Earlier quoted context omitted.
Start loading essential content via AJAX?
How about eschewing shitty ad networks and actually delivering relevant ads?
eschewing shitty ad networks
Who does that leave?
Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
271–280 of 320 posts
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#272I definitely hate ads like anyone, but it should be acknowledged that ads serve a purpose too, of creating an economy for free content and giving people an avenue to get some income in exchange for their efforts, and possibly be able to devote their full attention to a free project and not have to support themselves with other income. Ads give creators some incentive to create stuff - although the income generally is…
I've been on the Internet since before advertising became common, and I am not convinced that advertising is the only, or even a good, model for funding either content or infrastructure. The move to advertising as the basis for the Internet has hidden, at least from most users, the cost of running a website and putting content online, which is frankly quite low compared to what it used to be, both in terms of actual…
So if you are not convinced the advert driven model is not "the only, or even a good, model" what is then an alternative.
I think the ad model needs to improve where the major players will start enforcing strict rules on what types of adverts are allowed for example, they could reject any advert that waste CPU cycles, reject ones using too much memory, ban buggy adverts.
Plus, the number one concern these days, the privacy concern, I am forced to use adblockers everywhere on the Internet except for a few sites because I do not want some company giving me product recommendations just because I had a conversation with a friend about something related.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#273For those of us - myself included - who run a hosts file list (either using dnsmasq like Pi-hole or directly), here are the sources that Pi-hole use so you can add to your own solution: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/blob/master/adlists.defau... There's a few on there I don't use and will look to implement. There's also a few they seem to have missed (perhaps intentionally?) so below I have included the lists I u…
Someone should whip up a little community-driven service that would serve all known ad network hosts.
and a community driven list of good advertisers that are transparent in how they deal with our information and take the quality of the adverts seriously.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#274With all the ad blocking technologies that are coming up, I wonder if Google is devising something to counteract these efforts. For instance, since browser-based ad blockers work from what I know by blocking known domain names, couldn't Google create random subdomains and serve the code from a different subdomain every day or even every few hours, as well as change the way their JavaScript and HTML looks? Even someth…
The web advertising firm I work for has random looking domains for that purpose. The current domain generation algorithm seems to be using one to two domains a month. Although I've don't have access to any of the frontend code, I can only assume the DOM elements on the page are also obscured/randomized to an extent.
It is also my understanding that some of our boxes are here solely to proxy requests (either assets or websockets, which are increasingly popular in the field) to 3rd parties, to make sure it bypasses client side countermeasures.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#275Cool project! Great idea and nice UI. I have tried recently and it works fine with HTTP. The problem is with ads served via HTTPS and since today most of the pages are using HTTPS protocol pi-hole is kinda useless. For reference on this topic https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/websites-hanging-timing-out-...
DNS happens before HTTP and HTTPS. If you block at the DNS level it will work for both HTTP and HTTPS URLs. That page you linked seems to confirm this, and that Pi-Hole works just fine blocking HTTPS.
True but only if the add is served off a different domain.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Note 3 is not a Google-made device, it's made by Samsung. Google's own Nexus and Pixel devices allow it in a single button press, I'm unsure of other manufacturers except OnePlus which does the same as Google. As I said in my post, some devices are a lot better than others when it comes to this. Also, bricking doesn't just happen, if you understand what you're doing you'll be fine. That "some risk" isn't random,…
This is simply not true. I've spent 3 years flashing and messing with my phone in many ways.I've hard bricked it only once. When it was updating my phone froze. I didn't do anything stupid. It simply froze and messed with all partitions. It's hard to fuck your phone but it's a possibility.
Sorry, but "froze and messed with all partitions" makes it sound more like you fucked up and flashed the wrong rom or something - flashing an update should never mess with all partitions - only /system and /data really.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not anymore. On Android devices with unlocked bootloaders, a great amount of apps won't work. Android Pay, Snapchat, Pokémon Go, etc. Google has tried to fight rooting as much as possible.
Use magisk or suhide and they'll work just fine. When you have access to the bootloader, there's nothing they can do to stop you - any attempt will ultimately be futile.
Actually, they now check a fuse on the device to verify if you unlocked the bootloader – if you have, on some devices, safetynet will fail.
So, yes, they can do something: blow fuses in the fucking system.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#278Default settings use remote, shared DNS caches run by an advertising company. Regardless, this is a step in the right direction. DNS is highly effective for this filtering out advertising. Personally I just run my own authoritative nameserver(s) with all the IP addresses I need. No recursive cache. When I browse to websites where I have never been and may not return, I am never using graphical browser that loads "res…
Do you find a setup like this takes more time to gather the information you're looking for? What is your primary reason for doing it this way? Privacy? Avoiding malware?
"Privacy? Avoiding malware?"
Neither. Those benefits are only side effects.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#279Network-level means no easy opt-out on a per-site basis. You cannot choose to support certain sites or view occasional sites that, understandably detect ad-blocking.
Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use magisk or suhide and they'll work just fine. When you have access to the bootloader, there's nothing they can do to stop you - any attempt will ultimately be futile.
Actually, they now check a fuse on the device to verify if you unlocked the bootloader – if you have, on some devices, safetynet will fail. So, yes, they can do something: blow fuses in the fucking system.
From what I've seen, there are no actual cases of this in practice at least not on Google devices - Google devices don't even have such a fuse. Maybe some Samsung stuff - but that's an easy fix, don't buy from Samsung. Also, it does not fail SafetyNet even on those Samsung devices, just some Samsung-specific stuff.
From what I've seen the only mention of such fuses on Google devices is one that enables secure boot from factory and forces you to run the unlock command as I mentioned to reflash your bootloader - nothing to do with safetynet or anything similar.
Let me know if I'm missing a device which does actually do this. Yes, it's theoretically possible, but requires sufficient crypto hardware and protection to make it significant and it'd be a significant shift in direction for Google to go this route currently in my opinion.
Of course a full safetynet emulation that would spoof the check as a different device would also be an option... but it'd be a pretty big undertaking, but one which I'm sure would happen if this ever became a remotely significant threat.