Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mmm, Pi-hole

troyhunt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

401–410 of 421 posts

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#401

Post by cestith »

michaelt wrote: post #388
cestith wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand it's about cognitive costs. What I propose makes the cognitive load of actual monetary payment a single decision per month. I pay X. Let the aggregator and the publishers automatically figure out every little fractional detail.

If the objective of paying is to make the web better and reward quality content, you don't want two pages of clickbait to pay more than one page of watergate-level investigative reporting. And any automated system to tell clickbait from quality journalism will incentivise people to trick it. So at the very least, you need a refund button.

An upvote button and a flag button I think might do the trick.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#402

Post by kasey_junk »

1943820037 wrote: post #355
kasey_junk wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is interesting because that is the environment where paid ads have the least structural advantage. My take is that no matter what people say they prefer to subsidize their content by viewing ads over actually paying the equitable price for it.

Nope. People _say_ they want to pay an equitable price for content rather than viewing ads because that's exactly what they prefer and would do. The problems are: - Your definition of 'equitable price' when we live in a time where no single human can digest across their lifetime even a single year's worth of the glut created. - The quality is universally garbage and as an information consumer you'd still have to spen…

Equitable in this case isn’t determined by the producer or the consumer of the content but by the market.

The market shows that advertisers are outbidding consumers who don’t want ads. That sets the equitable price, not the desire of the consumer.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#403

Post by acoard »

galadran wrote: post #220
lvh wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not say "a compromised DNS server is completely inconsequential", I said that a compromised WebExtension with :// / and tabs permissions has UXSS (obviously true) and UXSS is worse than compromising DNS resolution. Which one of these is worse: a) I might be able to convince a bad IOT device to connect to an IP I control which may or may not let me do something interesting, -- or -- b) I can just use your sessio…

> The crux of your argument seems to be "it is more valuable to be able to point an IOT device at the wrong IP than it is to get UXSS on a machine on that network". That seems obviously wrong to me for any user, technical or not. If PiHole is malicious, there is already an attacker on your network, DNS Spoofing is just one example of the possible consequences. The PiHole can also port scan, connect to services etc. I…

>If PiHole is malicious, there is already an attacker on your network

In contrast, UXSS provides an attacker on your network that already has access to everything inside your browser. That's banking, email, keylogging credit card numbers, etc. That's the end game right there.

A malicious rPi on your network is quite a few steps away from there, you'd still have to phish and deal with HTTPS/browser security and unlike UXSS that only gets you one set of credentials.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#404

Post by class4behavior »

beagle3 wrote: post #354
class4behavior wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Do you know if it’s possible to deploy it on a virtual AP? E.g. have “MyNetwork” and “MyNetworkWithAds” - so that it is easier for nontechnical users to switch, and also doesn’t deactivate for everyone when just one user needs to (even if only for 5 mins)?

Possible but not that simple actually, as there is little to no documentation or shortcut for such a case available using dnsmasq. Afaik you can only realize this by running multiple instances.

The childproof network example is the fitting how-to you can learn from: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/kidsafe-or-guest-wifi-forced-saf...

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#405

Post by tombrossman »

voltagex_ wrote: post #337
tombrossman wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be more full-featured than you are looking for, but have a look at the Turris Omnia. It is extremely customisable and you can add an internal SSD to run LXC containers on (including one running Pi-hole, which is what I do). Not cheap, and sometimes unforgiving if you don't know exactly what you are doing, but worth every penny in my opinion. https://omnia.turris.cz/en/

Have you had any issues with the auto updater? I got rid of my Omnia after an auto-update broke DNS while I was away from home. Ironically, went to Unifi after reading Troy's blogs about it - now regretting it immensely as the hardware is nowhere near as powerful as the Omnia.

This happened to me too, and what I learned is that the Omnia uses the Knot DNS resolver, which re-enables itself after updates and this breaks everything if you have made certain customisations.

The fix is to disable this with "echo 'Uninstall("knot-resolver", { priority = 60 })' >> /etc/updater/conf.d/user.lua" over SSH so it stays disabled. You can do this for any service you modified or disabled, and the documentation barely mentions this (it's a real showstopper bug until you diagnose it - no connectivity whatsoever).

