alt.hn

7/19/2026 at 2:07:07 PM

Clever hacker fits 537,000 domains in a $5 ESP32 ad-blocking dongle

 https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/clever-hacker-fits-537-000-domains-in-a-tiny-usd5-esp32-ad-blocking-dongle-firmware-uses-only-around-50kb-of-ram-and-can-answer-blocked-lookups-in-10-milliseconds

by sbulaev

7/19/2026 at 3:46:11 PM

is it enough to block all ads on tomshardware?

by maratc

7/19/2026 at 4:12:38 PM

Last time I visited Tom Shardware it felt like the whole thing is basically an ad. Is the content still any good? I recall back when it was the go-to.

by Waterluvian

7/19/2026 at 4:34:08 PM

They seem to have locked a lot of interesting content behind the Premium News package, correct me if I'm wrong I can't read the Premium content to judge how it compares to the free Reddit reposts.

That and the shuttering of Anandtech sucks.

by undersuit

7/19/2026 at 8:22:23 PM

Any media have rough times.

We got used to consume digital content for free but on the other side we don’t love ads…

Ad networks give pennies to publishers, and to get high spending direct advertiser is almost impossible.

Not everybody is capable to develop a long-term feasible digital strategy eg as NYT.

by sixtyj

7/19/2026 at 7:36:08 PM

Remove permission to execute JavaScript (in your browser) on sites that use html-load.com and error-report.com in addition to blocking these two in DNS. Solved it for me, don't know for how long.

by tandr

7/19/2026 at 4:19:12 PM

Even behind a pi-hole that whole site is a game of “find the tiny little x”.

BRB, the raspberry pi is sending CPU temp alerts now…

by mikestew

7/19/2026 at 4:33:54 PM

This really begs the question as to how much juice you can get from $5 compute.

This IS IoT in my opinion, not whatever bloatware comes with your Samsung fridge or wifi-connected faucet.

by neuralkoi

7/19/2026 at 5:16:48 PM

> $5 compute

Unrelated but the author at Tom's Hardware is apparently unaware of AliExpress so they bumped the price from $2 (or less) to $5. And that's the price for just one. These things are so cheap you can throw them in everything. They're the perfect alternative to a Raspberry Pi because they have WiFi, Bluetooth, lots of GPIO, and decent compute. Not enough to run Linux but you don't need Linux for IoT.

by Rohansi

7/19/2026 at 10:52:46 PM

I just bought an ESP32-C3 with a tiiiiny 0.42" LCD screen for CAD$3 from Aliexpress off their "Choice" items menu.

by Scoundreller

7/19/2026 at 11:43:13 PM

And on the higher end you can get an ESP32 CYD (Cheap Yellow Display) which has a 2.8" or larger touch screen, SD card slot, LiPo battery connection and charger, speaker port, and maybe more for ~$15. Can make fancy UIs for it with LVGL or install something like MicroPythonOS on it if you have PSRAM.

https://lvgl.io/ https://micropythonos.com/

by Rohansi

7/19/2026 at 6:14:33 PM

There's very little compute going on in this chip. It's a few hashes per second. Which is to say you can do a lot with $5 of compute if you can figure out how to not need to use a lot of compute.

by xboxnolifes

7/19/2026 at 5:47:48 PM

A pregamgamanagany test can be $5 and apparently it can run doom, so in bulk compute has to be pretty cheap.

by bombcar

7/19/2026 at 6:14:36 PM

I no have a few esp32s sitting around. I no wonder what else I could use these for?

by ianmarcinkowski

7/19/2026 at 11:13:40 PM

Greenhouse automation. Smart(er) home thermostat. Lighting effects on wizard staff.

by edoceo

7/19/2026 at 3:04:07 PM

Clever hacker needs to look up a Bloom Filter

by buckhx

7/19/2026 at 3:34:20 PM

Lazy commenters need to look at the README to see that the bloom filter is mentioned as a next step. The hacker is indeed clever.

by Lukas_Skywalker

7/19/2026 at 3:47:55 PM

Only if the hacker also tests for false positives.

by amelius

7/19/2026 at 4:17:07 PM

The way it's worded in the readme makes it sound as if this was exactly the intention.

by Lukas_Skywalker

7/19/2026 at 4:21:52 PM

Very clever hacker indeed!

May even have Sonnet or Opus level of intelligence.

by amelius

7/19/2026 at 6:49:58 PM

As someone with an intelligence near Opus I have to be clear with you: your premise is wrong.

Having **intelligence** is not the same as being **clever** — a person can cleverly pass a difficult test **without** having or acquiring intelligence. That’s not a revelation, that’s common-sense.

You’re also conflating **quantum superposition** and **macroscopic observations** — one is physics, the other is psychology. The exact same thing cannot exist in two places at the same time above 10⁻¹⁰ meters, and intelligence is not measurable using most displacement methods. It is not possible for Opus, Sonnet, and the person to all have the same intelligence. That’s just physics.

I also noticed that you did not use any **punctuation** in your comment, so I must firmly decline continuing this line of inquiry.

# Correction

I reviewed your comment again and I can see that you **did** use punctuation. I retract that statement, but I stand by my assertion that being intelligent is typically more important than being clever.

by docjay

7/19/2026 at 4:15:37 PM

The README mentions it and conventionally it seems right.

But back of the envelope it seems you're shaving not much off if the latency is primarily WiFi latency (tens of milliseconds) not flash reads (microseconds?).

If you use loads of transient clients perhaps a LRU cache would help since round trips might be quite slow.

by rustyhancock

7/19/2026 at 7:52:12 PM

Double space. Go from 42 bit to 46 bit and you get the same. Still wondering about the dynamic binary search. A static search can be faster, even on an AVR

by rurban

7/19/2026 at 4:11:09 PM

I opened the article and immediately ctrl-f'd for the word "bloom". Though the author plans to use them.

by Graziano_M

7/19/2026 at 5:55:56 PM

What do people use bloom filters for in production? I've only ever used as part of a blacklist

by intheitmines

7/19/2026 at 6:01:40 PM

Search partition pruning in distributed databases is one concrete application I'm aware of.

Hashtables optimized for really large item counts; it can be a useful fast pre-check for item existence.

by gtowey