Welcome to today’s daily kōrero!

Anyone can make the thread, first in first served. If you are here on a day and there’s no daily thread, feel free to create it!

Anyway, it’s just a chance to talk about your day, what you have planned, what you have done, etc.

So, how’s it going?

  • @DaveMA
    2•7 months ago

    Interesting suggestion. Unfortunately decisions about shared utilities aren’t mine to make, these days. I’m sure there are better plans out there.

    Ah that’s a shame. 60GB these days doesn’t go a long way.

    Weird fact about the router though, it’s a very old Vodafone one and when we set it up the one thing it would not let me change was the dns so it still uses Vodafone servers on a Spark plan!

    That is weird! I’m starting to remember how locked down routers used to be. These days we have quite a bit of control over what we can do with ISP routers. I can change DNS, do port forwarding of HTTP ports, etc.

    • @liv
      2•7 months ago

      Yeah that must be cool! Tech has just got so much better lately and there’s so much cool stuff. I think if I had money and capability I would want to muck around with running stuff through a raspberry pi.

      • @DaveMA
        2•7 months ago

        The Pi is cool but if you have a PC/laptop you can probably just run a VM for messing around. If you don’t have a computer then the cost of the Pi is just the beginning, with the need for a keyboard and mouse, HDMI mini adapter, SD card (I just use the TV for the monitor when needed, plugging in with HDMI).

        You can get a kit like this but, well, it’s $200.

        Honestly it’s probably cheaper to get a VPS when OVH has their VPNs on sale for $2 a month for 12 months. But you’d probably need a PC to SSH to it (you can do it on mobile but it doesn’t sound like fun).

        • @liv
          2•7 months ago

          Sorry to be ignorant but do VPS do ad blocking? I was daydreaming about a raspberry pi if I won lotto because a) I used to like trying to build my own computers and b) pi-hole to block ads for non tech savvy people in the house.

          • @DaveMA
            2•7 months ago

            With a VPS it gets a bit more complicated, I probably wouldn’t try to do pi-hole on a VPS though I think it would technically be possible. Regardless, I think your major blocker will be that you mentioned your router doesn’t let you change the DNS server. pi-hole is a DNS server from the point of view of your router. You need to be able to change the DNS server for it to work. And if you can change your DNS server, then Adguard free plan might be an easier and cheaper (but less fun) way to get that.

            I thought you might be able to pick up a really old Pi for cheap, I have pi-hole running on an original Raspberry Pi model B, but there aren’t that many and even the ones that are there are more than I thought they would be (e.g. I can see a Pi 2 for $40).

            People often use old laptops as a server, if you have one of those lying around.

            • @liv
              2•7 months ago

              Yes and no, I’m still using my 2014 laptop as, well, my laptop!

              All this is super interesting. I’m filing it away in the back of my mind.