Hacker News Reader

Comment by huhtenberg | Hacker News Reader

Set up a DNS proxy, point your son's iPad at it, tail the log and then blacklist domains that serve these ads.

Bonus, this can also be used to remove YouTube and other kinds of ads as well as all the phone-home "analytics" if that's your thing.

  -- Edit --

Some options:

http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html + ToDo's via Google

https://github.com/apankrat/dnswhisperer or more generally https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=ad+blocking+dns

There are also 3rd party services that provide this function. They have obvious privacy issues, but for a kid's iPad it might be an option.

View on HN

Another alternative is buy him a Nintendo handheld instead of an iPad. No ads, no dodgy content, quality games.

what if you dont like Nintendo games ?

The games are for a young child. It is quite unlikely that Nintendo makes a game that is unsuitable for or disliked by people of that age. They are the one console maker who focuses on gameplay experience instead of graphics technology.

Then don't buy a Nintendo handheld...?

proxy him and tail the logs?

Get a PSVita instead it's a ridiculously underrated handheld and will be going cheap these days.

But as it was a young kid we're talking about I think it's safe to say there will be something on Nintendo that they're into.

My main point was more just you really do get what you pay for and if these things on iPads bother you then please vote with your wallets and buy products from companies that actually care about quality of their software.

There are tons of 3rd party games for the 3DS. If you can't find games you want to play on it, then you're not looking.

The console is supposedly for the kid, not you. I've never met a 4-year-old who didn't like Nintendo games.

Does not really answer my question. I don't feel that culturally these games bring much on the table. Why do you have to make 4-years old play games made for 4-years old? When I was 5 I wanted to play the games my 15 years old brother was playing.

My daughter is six and super-happy with the Nintendo DS. I have a 3DS that she also plays on sometimes. When she was 4, we bought one of those child-hardened Kindles and enrolled her in Amazon Freetime; she loved it.

Exactly the same progression with my five year-old. He still uses his hardened Kindle with Freetime, but for most gaming, really likes his DS I restored from a broken state on the cheap.

+1 for Pi-Hole for this sort of thing. Comes with pre-built lists of sites, and has a nice admin ui to handle blocks/allows.

The thing you want for this is called Privoxy. There are scripts out there to convert e.g. Easylist to Privoxy format. It should take less than an hour to get it all going.

Also, the kid and father could pihole the shait out of it. I know i really want to do it.

Q: About ad blocking dns projects in general, what's the downside ? (beside jeopardizing the future of the internets)

Making people who have passive ad income upset enough to tell people not to use it but in a non confrontational way

The same downside as adblockers: some websites will break or block you.

Wow, thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com