News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by everdrive on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @06:19AM (#17705195)
This might be unpopular, but I hope Pihole remains untenable for non-technically savvy users. Advertisers and ad-blocking are always engaged in a game of cat and mouse. I'd prefer advertisers to see Pihole as a tiny niche of the market they don't need to seriously work to defeat.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by apexalpha on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @06:34AM (#17705259)
The only way to defeat them would be to self-host ads. Which would actually be a good thing since publishers would now have an incentive to make them as light as possible since it's their bandwidth being used.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by gruez on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @08:56AM (#17706074)
because of how pi-hole works (works on the DNS level), all they have to do is use some CDN domain, which can't possibly be blocked without serious collateral damage.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by apexalpha on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @10:43AM (#17707061)
Yes, but as long as they don't pihole works beautifully because the ads are killed before they are downloaded, in stead of stripped after the download (like with uBlock).

Especially on data capped devices like mobile phones it works wonders.

Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by gruez on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @11:15AM (#17707350)
>the ads are killed before they are downloaded, in stead of stripped after the download (like with uBlock).

That’s false. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-block-ads...

Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by alsetmusic on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @11:28AM (#17707483)
> Yes, but as long as they don't pihole works beautifully because the ads are killed before they are downloaded, in stead of stripped after the download (like with uBlock).

> Especially on data capped devices like mobile phones it works wonders.

Are you implying that pihole works wonders on data-capped devices such as mobile phones? If the phone is connected to a network with a pihole, it isn’t using the capped cellular service. If it is using the capped cellular service, it isn’t going through a pihole. Am I missing something?

Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by dtparr on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @12:01PM (#17707804)
It's less common, but some people use a VPN while on mobile data to get back to their local network.

https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/overview/

I guess you could also setup your pihole to be externally accessible and then point your phone's DNS at it, though I'm not sure that's a particularly good idea.

Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by pard68 on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @12:01PM (#17707809)
Some ISPs have caps as well. Comcast has caps in most of the USA for example.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by crtasm on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @01:18PM (#17708532)
My phone and tablet connect via openvpn to a server running pi-hole.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by gorhill on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @08:47AM (#17715417)
> in stead of stripped after the download (like with uBlock)

That's quite an erroneous statement, especially given how easy it is to verify.

You can see for yourself by using uBlock Origin along with your pi-hole: your pi-hole will see _less_ network requests with uBO (or any other similar blockers really).

Everything which is blocked by uBO will not be seen by your pi-hole, and this simple observation contradicts your statement.

Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by flukus on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @12:33AM (#17713219)
This is what CDNs are designed for, the allow a few companies to get a monopoly on your browsing data. This is why I prefer uMatrix, it blocks all third party requests, a lot of stuff breaks but it breaks because their tracking you.
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @09:45AM (#17706498)
Doesn't using a CDN break impressions statistics, making it impossible to administer?
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by everdrive on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @04:58PM (#17710738)
Agreed, I find that self-hosted ads tend to be the least offensive. Even if this changed, and some self-hosted ads were intrusive or malicious, it would certainly be a simple problem to solve: block site X.com and don't visit site X.com
Re:Pi-Hole: Why You Need a Network-Wide Ad-Blocker by mikec3010 on Tuesday August 07, 2018 @12:29PM (#17708079)
I'm waiting for the next generation ad blockers where a cloud based html rendering engine renders the image of the page to a frame buffer, crops out the article or pictures, compresses them, and sends it to my device.

Hell, you could do a mechanical turk system and pay micropayments to 3rd world employees to crawl ad-infested crap and harvest the content for me (Or better yet, share it for the common good)