there's lots of chatter about blocking ads lately and god, I am HERE FOR IT. I hate adverts. online or IRL. they're a blight on our society and to our senses and it's a topic I've been passionate about for years. yes, you should switch to Firefox. today!

but what about everywhere that your browser's adblock extension doesn't reach? do you like the sound of universal ad blocking AND telemetry blocking for every computer and device on your network, whether wired or wifi, with no setup or config needed on said devices? or perhaps you're interested in an entry-level tech project with a microcomputer (like a raspberry pi or alternative) that has a tangible and positive impact on your day-to-day life? if not both of those things?? well then: most of you big nerds on cohost like me probably already know exactly what I'm gonna talk about and can keep scrolling!! hOORAY!! for the rest of you, check out:

Pi-hole!

my personal pi-hole dash. holy shit that's a lot of filtered garbage.

you can install it on something like a raspberry pi or alternative tiny computer, or perhaps a server you're using for other things. I've run it just fine on a raspberry pi zero W, so it's incredibly lightweight too.

so how does it work, in layman's terms? unlike a browser ad-block extension, pi-hole has a huge blocklist of domains that you can give it, and rather than filtering out ad domains upon load in the browser, pi-hole stands in between your client and the Internet, and filters out all those domains before they even reach your computer! it actually makes your browsing experience faster (probably intangibly, but still)!

how do I install it? you can either install it on Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or Raspbian (there's an easy one-line install command) or on any OS using Docker. then you need to run the setup wizard, and also set the IP address of the machine running pi-hole as the DNS server on your router.

these installation and configuration steps might seem a little cumbersome at first if you've not done much of this kinda thing before, and you might even end up needing to just start from scratch if you've messed up a step and troubleshooting seems like too much. but that's the joy of lil tech projects like this!

there's also a star trek theme??

is there anything it can't do? only speaking from my personal experience, it cannot block youtube ads when running from a TV's built-in youtube app. same goes for amazon TV, etc. (personally I just VPNed to India and pay £1.30ish per month for youtube premium)

which blocklists should I use? in pi-hole you just provide URLs to a text document with a list of domains to block. here is the definitive List of Lists you can feed in, separated by category (ads, telemetry, suspicious/virus-y etc).

can it ever be too aggressive? I've never had an issue, but my housemate has sometimes had issues playing free-to-play mobile games where she couldn't load the ads to continue playing. but pi-hole has a whitelist system! check out this nice and easy whitelist tool you can run for generally harmless domains that are can get blocked (URL shorteners and the like).

does this track and log internet activity? yes it can, which can be good for diagnosis and troubleshooting, but you have granular options on what exactly gets logged. I've switched on full anonymity as I live with other people.

I don't usually do writeups like this so I hope it's been clear enough! finally I'm going to plug something I did for fun: a tiny e-ink dashboard I made for a raspberry pi zero. it's not super useful, but it was fun to make.

good luck and have fun! seriously, fuck advertisements