brave-core VS Pi-hole

Unrelated but about Brave and interesting to me: I recently found myself having a large upstream project that I need to maintain some custom patches for, and there's a need for deeper customizations and I worry that my rudimentary system of applying .patch files will turn into an unmaintainable nightmare of merge conflicts after every rebase. I was thinking about possible solutions, and it occurred to me that Brave being Chromium-based must have this same challenge but an order of magnitude more difficult, so I looked for their code to see how they solved this issue.

It's pretty interesting! They do basically the same thing for core Chromium, applying a (big) set of patches[1].

Incidentally, I'd be interested to hear any ideas/approaches to this problem. I'm guessing if there was something clearly better, Brave would be doing it, but it seems like there should be a better way even if I can't think of one.

[1] https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/13737

(Incidentally, that PR number is not quite elite. :)

I disagree that it's lip service Brave has a ton of engine level privacy patches https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

To my understanding you can't match it with just js extensions.

Only firefox on the highest security mode comes close I think?

Or ungoogled chromium? (brave has most of their patches IIRC)

Are there other options that have this number of patches?

Chromium is not 100% Google's forever and always, though they do currently lead the way, and with the most used/backed fork.

https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/19476

They have much more changes than just compile flags. Here's the repo where they maintain their patch set: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/tree/master/patches

Brave Private Ads toggle controls just Push Notification ads at this time. So, if you are still seeing Push Notification ads, that would be incorrect. However, it's normal to still see New Tab Page image ads, and/or other ad formats. We are introducing a new UI that helps you better toggle on/off specific ad units, and removing the "Brave Private Ads" toggle that can be confusing: https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18938

Yes, being fixed. Github at https://github.com/brave/brave-core/pull/18922

Si te preguntas, ¿por qué no usar Adguard o Pihole? 🤔

This is an overreaction, almost to the point of absurdity.

Risks inherent to pipe installers are well understood by many. Using your logic, we should abandon Homebrew [1] (>38k stars on GitHub), PiHole [2] (>46k stars on GitHub), Chef [3], RVM [4], and countless other open source projects that use one-step automated installers (by piping to bash).

A more reasonable response would be to coordinate with the developers to update the docs to provide alternative installation methods, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[1] https://brew.sh/

[2] https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole

[3] https://docs.chef.io/chef_install_script/#run-the-install-sc...

[4] https://rvm.io/rvm/install

Pi-hole to block ads and tracking for my less technically savvy relatives

https://pi-hole.net/

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS.

Note: This isn't a shill for NextDNS; I love these kinds of projects and think they absolutely should exist, but NextDNS just happens to be one of those dead-simple SaaS tools that is an insanely good value.

0 - https://pi-hole.net/

1 - https://nextdns.io

It definitely IS an option, but at the network level.

https://pi-hole.net/

It runs on damn near everything, and is a DNS level adblocker for the whole network.

I recently switched to Wipr [0]. It’s dead simple to use, and will auto update its filter lists in the background.

Adguard [1] is a decent free option.

I also use a Pi-hole [2] on my network.

[0] https://kaylees.site/wipr.html

[1] https://adguard.com/en/adguard-safari/overview.html

[2] https://pi-hole.net/

Are you trying to build a DNS proxy (similar to Pi-hole) that intercepts DNS requests and checks for the ones that look harmful? If so, I would suggest trying to separately build a DNS client and a DNS server, before trying to integrate them together. Start with Beej's Guide to Network Programming if you need to learn the basics of sockets, and then take a look at the documents that define the DNS protocol itself (RFC1034 and RFC1035).

Setup a pi-hole.

It's definitely not as simple as installing an app on your phone, but I run a Pi-hole on my home network, and it does block ads in many games.