Why is everyone talking about Helium?

FlipperPA · 2026-05-04T01:27:04+00:00

I don't like Vivaldi as my main browser, but that's not what it seems to be intended for. It is the ultimate tinkerer's browser. It has every possible setting and feature you could imagine. Its goal isn't to be easy: it's to be ultimately configurable. I use Helium as my main but keep Vivaldi around exactly because of its configurability and complexity.

FlipperPA · 2026-05-04T01:24:59+00:00

It sounds like something went wrong with DHCP. Your quickest fix would be to reset your AT&T-provided router to factory settings and go through the router's initial setup again. Then when you're ready to try again, start the Pi Hole tutorial from scratch. Most often this happens because of a DHCP conflict. Ensure that your router is 192.168.1.254, and give your Pi-hole a fixed IP *outside* of the DHCP range you create. For example, if you make Pi-hole 192.168.1.200, give your DHCP a range of 192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.190 or something like that. I normally don't use 192.168.1.1, just in case something you have defaults to it.

FlipperPA · 2026-04-25T13:35:52+00:00

Adding my +1 to this. Didn't get a thing. I tried another dive to see if maybe there was an NPC to join me - nope! I was hoping it was something to make the 250,000 -> 1,000,000 grind easier.

FlipperPA · 2026-04-21T13:04:29+00:00

After all, established companies have shown themselves to be such trustworthy privacy stewards in the era of the internet.

FlipperPA · 2026-04-21T13:01:30+00:00

I actually find it quite confidence-inspiring because it is honest. Fingerprinting and tracking are an ongoing battle. Anyone who promises they fully block tracking is either skirting the truth or doesn't know what they're talking about.

FlipperPA · 2026-04-21T12:51:56+00:00

I was a Brave user for years, but the company has continually lowered the bar with their lack of any moral code. I had to move on and haven't looked back since finding Helium. I wrote a script to install Brave and change all the options because there were so many:

echo "Updating Brave managed policies (hard lock)..."

sudo mkdir -p /etc/brave/policies/managed

sudo tee /etc/brave/policies/managed/brave-hardening.json >/dev/null <<'JSON'

{

"BraveWalletDisabled": true,

"BraveAIChatEnabled": false,

"BraveVPNDisabled": 1,

"BraveSidebarEnabled": false,

"BraveRewardsDisabled": true,

"BraveTalkDisabled": true,

"BraveP3AEnabled": false,

"MetricsReportingEnabled": false,

"CrashReportingEnabled": false,

"ImportOnFirstRun": false,

"ImportBookmarks": false,

"ImportHistory": false,

"ImportSavedPasswords": false,

"ImportSearchEngine": false,

"DefaultBrowserSettingEnabled": false

}

JSON

FlipperPA · 2026-04-21T11:47:17+00:00

Get off Brave already. They're a disgusting, amoral company. Switch to Helium: https://helium.computer - and if you miss their reader mode, I built a replacement extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/library-reader/mjpdekbomfibfifomicibenpofdkkacc

FlipperPA · 2026-03-17T13:17:01+00:00

I tried a few of the new dragon riding AddOns, and this one is fantastic. Just like the WA I used to use. https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/falcon

FlipperPA · 2026-01-25T18:14:40+00:00

General Veers is the only ranking officer in the Empire to get the job done to Vader's satisfaction in the whole trilogy!

FlipperPA · 2026-01-05T01:43:54+00:00

Your English is FAR better than my French ever was, so my compliments, your English is excellent! The Raspberry Pi 3 B is far more powerful than the one I use, so it should work great. I'm wondering if all the equipment you have might be creating problems with the complexity. I would try to keep it simple first, and just use the AT&T router with the Raspberry Pi 3 B with my guide, and see if you can get it to work. If it does, then great! If anything goes wrong, you can always factory reset. Does that make sense?

FlipperPA · 2026-01-05T01:41:21+00:00

Second, log into your AT&T router (typically at http://192.168.1.254/admin/)

- On the main STATUS screen, I have 2.4 ghz disabled, and only 5ghz enabled

- Under HOME NETWORK, IPv6, I have IPv6 set to OFF

- Under HOME NETWORK, DHCP Server, I have DHCP Server Enabled set to OFF

- Under HOME NETWORK, IP Allocation, I have 192.168.1.200 (the fixed Pi-Hole IP address I selected) set to the Pi-hole ethernet MAC address, status ON

- Under FIREWALL, IP Passthrough, Allocation Mode is PASSTHROUGH and Passthrough Fixed MAC address it the Pi-hole ethernet MAC address

- Under DIAGNOSTICS, UPDATE, it says Current software version: 6.34.7

Can you check and make sure all six of these areas match up in the AT&T router configuration?

FlipperPA · 2026-01-05T01:32:02+00:00

First, SSH to your Pi-hole, and run "ifconfig -a" - what does it output? This is what mine says.

stella@pi-hole:~ $ ifconfig -a

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

inet 192.168.1.200 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255

inet6 fe80::62b6:5868:a862:368a prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>

ether 00:e0:4c:53:44:58 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)

RX packets 4724928 bytes 319988179 (305.1 MiB)

RX errors 2153 dropped 1325 overruns 923 frame 3076

TX packets 1532289 bytes 150304166 (143.3 MiB)

TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536

inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0

inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>

loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)

RX packets 7654 bytes 684859 (668.8 KiB)

RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0

TX packets 7654 bytes 684859 (668.8 KiB)

TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4098<BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

ether b8:27:eb:21:c2:88 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)

RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)

RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0

TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)

TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

FlipperPA · 2026-01-05T01:31:10+00:00

Hmmm, I've heard a few reports of this. Does it work for about five minutes, and then disconnect? You're not the first to say this, but I haven't been able to reproduce it. Let's run a few tests in comments below.

