Tag Archives: security

April 20, 2026 · 6:36 am

If YouTube Ads Are Bothering You, Use The Brave Browser

In general, I don’t overly recommend products that aren’t books I’ve written. Unless I ever get a legitimate sponsor, I will not just rave about certain products on this site in hopes of getting a share of the sales. That’s just not my style.

However, if I ever encounter a product that offers a genuinely useful service, I will single it out. I will give it my full recommendation. And I won’t ask for any money or commissions. That way, you can be certain that I’m not recommending it for selfish reasons.

This brings me directly to the Brave browser. Unless you’re tech savvy or work in IT, you probably haven’t heard of it. It’s a web browser in the same mold as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. It wasn’t made by some existing tech company and it’s not one of those products that you see advertised in the mold of AI or car insurance. It’s entirely open source, which in technical terms means it’s basically the opposite of Apple. It was made from the ground up using code that’s available and not subject to lawsuits by overpaid lawyers. That also means it’s completely free. You download it right now and it costs you nothing.

And you should download it.

You should use Brave.

That’s because Brave is coded to emphasize two important features, privacy and ad-blocking. Privacy, in general, should be important to you. Even if you’re not big on conspiracy theories about the government spying on you, you should still be concerned about tech companies using your data to sell you dumb shit. Your data is valuable. To give it away for free is akin to giving a burglar a spare key to your back door. Brave was created specifically for those who take privacy seriously. You can still permit companies to gather your data, but Brave helps make sure it’s not taken without your concent.

But it’s the ad-blocking feature that really makes Brave valuable. I’ve always found the ads on numerous sites annoying. A lot of the sites I go to for comic book news have become enshitified to oblivion. Use most browsers and you’ll get this annoying window that demands you disable the pop-up blocker. And in some cases, you can’t close that window. So, the site becomes useless. Brave blocks that. It makes some of my favorite sites usable again.

But it’s YouTube where Brave shines the brightest.

I get that YouTube needs to run ads to make money. But the enshitification process has been accelerating a lot more in recent years. It’s at a point where even simple, benign videos are hit with unskippable ads for toilet cleaner and car insurance every 10 minutes. It’s so annoying that it ruins the experience. It was bad enough when I could skip the ads. Now, that’s happening less and less. I can easily foresee a future where YouTube just removes the skip feature altogether.

But Brave utilizes a powerful adblocker that, as of the time of this post, stops those ads. I’ve tested it out. I can confirm that it does indeed eliminate ads. Sometimes, it means videos take a big longer to load or stall at certain points. But at no point is it interrupted with shitty Liberty Mutual ads. That ensures the YouTube experience remains consistent. I know there’s the option of buying YouTube Premium. However, the price for that service just went up. And I expect it to keep going up, especially as the option to skip ads is limited.

So, if you can’t afford another subscription service like that, give Brave a try. I can’t guarantee that it’ll always block every ad. Tech companies are very motivated to circumvent browsers like Brave. At least for now, it’s a solid solution to an escalating problem and it has my full recommendation and endorsement.

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April 2, 2024 · 5:09 am

How To Get Around (Certain) Paywalls

First off, fuck paywalls.

I understand why the exist. I understand that content creators, media outlets, and individuals need to make money for their efforts. It’s a necessary evil to fund the many good things the internet provides.

That being said, fuck paywalls. They’re one of the most annoying things to manifest on the internet that don’t involve whiny trolls with too much free time.

With each passing year, it seems, more and more websites are resorting to paywalls to restrict or limit access to their content. This is especially common with news outlets, including major newspapers like the Washington Post and the New York Times. But I’m also seeing it on smaller outlets that aren’t major newspapers, especially those that cover sports, entertainment, or various genre news.

They’re all annoying as hell. They’re basically asking for a newspaper subscription that can range anywhere from a couple of dollars to the equivalent of a yearly Netflix subscription. At a time when most people are already annoyed by the amount of subscriptions they have to pay for, this is making a bad problem much worse. It’s essentially segmenting the internet in ways that run counter to how it began.

But rather than lament on this annoying trend, I’d like to offer some guidance to those who hate paywalls as much as I do. Even if you too understand why they exist, nobody will blame you for not wanting to purchase an entire subscription just to read one or two articles. For those instances, there are some ways to get around that.

For the sites that offer a handful of free articles before requiring a subscription, you could always use a VPN. These VPNs, also known as Virtual Private Networks, basically mask your IP address so that it always seems like you’re coming from a new location. While some sites are aware of this tactic, it’s very difficult for them to filter it out. VPNs offer many other uses aside from getting around paywalls. They do come at a cost, but you do get a lot out of them.

But if you don’t want to invest in a VPN, another way to get around paywalls is to use certain free sites. They don’t necessary get around the paywall. They just allow you to see the content in a more raw format. It’s like seeing copying the sheet music instead of the song and letting another program play it. All you do is put in the URL to an article or site section into the site and let it work.

There a number of sites that do this. Not all of them work on every site, but here are the ones that work best.

https://12ft.io

www.archive.org

Please note that these don’t work for every site. For some media outlets, you will get errors or your browser will just freeze. But in most cases, you can usually expect to get around the paywall and at least read the main substance of an article.

It works for now. I don’t doubt for a second that many outlets are already looking for a way to block this sort of thing. And if there comes a day when all paywalls can be circumvented, then those same outlets will find another annoying way to fund their operations.

Again, I get why this happens. Before paywalls, there were all sorts of insufferable pop-up ads, banner ads, and mailing lists. Once those fell out of favor, site operators looked for another way to monetize their content. Paywalls are just the latest manifestation of that effort.

They’re annoying and most people still hate them. But, so long as they exist, we need to live with them and know how to get around them. I hope this helps.

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