It’s Pi Hole. Everything’s computer.

  • ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world
    51·
    9日前

    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.

  • einfach_orangensaft@sh.itjust.works
    35·
    9日前

    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.

  • Magnum, P.I.@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    32·
    9日前

    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.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        2·
        9日前

        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
          4·
          9日前

          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.

  • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    8日前

    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·
      8日前

      (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·
      8日前

      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·
      8日前

      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?)

    • CatZoomies@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      8日前

      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

    • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
      7·
      9日前

      And/or some weird legislation that mandates connecting them to your home network. Because you wouldn’t want them to not be able to phone home with the thousands of screenshots so their AI can verify that you are not stealing copyrighted content, right???!

            • humorlessrepost@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              9日前

              I really hope that continues to be an option.

              I worry it’ll end up like trying to buy a car that doesn’t constantly report your location (physically disconnecting the cellular antenna is still legal for now) or living without a cellphone and only paying with cash. With enough time, any semblance of privacy becomes weird, then illegal.

  • 𝔻𝔼𝕍𝕀𝕃𝕀𝕊ℍ@lemmy.world
    7·
    9日前

    Buying old TV (as long as LED) or 2K resolution TV is still worth it for me because i don’t like Android TV, Smart TV, or other crap and shits. For me a TV doesn’t need to have that kind of features, if you want android just buy android tv box like NVIDIA Shield or Minix

    • Prox@lemmy.world
      10·
      9日前

      Couldn’t you just buy a new, awesome TV and then not hook it up to the internet?

      • Randelung@lemmy.world
        6·
        9日前

        It takes ages to boot, might have integrated offline ads, draws power when on standby for features you don’t want like remote controllability via network, and it’ll probably nag you forever to let it online. No thanks, a display will always just be that in this household. Separate concerns please, also easier to upgrade or replace.

      • Pope-King Joe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        71·
        9日前

        Many newer smart TVs will literally not boot up past a certain point until you connect them to the internet to “activate” them. It’s actual madness.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4·
        9日前

        I set up my Samsung give it its initial update, and then blocked it from internet at my firewall. If I need it to do something I unblock it for a few minutes and then block it again when I’m done. I use streaming sticks for all my other work and they’re just pie holed regularly.

      • Final Remix@lemmy.world
        3·
        9日前

        That’s what I did with my brand new whatever-inch big fucking flatscreen. Like 80% of the buttons on the remote make a little notification come up saying the feature’s missing since the TV wasn’t set up “properly”, but it works fine.

    • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
      18·
      8日前

      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·
      8日前

      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.

      • passepartout@feddit.org
        10·
        9日前

        Probably because you should care about the fuckton of TVs being sold and in circulation with software that is just some of the worst privacy violations bundled together in a case behind a big LCD/OLED panel. There is no option to avoid it and probably no option to install something else on the hardware you bought and therefor should be yours to do whatever you want to with it. I even read that some connect to open wifi access points without passwords to reach the internet.

        • CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          9日前

          Probably because you should care about the fuckton of TVs being sold and in circulation with software that is just some of the worst privacy violations bundled together in a case behind a big LCD/OLED panel.

          But that’s what I mean. I don’t use my TV as a smart TV, it’s plugged into a device where I can control the privacy settings via HDMI. No wifi, no apps being used, no connection to the outside world. That’s why I don’t care about DNS shenanigans with the TV, because I do them more comfortably on another device.

          • passepartout@feddit.org
            2·
            9日前

            You not caring about the implications because you can avoid it in your own home could have come across as not helpful to the greater cause I guess.

      • Novaling@lemmy.zipEnglish
        21·
        9日前

        We do a lot of streaming in my house unfortunately, mostly using Kodi to pirate anime. So it needs Wifi in our case. If I had some old (working) laptops and router around, I’d do a Pihole and VPN but alas.

        • rainwall@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          9日前

          Slap one of these under or behind your tv. Put pop-os Linux on it it. You can run pihole/Jellyfin/kodi off it at the same time. It will host your anime and index it with jellyfin, filter your entire network for ads, and give you kodi’s excellent interface.

          Jellyfin can grab metadata/subtitles/autoskip intros/on and on and has native kodi integration. It will run better on a beefer PC than the one above, but if youre just using it on 1 tv with kodi, you should be fine.

          • Novaling@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            8日前

            Oh, I’ve really wanted to self-host and do something like that, but I didn’t wanna spend too much more money than I have (recently bought drives and a bay) and figured I’d use old/outdated/broken laptops to save money and be environmental, but I’ve been thwarted by proprietary chargers (an old Acer) and screens not turning on (a broken Mac). I’m a college student so I don’t wanna drop my money too much in a month (gotta learn to budget somehow right?). Might ask my college IT if they’ve got old shit around instead.

            • rainwall@piefed.socialEnglish
              2·
              8日前

              Using castoff hardware is a classic first homelab setup. You dont need an actual server to setup a homelab either. Old desktops do the job well enough. I personally run a cluster of 3 of the small desktops i recommend in my last comment, if slightly beefer models. They work great. This site keeps a comprehensive list.

              If you’re looling for next steps, this is a great general guide. Id personally recommend proxmox of the options he lists. Its a hypervisor that will let you slice up your physical server into virtual machines, letting you split out services like a pihole/*arr stack/jellyfin/kodi in a very sane way.

              Linuxserver.io has a huge list of services that you can host with containers inside those virtual machines.