8 ms·

Great for everyone still using Adblock Plus. The rest of us switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back.

unKlever 11y ago
Do you have any tips for performance. I use chrome and ublock, umatrix and disconnect. Disconnect is a few second penalty but worth it for a free proxy. However, I am not sure whether ublock runs before uMatrix, or how much that matters. I was hoping to find a few great regex heuristics to speed things up and procide better blocking. I personally don't use 3rd party block by default because honestly why bother, sites display so shitty you might as well just noscript and whitelist. tldr; parent or anyone interested do you have suggestions surrounding: > good filter configurations in ublock > whitelist & regex config > use uMatrix? > how to optimize for performance? Ideally in chrome.
- ac29 11y ago
  uBlock can use disconnect's filter lists, its in the options. I'm not sure why you think disconnect is giving you a "free proxy", that doesn't seem to be a feature.
  - unKlever 11y ago
    It runs anonymous search and returns the results from their servers proxied. It offers an actual VPN if i am not mistaken, as a paid service.
- witty_username 11y ago
  use tor, the latency is pretty low (at most it adds 500 ms)
ethana 11y ago
What people doesn't know is that uBlock makes use of EasyList as one of its default block lists. EasyList is maintained by ABP's parent company. That list itself has built-in whitelist that could not be turn off without revamping the list itself. That list contains upward of 60k of rules and no one has time to evaluate that for free. uBlock can make all kind of independence claims it wants, but at the end of the day, uBlock is still relying on ABP for its blocking rules--which is no guarantee at all. edit: lol why are people downvoting me for pointing out that uBlock is relying on ABP? uBlock never acctually claimed to not having acceptable ads. By using ABP's EasyList, they could already be running an "acceptable ads" whitelist. edit 2: Here's the link to easylist for anyone that care to check out the included whitelist: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt Warning, the list is over 1mb.
- coherentpony 11y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted. Seems like an entirely reasonable comment to me.
  - mverwijs 11y ago
    Because the comment has nothing to do with the parent. The fact that uBlock uses ABP lists is completely irrelevant. People choose uBlock because it uses compute resources more efficiently. Regardless of the list.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      It's not irrelevant. People may assume they are switching to an entirely independent project when moving to uBlock, but a dependency has now been pointed out. Whereas previously, I may have assumed that if Ad Block ceased to be, or their servers were having problems I would be completely unaffected, now I know I might be. This is useful information for anyone who "switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back."
  - girvo 11y ago
    Because while some of the facts are true, most are are not and are baseless speculation. As it stands, the "acceptable ads" list is not in uBlock Origin.
- dnlrn 11y ago
  Yes, you are right, but just to make this point clear: The whitelisting that occurs in EasyList doesn't allow ads to pass through and is in no way related to the "acceptable ads" feature in ABP. The whitelisting in EasyList is because some sites check for Adblock and blocked elements, so EasyList needs ways around that.
- contravariant 11y ago
  I'm not too sure if the "acceptable adds" whitelist is built in, they still allow you to turn "acceptable adds" off. Haven't investigated it thoroughly, but if I recall correctly the adds on reddit.com are block by uBlock, but not by AdBlock Plus (unless you disable the "acceptable adds").
ssalazar 11y ago
I switched back to ABP when uBlock started universally blocking Sourceforge. I understand Sourceforge has engaged in a number of very shady practices lately, but I need Numpy for my job and I don't have time to work around nanny software.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- aganders3 11y ago
  Nanny software you installed yourself? In any case, NumPy is on GitHub now.
- cremno 11y ago
  Uninstalling uBlock, installing and setting ABP up takes less time than temporarily or even permanently disabling the blocking of SF by simply clicking on a button?
- dnlrn 11y ago
  uBlock didn't start to universally block sourceforge, they just added sourceforge to their "uBlock filters - badware risks" list, which is justified imo. If you don't want this behaviour, just disable the list.
  - kzrdude 11y ago
    I'm always happy with the reminder that I happened to follow a link to sourceforge. I don't need anything there..
- mintplant 11y ago
  Couldn't you have turned off uBlock for that site via the toolbar button?
  - gorhill 11y ago
    One doesn't even need to turn off uBlock if one disagrees with the wholesome blocking of sourceforge.net: right in the warning page, uBlock Origin offers the user to remove temporarily or permanently the wholesome blocking for the site.
WatchDog 11y ago
I tried out ublock, didn’t seem to work on twitch.tv and a couple of other random things. So I moved back to ABP.
- frankacter 11y ago
  ensure you are using uBlock Origin, not just uBlock.
nnethercote 11y ago
[Here's a comment that I made on this topic on my blog back when this was discussed in July, which is still relevant. The numbers have probably changed a bit, but I doubt enough to affect my point. (The link is https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2015/07/01/firefox-41-will-use-less-memory-when-running-adblock-plus/comment-page-1/#comment-46747 https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2015/07/01/firefox-41-w...).] I’ve seen variations on this comment many times in discussions of this post. It’s totally wrong-headed. Here are the usage stats for these add-ons: - AdBlock Plus: 20.3 million daily users (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/statistics/?last=30 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/...) - uBlock: 0.22 million daily users (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/statistics/?last=30 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/statis...) - uBlock Origin: 0.08 million daily users (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/statistics/?last=30 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...) There are ~70x as many AdBlock Plus users as there are uBlock users. Unless you personally convince all 20 million AdBlock Plus users to convert to uBlock, they won’t see any benefit. (And good luck explaining to them the uBlock vs. uBlock Origin split! What a mess that is.) Meanwhile, when Firefox 41 comes out in September, all 20 million of those AdBlock Plus users will immediately benefit, without having to lift a finger, thanks to Cameron’s patch. Sometimes it’s worth thinking outside the tech elite bubble (the one where “everybody knows uBlock is better”) and thinking about ordinary users in the real world (where most people haven’t even heard of uBlock).
- webwanderings 11y ago
  Thanks for the data. As another uBlock user (who does not care about the split by the way) and as someone who is not a tech-bubble elite, I can tell you with much confidence, that there is no such thing as "ordinary users" when it comes to Adblocking.
  - zingmars 11y ago
    I don't know man, plenty of people are fed up with ads (installing adblock isn't really technically challenging) and now there are plenty more non-tech people using adblock because of Apple.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
I use alternate host files.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  I used to do that but found it ultimately too fiddly - like if you need to unblock a site manually editing your etc/hosts, then you have to get your browser to refresh it's DNS cache. Do you use an app to manage your hosts file?
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    I use GasMask on OS X. Makes switching through host files a breeze. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29949/gas-mask http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29949/gas-mask

