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Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

ericdraken.com

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Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#551

Post by amichal »

glitchcrab wrote: post #68
ajkblue wrote: post #28

This reminds me of a now-dockerized Privaxy, which is a UBlock-origin blocklist compatible MITM proxy. It’s crazy to see how many ads and tracking scripts are on smart products, especially my TV where so far in my testing it’s over 40% unnecessary traffic. Its been pretty fun to try and strip out ads on my smart-tv apps. https://github.com/deetungsten/webui-privaxy is the dockerized fork of https://github.com/Barre/p…

How do you get your TV to trust the self signed cert?

I believe the article shows screenshots of it in Apple TV (at least)

Looks like it uses the method in this article https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1948/_index... but i have not (yet) tried it

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#552

Post by cbsmith »

coder543 wrote: post #546
cbsmith wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author also seemed to think parsing a <2MB protobuf was CPU intensive. Even for a cheap embedded network device, you'll never convince me that is true.

But... can you do it at 1Gbps on a single core of a Raspberry Pi? You have to both parse and then reencode it. 1000Mbps = 125MBps. 125MBps/(2MB/message) = 62 messages per second. 62 messages per second means that you have 16ms to do 5 things: decrypt the TLS, parse the protobuf message, filter the message, encode the protobuf message, encrypt the TLS traffic. If you take more than 16ms, you cannot achieve 1Gbps. We'v…

> But... can you do it at 1Gbps on a single core of a Raspberry Pi?

Probably not, but if you've only got a single Raspberry PI core at your disposal and you're trying to pump 1000 Mbps of network traffic through said Raspberry PI, you've already got significant challenges.

> 62 messages per second means that you have 16ms to do 5 things: decrypt the TLS, parse the protobuf message, filter the message, encode the protobuf message, encrypt the TLS traffic. If you take more than 16ms, you cannot achieve 1Gbps.

Let's just say you have a system that can do all that in 16ms. I would estimate significantly less than 1ms of that time would be spent parsing and encoding the protobuf message.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#553

Post by ComputerGuru »

nntwozz wrote: post #325

Replacing the YouTube client on tvOS/iOS/macOS with https://github.com/yattee/yattee and using either https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped as backend is a nice alternative.

> and using either […] as backend [emphasis added] is a nice alternative.

Both those links are to alternative YT frontends, though?

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#554

Post by coder543 »

cbsmith wrote: post #552
coder543 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... can you do it at 1Gbps on a single core of a Raspberry Pi? You have to both parse and then reencode it. 1000Mbps = 125MBps. 125MBps/(2MB/message) = 62 messages per second. 62 messages per second means that you have 16ms to do 5 things: decrypt the TLS, parse the protobuf message, filter the message, encode the protobuf message, encrypt the TLS traffic. If you take more than 16ms, you cannot achieve 1Gbps. We'v…

> But... can you do it at 1Gbps on a single core of a Raspberry Pi? Probably not, but if you've only got a single Raspberry PI core at your disposal and you're trying to pump 1000 Mbps of network traffic through said Raspberry PI, you've already got significant challenges. > 62 messages per second means that you have 16ms to do 5 things: decrypt the TLS, parse the protobuf message, filter the message, encode the prot…

> I would estimate significantly less than 1ms of that time would be spent parsing and encoding the protobuf message.

It would just be nice to see a representative benchmark on a Raspberry Pi 4.

I generally agree with you on that point, but I don't consider anything a "given" on something as weak as a Pi.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#555

Post by mynameisvlad »

netsharc wrote: post #404
yrro wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? This isn't the 90s any more. You shouldn't use your employer's systems for anything other than work.

Hah, remember how Amazon invented "Cyber-Monday"? They claim the Monday after Thanksgiving when people go back to work it'll be their first encounter with Internet-connected computers after the Thanksgiving vacation, and it's the time where they'll be most busy shopping for Christmas presents...

Amazon was barely a blip when Cyber Monday first came out, let alone the inventors of the term.

