What are /r/tech's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

This is a great time to switch!

Get yourself the latest version of Firefox with the following add-ons:

• HTTPS Everywhere

• uBlock Origin (and EasyList

• Privacy Badger or Privacy Possum

• Decentraleyes

• CanvasBlocker

• Smart Referer

Those are, imho, basic add-ons EVERYONE should have. They're pretty much set 'em and forget 'em.

If you wanna go further:

• NoScript Security Suite

• uMatrix (some use with NoScript, some use in lieu of)

• NetCraft Anti-Phishing Extension

Combine that all with a PiHole and a trusty VPN (Mullvad, PIA, Nord, Proton, etc.) and you will be set!

** Semi-Unrelated reminder: while you're thinking of security, get a good password manager (BitWarden, Lastpass, KeePass XC) and use 2FA whenever you can!

EDIT: Thanks for the gold, kind strangers! <3

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention that you should change your default search engine in Firefox to DuckDuckGo.

>No applicant will be favored or treated differently, and no one can buy their way onto the whitelist. Everyone has to comply with the criteria and everyone has to go through the same process before the ads qualify as "acceptable."

From Adblock Plus's FAQ.

I have little to no issues with non intrusive ads. It's about time advertisers on the internet stop with the intrusive terrible ads. At least this shows that companies are starting to realize how big of a market they lose by allowing ridiculous ads to go live.

The top comment over at "hacker" news (lol) is:

> That comment was taken out of context. Wired wrote an entire article about an offhand remark.

> I was at ChefConf, the comment was made during a panel discussion on open source [1]. On the panel there was an engineer from Facebook, an IT Director from Gap, and Mark Russinovich the CTO of Azure (note Azure, not Windows).

> The conversation went something like this (paraphrasing):

> Moderator: "Microsoft used to really suck, and they were really anti-open source. But now they are open sourcing things like CLR on GitHub. I bet one thing they will never open source is Windows."

> Mark: "You never know, it's definitely possible. Crazy stuff happens."

> Nothing more on the subject.

So ... yeah, probably not. Nice clickbait by Wired though. Did they hire some buzzfeed writers recently or what?

All of it seems odd, but the strong push towards BitLocker is really weird. It's not just on that page, but even when you install this new version you get a message box saying to use BitLocker instead.

And if they're pulling a Lavabit, why the push to BL which is undoubtedly backdoored? Why not just leave it at the "TrueCypt isn't secure! Now you can only decrypt!"?

There's just too much weirdness for this to be legit. See here and here.

“However, ExpressVPN is sticking with Daniel Gericke. 'His history and him an invaluable hire for our mission to protect users’ privacy and security,' it says.” Riiiiight…

“The news comes after ExpressVPN this week sold itself to British-Israeli digital security software provider Kape Technologies for a reported $936 million.”

For those interested enough to wonder, but not interested enough to Google the app: App Store and Google Play.

What's unique about Own-Mailbox isn't that it's a personal email server, but that's is a HARDWARE based server. You've been able to run your own mail server since forever, but yeah, it has required quite a bit of knowledge to do so. The appeal of this is the "plug and play" nature of it.

But... I can't trust them. And considering how much of a niche market "privacy for email" is, I'm not sure if the rest of their target market will trust them either.

The problem is that creating secure software is insanely difficult. There are uncountable ways of getting it wrong and only a few very hard ways of getting it right. The chances of two guys who recently graduated from college magically getting this right on their first try? Well, stranger things have happened, but there's no way I'd count on it.

I'd feel a lot better about this if they were just creating the hardware and letting something like Mailpile handle the software.

I remember all the "Is 200x the year of the Linux desktop?" articles.

I said it wasn't going to happen and all the people on Slashdot called me names.

Here is a really old copy pasta troll from 2004 on Slashdot.

