this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
165 points (99.4% liked)

Explain Like I'm Five

14306 readers
445 users here now

Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!

Rules

  1. Be respectful and inclusive.
  2. No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
  3. Engage in constructive discussions.
  4. Share relevant content.
  5. Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
  6. Use appropriate language and tone.
  7. Report violations.
  8. Foster a continuous learning environment.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
sabbah@lemmy.world
AradFort@lemmy.world
rikudou@lemmings.world
Don_Dickle@lemmy.world
Rikudou_Sage@lemmy.world
165
ELI5: How are these massive adblock lists kept updated so regularly? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by DeadNinja@lemmy.world to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
27 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Do they get some kind of real-time feed that tells them "hey this URL popped up in the web today, but it is a tracker, so block it", or is this exercise is mostly helped by the crowd ?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 75 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Regular expression magic.

A lot of ad networks have a pattern to the name or the window the advert appears in.

Using regular expression you can find just the adwindow and ignore the actual content.

Now what is regular expression? A wizard language.
ask any programmer about RE after 4 beers and watch the hate wash over their face.

[–] JPAKx4@lemmy.sdf.org 37 points 1 year ago (8 children)

I love regex, I'm not even gonna lie. To be fair, my expressions haven't been 50+ characters long, but still.

[–] ShunkW@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to play regex games online lol. I once wrote a pattern for work that was ~200 characters. I loved doing it lol.

[–] Navigate@partizle.com 2 points 1 year ago

Seems like an interesting way to learn. Do you remember any of them?

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)