo, and there is no reason to use them when you've got uBO/uMatrix.

I strongly recommend uBlock Origin in favor of AdBlock. AdBlock is a commercial endevour that makes deals with advertising companies to let their ads through.

Which you can turn off. And eyeo-owned Flattr is a way to do micropayments without ads.

The fact that you have to turn it off is a clear signal of a piece of software which works in its interests, not yours. Can you justify using AdBlock Plus over an extension which doens't even need the switch in the first place?

You should only use one blocker at a time. Like antivirus apps, more is not better.

No umatrix provides finer control and is definitely useful along with your adblocker.

umatrix is available as part of uBO by clicking I'm an advanced user.

Why is this?

Presumably because an adblocker, like virus detection, consumes potentially non-trivial CPU, and may introduce race conditions of extensions applying deltas to a DOM which results in rendering and behavior bugs.

adblockers are just filters and aren't scanning your files like an antivirus, little cpu used I imagine.

uBlock origin's lede is "Finally, an efficient blocker. Easy on CPU and memory." Ad blocking, pre-ublock, could take noticeable resources.

The different apps do the same thing and end up competing for resources.

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