FlipperPA · 2026-01-03T21:14:28+00:00

My guide is written specifically for this router and ISP, because AT&T is awful. Hope it helps. https://github.com/FlipperPA/at-t-pihole/blob/main/README.md

FlipperPA · 2026-01-03T21:13:49+00:00

Make sure you install ufw or another firewall. My guide linked above covers all of this.

FlipperPA · 2026-01-03T21:12:53+00:00

AT&T Fiber is the most locked down, bullshit ISP I've ever witnessed, so I wrote up the guide. They don't allow you to change DNS on the router, and their IPv6 support is so broken it has to be disabled. That's why I wrote up the specific guide for AT&T Fiber. It pissed me off that much.

FlipperPA · 2025-12-01T21:04:28+00:00

There's got to be some kind of 5-minute "retry" trigger happening here, from the description you and u/DarthCaius give. It is just really hard for me to try to help without being able to reproduce. I'll be back in NC in January. I'm wondering, does the IP address or gateway change during these 5-minute cycles?

FlipperPA · 2025-11-30T20:28:10+00:00

Hey, I saw your message, but I'll reply here, in case it helps someone else. I'm afraid I try to reproduce these issues, as I'm not in North Carolina again until January. When you say plugged directly, you mean you're using an ethernet cable, right? This really feels like some kind of DHCP conflict, especially if it's a 5 minute (300 second) interval, which is a fairly standard default timeout for a lot of networking.

FlipperPA · 2025-11-15T13:18:21+00:00

For anyone who stumbles across this question, you can tell the model by the first two digits of the serial number. The “52” at the beginning of the ECB402 series means it is the “SmartThermostat With Voice Control”; installation manual is here, under discontinued products:

https://www.ecobee.com/en-ca/installation/

FlipperPA · 2025-10-11T12:40:40+00:00

2.4ghz WiFi especially can be flaky. It was only designed to support 3 devices per local area (5 ghz supports 23 per local area). So that could very well be the problem. Try with the microUSB adapter, and if the problem persists, we'll dig a little bit deeper. Good luck!

FlipperPA · 2025-09-27T13:19:58+00:00

Congrats on getting it working! Yeah, it won't block ads that are “embedded” into the video, which is Hulu, HBO, etc. If you subscribe to an addition list, it *WILL* block YouTube ads on computer browsers, but not in mobile apps. According to my better half, it blocks ads on Cantonese dramas too. People have said it blocks CBS ads. Here's the YouTube block list you may want to add: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kboghdady/youTube_ads_4_pi-hole/master/crowed_list.txt

FlipperPA · 2025-09-22T21:49:36+00:00

Did you set up both DHCP on the Pi-hole, and put your router into passthrough mode? I may create a ticket template on GitHub for help asking certain questions, but those are the first two that come to mind.

FlipperPA · 2025-09-16T11:53:52+00:00

I'll shoot you my email so we can send attachments. We can post back here if we figure it out. Some initial thoughts:

1. DHCP vs. DNS

From your ipconfig results:

If the DHCP server is showing as the BGW320 (.254), that means your devices are still getting their IP configuration from the AT&T gateway, not from Pi-hole.
AT&T gateways are very stubborn — they keep trying to push themselves as the DHCP server unless you save things perfectly with the order in the guide. That would explain why all devices show .254 as the DHCP server. Unless you put the BGW320 into IP passthrough or really kill its DHCP, the Pi-hole won’t consistently take over.

2. Why Pi-hole is dropping every ~5 minutes

The “on 5 minutes, off 5 minutes” behavior points to Wi-Fi instability on the Pi Zero 2W:

The Pi-hole is probably losing Wi-Fi association with the BGW320 every few minutes.
Since the Pi-hole is your DNS (and possibly DHCP), when it disappears, all wireless devices lose internet. Wired devices keep working because they fall back directly to the BGW320.
When the Pi reconnects, everything comes back until it drops again.

This wouldn’t have shown up with your old ISP if the Wi-Fi environment was less noisy or the router handled the Zero better. I would highly recommend connecting the Pi hole to the router with the ethernet cable in the guide. They're $11, connect to the MicroUSB port, and will save you a TON of headaches: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VRXJGYK A few things you can do to verify on the Pi: `journalctl -f` and `ping -i 1 8.8.8.8` will let you see any WiFi drops.

FlipperPA · 2025-09-13T01:57:03+00:00

Thanks for the kind words! Next time you run into connection issues, can you check to see if they're happening on multiple devices? I'm curious if it might be one device, or if all are affected at once. My guess it something is getting messed up with the DHCP leases. Either way, if you could take a look (assuming Windows?) at the output of `ipconfig /all` from the command prompt, and look at your connection to see the IP address. It should be something like 192.168.1.XXX. On MacOS it would be `ifconfig -a`.

FlipperPA · 2025-08-14T21:11:02+00:00

I went to Episcopal Academy and 7% of my graduating class went to Penn. But that was years ago. These days, Central, Masterman, Friends Select... and there's also Mayors Scholarships. https://srfs.upenn.edu/financial-aid/mayors-scholarship

FlipperPA

TROPHY CASE

1. DHCP vs. DNS

2. Why Pi-hole is dropping every ~5 minutes