Do you have any tips for performance. I use chrome and ublock, umatrix and disconnect. Disconnect is a few second penalty but worth it for a free proxy. However, I am not sure whether ublock runs before uMatrix, or how much that matters. I was hoping to find a few great regex heuristics to speed things up and procide better blocking. I personally don't use 3rd party block by default because honestly why bother, sites display so shitty you might as well just noscript and whitelist. tldr; parent or anyone interested do you have suggestions surrounding: > good filter configurations in ublock > whitelist & regex config > use uMatrix? > how to optimize for performance? Ideally in chrome.

ac29 11y ago
uBlock can use disconnect's filter lists, its in the options. I'm not sure why you think disconnect is giving you a "free proxy", that doesn't seem to be a feature.
- unKlever 11y ago
  It runs anonymous search and returns the results from their servers proxied. It offers an actual VPN if i am not mistaken, as a paid service.
witty_username 11y ago
use tor, the latency is pretty low (at most it adds 500 ms)

ethana 11y ago

What people doesn't know is that uBlock makes use of EasyList as one of its default block lists. EasyList is maintained by ABP's parent company. That list itself has built-in whitelist that could not be turn off without revamping the list itself. That list contains upward of 60k of rules and no one has time to evaluate that for free. uBlock can make all kind of independence claims it wants, but at the end of the day, uBlock is still relying on ABP for its blocking rules--which is no guarantee at all. edit: lol why are people downvoting me for pointing out that uBlock is relying on ABP? uBlock never acctually claimed to not having acceptable ads. By using ABP's EasyList, they could already be running an "acceptable ads" whitelist. edit 2: Here's the link to easylist for anyone that care to check out the included whitelist: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt Warning, the list is over 1mb.

