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My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

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Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#41

Post by thecatspaw »

JorgeGT wrote: post #33
tyingq wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff" Google's smart though. They know that rolling out unsavory ideas in small pieces keeps it under the radar. They didn't, for example, push the organic search results under the fold all at once. This could be innocuous, or part of some larger agenda.

This is usually called salami slicing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing See also the boiling frog fable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

Or privacy zuckering

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#42

Post by fixermark »

This guy sure is angry that his consumer electronics device is architected to be maximally convenient to set-up and use for the common user.

He may want to consider an alternative product. Or use his 1337 hacker skills to modify his already-customized local routing configuration to just do the thing this consumer electronics device is assuming is standard (i.e. accessing services by IP on the Internet) by telling his network to proxy 8.8.8.8 to some other IP he designates.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#43

Post by apostacy »

scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole.

It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings.

It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are really hard to block).

I think the Chromecast is the ideal Google device, and a preview of what Google's model is: It slowly removes features through updates that you cannot turn off, and would rather fail completely than not be able to serve you ads.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#44

Post by fixermark »

zamazingo wrote: post #16
richardwhiuk wrote: post #13

I've seen this been done before, and IME it's reasonable behavior. I've seen so many instances of computers configured with DNS servers which are extremely slow, or provide garbage results, that adding a known good DNS server to the list, and then parallel resolving across all of them is a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

Unless you want your own dns server used at all times.

If you're savvy enough to configure your own DNS server, you're probably savvy enough to modify ip table resolution.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#45

Post by thecatspaw »

vetinari wrote: post #31
isostatic wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google DNS came about because of a very real problem of shitty ISPs giving shitty DNS servers that gave fake results (especially in NXDomain cases) I can see why you would want to use a known-good dns provider in your product, however at the very least there should be an ability to turn off such behaviour.

It is not shitty ISPs giving fake results. It is me. My resolver does that and it is for a reason. Disrespecting what the local network tells you to use just leads to arms race.

Google doesnt care about a piHole or similar, its such a tiny tiny part of their customers its not worth fighting it at this point

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#46

Post by fixermark »

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #29
shawnz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why would you care about that? You're already connecting to Google's service, YouTube, so what does it change to use Google's DNS to resolve it? What is the circumstance where you'd care about not using Google's DNS but then connect to a Google service anyway? If Chromecasts allowed arbitrary web browsing, I would maybe see your point -- but they don't.

Not just Google - when you cast you handoff a URL to the CC to stream from - this could be from Netflix, or anywhere really. 8.8.8.8 as a brute-force backup I can understand, but by default it should be taking the network DHCP settings.

That default, sadly, would basically guarantee the thing doesn't work for all too many users. And as a consumer electronics product (especially in the sub-$50 price-range), the market-smart thing to do is configure the defaults to work in the saddle-point of worst-case and common scenario (i.e. badly-configured local router talking to a standards-hostile ISP's DHCP configurations).

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#47

Post by FakeComments »

apostacy wrote: post #43
scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole. It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings. It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are reall…

> would rather fail completely than not be able to serve you ads.

Google is an ad company; if you don’t watch the ads, you’re not a useful product.

It doesn’t matter you “bought a product”, this behavior is their corporate DNA. It’s the Office to their Microsoft. Time and time again, we see a clear behavior from Google: that everything feeds the ad machine — or else!

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#48

Post by chewz »

Set DNS to Google and do

dig +short TXT whoami.ds.akahelp.net

Then set to other DNS provider and do the same

You will see that Google DNS is delivering ECS which helps with directing traffic to nearest CDN.

I have quite secure DNS setup but still forward some queries to Google DNS (HBO, Spotify, etc.) just to take advantage of using ECS.

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#49

Post by fixermark »

koolba wrote: post #15

This is pretty crappy and is the type of thing that would prevent you from a bunch of purely local use cases like pointing it at your local media server. Is this the Paul Vixie?

I don't think it prevents streaming from a local media server, as that use-case is already supported.

https://allaboutchromecast.com/chromecast-how-to-guide/compa...

Re: My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

#50

Post by scrollaway »

apostacy wrote: post #43
scrollaway wrote: post #14

I'm always shocked at how easy it is for people to fall into the "Google is evil!!1" trap on such trivial stuff (and funnily enough, much more serious privacy issues related to Google are ignored/downvoted). Hardcoded DNS servers are common. Extremely common in a bunch of IOT devices, given how broken some ISPs are. This is a non-story and the only reason it's being upvoted is because Google is doing it, and they als…

This isn't a case of an IOT device though. My Chromecast went through massive amount of trouble to use Google's DNS servers, to serve ads behind my pi-hole. It would respect all of my DHCP parameters, but silently ignore DNS settings. It was clearly intentional to serve ads. I had to set up a firewall to force it to use my DNS server. And eventually even that stopped working with an update (which themselves are reall…

I can't really entertain the suggestion that pi-holes are considered by Google as a serious-enough threat that they'd go through this trouble just to fuck with it.

Seriously, think about the venn diagram of Chromecast users and pi-hole users. It looks a lot like a tennis ball being dropped into the sun.

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