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Mmm, Pi-hole

troyhunt.com

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Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#281

Post by lose-frown-sans »

tpush wrote: post #117

> [...] it's also the fact that running an ad blocker means giving a third party an enormous amount of power over your browser. That's why Safari's content blocker API is so great[0]. Creators of these extension have no access to my data and it's faster than normal extensions to boot. I'm using Wipr, which seems to work just as well as pi-hole on the example pages. Blocked his advert too, or at least I can't find it…

Safari Content Blocker is pretty great but it's restricted to Safari only. So if you use Reeder, for example, to view articles then ads won't get blocked.

As an additional system-wide layer, I subscribe to Peter Lowe's ad block list with Little Snitch. Now I can block all outbound requests to ad servers system-wide.

As much as I like PiHole, I don't think it's a one-stop solution. It's generally easier to manage stuff locally on my system. I think the big advantage is for software that isn't as open (like iOS, tvOS, etc).

I find that working in layers instead of trying to find a singular solution is easier to work with and provides more flexibility.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#282

Post by cuboidGoat »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #166
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked, which is absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous. I see absolutely no negative effects browsing like this. Everything I've come across still works fine. Even sites that detect uBlock Origin and tell me to disable it, will work with that disabled and Pi-hole still blocking the ads instead. I heavily believe we sh…

> I heavily believe we should be supporting creators As do I. There's two significant issues I have supporting most sites: 1. They provide only a subscription that is comparable cost to an old-media full subscription. Like most people in the Internet age I have a small number of main sources that I visit daily, and a much larger secondary tier where I may average one or two stories a week. Or they're the sites linked…

>2. I'm yet to find a site that takes my subscription and turns off ads and invasive tracking. Just ads. Still not an equitable deal.

As it currently stands, a large chunk of the newspaper industry in the states is willing to block the whole of the EU, when it could offer it that model, so I wouldn't hold your breath.

A source at Tronc says not only have most of the chain's papers blocked EU visitors because of GDPR, but Tronc "currently has no plans to support the EU" because doing so is seen as not economically viable

https://twitter.com/mathewi/status/1001571559679582209?lang=...

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#283

Post by spurgu »

LynxInLA wrote: post #273
daxorid wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also run pi-hole on a tiny VPS and set your DNS statically on all devices.

do you have any links for doing this?

Yeah this is something I've been thinking about lately as well. Pi-Hole seems cool but what about most of the time when I'm somewhere else than my local network?

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#284

Post by spurgu »

sciurus wrote: post #89

I don't use a browser extension, I use Firefox's built-in tracking protection. It is only enabled by default in private browsing mode, but it's easy to enable it for all your browsing. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection I get 126 requests and 2.3 MB transferred on Daily Mail Australia, which seems comparable or better than what Troy saw with Pi-hole. See https://postimg.cc/3WYwZf3b (Disclosu…

It's sad. I've so much wanted to go back to Firefox after 10 years on Chrome now but every time I give it a try it just doesn't do it for me. Mostly because I have quite specific habits and I don't remember off-hand what it was specifically the last time I tried it that made me give up, I should really do a write-up the next time I give it a go, as I love Firefox (what it stands for) but there's always that _something_ that makes me go back to Chrome after a week or so. Currently I'm exploring Vivaldi (based on Chromium, which has some awesome power user features).

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#285

Post by spurgu »

spurgu wrote: post #284
sciurus wrote: post #89

I don't use a browser extension, I use Firefox's built-in tracking protection. It is only enabled by default in private browsing mode, but it's easy to enable it for all your browsing. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection I get 126 requests and 2.3 MB transferred on Daily Mail Australia, which seems comparable or better than what Troy saw with Pi-hole. See https://postimg.cc/3WYwZf3b (Disclosu…

It's sad. I've so much wanted to go back to Firefox after 10 years on Chrome now but every time I give it a try it just doesn't do it for me. Mostly because I have quite specific habits and I don't remember off-hand what it was specifically the last time I tried it that made me give up, I should really do a write-up the next time I give it a go, as I love Firefox (what it stands for) but there's always that _somethin…

Also, I get similar results with Daily Mail with Chrome/Vivaldi + Ghostery. But I'm placing a lot of trust in Ghostery that I would rather place in Firefox.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#286

Post by dogecoinbase »

aquadrop wrote: post #207
Semaphor wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have Reddit whitelisted until they started showing subreddit-targeted ads in other subs. I follow a bunch of cryptocurrency subs and the ads there are… well… as you expect.

Why is this bad? You follow cryptocurrency subreddit, they show you relevant ad. You follow "warm mittens" subreddit, they show you relevant ad, etc. So why is it a bad thing?

I can't speak for the GP, but in this case of the cryptocurrency sites/fora I frequent (including topical subreddits), the ads are for idiotic scams. This indicates that whatever vetting they're doing is insufficient, and so they can be safely blocked (specifically -- if they can't be trusted to not display ads for obvious fraud, they can't be trusted to vet ads for other malicious attributes).

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#287

Post by pbhjpbhj »

r3bl wrote: post #6

Off-topic, but that Vollkron font definitely styles 1s very weirdly. I thought it said I.I.I.I instead of 1.1.1.1 until I copied the text and pasted it somewhere else.

FWIW, https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/vollkorn, shows they have a choice of styles for numerals. But the half height I appears to be the default.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#288

Post by craftyguy »

helper wrote: post #145
craftyguy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This thing is in the best possible location for poisoning DNS for every system on your network. That should be a HUGE concern.

It is an order of magnitude safer than a browser plugin.

Right, neither one of them are great ideas unless you can trust the source. To argue otherwise is a relative privation fallacy.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#289

Post by naravara »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #166
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked, which is absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous. I see absolutely no negative effects browsing like this. Everything I've come across still works fine. Even sites that detect uBlock Origin and tell me to disable it, will work with that disabled and Pi-hole still blocking the ads instead. I heavily believe we sh…

> I heavily believe we should be supporting creators As do I. There's two significant issues I have supporting most sites: 1. They provide only a subscription that is comparable cost to an old-media full subscription. Like most people in the Internet age I have a small number of main sources that I visit daily, and a much larger secondary tier where I may average one or two stories a week. Or they're the sites linked…

>There's no low user or micro transaction options for these, so I get a choice of pay say £10 a month or nothing, for a site I might be getting £1 or 10p a month "value" from.

A "tip jar" or micropayment model to supplement subscriptions would be a great option. Unfortunately I think processing fees eat up a significant chunk of your take to the point where it's not really profitable to build a business model around it. Even if you get a great solution going, getting buy-in from the number of vendors you'd need on board would be prohibitively difficult. The only ones with the reach would either be inclined to lock it down and stick with the ad centric model (Facebook, Google) or just don't have the organizational culture to give it the attention or support it would deserve (Apple, Amazon).

In the old days you could go to a corner newsstand and pick up a newspaper, even from one of those little boxes on the street. This let you just buy if there was something interesting that you needed to look at that day without committing and, importantly, without handing personal financial information to who-the-hell-even-knows. A payment infrastructure that makes this quick, easy, and cheap enough to where cost isn't a concern would be incredible.

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