Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by basscomm » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #60

zelon88 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with the "old" way, where you visit a Mopar automotive related website and saw Mopar car part ads? Or when you visit a computer magazine and saw ads for computer parts? Or when you went to NYT and saw basic shit like paper towels and fall fashion? It became a problem when everyone and their sister started needing to know what kinds of kinks I'm into just to sell me dish detergent.

One big problem with entirely static ads is that websites are global but the ads running on them are for brands that are likely local (at least to a specific country.) If I visit the NYT website in e.g. Norway, should I still see ads for an American brand of paper towel that doesn’t exist here; or should I see ads for Norway paper towel brands? The flip-side of this is that I’ve noticed that YouTube shows me PSAs fro…

> (“there’s an election soon” ads, “we’re building a new piece of civil infrastructure” ads, etc.) I actually kind of like that; I don’t have cable, so it’s not like I would see them anywhere else.

I don't have cable, either, but I do have a pair of rabbit ears to keep up with local news via OTA broadcasts.

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

#162

Post by someexgamedev » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:52 PM UTC

_eht wrote: post #136

someexgamedev wrote: post #130

Why hasn't anyone, or pi-hole themselves, made a public DNS that does this? Pass everything not on the blocklist thru to 1.1.1.1. The fact that this requires special hardware, bash commands, etc is severely limiting the audience. The more people blocking ads the quicker the internet changes. Edit: thanks for the replies!

Just to be clear, what change are you expecting to happen? Not /s.

Most of the blogs and content aggregation sites shrivel up and die. A bunch of pay walls go up around the good content ppl would actually pay for. There's less crap on the internet because there's less spying to make the crap profitable. Everyone claps.

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

#163

Post by nawtacawp » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

F00Fbug wrote: post #145

If you're running some type of hypervisor (ESXi, Proxmox, etc.), you can create a tiny VM running Debian and load Pi-hole on it. No need for extra hardware and wires.

I use ESXi and one of the VMs is pfSense. pfSense has an additional software package called pfBlocker, which is highly configurable and just plan awesome for blockings ads/trackers/etc for the LAN. pfSense has tons of other options - I setup a vLAN and all of my IoT devices are segregated onto it. That way they can't interact with the rest of the devices on the LAN.

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

#164

Post by asymptotically2 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

entropicdrifter wrote: post #70

brianpayne2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages of using Cloudflare's DNS as opposed to say Google DNS or your ISP? Tracking?

Speed and tracking. Cloudflare claims they don't keep logs

>Cloudflare claims that they don't keep logs

Emphasis on 'claims', sadly we have no way of verifying that they don't actually keep logs.

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

#165

Post by isbjorn16 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

ashman5 wrote: post #126

isbjorn16 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you noticed any drastic reductions in speed? My rpi 3b (not 3b+) just couldn't handle it. It had 2 users. Our DNS resolution times increased by about 200ms. It was awful. I stripped it back out and haven't bothered trying to set it up again. (Other details: the RPI was hardwired, wireless disabled, and it was a fresh raspbian install with zero customization outside of adding pihole.)

I would say that you may have a setup issue with your router. My resolution times decreased when the pi-hole is providing DNS responses. I have 30+ devices on a 3b+. I'm using a UniFi setup and both WAN and LAN point to the pi-hole local ip address.

I'm running a pfsense setup with cloudflare as my DNS (DNS-over-TLS, in specific). As soon as I had the rpi in the middle, it jacked up resolution times like crazy (rpi was set to use my SG as its DNS, so ->rpi->pfsense->1.1.1.1

It's good to know you guys haven't been having problems; I thought everyone was just fucking nuts or something, but no; local problem. Sigh.

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

#166

Post by nawtacawp » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #83

Piskvorrr wrote: post #2

[tinfoilhat] Given that Chrome now became Google's weapon against adblocking, how long until it starts refusing to use Pi-hole specifically? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 [/tinfoilhat]

This is the dark side of DNS-over-HTTPs: it prevents the network operator from changing what is received by browsers. Sometimes this is legitimate, as in Pi-hole. Paul Vixie got very upset when he discovered that his chromecast bypasses local DNS settings to go directly to Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170671 I wouldn't be surprised if soon Chrome defaults to DNS-over-HTTPs direct to base, except for…

could setup a small firewall (pfSense) that routes all DNS queries from connected devices to your own DNS server.

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

#167

Post by Nas808 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:58 PM UTC

OrgNet wrote: post #122

Couldn't apps start hard coding DNS servers to avoid pi-holes?

Some already do (Chromecast, Google Home devices).

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

#168

Post by pixelbath » Thu, May 30, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

Given how Google has, literally this morning, informed me that they're discontinuing text-only AdSense units, I can't think of a more appropriate time.

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

#169

Post by zaroth » Thu, May 30, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

I haven’t tried Pi-Hole yet but this was the impetus I needed to decide to set it up tonight.

I commented on a different post last night, that I was a bit shocked and saddened to see their Patreon is only pulling in $1,700/mo.

Do they have another significant revenue stream? Is it just too much hassle to bother signing up to Patreon to commit to even $1/mo? Do they have something on the Admin panel where users can click to pay directly?

I’m not judging, I don’t even have a Patreon account. I’m curious how such an apparently crucial and useful piece of software — one that no doubt is responsible for providing millions of dollars of value to its users, and perhaps blocking tens of millions of dollars in ads — how can the project be sustainable after 53 releases and 2,700 issues on Github while pulling in less than $24k/yr?

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

#170

Post by theandrewbailey » Thu, May 30, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

isbjorn16 wrote: post #117

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #17

Pi-hole is my most prized addition to my connected home. It was simple to set up, easy to manage, and easy to access for whitelisting. Now, all of my devices throughout my network benefit from the service, as opposed to relying on locally installed solutions. If you aren't using it, you should!

Haven't you noticed any drastic reductions in speed? My rpi 3b (not 3b+) just couldn't handle it. It had 2 users. Our DNS resolution times increased by about 200ms. It was awful. I stripped it back out and haven't bothered trying to set it up again. (Other details: the RPI was hardwired, wireless disabled, and it was a fresh raspbian install with zero customization outside of adding pihole.)

I have an old desktop in my basement running Ubuntu with PiHole (and some other things). My router is still the DHCP server, but distributes the PiHole machine as the first DNS server. I haven't noticed anything being slow.