I challenge you to remove the gray ad using Adblock

My ideal ad-blocking solution turns the popover, popunder, rollover-expanding, shouting at the top of their heads to get your attention advertisements into something as innocuous as that 'nasty' gray ad. I don't have a problem trading my eyeballs for a product, but I do have a problem when your ad takes over my browser, makes the page unusable, or is generally a pain in the ass.

Of course, my fix there isn't to use an adblocker, it's just to block the site altogether.

Here's my equivalent solution:

  var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
  canvas.height = 1;
  canvas.width = 1;
  var twodctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
  var blockImg = null;
  var qs = document.querySelectorAll('img');
  for (var i = 0; i < qs.length; i++) {
    var img = qs[i];
    twodctx.drawImage(img, 0, 0, 1, 1);
    var imgd = twodctx.getImageData(0,0,1,1);
    if (imgd.data[0] == imgd.data[1] && imgd.data[0] == imgd.data[2] && imgd.data[3] == 255) {
      var badDiv = document.createElement('div');
      badDiv.style.display = 'none';
      document.body.appendChild(badDiv);
      badDiv.appendChild(img.parentNode.removeChild(img));
      break;
    }
  }

    var removeImageByHash = function() {
        var bad = [525994816];
        var canvas = document.createElement('canvas');
        var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d");
        var imgs = document.querySelectorAll('img');

        for( var idx = 0; idx < imgs.length; idx++ ) {
            var el = imgs[idx];

            canvas.width = el.width;
            canvas.height = el.height;
            ctx.drawImage(el, 0, 0, el.width, el.height);

            var hash = 0;
            for( var i = 0; i < el.width; i++ ) {
                for( var j = 0; j < el.height; j++ ) {
                    var pixel = ctx.getImageData(1, 1, 1, 1);

                    hash = ((hash << 5) - hash) + pixel.data[0];
                    hash |= 0;
                    hash = ((hash << 5) - hash) + pixel.data[1];
                    hash |= 0;
                    hash = ((hash << 5) - hash) + pixel.data[2];
                    hash |= 0;
                }
            }

            var found = false;
            for( var i = 0; i < bad.length; i++ ) {
                if( bad[i] === hash ) {
                    found = true;
                    break;
                }
            }

            if( found ) {
                var hidden = document.createElement('div');
                hidden.style.display = 'none';
                hidden.style.width = 0;
                hidden.style.height = 0;

                document.body.appendChild(hidden);
                hidden.appendChild(el.parentNode.removeChild(el));
            }

            console.log(idx + ": " + hash);
        }
      };

I'm guessing intern at an ad network pitches he can come up with an "unblockable ad" to his boss.

Boss wants to go home for the holiday weekend so he says, "OK, whatever kid" as he's walking out the door just after lunch.

Intern signs up with a one-hour old HN account and posts his masterpiece here and starts playing whack-a-mole with the dozens of methods to trivially block the "unblockable ad".

After a couple hours, everyone gets bored and goes back to work. The intern frets and worries all weekend that he promised his boss an unblockable ad and won't be able to deliver on Tuesday when everyone is back in the office. Come Tuesday, he goes into the office, sweating and nervous to discover his boss wasn't in the slightest bit paying attention to whatever it was he was saying last Friday.