But yeah people were so absolutely shure Windows was done for and Linux was going to replace it on the desktop in some circles that anyone who couldn't see that was either 1) a complete idiot or 2) a paid shill for M$

Especially poorer people, both in the US and not alike. Often they own a smartphone and a tablet... no computer. All they see is Apps. Facebook app, Twitter app, ect. The web browser is an little thing on the side rarely used. I say poorer people out of experience that the less well off people I knew still after HS... they really just had no name $40 china Android tablets from Walmart and that's it. They can't afford a PC. Even a $300 budget laptop is still a save-up-to-buy thing.

This is the core reason Facebook/Google/other Cos. want to give free internet in developing countries. They don't know what the fuck a Winedoze is or a Mazilla bowser. They know what "Facebook app" is and that they get free facebook from the sky.

And this is why I'll never get mad about companies like NordVPN and their pervasive, massive YouTube advertising campaigns: because as long as bullshit like this exists, there's a reason to have workarounds.

I had been using Chrome for over a decade. Now I exclusively use Firefox for personal use. Check out privacytools.io for helpful settings and extensions to make your install more secure.

Thanks for your kind words!

Yes, that is an excellent idea before launching to the EU. Right now it's US-only and I'm aware of and complying with the data laws - I have a privacy policy, I only keep the minimal data we collect for a minimal amount of time, I do best-practices like HTTPS and data encryption, etc. When I open up the app to EU there will certainly be additional checks I'll have to make sure I comply with!

A really key component of this project is that user locations are no longer required for long-term storage to do useful work with the sensors on the phone. That's super important to me, and I plan to make even further improvements in the future to make it even more privacy focused (like running your own local server, eliminating the need to even send me raw barometric pressure data in the first place)!

Here's how the 'virtual weather stations' will work in All Clear Weather (currently in-progress):

1. All data is sent in hourly increments to the server. This will include encrypted location and barometric pressure data, also light sensor data and (if your phone has it!!) temperature and humidity sensor data from the hygrometer and thermometer.

2. In 6-hour repeat/periodic batch jobs, the server uses geographical bounding boxes to categorize sensor data into groups.

3. Statistics are generated for each of these groups, like mean pressure, pressure trend, max pressure, min pressure, pressure variance, etc.

4. Now user locations can be deleted along with all the raw data, as the bounding box summaries are now more useful anyway! Fewer errors will show in the data, as nearby measurements can be used as sanity checks on the quality of the incoming data.

This, among other things, is why we need IPFS.

I’ll give you the gist of it here:

Instead of addressing files by name (eg “myhomepage.com/lolcats/cheezburger.jpg”) we would address them by content, using a hash based on the file’s data.

The “entry point” of each page / app would still need to be named (eg “myhomepage.com”) but everything after that can be loaded with content hashes.

This lets us do some interesting things:

• The browser can cache files across webpages, eg if multiple pages use the same file you don’t need to download it twice.

• Because you’re addressing a file by content you can basically download it from anyone, not just a named host. And since you can check the name hash against the file’s content it’s secure. Imagine being able to stream video from the guy sitting next to you in Starbucks instead of across half the planet.

• This also allows for easier archiving and distribution of content. The IPFS client essentially acts as a Torrent provider, so other people get access to the files you download. This lets anyone become a “web host”

It’s very exciting tech

One addon to rule them all when it comes to facebook management.
http://www.fbpurity.com/

Edit: for all those that want to hide sponsored stories/box, game invites, sort the feed to most recent and lots more. Check out the addon and what it can do. There is a lot of options in it. Made it so I could use facebook for what I wanted, keeping up to date on people and groups. Without all the spam.

I don't think you can be a billionaire when you're between $1.31-$2.65 billion in debt

>Beyond finding that companies owned by Mr. Trump had debts of at least $650 million, The Times discovered that a substantial portion of his wealth is tied up in three passive partnerships that owe an additional $2 billion to a string of lenders, including those that hold the loan on the Avenue of the Americas building.

> concerns about how apps use the data and images supplied by users, particularly those that are owned or operated outside the U.S.

Wait... what?! It's the US agencies that (officially, thanks to Snowden) spy on basically everyone and security troops that put innocent tourists through hours of interrogation because of thoughtless tweets.

