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Comment by zamalek | Hacker News Reader

> If you're worried about viruses [...]

Not to mention that a host of vulnerabilities were image related a few years back (one of the original rookits exploited a TGA bug).

> uBlock Origin

Honestly, this is the antivirus of the web. I helped my niece set up my old computer for Minecraft today, and she was explaining how her friend had installed viruses (adware, really) 3 times. Every one of those instances was caused by download link confusion for Minecraft mods. Disabling JavaScript isn't going to save you from being tricked into downloading shady software, only an adblocker will.

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Yeah! After I install uBlock Origin, people seem to stop downloading malware for some reason. Funny how that works...

> one of the original root kits exploited a TGA bug

As a lover of old image formats and the security issues they can cause* this sounds fascinating, but some quick google searches don’t seem to surface what you are referencing. Can you share any more details?

* I once fell into discovering a memory disclosure flaw with Firefox and XBM images

There was the github ddos that existed (iirc) as an image that made a request when viewed (I think it actually ran a script) and a couple smaller botnets that used similar functionality in 2018.

Wish I could edit that, I meant jailbreak - which did give root access, technically allowing a host of nefarious use cases.

In my experience Brave Browser (chrome based) runs circles around uBlock origin FYI

No it doesn't. I use Firefox with ubo and Brave (without extensions) for work and I notice no "running circles around" by either browser. While I'm sure brave's native blocking is faster, in human perception the time difference is essentially nil.

Can you say more? I’m a happy uBlock user — what am I missing by not using Brave?

Forced client updates

https://brave.com/

In case the OP wanted to know exactly how Brave's adblock is different from uBlock Origin instead of a link to the marketing page with links to other things like cryptocurrencies:

Brave's browser claims a speedup over AdBlock plus, but was inspired by UBO, so the performance is fairly similar, but is baked into the browser instead of being an extension.

> We therefore rebuilt our ad-blocker taking inspiration from uBlock Origin and Ghostery’s ad-blocker approach.

https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

It's also written in Rust for performance.

I use a 6 year old desktop which wasn't that great even when I built it, and a pretty terrible 8 year old laptop, and I don't have any problems with uBlock Origin's performance. I have almost every filter list enabled (except for some regional ones), which results in 153486 network and 173646 cosmetic filters total.

Same here. My take away from these replies is that I'm not missing anything by sticking with uBlock.

With uBlock origin you're at the whim of the changes Google pushes through to chrome/chromium to nerf it.

What are you talking about? uBlock Origin is not tied to Chromium, and is not controlled by Google (unlike Brave which is just a fork of Chromium).

Jesus, why does everyone these days automatically assumes that everyone else is using Chrome or Chromium? It's almost as crazy as calling Windows a "PC".

Google controls the frontend APIs uBlock origin is allowed to use, and they have pushed changes numerous times in the past (covered on HN) to intentionally nerf uBlock origin because it hurts their bottom line.

I don't understand this way of thinking. Rust isn't magically fast. You can use most languages to write both performant and lazy code.

Also just so you know, Brave isn't "written" in Rust alone, it is a big software with a lot of parts, including but not limited to a rendering engine, a JS VM and a WASM engine.

The Rust part at most (unconfirmed) would be the glue that connects them together, and I doubt that's where the bottleneck is for most browsers.

Is that's the new algorithm that made the rust rewrite x69 faster

>The new algorithm with optimised set of rules is 69x faster on average than the current engine.

https://brave.com/improved-ad-blocker-performance/

I meant Brave's adblocker was written in Rust, as the context was about how Brave's adblocker differs from others.

"In my experience", followed by "for your information" - what an empty comment. You've not breathed any substance into your opinion with this post.

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