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Mmm, Pi-hole

troyhunt.com

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Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#251

Post by lostlogin »

Tomte wrote: post #64
windexh8er wrote: post #26

I'm surprised this is the top slot right now. Troy, generally, puts out interesting info on security related news however this feels a bit minimal. Since the project has been around a number of years now, and it's not relegated to only a RPi I would have expected him to delve into things a bit more. Pi-hole will also break things. I think the common one I always heard from users on my network at home were that Google…

Of course I have deployed it on a Raspberry. I don't have another always-on computer, and while it's not the only supported target, it is the one most Pi-Hole users have, so I get maximum community support. I'm doubting whether electricity cost might be too high (it's getting mighty warm), but I haven't measured it, yet. So far, I love my Pi-Hole. Absolutely no problems with it.

A cron job every hour with a slack notification of temp >60C has put me at ease. It goes over occasionally so I suppose I’ll need a fan at some point.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#252

Post by portaljacker »

My only issue is if I haven't been to a site in a while it makes an error showing page not found or something similar, then a reload fixes it.

Otherwise, it's a godsend, especially on mobile. Though some...unscrupulous sites...I visit on mobile on some occasions still manage to redirect me to crazy shit. But I get way less adds pretending I have a virus.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#253

Post by rdtsc »

class4behavior wrote: post #51
ryandrake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s essentially dnsmasq which can be run directly on your wireless router if you are using custom firmware. No separate hw needed, no need to horse around with dockers or containers or any of that stuff. I’d guess a lot of people are already running dnsmasq for other purposes, so adding the blocklist and periodically updating it should be trivial.

Yeah, on openwrt you just install the adblock package https://github.com/openwrt/packages/tree/master/net/adblock/...

That is what I did. I used a TP-Link Archer C7 router and installed adblock and few other useful packages. Works like a charm so far.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#254

Post by zmw »

mikestew wrote: post #203
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked, which is absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous. I see absolutely no negative effects browsing like this. Everything I've come across still works fine. Even sites that detect uBlock Origin and tell me to disable it, will work with that disabled and Pi-hole still blocking the ads instead. I heavily believe we sh…

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked Where in THE hell are you going on the Internet? Wait, don't answer that. I only wonder because we sit at around 20-30% at our house (which is still ridiculous). But approaching 90%? Maybe I need to crank the blocklists up a notch, but I can't imagine even surfing porn sites all day that I could get anywhere n…

I’m only at 7.5%, probably because I use uMatrix in the first place, and have gone out of my way to kill a few applications that phone home like crazy.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#255

Post by mikestew »

JadoJodo wrote: post #225
mikestew wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked Where in THE hell are you going on the Internet? Wait, don't answer that. I only wonder because we sit at around 20-30% at our house (which is still ridiculous). But approaching 90%? Maybe I need to crank the blocklists up a notch, but I can't imagine even surfing porn sites all day that I could get anywhere n…

I've hit 75% before. My Roku desperately wants to phone home (25k requests/day).

Yeah, upvote for reminding me about chatty IoT crap. I've got a Nest right now that was phoning home every four seconds. Why, I have no idea, so now it doesn't phone home at all. And a Foscam camera that isn't as persistent, but still tries a few times a day. We're still at < 35% blocked, though.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#256

Post by morley »

andersriutta wrote: post #249
morley wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Brave browser, which operates exactly on the model you describe: https://brave.com/

Initially, Brave was set up so a user could add bitcoins to an account and set a monthly spending target. Then Brave would split up that monthly amount and send it to sites based on how much time the user spent at each site. But as far as I can tell, they discontinued that model, and now they also sell ads.

I'm on the latest version of the browser, and there's a "Payments" tab in Settings where you can add funds with BTC / ETH / BAT / LTC, set monthly budgets, and see what your percentage is. So I'm not sure where you saw that they discontinued that feature or sell ads.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#257

Post by lyk »

moftz wrote: post #212
biktor_gj wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a self-updating hosts file. If you only do it once in a month you'll start seeing ads again. Also you can edit the hosts file if you're rooted, but you definitely can't if you're running a stock unmodified ROM. If you're rooted and you only care about your Android phone, you can also install Adaway, which does pretty much the same thing without the whitelist capability (Get it on F-Droid), but if you have a numb…

Host file blocking on mobile devices produces some weird web browsing. I like using browser plugins because it gets rid of the whole chunk of html so it's like the ad was never there in the first place. On android, there are these huge blank spots you have to scroll past to keep reading. I still keep adaway on but I wish I could just use ublock origin with android's chrome.

You can use uBlock Origin in Firefox on Android, and I've found DNS66 to be a good non-rooted adblocker on Android.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#258

Post by paavoova »

r3bl wrote: post #6

Off-topic, but that Vollkron font definitely styles 1s very weirdly. I thought it said I.I.I.I instead of 1.1.1.1 until I copied the text and pasted it somewhere else.

uBlock Origin allows you to block remote fonts and use system fonts instead. You can selectively enable them on a per-domain basis, and, for cases like this, have them blocked them by default.

With remote fonts enabled on https://www.troyhunt.com/mmm-pi-hole/

  24 requests 3.12 MB / 3.06 MB transferred
And with remote fonts blocked:

  20 requests 2.96 MB / 2.90 MB transferred
It's not just ads you have to worry about.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#259

Post by dylz »

equasar wrote: post #216

Does this impact gaming latency performance? I play Quake Live so every ms is important for me.

For DNS? No - it makes no difference. DNS happens generally before you establish the connection.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#260

Post by cestith »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #221
mygo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no low user or micro transaction options for these, so I get a choice of pay say £10 a month or nothing There is yet to be a quick and simple micro-transaction infrastructure for the web. Transaction costs inhibit micro-transactions. They don’t scale down. Some are trying to use crypto to do micro-transactions, but even crypto has transaction costs that inhibit how small micro-transactions can be, not to me…

I read an article once that argued the big problem with microtransactions was the transaction cost imposed on users . For the sites, sure, everything can be automated. But even in the best case of good browser ui/ux support the burden shifted to users would be massive. The cognitive cost of trying to decide whether to spend 10c on an article I haven’t read yet costs me way more than 10c. Man that article sucked. Did…

I would absolutely pay $10 a month to an aggregator like HN or /. that then paid publishers a portion of that based on article rank and/or number of clicks through.
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