Why particularly outside the US? How much more concerns could anyone trigger???

"If you are blind or have low vision, you can use VoiceOver, an advanced screen reader, to get the most from your iOS device. And Siri and Dictation help you type, launch apps, and read your calendar." https://www.apple.com/accessibility/ios/#vision

They might have that, something to that effect. That doesn't mean it will work exactly like that though; behind the immediate code you write, a lot of things go wrong that defy logic.

For instance if you are programming with C or a derivative language, some mistake you did in a totally irrelevant place can corrupt memory and if the planets align, can totally fuck up your above comparison.

Or for instance, your comparison might work just fine, and your x might in fact be smaller than 10000, but down the line the methods responsible for getting x, initialising the typeface to print the payout, rendering the payout amount as a fancy text to some place in memory, sending it to screen with flashy animations, can fuck up in innumerable ways due to software and hardware faults.

Also consider the fact that that 10000 value is not a static value but something designed to be changed on the fly so a lot can go wrong in the course of grabbing the maximum payout amount from wherever it was stored. Your comparison would be totally ineffective if you didn't correctly read the maximum payout amount from the memory to begin with.

In the more extremes, an Alpha Particle coming from the sky can hit the memory module, flip a bit in the machine's memory and change the result of your comparison from true to false. Or simply the RAM might go bad (persistent bitflips in failed RAM sticks is quite common, and your computer will work just fine until the value of that particular bit will influence something critical that will cause very strange errors or operating system crashes).

You'd wish software development was that easy though.

Reminds me of the quote by Donald Knuth, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and the famous author of "The Art of Computer Programming":

-Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.

Yeah, according to this site Apple and Samsung have 70% of the US phone market. If they say something is happening then it will happen.

The only way it wouldn't is if every carrier refused, but then all it would take is one to adopt it and everyone would switch to them to get the latest iPhone/Samsung, causing a domino effect with the other carriers to stop them losing customers

Luckily Mozilla and the EFF are working on solving that. They are working on a new CA that will allow you get a cert for free just by being able to prove you control the website you want the cert for.

I posted this comment a few days ago in regards to the 97% profit margin myth:

From what I've read, that's an analyst's guess since he doesn't have reports from each sector of TWC (because those aren't released to the public.)

I read this about that article on Hacker News

> Comcast's 2008-2011 mean (standard deviation) operating margin is 20% (0.8 percentage points), pre-tax margin is 14% (1.8 percentage points), and net income margin 9% (1.4 percentage points). This is of note for a purported utility, but not "comically profitable".

> Let's observe their most recent quarterly disclosure [1] by business segment. Here we learn that the Cable Communications division, which "consists primarily of video, high-speed Internet and voice services (“cable services”) for residential and business customers in the United States", had an operating margin of 40% and spent 14% of revenues on capital expenditures. We also learn that Cable Networks, which "consists primarily of our national cable television networks, our regional sports and news networks, our international cable networks, our cable television production studio, and our related digital media properties", had an operating margin of 37%.

> Where's the money going? Breaking out Cable Communication's costs, 35% went to programming, 35% go to "Other", defined as "business services, advertising, network operations, and franchise and other regulatory fees", 12% to marketing, 10% to technical labour, and 8% to customer service. Also of note, 24% of the division's revenues came from residential high-speed internet (50% came from residential video).

> [1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1166691/000119312512437120/d422555d10q.htm

In essence, the 97% sounds to be a gross profit margin rather than a net profit margin. (I am not an economics person, and this just comes out of a few minutes of research so please correct me if this is wrong.)

LastPass

• Works on all platforms, works in browser (basically replaces the built-in password management.)
• Can auto-generate secure passwords so you don't even need to know what they are.
• Everything is encrypted on their servers, they don't have access to your passwords.
• Allows you to save your encrypted database of passwords locally.
• Has a feature right now listing which websites you access that you should change passwords after HeartBleed.
• Can also work on mobile / desktop apps if you pay the $1 a month (I don't, my co-worker does and loves it.)

