Re: firefox > Preferences > When Firefox starts.
On Wed 24 Apr 2019 at 14:29:00 (-0400), Lee wrote:
> On 4/24/19, David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:
> > [I presume that replying only to me was a mistake.]
>
> Nope, responding to your "my /etc/hosts file has ~14000 lines" didn't
> seem all that germane to the thread. & not that this is either, but
> if you'd prefer to keep it on the list I don't mind.
The OP posted a startup problem. Later they stated that their main
concern was the time taken to open pages, as quoted immediately
below. My 14000 line /etc/hosts is installed with the main purpose
of speeding up page rendering. So was using Opera, but I found it
had this major startup problem.
> > On Tue 23 Apr 2019 at 10:38:41 (-0400), Lee wrote:
> >> On 4/22/19, David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:
> >> > On Sun 21 Apr 2019 at 20:30:53 (-0700), peter@easthope.ca wrote:
> >> >> From: David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>
> >> >> Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2019 16:13:11 -0500
> >> >> > Does the behaviour reported in your OP cause you *great* concern?
> >> >>
> >> >> No. Just wastes time. Opening a simple local HTML home page requires
> >> >> roughly a minute rather than roughly a second.
> >> >
> >> > I tend to forget that, because my /etc/hosts file has ~14000 lines,
> >> > pages appear a lot faster here.
> >>
> >> Have you looked at bind's dns rpz?
> >
> > Just now.
> >
> >> http://zytrax.com/books/dns/ch7/rpz.html
> >> It lets you do things like
> >> *.2o7.net CNAME .
> >> *.doubleclick.net CNAME .
> >>
> >> to block entire domains instead of having to list each and every
> >> hostname in the domain.
> >>
> >> And you can log what is blocked/allowed to make troubleshooting easier
> >
> > It might be a good *mechanism* for the diversion itself, but AFAICT
> > it's aimed at the *policy* implementers rather than the end-user.
>
> Just out of curiosity - do you think pi-hole is aimed at policy
> implementers or end users?
I don't know about their policies, or whether they have any. I've not
found any description of how you would configure it, only how you
install it. Do they provide blacklists?
It's also not clear to me where I should install it to. My router
uses the Google nameservers, and all my machines have the router
as their nameserver. The router is the only part of the network
that's always up and running.
But let me explain what I mean by those terms I used earlier:
Mechanism: Any method of modifying the result of trying to resolve
foo.bar to an IP address, irrespective of the specific domainnames
which somebody has to give to it. My mechanism is resolving to
localhost.
Policy implementers: The people who make the decisions about which
domainnames should have their resolution modified. If you look
through the reference I gave for the source of my /etc/hosts, you
can see their policies listed as comments bracketing the sections,
and they are:
#<shock-sites>
#<shortcut-examples>
#<hijack-sites>
#<spyware-sites>
#<maybe-spy>
#<malware-sites>
#<doubleclick-sites>
#<intellitxt-sites>
#<red-sheriff-sites>
#<cydoor-sites>
#<2o7-sites>
#<oewabox-sites>
#<ad-sites>
#<maybe-ads>
#<canvass-fingerprinting-sites>
#<evercookies-sites>
#<yahoo-ad-sites>
#<hitbox-sites>
#<extreme-dm-sites>
#<realmedia-sites>
#<fastclick-sites>
#<belo-interactive-sites>
#<popup-traps>
#<ecard-scam-sites>
#<IVW-sites>
#<wiki-spam-sites>
#<Windows10>
End-users: The people whose browsing experience are improved by
the policies selected, and implemented using the chosen mechanism.
> > The value I get from Dan Pollock is the list of sites rather than the
> > most elegant mechanism for handling that list. Looking at the comments
> > in the list, and by comparing evolving versions, it does appear that
> > Dan actively "opens holes" where people report interference or
> > difficulties using certain legitimate sites.
> >
> > Finally, I wouldn't know where to start to compile a list of sites
> > like that.
>
> https://dnsrpz.info/
> If you're a business, you can buy access to an rpz feed.
I'm not, but I take it that different feeds have different policies on
which sites to include, and come at different prices.
> If you're a [home?] network admin it's simple enough to enable logging
> & see what all is allowed that you'd rather have blocked. And/or grab
> things like Dan Pollock's list and turn them into an rpz file.
Frankly, I don't want to be bothered with processing the list.
And, of course, logging a site means that you must have already
encountered it, which defeats the object of having those "shock
sites" listed: the point is not to see them at all.
> I just
> don't like the size & the churn in curated host files - I'd rather
> have a single line
> *.advertisingdomain.tld
> and have them all blocked vs. the maybe hundreds of lines blocking
> each specific host.
I can see that one or two sections of Dan's list could be factorized
into a *.foo.bar pattern, but as compressing the file only gives 75%
reduction, there are still a lot of sites to be fed into whichever
mechanism you choose for resolving/diverting them.
And finally, I'm not sure whether it's been mentioned in this thread,
but there's a reason I wrote "Does the behaviour reported in your OP
cause you *great* concern?". I should then have reported the fact that
when I get the page with "Sorry, we're having trouble getting your
pages back", I just press Return, and all the Tabs reappear.
So for me, that message has been a non-issue for several years.
Cheers,
David.
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