Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

pi-hole.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 320 posts

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#301

Post by problems »

snaky wrote: post #300
problems wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Android doesn't provide fine-grained permissions control or root access, so users can't block ads. One caveat here - Google devices are probably some of the most allowing of root access and full device ownership - easily unlocked bootloaders basically allow it to be a one button process. Some manufacturers make you put your device on a shitlist with them before they'll give you a key to unlock the bootloader and…

> Google devices are probably some of the most allowing of root access and full device ownership Did you hear about SafetyNet? https://koz.io/inside-safetynet/

Someone else already commented on it, see that thread. It's trivially bypassed using current tools.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#302

Post by JustSomeNobody »

__oz wrote: post #11

+1 for pfSense port. Also, not sure how I feel about having this device as my primary DNS server for my entire internal network. What if the project gets compromised and injects a number of malicious DNS entries, now my entire network is toast?

But, can't this be said of any DNS provider?

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#303

Post by JustSomeNobody »

pix64 wrote: post #213

I feel like this is a bit dangerous because it doesn't allow the end user to disable it if it breaks a website which is quite common.

Then they let the admin know. The admin then whitelists the site and no more problem.

There can't be that many of these situations.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#304

Post by jerrac »

majewsky wrote: post #250
jerrac wrote: post #207

I wonder if there's any way to integrate this with OPNSense firewall. I already have that set up as my LAN's dns server so I can name my internal computers.

Can you set the pi-hole as the firewall's upstream DNS?

That's the direction I was thinking of going. My main concern is that I spent quite a while figuring out the fastest dns servers to use, and I have them set in OPNSense. I wonder how adding pi-hole to the mix will effect speed... (As in, finding the dns servers that select the best servers for my streaming video apps...) Guess the best thing to do is to try it. I would hope pi-hole would let me select it's upstream servers as well. :)

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#305

Post by geekamongus »

olyjohn wrote: post #159
geekamongus wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to run at home with a web-based GUI for whitelisting, blacklisting and such. I like this tool a lot, personally, and it helps me feel better about keeping the family safe(r) online at home.

Agreed, it's been really nice to run at home. Took about an hour to set up from a diskless Pi I had sitting around, to a fully running system. Maintenance has been zero so far, and haven't had any downtime or anything. The best part was when I first fired up the web interface and saw that it had already blocked 14 requests after hardly being up for more than 5 minutes. Nobody was home at the time, so it was kind of a…

I was amazed at how much it was blocking on my Roku device hooked up to my TV. I ended up having to whitelist a few things in order for it to work, but it's blocking ads there too.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#306

Post by libeclipse »

promofaux wrote: post #299
libeclipse wrote: post #173

I used this for a while but I found that it was unbearably slow. Perhaps it's too much to ask from a RaspberryPi3.

When you say unbearably slow, do you mean the actual DNS resolution, or the Admin interface? An Rpi3, even a Rpi B or zero is plenty good enough for DNS queries! The Admin interface has been a bit of a bugbear for a while, but we are working on some massive improvements for the 3.0 release (coming soon™)

The DNS resolution itself was really slow for me, slowed down web browsing severely.

Also I was really concerned by the fact that anyone on the network could access history for everyone else. It's not a nice feature.

It's a good project otherwise, props to you guys.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#307

Post by AlexAffe »

gwu78 wrote: post #167

Default 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…

I really like the approach. This is where the net is headed. Graphical browsing is unnecessary in a way. Now, the only issue with that is the way the web is currently heading. A site hosted at aws or cloudfront is hard to whitelist...

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#308

Post by finid »

johnpowell wrote: post #292
finid wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proponents of adblockers are not thinking this thing through. It takes time (that's money) to create quality content that anybody would love reading. Heck, even content that's crappy takes time to create.

I remember back in 1994. There was actually better quality content back them. Think of half the sites being Ian's Shoelace Site. People that are just really into something and make a site about it. Static HTML sites that were fairly cheap to run. I had a site about all the special tricks in Tony Hawks Pro Skater. It was simple HTML and I got a ton of hits (this was later in 1999). No ads, I just loved the game.

There was better quality in 1994 than there is today? Wow!

So is that site still up? If not, why did you stop? Too much effort to keep it running?

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#309

Post by dserodio »

majewsky wrote: post #237
legohead wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When over 30% of your userbase is adblocking, it's not worth it. Your users will complain to you, not the adblockers. They don't even understand what's going on. Asking your users to whitelist the site doesn't work, either.

Pro-tip: Lazy-load the imprint link and support form so that these adblocking bastards cannot annoy you. /s

I got bitten by this on https://about.gitlab.com/contact/

I thought "hey, the Newsletter and Security Notices icons aren't clickable", opened a ticket, and found that the input and submit elements that should be under those icons were being blocked by disconnect.me :)

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#310

Post by bitJericho »

devonkim wrote: post #121
stagbeetle wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you suppose that is? Is it because you believe people use ad-blockers because they're impulsive and can't hold their gaze?

I think it's based upon the idea that people with ad blockers see less ads and so are still sensitive to ad impressions. In contrast, advertisements in really crowded situations (most people that walk about in urban areas, for example) require more effort to stand out as advertising saturation point hits. I mostly combat any ad influence on me by making a point to _not_ buy anything that is advertised. Works out pret…

That's it exactly. On top of that, you're shocked an ad got through!
Post reply on HN