Edit: Just to touch on the security aspect of it, it's basically as strong as you make it. To gain access to your passwords you use a master password, the stronger it is, the safer you are (as they are simply storing an encrypted blob on their servers for you). They also have several methods of two factor authentication you can use.

> The problem is, truck GPS is pretty inaccurate. It will run you under bridges that are too short, and down restricted roads.

You should really get a better GPS. If you fill in your trucks info, height weight etc, your GPS can route you around all that.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alk.copilot.market.uscanada.truck

The site's live at https://photos.google.com/. It's kind of amazing so far (it's really good at identifying my cat in pictures!) but I can't verify if you retain full rights to the photos you upload to it. Anyone know anything about that?

That might not be an option in this case since Samsung's response suggests some of the devices in the computer might stop working if you use Windows Update. From the comments on Hacker News:

>Sounds to me like they put defective rev of a USB3 host controller on the board, and they need their own driver to work around it, but the host controller is going to identify itself generically enough that Samsung can't rely on PNP ID matching to pick their work-around driver. Hence they disable windows update to avoid getting a driver update that would stomp their workaround driver.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9769377

nope, according to the new macbook's area of the apple site you get a USB-C and a headphone port. If you want the other things, you will need adapters. This includes regular f'in USB ports. So basiclly if you want to charge and plug in a USB mouse, your shit out of luck.

Yes, the kernel is still Linux. But look at an average Linux desktop, and at an Android phone and you will see how little kernel means in the grand scheme of things.

I used to think that Stallman's insistence to call it GNU/Linux was some silly attention whoring, and it took Android to prove me that he was right all along. They are different operating systems, which happen to share the kernel.

EDIT: on the other hand there exists Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, that's closer than Android to what I used to think Linux was, even though it doesn't use Linux.

Yeah, DASH is what causes you to load the video in small parts at a time. Have you tried Youtube Center? I'm using the userscriopt with Greasemonkey on Firefox (which I've found works better than the addon). Not sure how well it works in Chrome.

Don't use NordVPN.

I highly recommend ProtonVPN or Mullvad VPN. Proton has had their own questionable stuff recently, but Mullvad is what Mozilla VPN is under the hood.

Disclosing that I am an MS intern because legal things:

Telemetry/keylogger concerns: The stuff collected related to actual data input was only collected during the technical preview. The data that is collected in the release version is optional and harmless. Think less "DJ_Jim opened so many reddit tabs that his computer crashed" and more "a computer crashed because of memory issues." See what the ToS says related to personally identifiable information if you want more specifics since I'm too lazy to.

Cortana concerns: Once you start using Cortana you have access to the "Notebook" which tells you exactly what Cortana knows about you and you can opt out piece by piece. It has similar permissions to Google Now if you have every used that service. Except you can actually find the opt out button. Again, see the ToS for personally identifiable information for a general idea of what parts of this data gets looked at.

Skype/Outlook concerns: You store your email on MS servers, don't turn off the email option in cortana, and then statistics on your email end up on MS servers. Seems more like they tried to fill space to me because I don't understand the issue.

Real-time protection: There is literally nothing in that shot related to data being collected by MS. Why is it even in this image?

edit: Also see https://www.bing.com/account/personalization

I used lots of sources and after much research, went with Mulvad. It's fast, easy to use, has its servers outside the US, keeps no logs, and is rated well for $50/year. I used to use Private Internet Access, but now use Mulvad.

[https://searchcode.com/?q=if(version%2Cstartswith(%22windows+9%22)](https://searchcode.com/?q=if(version%2Cstartswith(%22windows+9%22\)) - and that's just open source.

They could have alternatively just jumped back off the numbered versioning scheme. There was also some posts about them focusing more on just calling it "Windows" and continuously updating it so aside from internals the name wouldn't matter too much.

