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

My Chromecast Ultra would not start until I began answering 8.8.8.8

mailarchive.ietf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 519 posts

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

#411

Post by calibas »

ehsankia wrote: post #348
calibas wrote: post #170

This should bother people here more than it does. The last thing the Internet needs is even more dependence upon Google. They've made it quite clear through their actions that they're not supporters of a free and open Internet: https://theintercept.com/2018/09/14/google-china-prototype-l... If people don't push back against these kinds of things, Google will continue to abuse their power. There shouldn't be an army o…

I agree with most your points, but trying to make a connection between "exploration of bringing Google services to China" and "supporting free and open Internet" feels like a huge stretch to me. Let's ignore the fact that every other tech company such as Microsoft and Apple are in China, and the fact that Google already does censor content in most other countries. Let's also ignore all the other things Google does fo…

You can't create tools for censorship in China and support a free and open Internet. Those things are completely opposed to each other.

Pointing out the actions of other companies, the good things Google has done, or the fact that they censor content in most countries doesn't negate that fact. Those are just mediocre argumentative tactics to try and downplay a public relations disaster.

We're not even dealing with the same Google from 9 years ago. Here's some good reading for everyone about how Google went out of it's way to protect Chinese dissidents and refused to comply with the Chinese government. Now they're doing the opposite:

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

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

#412

Post by kllrnohj »

darpa_escapee wrote: post #199
metalliqaz wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's business is built on web services, and we know for a fact that ISP occasionally try to inject bullshit into their customers browsing sessions via all kinds of dirty tricks. Their DNS is also designed to be faster than typical DNS. I wouldn't be surprised if Google sees this as a way to ensure the proper function of their devices.

This is an incredibly generous reading of the situation that, as far as I can tell, has no basis in reality. Google is circumventing how the internet works at pretty basic level by not respecting users' DNS preferences in favor of their own.

The internet does not work on top of DNS. DNS works on top of the internet. Nothing about IPv4 was circumvented here, and IPv6 is even built to not need/use DHCP at all.

There is no mandate or expectation that all DHCP clients always use the advertised DNS settings. If there was than alternate DNS services like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 wouldn't even exist in the first place, as your ISP would be in complete control of your DNS settings unless you splurged for a static IP.

The cast client decided to use its own DNS settings as many clients do - you can override the DHCP settings on just about any general purpose OS, for example. Even though they are DHCP clients. Do you call Linux allowing you to specify a DNS server as "circumventing how the internet works at a pretty basic level", too?

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

#413

Post by kllrnohj »

cwkoss wrote: post #274
Bartweiss wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really interesting point, thank you. My initial reaction to the post above was "ship a known-good DNS if you must, but honor the user-chosen service unless it's not answering." This makes sense as a more common reason you'd want to hardcode a DNS, and a reason to honor your setting over whatever is coming back from the customer's DNS. I still can't see a good rationale for only using the hardcoded DNS, thou…

There's no reason "use only hardcoded DNS" couldn't be user configurable, for all the benefit with none of the costs. Well... all of the benefit to the user. Google doesn't get to use your DNS requests to sell ads.

> Well... all of the benefit to the user. Google doesn't get to use your DNS requests to sell ads.

How do you envision this working on the product in question? When are you ever making arbitrary DNS lookups in a Chromecast?

Seriously take the tinfoil hat off for a minute and think rationally. Google owns the entirety of the software on the device, and all connections to & from it. There's nothing they gain in terms of data harvesting from hard-coding their DNS here. There is no user input in play at all here. What are they going to harvest from a device that only ever does DNS lookups for their own hostnames?

If this was happening on Chrome, or Android, or something where user input & interaction was actually a thing then sure. But this is a goddamn Chromecast. All it does is watch YouTube and similar. How in any way, shape, or form can those DNS requests in any way help sell ads?