coherentpony 11y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Seems like an entirely reasonable comment to me.
- mverwijs 11y ago
  Because the comment has nothing to do with the parent. The fact that uBlock uses ABP lists is completely irrelevant. People choose uBlock because it uses compute resources more efficiently. Regardless of the list.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    It's not irrelevant. People may assume they are switching to an entirely independent project when moving to uBlock, but a dependency has now been pointed out. Whereas previously, I may have assumed that if Ad Block ceased to be, or their servers were having problems I would be completely unaffected, now I know I might be. This is useful information for anyone who "switched to uBlock Origin and never looked back."
- girvo 11y ago
  Because while some of the facts are true, most are are not and are baseless speculation. As it stands, the "acceptable ads" list is not in uBlock Origin.
dnlrn 11y ago
Yes, you are right, but just to make this point clear: The whitelisting that occurs in EasyList doesn't allow ads to pass through and is in no way related to the "acceptable ads" feature in ABP. The whitelisting in EasyList is because some sites check for Adblock and blocked elements, so EasyList needs ways around that.
contravariant 11y ago
I'm not too sure if the "acceptable adds" whitelist is built in, they still allow you to turn "acceptable adds" off. Haven't investigated it thoroughly, but if I recall correctly the adds on reddit.com are block by uBlock, but not by AdBlock Plus (unless you disable the "acceptable adds").

ssalazar 11y ago

I switched back to ABP when uBlock started universally blocking Sourceforge. I understand Sourceforge has engaged in a number of very shady practices lately, but I need Numpy for my job and I don't have time to work around nanny software.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
aganders3 11y ago
Nanny software you installed yourself? In any case, NumPy is on GitHub now.
cremno 11y ago
Uninstalling uBlock, installing and setting ABP up takes less time than temporarily or even permanently disabling the blocking of SF by simply clicking on a button?
dnlrn 11y ago
uBlock didn't start to universally block sourceforge, they just added sourceforge to their "uBlock filters - badware risks" list, which is justified imo. If you don't want this behaviour, just disable the list.
- kzrdude 11y ago
  I'm always happy with the reminder that I happened to follow a link to sourceforge. I don't need anything there..
mintplant 11y ago
Couldn't you have turned off uBlock for that site via the toolbar button?
- gorhill 11y ago
  One doesn't even need to turn off uBlock if one disagrees with the wholesome blocking of sourceforge.net: right in the warning page, uBlock Origin offers the user to remove temporarily or permanently the wholesome blocking for the site.

WatchDog 11y ago

I tried out ublock, didn’t seem to work on twitch.tv and a couple of other random things. So I moved back to ABP.

frankacter 11y ago
ensure you are using uBlock Origin, not just uBlock.

nnethercote 11y ago

[Here's a comment that I made on this topic on my blog back when this was discussed in July, which is still relevant. The numbers have probably changed a bit, but I doubt enough to affect my point. (The link is https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2015/07/01/firefox-41-will-use-less-memory-when-running-adblock-plus/comment-page-1/#comment-46747 https://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2015/07/01/firefox-41-w...).] I’ve seen variations on this comment many times in discussions of this post. It’s totally wrong-headed. Here are the usage stats for these add-ons: - AdBlock Plus: 20.3 million daily users (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/statistics/?last=30 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/...) - uBlock: 0.22 million daily users (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/statistics/?last=30 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/statis...) - uBlock Origin: 0.08 million daily users (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/statistics/?last=30 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...) There are ~70x as many AdBlock Plus users as there are uBlock users. Unless you personally convince all 20 million AdBlock Plus users to convert to uBlock, they won’t see any benefit. (And good luck explaining to them the uBlock vs. uBlock Origin split! What a mess that is.) Meanwhile, when Firefox 41 comes out in September, all 20 million of those AdBlock Plus users will immediately benefit, without having to lift a finger, thanks to Cameron’s patch. Sometimes it’s worth thinking outside the tech elite bubble (the one where “everybody knows uBlock is better”) and thinking about ordinary users in the real world (where most people haven’t even heard of uBlock).

webwanderings 11y ago
Thanks for the data. As another uBlock user (who does not care about the split by the way) and as someone who is not a tech-bubble elite, I can tell you with much confidence, that there is no such thing as "ordinary users" when it comes to Adblocking.
- zingmars 11y ago
  I don't know man, plenty of people are fed up with ads (installing adblock isn't really technically challenging) and now there are plenty more non-tech people using adblock because of Apple.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

I use alternate host files.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
I used to do that but found it ultimately too fiddly - like if you need to unblock a site manually editing your etc/hosts, then you have to get your browser to refresh it's DNS cache. Do you use an app to manage your hosts file?
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  I use GasMask on OS X. Makes switching through host files a breeze. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29949/gas-mask http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/29949/gas-mask