A.) Hosts do more than:
1.) AdBlock ("souled-out" 2 Google/Crippled by default)
2.) Ghostery (Advertiser owned) - "Fox guards henhouse"
3.) Request Policy -> http://yro.slashdot.org/commen...
I read through the thread on RequestPolicy, and you were pretty thick when it came to recognizing some key points:
1) RequestPolicy blocks all external sites by default, which means you don't need a "bad" list that needs to be constantly maintained, so it's actually the simpler and more effective solution.
2) The reason to block YouTube from 3rd party sites is to avoid tracking by Google (they own YouTube). With RequestPolicy, I can still watch YouTube videos and avoid the tracking. But that's just one example. RequestPolicy blocks all such requests, so I don't have to worry about YouTube, Amazon, or any other site that probably isn't in the "bad" list from getting tracking info from 3rd party sites by doing something as simple as embedding a link.
3) You mention speed, but give no hard numbers. If, for example, RequestPolicy does its job in less than 1ms, then it doesn't matter if a hosts file is twice as fast or even ten times as fast, because either way the difference is imperceptible. I don't have any speed problems using RequstPolicy, at all.
I'll throw in another point: RequestPolicy is open source, meaning I don't have to trust a binary from "apk" being run as an admin to manage my hosts file. RequestPolicy is also cross-platform.
You can have the last word, as engaging in discussion with you is pointlessly annoying. I'm just leaving this response so that people who are rational can make an informed judgment.