The overhead involved, really. That said, VoLTE is here and an alternative on some handsets... Since you say FaceTime and iMessage i assume you use apple. It's on the iPhone 6 and 6+

Let me be more speciFic: VoIP services, like Skype, have existed for a while but there's not real assurance as to the quality of the signal. this isn't kosher on a phone, where we've come to expect very consistent quality in transmission as well as reliability. VoLTE is similar to VoIP, but there are added safe guards to make sure everything is above board. Here is a little webpage for you.

I've not used 1Password, but given that it's not opensource, it's published by a for-profit company, and free to download, I wouldn't trust it.

If it's freely available and published by a for-profit company, you've gotto question why they release the software for free–perhaps they just want to world to use encrypted and strongly generated passwords, but perhaps there's a backdoor in the program delivering your password to them–either way, you don't know because nobody can review the code.

There are many forks of KeePass for basically every platform you can think of. KeePassX works on Mac; or if you want to run the original, KeePass works well through Wine.

DuckDuckGo is just one site which doesn't track you. Do Not Track is a flag, set by the browser, which requests that the site not track the user, and is widely ignored.

Privacy Badger is an extension similar to Disconnect or Ghostery, which plugs into your browser and aims to allow you to block all sites from tracking where you go and what you do.

This is not the dominant failure mode of SSDs. The dominant failure mode of SSDs is if you get a power failure, you could face 100% loss of data on your SSD, and possibly also destruction of the device.

I had to start using specially protected SSDs because I was losing computers constantly during periods of lots of power failures.

source

source 2

> Healthy eyes can create 1 to 2 million pixels.

There's absolutely no way this is true. Healthy vision is estimated to be from 50 to 570 million pixels.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-resolution-of-the-human-eye-in-megapixels

From what I've read, that's an analyst's guess since he doesn't have reports from each sector of TWC (because those aren't released to the public.)

I read this about that article on Hacker News

> Comcast's 2008-2011 mean (standard deviation) operating margin is 20% (0.8 percentage points), pre-tax margin is 14% (1.8 percentage points), and net income margin 9% (1.4 percentage points). This is of note for a purported utility, but not "comically profitable".

> Let's observe their most recent quarterly disclosure [1] by business segment. Here we learn that the Cable Communications division, which "consists primarily of video, high-speed Internet and voice services (“cable services”) for residential and business customers in the United States", had an operating margin of 40% and spent 14% of revenues on capital expenditures. We also learn that Cable Networks, which "consists primarily of our national cable television networks, our regional sports and news networks, our international cable networks, our cable television production studio, and our related digital media properties", had an operating margin of 37%.

> Where's the money going? Breaking out Cable Communication's costs, 35% went to programming, 35% go to "Other", defined as "business services, advertising, network operations, and franchise and other regulatory fees", 12% to marketing, 10% to technical labour, and 8% to customer service. Also of note, 24% of the division's revenues came from residential high-speed internet (50% came from residential video).

> [1] http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1166691/000119312512437120/d422555d10q.htm

In essence, the 97% sounds to be a gross profit margin rather than a net profit margin. (I am not an economics person, and this just comes out of a few minutes of research so please correct me if this is wrong.)

In fact, Apple just broke the record for quarterly profitability just a few days ago. $18 billion.

For comparison, Google's net income for 2013 was $12 billion. Apple made more money in 3 months than Google made in an entire year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8407395

It looks like it's an update of an older 'worm' from 2009, it spreads via the old 'install this unsigned program and give it admin access'-flaw. So no actual security issue except the one behind the keyboard.

Can someone please clear it up the difference between the iphone 6 and iphone 6 plus for me besides size?

Like did it say the iphone 6 plus gets better battery life, retina display, better camera and option to go to 128 GB in storage which the iphone 6 doesn't have?

Also do you think a 5.5 inch phone is too big and impractical especially for pockets? Right now i have a 4s and not sure to upgrade to iphone 6 or iphone 6 plus...thoughts?

Edit: I looked at https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/

Looks like the bigger phone does indeed have better battery, Optical image stabilization, 1920-by-1080-pixel resolution at 401 ppi, 5.5-inch...but still not sure if it is worth the extra size and $100 extra bucks...?

