Is there anything opensource that can replace the main server? I run the docker (linuxserver.io) and every update I need to re-opt out of tracking. So annoying. I thought they were like the Apple of this space, you pay a bit more but no shenanigans. Looks like they’re the Google. Shame.
Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
221–230 of 322 posts
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#222I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their…
My mother got a new laptop, and at some point I got remote access to help her get a few things set up (password manager/ad-blocker/backups/etc). I was really amazed at what her Facebook feed looks like. Actual Facebook advertisements for literal scams. 'Michelle Obama's investment tips' for some bitcoin platform. 'Patagonia Outlet' with items at 25% of the cost, at domains like patagonia-outlet.shjss72828.sub.domain.pl, etc. I scrolled for a while and more than half of the advertisements were like this. This is what senior citizens are dealing with.
This is just not ok. I understand that screening everyone in the world's personal posts/shares for 'fake news' is a daunting task, but KYC-ing advertisers and screening/auditing ads for blatant and obvious scams or false marketing is many orders of magnitude less resource intensive... and should be required by laws with teeth.
If the costs of doing so mean that it's impossible to make a profit as an ad platform, then that business model should die.
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somewhere an engineer was tasked to write software that does an inventory of my network to see what new shiny hardware of theirs I don’t yet own. Then, the software that was written to manage a product that I paid for shoves a call-to-action that takes a considerable amount of the page to suggest I buy it. And I can’t dismiss or close it. The difference with ads on the web is that I paid for the privilege of being se…
> Somewhere an engineer was tasked to write software that does an inventory of my network to see what new shiny hardware of theirs I don’t yet own. No. Somewhere a marketer queried a database using a simple marketing automation tool to decide which of a variety of banners to show you.
No. This is hard coded into the management interface.
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#224I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their…
This is not that simple, unfortunately. Advertising in itself is not bad. Why informing about a good product is something wrong? How we would have Tesla or iPhones, etc. without advertising. Nobody would know about all of those. But something went wrong at some point. Similarly with options - options were a great way farmers could offload risk to the products buyers, who, in exchange could get better prices. But when…
> This is important lesson. Capitalism is a great system, but it cannot be narrowed to greed. Capitalism requires working ethics since we are not able to regulate every aspect of life - it is practically impossible.
The market is literally a big, greedy - in algorithmic sense - optimization engine. It optimizes away everything that stands in the way of making more money. It optimizes away quality, and it absolutely optimizes away any and all ethics. Marketing and advertising are a clear example of this in two separate ways: on the object level, they're already doing everything they can that isn't strictly illegal[0]; on the meta level, you see that competing on marketing and advertising has a better ROI than actually trying to make better products.
You cannot expect a sense of ethics from a system which requires ethics as a containment vessel, and continuously tries to erode it. Much like you can't expect water to just keep flowing in a straight line, in absence of a bank or pipe that would constrain its expansion.
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[0] - And enforced. GDPR demonstrates that with insufficient enforcement, otherwise reputable companies will absolutely break the law.
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any brands you would recommended for home use for "prosumers"?
Maybe https://www.turris.com/en/omnia/overview/ is worth a shot.
Adding my thoughts from being a Turris Omnia user since the release (2016).
I think it's one of the better standalone WiFi router/AP's out there. If you want a long term supported open source/openwrt one it might be the best choice out there.
The original 3.11 release track has been super stable for many years, and is still being updated with security fixes. The 4.0 branch was a bit bumpy ride but since the 5.0 release early last year I've had zero issues.
Note that the default WiFi chipset is not the latest generation, and although the dev team is actively looking at the possibility to get some wifi6 working [1], I think it might be a while before that is out and stable.
As a bonus it has some cool features like built in support for CZ.nic's honeypot as a service [2] and lxc.
[1] https://forum.turris.cz/t/wifi-6-ax-adapter/10390/63 [2] https://haas.nic.cz/
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's a program for managing physical hardware running on my hardware. That's not what the article suggests. The article suggests an ad on a page with an ubiquiti url. While it may be the same software under the hood, I agree that seeing an ad when I'm on someone else's hosted page is (somewhat) acceptable unless I'm a paying customer, but seeing it on my own machine isn't. In the end since those are two entirely di…
> That's not what the article suggests. The article suggests an ad on a page with an ubiquiti url. It's both. UniFi is product line of network hardware which is managed by a central controller. The controller is available as a software download, and Ubiquiti sells a few devices that are pre-configured to run it (the "Dream Machine" from the ad, and their "Cloud Key", which is just a PoE-powered mini-appliance that ru…
On my install, it worked when I went to settings and found "Use new interface in all pages" or something like that. Disabling that option kicked the UI back to the non-insane version.
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Somewhere an engineer was tasked to write software that does an inventory of my network to see what new shiny hardware of theirs I don’t yet own. No. Somewhere a marketer queried a database using a simple marketing automation tool to decide which of a variety of banners to show you.
No. This is hard coded into the management interface.
How do you know that?
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's a program for managing physical hardware running on my hardware. That's not what the article suggests. The article suggests an ad on a page with an ubiquiti url. While it may be the same software under the hood, I agree that seeing an ad when I'm on someone else's hosted page is (somewhat) acceptable unless I'm a paying customer, but seeing it on my own machine isn't. In the end since those are two entirely di…
I don't understand how can you keep things apart when it's the same software?
If I can self host it expect no ads (ie when I see that interface on an url that says 192.168...). If I pay a subscription for a service I expect no ads there.
If I buy a gadget and use the manufacturers’ cloud service “for free” (apart from the hardware purchase) then I expect anything.
I wouldn’t want to use a cloud service to access what’s on my own hardware. Apart from ease of configuration, what’s the point of it? Why wouldn’t I rather go to my own server?
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently upgraded my home network and went with mikrotik (an RB4011). RouterOS is incredibly deep
It's also incredibly userunfriendly and lacking features for home users. I have both UniFi APs and a Mikrotik router and configuring RouterOS reminds me of trying to setup PPPoE internet on a Linux machine in 1990s. A lot of manual settings with obvious features (NAT acceleration, NAT loopback, good VPN client, easy QoS, reasonable firewall) being extremely hard to configure well in comparison to competing SOHO equip…
Yes, Mikrotik allows tweaking everything, but if home user is not interested in that, there's Quick Set for configuring the common scenarios.
Opposite way is much harder, as we can see with Ubiquiti: they hide and remove options, that are needed. With USG devices, I could have config.gateway.json configuration for some of those hidden options (like having site-to-site VPN using hostnames instead of IP addresses... well, Unifi UI cannot do that, but strongswan doing the IPSec on Unifi has no problem doint that). With UnifiOS devices, they are not addressing the issues, they are taking away the workarounds instead.
So they can advertise as much as they want, until they make devices fit for the purpose, there's no point in purchasing them. I don't see the situation improving anytime soon, they don't listen on their own community forums.
Re: Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface
#230What is this interface? I have ubiquiti hardware but not any UniFi hardware, is this only a UniFi thing?
This is the UniFi Controller appliance, software that lets you deploy and configure the WAPs from a webapp.
If it’s an appliance why would I access it through a cloud service rather than directly accessing its network interface?