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#406

Post by pdimitar »

freehunter wrote: post #299
slacka wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I heavily believe we should be supporting creators Agreed. Do you disable your pi-hole on sites like Reddit? They vet their ads so not have any of the malicious attributes that you described. All the larger newspagers like WaPo and NYT are also good about this too. I'm all for blocking intrusive or malicious ads. But quality content depends on ad revenue. The author dedicated an entire paragraph on donating to the…

Do you keep your car doors unlocked when you park in safe neighborhoods? Do you give nice strangers a spare key to your house? Do you sleep in an expensive hotel with the door propped open? Do you keep your password on a sticky note at your desk inside your secure office? Of course not. So why would I disable my security software just because a site I visit hasn't been hacked yet ? That's just basic security hygiene.

Agreed. Furthermore, nothing guarantees that them being good actors now won't be changed when they get acquired by a media giant. Policy and culture can and have changed overnight in organizations after acquisition.

It's the same as with Troy's argument about good browser extensions. Yes they are good today but them being bought for 5 figures and the personal data harvested does not make the news and the users are clueless about it. I rather just not take the risk.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#407

Post by pdimitar »

OzCrimson wrote: post #246
greymeister wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Modern online advertising companies are malicious entities that actively harm users, and I absolutely classify them as malware. This is exactly the response for anyone that is frustrated by blocking ads impacting revenue for web publishers. Had the ad tech not become so invasive and pernicious, users wouldn't be going out of the way for solutions like this. The advertisers have essentially forced our hand.

Where I feel my hand was forced was when a friend wanted help promoting a professional conference in the area of data and tech. I went to the website and, in the center of the page, there was an ad for cellulite cream. OH! C'MON!!! I believe in the conference, but I'm not going to share the link with that ad on it. It's been explained to me that the website owners don't know what ads are being served up. All they kno…

> if I was bitten by 10 dogs out of 50 dogs, I'm gonna have a problem with dogs. Period. You can insist on how friendly your dog is, but no. Talk to the other dog owners before trying to get me to take another risk.

Exactly my stance on whitelisting advertising. I am sure there is a good amount of fair advertisers out there, but the area at large is full of scum.

I would start with a full-on disable of 3rd party JS but I know that would break a whole lot of other and actually needed functionality. So I have no good solution except not to trust anyone. Pi-Hole is my next stop as well.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#408

Post by abraham_lincoln »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #381
abraham_lincoln wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking use-cases for house guests or very non-technical folks (what is a bookmark?).

Arcade button[0] mounted on the RPi that initiates the 5 minute pause script? [0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/1185

Yes!!!

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#409

Post by pdimitar »

paxswill wrote: post #351
kdot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been also searching for recommendations, particularly on a custom firmware router that allows me to host a VPN server.

It’ll be more involved for you to set up, but pfSense is what I use. I basically forget it’s there until I want to change something (add a new VPN user, monitor bandwidth usage). I’ve set up an IPSec VPN that works well with my Apple devices, especially with a configuration profile that enables on demand VPN (connect via VPN when certain conditions are met, like not on my home WiFi). For hardware I use a cheapish “in…

How do you instruct an iPhone or iPad to use VPN when you are not connected to your home Wi-Fi? I used their former Workflow automation app (now dubbed Shortcuts in iOS12) and it did allow reacting to such an event (going out of range of 1 or more wi-fi networks) but did not realize one of the possible actions was to be able to enable VPN.

Was that what you used? Or was it something else?

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#410

Post by pdimitar »

badbug wrote: post #130
andreasvc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that's a downside. The advantage is that it's much simpler and will also work when you're not on your home network.

How do I edit the hosts file on my iPhone?

Probably not the answer you are looking for but:

(1) Install "1Blocker X" -- not free but it's cheap. (2) It has a huge number of rules and protects your Safari pretty damn good. (3) You can disable the existing rules if you so choose. (4) You can add new ones based on URL regexes or CSS rules.

I am still using it actively both on my iPhone and iPad, one of the best investment in apps I ever did.

Post reply on HN