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

#414

Post by kazinator »

vetinari wrote: post #403
kazinator wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Google will fight that fight I'll happily enjoy the benefits. Evidently, they are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_HTTPS https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/dns-over...

And that's how we are going to get mandatory https proxies in networks... The arms race will continue, making the lives of everyone more difficult.

A HTTPS proxy can't rewrite the contents of your stream. If it redirects to the wrong host, the cert doesn't match.

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

#415

Post by loeg »

vetinari wrote: post #407
loeg wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP said: > The Chromecast Ultra isn't sold here

And the OP was wrong; Chromecast Ultra is being sold here in Europe.

What? How do you know where OP lives or what is sold there? "Here" and "here" refer to different places depending on who is speaking.

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

#416

Post by kllrnohj »

dingaling wrote: post #152
fixermark wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in control of your own network. Map 8.8.8.8 to the machine of your choosing.

What if my network is IPv6 only?

Then DHCP isn't even used/required and this is all moot as clients are fully allowed (and even expected) to self-configure, including DNS if they want. Heck, DNS advertisement via IPv6-RA is still only even a proposed standard: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6106 it hasn't been ratified yet, and support isn't widespread.

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

#417

Post by vatueil »

mthoms wrote: post #254
fixermark wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or to speed up the Internet experience. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/introducing-google-p...

Interesting then, that they chose to do this instead of giving monetary and technical support to the already established opendns.org Kind of like they started Knol to compete directly with Wikipedia.

Despite what the name may suggest, OpenDNS has always been a for-profit company, and they used to serve ads in the same way ISPs have been criticized for. Offering an alternative to OpenDNS was a good choice.

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

#418

Post by userbinator »

kllrnohj wrote: post #412
darpa_escapee wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly generous reading of the situation that, as far as I can tell, has no basis in reality. Google is circumventing how the internet works at pretty basic level by not respecting users' DNS preferences in favor of their own.

The internet does not work on top of DNS. DNS works on top of the internet. Nothing about IPv4 was circumvented here, and IPv6 is even built to not need/use DHCP at all. There is no mandate or expectation that all DHCP clients always use the advertised DNS settings. If there was than alternate DNS services like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 wouldn't even exist in the first place, as your ISP would be in complete control of your…

Do you call Linux allowing you to specify a DNS server as "circumventing how the internet works at a pretty basic level", too?

There's a vast difference between "users can configure it to what they want" and "it's hardcoded and can't be changed".

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

#419

Post by kllrnohj »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #364
imagiko wrote: post #304

I'm a dumdum when it comes to understanding stuff about DNS. Why is this bad, and are there any good resources for understanding how these are used by companies to extract more information about our habits?

If someone controls your DNS they can monitor and/or control your internet traffic flow. Like controlling your phone exchange, one can either watch who you connect to, or connect you to other phones regardless of the phones you try to connect to.

Except in this case nobody is controlling your DNS, as Chromecast doesn't let you make arbitrary DNS requests via it.

So Google/Chromecast only knows what DNS lookups Chromecast makes, which changes nothing with regards to privacy or anything else. It can't watch what you're doing, it can't snoop on your web traffic, etc...

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

#420

Post by kllrnohj »

userbinator wrote: post #418
kllrnohj wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet does not work on top of DNS. DNS works on top of the internet. Nothing about IPv4 was circumvented here, and IPv6 is even built to not need/use DHCP at all. There is no mandate or expectation that all DHCP clients always use the advertised DNS settings. If there was than alternate DNS services like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 wouldn't even exist in the first place, as your ISP would be in complete control of your…

Do you call Linux allowing you to specify a DNS server as "circumventing how the internet works at a pretty basic level", too? There's a vast difference between "users can configure it to what they want" and "it's hardcoded and can't be changed".

In both cases the client software ignored the network's settings. It's identical in behavior to the network.

Either that's circumventing how the internet works or it isn't.

Sounds like you agree that it's not, in fact, circumventing how the internet works?

Post reply on HN