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For-profit Pie Adblock (from the founder of Honey) called out for copying uBlock Origin open source code without credit (www.theregister.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 304 points 2 years ago (21 children)

Never use a "for-profit adblocker". Ublock Origin is free, open source and therefore won't fuck you over. You can guess where this "profit" is coming from when you're not paying for your "for-profit" adblocker

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  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    We have a problem. People have learned that they shouldn't use a free VPN. By that logic you shouldn't use a free ad blocker either. People don't understand the details enough so they operate on broad ideas.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    There is a difference between "free & open source" and "free because you don't pay with money".

    The first means it can be peer reviewed by anyone to make sure they aren't doing anything shady.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago

    Yeah that's right. Really, the difference is between free software and free services.

    Software can be free and open source and that can be a viable model, even a preferable model. Services can not be free without some party being exploited. In the best of cases this means services are provided by volunteers (and they are being exploited), but more commonly in business, it's the users who are being exploited.

    But as a rule, you should be suspicious of free services.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    The issue is that the difference is clear to us, but not to everyone else. Even at the periphery of the tech world, I've met people generally aware what source code is, but not of the specific concept of "Open Source" and why it makes a difference. We should avoid falling into the bubble trap where we assume that what's familiar to us is familiar to everyone else as well.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    I dunno if there's just a lack of education around what open-source means or what. Like jeez, you can contribute to unlock origin. You can study it and see if there's anything you disagree with. You can fork it and change it.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    I agree, unless it's straight up paid software which I usually don't mind paying for if it's good and I need it. Although arguably uBlock Origin is so close to perfection that I can't imagine how a paid ad blocker would hold up.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (9 children)

    What software have you paid for? Over here, proud owner of (off the top of my head) Keyboard Maestro, BetterTouchTool, Shottr, and superwhisper for Mac.

    Would be hard to live without these automation/macro, screenshot, and dictation tools!

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Shottr is legit. It's really amazing that there aren't more decent screenshotting tools when they're so incredibly useful. People would rather just take a picture of their screen and upload it that way :cringe:

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Shottr was well worth their Black Friday price ($12?). But the free version is entirely sufficient and worked well for me for over a year.

    Snagit has 10 times as many features for several times the price, but somehow Shottr is like the most efficient app ever. So, so fast! But Snagit is more like Shottr plus a miniature Photoshop so can excuse some of that.

    Oh hey, forgot Snippety the text expander 🔥 even has an iOS keyboard.

    Great dev too, super responsive solo dude.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    It's not just a higher price, it's an ongoing subscription. That's not something I would ever agree to. It makes zero sense. It's just greedy bullshit, in my opinion. Give me a flat fee and if it breaks or you add new features, I will decide if I want to pay again for an upgrade.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Ohh, can really recommend Bartender as well! If you have a lot of apps using the precious space in your statusbar (Docker; OneDrive; etc) this solves it nicely!

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Yesss, thank you, using the free Ice - Bartender quietly sold, causing some controversy.

    I installed Ice after troubleshooting for an hour until I realized macOS was hiding some of my menu bar apps. wtf? Quoting this piece:

    I have gripes about the notch. There isn’t enough room to display all of my menu bar apps and icons, so… they just get hidden!? Apparently, everyone in Cupertino thinks the best solution to this problem is to hide them with zero indication that there are more that simply can’t be displayed because of the notch. I wasted so much time trying to figure out why Little Snitch and 1Password were not running on my new machine. Was there a compatibility issue with Apple Silicon that I didn’t know about? That couldn’t be. In turns out, they were running the whole time but they were hidden by the notch.

    **

    […]

    **

    This “design” (or lack thereof) is so dumb. It is utterly ridiculous to me that this is still how it “works” two years after the introduction of the redesigned MacBook Pro with a notch. How hard could it be to add an overflow menu with a “«” (or should it be “»”?) button that shows the remaining apps and icons that can’t be displayed? This entire situation with the notch is ironic, because the iPhone notch and “dynamic island” are so thoughtfully designed with zero compromises regarding the functionality of iOS. In fact, they actually provide a better user experience. Yet on the Mac, how the notch interacts with macOS is laughably incompetent. It is shockingly lazy regarding attention to detail, and results in an outright disruptive and confusing user experience.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Shout-out to Beyond Compare! It makes my life as a many-hatted systems librarian much easier.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    For-profit ad blockers make their money from either ad injection or extorting ad companies to whitelist their ads. This is why the original adblock plus fell out of use.

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