91–100 of 211 posts
it's a good post, however I agree with the comments there and here that a raspberry pi 5 with 8gb ram is an overkill for just running pihole. a good old Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with 1gb ram it's enough and it will still have capacity to run other things there. And of course pihole can run on an old laptop or desktop box you already have so no need to buy a device just for the sake of it. I would rather not run it as a…
> 66.6% of all traffic is blocked I hear things like this a lot from PiHole users. But it's incorrect. Correct would be: 66.6% of DNS requests have been blocked. This says nothing about the actual volume of traffic/data that has been blocked
It would be pretty difficult to measure by more typical measures (e.g. bandwidth) because if you block DNS resolution you don't know the size of the resources you are blocking...
I used to spend a lot of time on my pihole trying to "fight the internet," but with this recent breakage, it just feels like what I need to be doing is just visiting fewer websites, owning less connected tech, and doing other things such as working outside or reading books. Blocking javascript goes a long way, but just avoiding bad websites, web apps, etc seems to be the only long-term solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"uBlock is only for your web browser - it can't help with other apps, smart devices, game consoles, etc." Yes, but don't we expect all of those devices (and apps) to move to DoH resolution if they haven't already ? In that case the pihole (or nextdns, etc.) are bypassed ... I suppose you could proxy all TLS traffic and block it but if the DoH is being served by the same FQDN as the traffic you want in the first place…
A couple years ago it was like night and day. Now it is still better than nothing, and in a year or two it might not be worth running.
It's definitely a moving target, but "we expect ... to move to DoH resolution" means that they haven't all moved yet, and a DNS based ad/telemetry/etc blocker still works today (for some apps / smart devices). If it works for some things today why would I turn it off because it might not work for a subset of those things tomorrow? Agreed the value proposition of setting one up is probably dropping, but I still prefer it to nothing.
Now that I think of it I should probably start logging how many DNS look ups "fail" because of the DNS blocking list, and monitor for changes. If it ever gets to less than one a day it's probably not worth the couple of W to power the RaspberryPI
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 use both, blocking all sorts of non-browser traffic. I find I can tell whenever the pi-hole isn't running. On the "less maintenance" front, I honestly don't pay any attention to the pi-hole in any given month. It has automatic updates running, and reboots when it needs to. It pretty much just works and I forget about it.
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.
Best to run both if you're in a position to do so
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people like to watch YouTube on their TV
I watch YouTube on my TV. Using Firefox, with uBlock Origin. We have a laptop plugged into the TV, with a bluetooth keyboard. It is a vastly superior experience to any smart TV I have ever seen.
My wife likes to cast youtube videos from her phone to the TV, so the experience is nearly the same to her on her phone as it is watching on TV. Maybe if she only used the PC interface she wouldn't mind, but she likes to search / scan / scroll youtube on her phone, and cast the bits she's going to actually watch.
She was very frustrated by having to find the video she wanted to watch on her phone on the PC using the some what finicky mouse touch pad to get the cursor to open the web browser, navigate to youtube, enter the title in the search box (possibly) scroll to find the video, and then a couple more steps getting it playing full screen.
I'm happy we have options to block ads that aren't uBlock Origin in firefox, even though that works great, and better than other options.
Tailscale with NextDNS is a simpler alternative to this and is easy to set up on all your devices.
Is there a tutorial you recommend?
1) at work 2) out of town 3) or just not home
Then, my family's ability to troubleshoot if PiHole goes down is extremely limited. Even if I had two.