> The term "Cyber Monday" was coined by Ellen Davis, and was first used within the ecommerce community during the 2005 holiday season. According to Scott Silverman, the head of Shop.org, the term was coined based on 2004 research showing "one of the biggest online shopping days of the year" was the Monday after Thanksgiving (12th-biggest day historically). Retailers also noted the most significant shopping period was December 5 through 15 of the previous year. In late November 2005, The New York Times reported: "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked." At the time, a lot of people had slow Internet at home. The idea for having such a holiday was created by Tony Valado, in 2003 while working at 1800Flowers.com, and coined "White Wednesday" to be the day before Thanksgiving for online retailers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Monday

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#556

Post by ComputerGuru »

soma8088 wrote: post #276
drt5b7j wrote: post #257

A few years ago pihole was all the rage. What happened? I'm genuinely asking what are the difference between the two approaches and when is one better than the other.

Pihole is still a wonderful application. I use it on my home network. One drawback that the pihole has vs pfSense is pihole cannot do anything about devices that have hard coded DNS ips (aka 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 etc).

DNS is really easy to redirect (at the firewall level) since it goes over UDP. The growing problem is DNS over HTTPS, which uses certificates and tcp and is much harder to redirect (without setting up a MITM and distributing the CA to all devices). Fortunately just blocking the DoH domains at the DNS level works, but unlike the global udp port 53 redirect, it’s a cat-and-mouse game.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#557

Post by capableweb »

kl4m wrote: post #348
magila wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? I've seen a variety of claims about the revshare split on youtube, but I've never seen any official source of those numbers.

It's right there on Google support https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/72902?hl=en#zippy=...

I'm not super familiar with YouTube terminology, is "YouTube Partner Program" something that applies to anyone who has ads on their YouTube channel? Seems to me something you need to apply to, and also only available in Canada, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States which probably excludes more than 50% of popular channels on YouTube.

It seems to me that YouTube would serve ads on any channel, not just those part of the YouTube Partner Program, but the % revenue share isn't published for non-partners it seems.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#558

Post by Brian_K_White »

sedatk wrote: post #491
notjoemama wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant response and observations. I’m not sure I’d agree with this one tiny assertion though: “1.87MB is not that big“ I have lived in rural communities most of my life and unless I’m on my own Wi-Fi, this actually is a big file to download. Maybe they have a workaround for mobile? Mostly I just want to add that rural Wi-Fi still struggles with Web 2.0 architecture. More often we’re operating on 2-4G speeds. Altho…

If you struggle with 2MB payload, how do you expect to stream video, which is usually hundreds of megabytes? You’re right about 2MB being a large payload in some network configurations, but I think it isn’t that big in Youtube’s context.

If I were to keep my insurance policy number in my car in the form of 9 bricks with a number on each one, I honestly wouldn't notice. The car would seem to drive exactly the same. There are even plenty of dead spaces to hide them where they wouldn't even noticeably consume cargo space.

Yet for some reason I will not place 9 unneccessary bricks in my car, nor tolerate them if I discovered them already there.

Is the "some reason" irrational?

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#559

Post by rolph »

xp84 wrote: post #514
criddell wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And many of us don't care all that much about ads, we're mostly opposed to tracking.

I’m honestly not asking to be obtuse, but what difference does this “tracking” actually make? I block ads on the web because they’re so obnoxious and usually so utterly stupid (One weird trick to blast belly fat!!”), but I couldn’t care less if an ad profile exists on me or on some GUID tied to a browser I use[1]. What’s your pitch to someone who doesn’t care, that they should care? [1] also, if tracking can help to…

tracking is used to infer what flavor of manipulation evokes a desired response. tracking has little to do with what you like to see.

Re: Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf

#560

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kortilla wrote: post #547
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little weird on HN to see someone refer to "rural wifi". Unless you're talking about a relatively rare form of mesh networking, there's not really any such thing as rural wifi, at least not in the sense that its different from any other kind of wifi - a very local RF network designed to share an access point. I assume you're using wifi as a stand-in for "internet" or "broadband". 4G speeds are completely fine…

> Unless you're talking about a relatively rare form of mesh networking It’s not rare. Ubiquiti is very popular for setting up point to point links getting a single internet connection shared amongst a bunch of rural homes.

We have a small house in Cerrillos NM that has point-to-point networking, run by a co-op (shout out to La Canada, great people). But my experience has been that this is fairly rare - La Canada is the only example I know in NM for example.

Also, this isn't my understanding of what "mesh networking" really is. It's just providing RF access to a single wired access point. But it could be that I don't understand what mesh networking actually is.

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