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The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

den.dev

11–20 of 211 posts

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#11
I really don't understand why people go to the trouble of using Pi-hole that only blocks at the DNS level, instead of using uBlock Origin which can block at the DOM level.

uBlock Origin is easier and cheaper to set up, less maintenance, and more effective.

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#12
post #2

In case you’re like a lot of folks in HN, read the title, and say to yourself “already have one”, read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, the New York Times app seems to now use its own hard-coded DNS servers. Without having tried it, it looks like TFA has the fix for that. EDIT: replies indicate that I, a person who is barely competent at many network ta…

> read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example,

Don't worry. All the browsers and stuff are bypassing this level of control by moving to DNS-over-HTTPS. You'll either have to deploy a TLS terminating proxy on your network, or give up on this arms race.

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#13
post #2

In case you’re like a lot of folks in HN, read the title, and say to yourself “already have one”, read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, the New York Times app seems to now use its own hard-coded DNS servers. Without having tried it, it looks like TFA has the fix for that. EDIT: replies indicate that I, a person who is barely competent at many network ta…

Apps that open arbritrary UDP/TCP ports? Isn't that something the app store policies should reject?

What is an arbitrary TCP port? Ports in isolation from an IP address aren't inherently arbitrary, they're nothing, and the IP:port pair is arbitrary. Once you allow connections to any host on the internet the port doesn't really matter - you can do whatever nefarious shit over port 80. And not allowing apps to connect to external internet servers seems pretty limiting.

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#14

I really don't understand why people go to the trouble of using Pi-hole that only blocks at the DNS level, instead of using uBlock Origin which can block at the DOM level. uBlock Origin is easier and cheaper to set up, less maintenance, and more effective.

Could be nice to have both! Plus, it's not clear that chrome will always support manifest v2. I recently learned that you can still use unlock origin in chromium by going to the extensions page and manually turning it back on, but who knows how long this will last?

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#15
post #2

In case you’re like a lot of folks in HN, read the title, and say to yourself “already have one”, read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, the New York Times app seems to now use its own hard-coded DNS servers. Without having tried it, it looks like TFA has the fix for that. EDIT: replies indicate that I, a person who is barely competent at many network ta…

Apps that open arbritrary UDP/TCP ports? Isn't that something the app store policies should reject?

They're not opening listening ports on the local system, they're just ignoring the system's DNS and saying "Take me to this IP and this port" and then doing a DNS lookup themselves

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#16

I really don't understand why people go to the trouble of using Pi-hole that only blocks at the DNS level, instead of using uBlock Origin which can block at the DOM level. uBlock Origin is easier and cheaper to set up, less maintenance, and more effective.

uBlock is only for your web browser - it can't help with other apps, smart devices, game consoles, etc.

It's best to run both.

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#18
post #12
post #2

In case you’re like a lot of folks in HN, read the title, and say to yourself “already have one”, read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, the New York Times app seems to now use its own hard-coded DNS servers. Without having tried it, it looks like TFA has the fix for that. EDIT: replies indicate that I, a person who is barely competent at many network ta…

> read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, Don't worry. All the browsers and stuff are bypassing this level of control by moving to DNS-over-HTTPS. You'll either have to deploy a TLS terminating proxy on your network, or give up on this arms race.

Jokes on you, I do have a fortinet which does this.... Oh wait, only up to TLS 1.1 or something and it's slow.

I forgot the name of the software but there used to be a few tools to terminate and reencrypt. But yeah dnssec is it's own challenge

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#19
post #12
post #2

In case you’re like a lot of folks in HN, read the title, and say to yourself “already have one”, read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, the New York Times app seems to now use its own hard-coded DNS servers. Without having tried it, it looks like TFA has the fix for that. EDIT: replies indicate that I, a person who is barely competent at many network ta…

> read TFA for the iptables config that fixes those apps and devices that bypass local DNS. For example, Don't worry. All the browsers and stuff are bypassing this level of control by moving to DNS-over-HTTPS. You'll either have to deploy a TLS terminating proxy on your network, or give up on this arms race.

To be fair, if you are geeky enough to run a PiHole you will have no trouble finding the config option to turn off DoH in your browser.

Re: The Beauty of Having a Pi-Hole (2024)

#20

I really don't understand why people go to the trouble of using Pi-hole that only blocks at the DNS level, instead of using uBlock Origin which can block at the DOM level. uBlock Origin is easier and cheaper to set up, less maintenance, and more effective.

I agree. I don't want to be a hater, because it's a cool idea... but I find that this is just the wrong level to operate on.

When I ran it, I ran into various hard-to-diagnose compatibility issues on different devices. Or, guests coming over and having their various websites be broken in ways that I'd have to troubleshoot.

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