Unfortunatly, Java translates the 'good' version string to a human readable 'bad' one and many sloppy Java developers have written code like

if (System.getProperty("os.name").startsWith("Windows 9")) {

It's horrible. But it's true.

it's not just you. Flash and firefox have never played nicely together IMO so I jumped to html5 on youtube long time ago but I'm still limited to 360 and 720. I think youtube live broadcast might still use the flash player but maybe not for much longer.

http://www.ghacks.net/2014/05/10/enable-media-source-extensions-firefox/ - support for media source extensions is supposed to be in as of ff 31 but it doesn't work for me in ff 35.01 after manually enabling it - from looking into this annoyance before this is why we're limited to 360 and 720 on youtube with firefox. I had not heard of waterfox until today.

dash: no means no 1080p or higher for you

It's the recommended combination of add-ons, without a doubt. uBlock might end up becoming the better ad-blocker in the long run. It's already more efficient than ABP, but isn't as effective and compatible yet. I've been testing it for a few weeks now and I'd say that it's definitely a promising project.

> They are universally garbage

Buy a Brother printer. Sturdy printers with cheap ink.

I've had their infamously great Brother HL-2270DW black and white laser printer for two and a half years and it's never skipped a beat.

I haven't own an inkjet of theirs but they all seem well rated at Amazon.

If the 14 eyes are true, Mullvad is part of it. If Mullvad is part of it, then that Mozilla VPN is part of it.

Do your research and don't subscribe to a VPN because ~~it's free~~ Mozilla said it's ok.

Edit: Mozilla's VPN isn't free, they're charging $4.99 USD for Mullvad's services.

I didn't know that but obviously I'm glad to hear it. I did a bunch of reading on the That One Guy's Privacy guide and they seemed top tier despite being the cheapest option. Only problem I have with them is that a lot of their IPs are blocked by streaming sites. But I don't know if that would be solved by using a smaller but more expensive option like NordVPN.

Seems similar in concept to the 'loopwheel'. The loopwheel uses carbon fibre springs whereas the softwheel (the one in the article) uses pneumatic/hydraulic shock absorbers.

I just want to hijack this comment to let everyone in here who feels like they are too poor for a bidet, that this one on Amazon is amazing...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A0RX2UI/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

You're BH will thank you

Massive Bluetooth security hole. Not sure when patch will be released for android. Might want to turn bluetooth off until you patch or need to connect to a device

https://www.armis.com/blueborne/

"Android users should verify that they have the September 9, 2017 Security Patch Level"

Or have this scan your shit. Its legit. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.armis.blueborne_detector

Try Basilisk. It's a less idealistic, more recent fork of Firefox, by the same developer as Pale Moon. It's one of the most featureful forks of Firefox I've found, without being a complete clone. It supports all the DRM technologies required to play proprietary video, it supports NPAPI plugins, it supports both XUL and WebExtension style addons (which was why I made the transition, as I don't agree with the limited-by-design nature of the new WebExtensions standard, but as a practical matter almost all new development will be there, so you need both), it supports sync, it includes the developer tools, it supports Firefox's themes... there's not much it doesn't support, really.

Generally, I've been pretty impressed with it. There's no turning back to Firefox for me.

I prefer Ricochet: https://ricochet.im/ :)

Unlike Signal and Riot, Ricochet is a different approach to instant messaging that doesn’t trust anyone in protecting your privacy.

• Eliminate metadata. Nobody knows who you are, who you talk to, or what you say.
• Stay anonymous. Share what you want, without sharing your identity and location.
• Nobody in the middle. There are no servers to monitor, censor, or hack.
• Safe by default. Security isn’t secure until it’s automatic and easy to use.

I think the real innovation from MS was the IllumiRoom, but it turned out to be too expensive to implement.

>we looked at it, but for an average customer it’s, like, thousands of dollars [for the set up].

Can you imagine playing Sunset Overdrive with the IllumiRoom? It would be one of the coolest things I can imagine.

