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

Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 138 posts

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#91

Post by [deleted] »

justanotherhn wrote: post #75
dmclamb wrote: post #74

I use pihole for my entire home network as primary DNS and opendns for secondary (long time user of opendns, since before Cisco bought it). I also have VPN setup for remote access (esp. for mobile). I use ublock origin at the browser level. These are layers of protection from undesired content (ads, malware, porn, etc.). If one fails, hopefully the next layer will provide desired protection. I have kids approaching t…

Are you trying to shield your teenage kids from seeing porn by accident or actively seeking it out? If it's the later you've already lost - presumably they have 4G.

[deleted]

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#92

Post by XelNika »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #88
XelNika wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't always work, because servers aren't always used in strict order. For example, my default Kubuntu 19.10 installation flips the primary and secondary if the primary is unresponsive for a while. Since my laptop takes a moment to establish a WiFi connection upon waking up, it always decides that the primary server is down and to default to the secondary server. It has currently been 3½ hours since my laptop…

Just remove the second nameserver from the config. In my experience you can just leave the second DNS server field blank on most (all?) devices.

How does that help the GP?

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#93

Post by Tempest1981 »

justanotherhn wrote: post #75
dmclamb wrote: post #74

I use pihole for my entire home network as primary DNS and opendns for secondary (long time user of opendns, since before Cisco bought it). I also have VPN setup for remote access (esp. for mobile). I use ublock origin at the browser level. These are layers of protection from undesired content (ads, malware, porn, etc.). If one fails, hopefully the next layer will provide desired protection. I have kids approaching t…

Are you trying to shield your teenage kids from seeing porn by accident or actively seeking it out? If it's the later you've already lost - presumably they have 4G.

Or at least one friend whose parents aren't tech savvy, and aren't home.

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#94

Post by amelius »

alpaca128 wrote: post #76
amelius wrote: post #55

The point of Pi-Hole is that you can't hack it that easily compared to software installed on your local computer.

How is it supposed to be harder to hack? I thought the main point is to have the blocking enabled in the whole network, including devices like smartphones.

Because the Pi-Hole doesn't run untrusted code, like a personal computer does (e.g. Javascript, installed applications, etc.). Same holds for smartphones.

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#95

Post by clairity »

robertcope wrote: post #41
hnarn wrote: post #24

I've been using https://nextdns.io/ for a while and I really like it. You can do DNS over HTTPS through Firefox (sadly not on an OS level in Windows for example, but that's fine -- I'm sure OS level support works better on Linux), and it supports a lot of user-level customization. You can add and remove entire blocklists, you can black/white-list specific domains, see logs of your blocks, some analytics, create your…

NextDNS is great. I have tried various DNS services -- OpenDNS, Cleanbrowsing, Cloudflare Gateway, Quad9, etc and I keep coming back to NextDNS. Would definitely recommend giving it a try if you're looking for a solid DNS-based security/privacy setup.

i've used some of those as well, and finally settled on adguard pro for my ios devices. do you (or anyone else) know how nextdns and adgaurd compare on ios?

adguard pro allows customization of dns servers (including DoT), has a running local log of dns queries, and provides custom whitelists/blacklists functionality. their dns (or maybe the app) very occasionally hangs requests, making my device seem like it's disconnected.

i've considered switching to nextdns but haven't found a compelling reason yet.

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#96

Post by m-p-3 »

hnarn wrote: post #24

I've been using https://nextdns.io/ for a while and I really like it. You can do DNS over HTTPS through Firefox (sadly not on an OS level in Windows for example, but that's fine -- I'm sure OS level support works better on Linux), and it supports a lot of user-level customization. You can add and remove entire blocklists, you can black/white-list specific domains, see logs of your blocks, some analytics, create your…

I've been using it as well and will most likely pay when the service is no longer free.

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#97

Post by GordonS »

lonelappde wrote: post #70
steveharman wrote: post #68

I wonder why the pi-hole tram doesn't also offer a paid tier (that they host), to help those who can't or don't want to roll their own? It could help fund future development and maintrnance costs.

Maybe they already have a full-time job? Anyway, it's free software. Anyone in the world can do that if they want. You can do that. Also, it's poorly scoped. Pihole is just an app. Any ownclowd provider can more efficiently host it along with a bundle of every other app people want to "own" but not run locally.

While this is true, I'd put much more trust in the PiHole team than I would some random corp - by the very nature of what they've built, and how they licensed it, I'd expect them to be privacy centric. By paying for such a service, I'd also feel like I was contributing to the ongoing maintenance of PiHole by the core team.

I think the GP's suggestion is a fantastic one!

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#98

Post by m-p-3 »

donclark wrote: post #59
jlkuester7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently spent a bunch of time comparing NextDNS vs PiHole. The reality is their features-sets are pretty close, but I eventually settled on NextDNS and here were some of my takeaways: NextDNS Pros: * Can use NextDNS on any network (thanks to their apps or just regular DNS-over-HTTP/TLS). * (Could get similar functionality on PiHole with a remote hosted PiHole + VPN, but much more complex to setup) * NextDNS allows…

Another PiHole pro is that it can work for every device in your house (if you set it up that way).

I've set NextDNS as my default DNS provider at the router level, so it kinda achieve that too.

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#99

Post by Natales »

xnyan wrote: post #90
obituary_latte wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also splurge and for under $10/mo set it up on a DigitalOcean (or similar) cheap hosting provider and have it available everywhere. And you can share with friends and family.

The cost in your example is far, far more than $10 USD a month. If you can set this up, your time is absolutely worth something and even if this is your area of expertise, you are now personally responsible for a critical piece of your internet browsing infrastructure. There are tons of important details to keeping a critical service up and running almost all the time - even if you are competent in this, that is stil…

The thing is that it's not really complicated anymore. It may be my area of expertise, but just following basic step-by-step instructions, it took me about 10 minutes to have a full ad-blocking, Wireguard VPN server on a DigitalOcean droplet by using Algo: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo , including the setup for my phone and iPad.

Re: Maza – Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system

#100

Post by xnyan »

Natales wrote: post #99
xnyan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost in your example is far, far more than $10 USD a month. If you can set this up, your time is absolutely worth something and even if this is your area of expertise, you are now personally responsible for a critical piece of your internet browsing infrastructure. There are tons of important details to keeping a critical service up and running almost all the time - even if you are competent in this, that is stil…

The thing is that it's not really complicated anymore. It may be my area of expertise, but just following basic step-by-step instructions, it took me about 10 minutes to have a full ad-blocking, Wireguard VPN server on a DigitalOcean droplet by using Algo: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo , including the setup for my phone and iPad.

Algo is a great project and I also use it, but if you’re running it in production and not spending some time each month at least on security analysis and review, your self-assessd expertise may be more of the Dunning-Kruger variety.
Post reply on HN