It’s Pi Hole. Everything’s computer.

  • BreadOven@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 hours ago

    I have an old raspberry Pi (512 mB one…maybe? It’s been a while since I hooked it up). Does anyone have a good guide to follow on setting up a pi hole?

  • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    20 hours ago

    At this time I’d like to shill for Sceptre. They make tvs and monitors that don’t have all that stupid fucking “smart” features. I do not know of another brand that still makes dumb screens.

    • Spice Hoarder@lemmy.zip
      2·
      12 hours ago

      (sort of) unrelated, but I found a Sceptre CRT Monitor in the woods and it’s one of the best tube displays I own.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      12 hours ago

      I bought a Sceptre TV as my first big purchase after graduating college and it’s still kicking nearly ten years later. Sure the speakers died a few years ago and several buttons on the remote no longer work, but it sure isn’t spying on me. And the picture quality is honestly not bad for what I paid

    • IngeniousRocks (They/She) @lemmy.dbzer0.com
      4·
      21 hours ago

      If you’ve got the hardware capabilities, I just Read yesterday that Kodi supports CEC and can be used to control your DVD player or Set Top boxes that also support it IF you have it plugged into your CEC port.

      This means turning a raspberry pi into the best media access client there is for a TV takes like 20-40 minutes (install librelec, profit?)

    • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
      19·
      23 hours ago

      OK, so whenever any device (e.g. your computer) wants to connect to a website (say, “wikipedia.org”), it tells your router that it wants to go to that website. Your router then sends what is called a “DNS Query” to some server, such as Google or Cloudflare, which takes the string of characters “wikipedia.org” and looks it up in their own dictionary of websites. In that listing, “wikipedia.org” will be linked to a specific IP address, which Google or Cloudflare then pass back to the router. Your router then connects the original device to that IP address, allowing your computer to get data from wikipedia.

      Now, modern devices make up to hundreds of these requests every second, so it’s not like it’s going to ask your permission for every single _one of them, right? Of course not. The problem, however, is that virtually every single proprietary app and piece of networked hardware nowadays is actively spying on you, by sending constant “telemetry”, marketing, and ad-servicing requests to hundreds, or even thousands of different services every day.

      Pihole is a program that runs on a device (traditionally a raspberry pi, but could also be as simple as an old always-on tower computer or as complex as a self-hosted server). This device is connected to your internet, and what you do is you tell your router that the only place it’s allowed to ask for DNS queries is your pihole device, rather than google or Cloudflare. Then you add blocklists, en masse, to your pihole, which takes every single DNS Query and checks it against the blocklists. If a DNS request isn’t on the blocklists, it passes the request on to an actual DNS server, like Cloudflare, then gives the response back to the router, and the router is none-the-wiser. You get to see wikipedia. HOWEVER, if your device has the temerity, the absolute gall, to connect to any server on your blocklists? The pihole just… Doesn’t pass on the message, and you get to choose whether the pihole actually sends your device a refusal, like “no, we won’t be connecting to google ad services today, thank you” or if it just stays silent, not letting the blacklisted requests through, and just shredding the request every time it gets one for that unwanted site. Also, the pihole can keep a log of every single request made, both blocked and allowed, and keep tallies of the most-requested servers. It does this by default, but can easily be told to stop whenever you want.

      TooComplex;Didn’tUnderstand: imagine your local network is a medieval walled city. Whenever someone inside wants to communicate out, they send their letter to the post office, which sends a runner out of the city and returns with the response. A pihole acts as a guard at the city gate, taking every letter, checking the addressee to see if the city’s magistrate is okay with sending information there. The guard has a long list of places letters aren’t allowed to go, and they are very fast at their job. If the addressee isn’t on their list, they send out their own soldier to take the letter themselves, rather than letting the post office runner go. If the addressee is on the blocklists, they either rip up the letter and send the runner back with their own, or they just rip up the letter and beat up the runner so they don’t go crying back to the sender and narc. Its the magistrate’s call how the guard handles it. Also, the guard keeps a list of every single letter that arrives at the gate, unless the magistrate tells them not to. The magistrate can peruse the list and tell the guard to allow or block any addressee on that list (or off of it) at any time.

    • slate@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      20 hours ago

      You should be able to go into your router and block internet access for your tv, no additional hardware necessary. And it’s more reliable than pi-hole since it’ll block all internet access, even static ips, and no chance of a dns leak.

  • Magnum, P.I.@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    35·
    1 day ago

    Wow the PNG is so transparent I am impressed. I think I have never seen anything so transparent before. You guys really know how to make stuff transparent. The most transparent in the world. Every expert knows this is the most transparent transparency transpering.

  • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    22 hours ago

    I love my PI hole but it’s needing a complete upgrade and a list rebuild. Damned thing is so reliable and solid I literally forget I’m running it. Things been up for over a year and not one issue.

  • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
    55·
    2 days ago

    I have a smart TV. It is connected to two things. The wall socket for power and HDMI #2 for my PC.

    Edit: Also I have a PFSense router, I use PFBlockNG to also block the IPs behind the blocked DNS entries. My phone is GrapheneOS and all of my computers are GNU Linux. Any blocked incidents I get are usually from websites. If I surf the web a lot in a month, I maybe get 200 blocked incidents. If my normie friends stay over with, for example, a Windows PC and an iPhone, I get 2000 per day. It’s wild what’s going on with these devices.

    • CatZoomies@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      LOL thanks bro. I was browsing the internet at AltaVista and downloaded a pi holo logo image that said transparent PNG in the name. When I added the image in Krita I had a good laugh and decided I’d leave it as is here

  • einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works
    46·
    2 days ago

    At this point just use the TV as screen for a Raspberry and be done with it. Pi hole is good but it cant catch everything, and i would expect smart tv’s by now try to smuggle out data on things that can get around the pihole. Every Smart TV has to be assumed a compromised device, with advanced data exfiltration options.

  • Pilgrim89s@lemmy.org
    6·
    1 day ago

    Best solution for these concerns in my opinion is

    • TV for presentation in companies (often without smart apps)
    • PiHole for blocking the most adds
    • SHIELD for the apps, like YouTube without adds, stream apps, emulators, etc

    Works like a charm for me, I did not see adds for month, maybe years. With the shield, I use SmartTube because I can login and don’t have any adds. None. I also use an app for streaming (moonlight or something like that) to play my PC games on my tv with controller.

    • CatZoomies@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 day ago

      How has SmartTube been for you? Is it an Android only or does it work on other platforms?

      I’ve been a FreeTube user for years, but YouTube’s aggressive countermeasures has mostly rendered this program unusable (I use on Linux). Devs put out fixes but they work for a handful of days before YouTube breaks it again.

      • Pilgrim89s@lemmy.org
        2·
        14 hours ago

        SmartTube is, afaik, only for the Shield Devices and similar ddevices - so not really for Smartphones. Most of the time, it is great but for some reason I often get a network error message and the videos stop. So sometimes it’s annoying. Haven’t found a good solution yet

        For smartphones, you can still download ReVanced. When Vanced was closed, they started again with revanced and it works like a charm. It has all premium features (like background listening) and blocks adds, even sponsored or fillers. The problem is the download, if you ask me. Because there is an official webside, but the download starts after it redirected you to some suspicious add website…

        Alternatively, you can download NewPipe. If you don’t care that you can’t login, it’s a perfect app. In my opinion, it’s not really needed because you can save your profile (backup) and restore. It also blocks all the adds. Best app so far (IMO). It can be downloaded in the F Droid store.

        For YouTube music, a good alternative is Kreate. Also available in the FDroid store.

        If you have any further questions, ask me anything. Would be glad if I can help

        Edit: NouTube is also a good alternative to YouTube premium, but I’m not really happy with the app. My complains are about some details though, so generally speaking, it’s worth a try

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
      13·
      2 days ago

      New TVs will connect to other smart TVs that have been connected to the Internet.

      You straight up have to pull their chips now if you really want to be sure.

      • rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio
        21·
        2 days ago

        This is the first I’ve heard of such a thing. Like TVs connecting to one another through Wifi Direct or BTLE and tethering their internet connection? Can you link to anything discussing this?

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
          8·
          2 days ago

          Hmm, I recall reading a couple articles about it a year or so ago but nothing is coming up in searches.

          I’m not sure if that means it was vaporware, misinformation, or coming soon to a Google TV near you. Anyone that’s more familiar with network capabilities is free to correct me, but as far as I’m aware if your TV even has Bluetooth it’s already capable of doing this at some level.

          Either way you’ll catch a smart appliance in my house when I’m dead.

      • Patches@ttrpg.network
        3·
        2 days ago

        ? If you’re going to block 1 Smart TV from the Internet. Why wouldn’t you do it to all the TVs on your LAN?

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 days ago

        I thought government regulation would prevent that? I thought the whole point of a Mac address was a unique id for hardware

        • Opisek@lemmy.world
          6·
          2 days ago

          Unique IDs are a privacy concern. Best you can tell by randomized MAC addresses is who the manufacturer of the device is and the type of device if you’re lucky (like when the manufacturer’s departments are internally split into separate companies), but that’s not guaranteed.