It wouldn't cost Microsoft anything to not force updates on consumer-grade products.

Looking at the Windows 10 version comparison, Pro adds zero functionality that we need.

For those that don't want to click/find: https://www.leakedsource.com/

Another is: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Also some password managers (LastPass at least, guessing more) can tell you if you're vulnerable, assuming you have your account listed in their system.

Also it sounds like Twitter (from the article), Netflix, and (probably) other sites are telling users if they are using a password that was in the recent large hacked user lists for their email/username (users that share passwords between sites). Pretty cool!

Check out Let's Encrypt. It should be available this year and makes certs pretty trivial. I've been using StartSSL and Comodo certs for SPDY for a while and I can't wait to migrate.

So, the procedure to delete your LastPass account:

Go to https://lastpass.com/delete_account.php

There's an option there to export your data.

Then cross your fingers that part of the deal wasn't to record a snapshot of accounts before the deal was announced.

I find CF.lumen better, especially if you're rooted. It just seems to mess with colours less, but still change the colour temperature.

Here's my optimism:
This Zdnet article indicates that MS will keep IE 11 around "for compatibility's sake" (perhaps just security updates). This would probably them up free to eventually diverge the engine and keep a more advanced pace like the other browsers.

I've heard in the past that MS has been held back in ways with IE because of paying organizations who are so dependent on entrenched old tech and wrong behaviors from earlier (IE6) days. This will allow them to break such functionalities in the new browser without completely abandoning those who are dependent.

I'm not really a defender or fan of Microsoft or IE, but I am a fan of a competitive, standards driven web. And there are a lot of people driving around in substandard browsers.

> Just don't put everything on facebook

Same goes for Google, Microsoft, etc. The problem is that people seem to put all of their data in a handful of companies, which makes for a good user experience but really hurts competition.

I'm not really sure what the solution is here, but it's not necessarily anti-competitive since you have choice, but there's also not much innovation in social media lately. People will only commit to a platform if their contacts use it, so there's a huge chicken and egg problem here.

Perhaps the solution is to push for a common platform to connect the various services together. There's Matrix for chat/VoIP and Signal integrates with WhatsApp, but neither is big enough to really offer a platform to facilitate choice.

2 points.

First point: this image appears to be cropped from this one.

Second point: the years don't seem to be sorted in a way that makes any sense. If I go left to right, I get 1987, 1993, 1996, 1998, 1997, 1989, so that doesn't make sense. If I go top to bottom I get 1987, 1989, 1991, 2007. This one only makes sense if you magically know when to go back to the top before you hit 2007.

Edit: I now see that this isn't cropped after all, but is actually TWO images. The first image makes sense if you go top to bottom of that image and then go top to bottom on the 2nd image (linked).

The internet lied to me!

I'm glad you're linking this article. But it almost sounds like you're recommending against users protecting themselves. And I don't agree with that at all.

Even if I individually opted out of the 40+ companies listed in that article, I still wouldn't trust these data corporations to have my best interests at heart.

I will still use open source software and cookie managers and other such measures to prevent tracking. And I recommend everyone do the same.

Here's a good website to get started protecting yourself. privacytools.io

Yes, and I'd say there are many exceptions. there are many non-profits out there, and other companies like ubuntu, duckduckgo that are privacy respecting.

The first thing profit driven companies usually screw over is privacy so, a good list of pro privacy companies is also a good list of companies:
https://www.privacytools.io/
r/privacytoolsIO

none of them;

wikipedia says english pronounciation would be:

>Jolla, in Finnish, is pronounced 'yolla'.

the word means a small Sail Boat

random site from duckduckgo search: http://www.forvo.com/word/jolla/ contains a recording of the pronunciation with some mic-whine-noice :P (is correct -source: I'm from Finland)

You can do it with Pipelight.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:pipelight/stable sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install pipelight-multi sudo pipelight-plugin --enable silverlight

(source for instructions)

From the Threema FAQ:

> Why don't previews in push notifications work properly? > > If you see an ID instead of a contact's name in a push notification: a sender's name is not visible in a push notification for recipients using Threema on iOS or on Windows Phone due to technical limitations of Apple and Microsoft. These operating systems don't support background decryption of message contents.

In Whatsapp I still get so see the message content on my iPhone's lock screen when I receive a message as a push notification. So if Apple hasn't changed something in iOS recently which allows client side decryption of push notifications without opening the app that means the push notification has to be decrypted on the Whatsapp servers. But then it's not end-to-end encryption at all. Does anyone know more about that?

Metal unfortunately does not replace facebook - instead it allows for you to chat with people / view your feed on facebook without the constant 'install messenger' nag screen. I have not yet found a way to replace chat. It's not as tightly integrated as the facebook / messanger apps, but it gets the job done.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nam.fbwrapper&amp;hl=en

http://www.zdnet.com/article/ces-2015-intel-introduces-compute-stick-with-atom-quad-core-cpu/

Apparently can't be powered thru HDMI (understandable) hence the need for an external USB power source. Then again, sticking another powered USB hub right behind your TV isn't unheard off.

Not directly, because you can't see or hit the servers that are doing the modification. GitHub responded in a pretty smart way by popping up a JavaScript warning saying &quot;malicious JavaScript detected on this domain&quot; to try to scare people away from the sites that were using Baidu analytics, which enabled the exploit.

Rural america. as of august 2013, 9 Million Americans still use dial up. http://www.cnet.com/news/3-percent-of-american-adults-still-cling-to-dial-up-internet/

Edit: My mom still uses DSL. 168 kilobytes down is what she gets on the best day...24x (still slow as hell) 56k speeds. This is in a small town. Hopefully i can convince her to switch to gulp... Comcast

Lifted straight from the FAQ:

> However if you run extensions like Adblock Plus or Ghostery in their default configurations, Privacy Badger can significantly increase your privacy online. (Adblock does not block invisible trackers by default, Ghostery does not block anything by default.)

ADB+ jumped the shark some time ago anyway, this one is the new hot shit: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Some bullet points:

• GPL v3
• much better performance
• element picker that works
• Chrome / Firefox / Safari / Opera

By that logic, anyone who "could" potentially do a bad thing should be treated as doing that bad thing.

What's to stop your mailman from putting sugar in your car's gas tank as they deliver the mail? You allow them onto your property after all.

Your bank "could" steal all your money, so keep all your money under your mattress.

It's silly, at some point you have to trust that a company will do what they say they're going to do, until proven otherwise. And this article certainly doesn't prove that ExpressVPN is doing anything untoward, except for hiring someone who used to be a hacker 5-6 years ago.

I think banning reply gifs, one word replies, karma grabs etc. would be a huge improvement over what it's currently like in most subreddits, more space for discussion and no pointless

>Verizon is the worst, DAE agree

>> https://imgur.com/hh382s.gif

>>> oh man I love that show, I wish Fox brought it back

>>>> https://imgur.com/l32ss8.jpg

>>>>>I just lost it

>>>>>>Hope you find it soon.

threads and you have to dig for anything of value.

But it's probably rather hard to enforce.

Does appear to be a camera phone! https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/native-brazilian-man-tupi-guarani-tribe-645997078

> But usually when these things are brought up, it's because they were suspected of gaming Google's algorithms, which is considered criteria for delisting.

Bingo

I can play Bioshock Infinite, Borderlands 2, HL2 and derivatives, and more.

I have a bash shell (I prefer fish); with BSD coreutils; UNIX permissions; multiple desktops (GNOME Shell does it better); Chrome and Firefox; graphics compositing years before Vista; native VNC, SSH, and FDE; PDF output (OMG!); and an update system that doesn't take 2 days and 5 reboots after a fresh install.

OS X is no modern Linux distro, but it blows the pants off of Windows.

If Mullvad haven't been audited, the no log policy isn't worth anything. A lot of VPN companies have advertised no logs only to then leak lots of log, get their servers seized by a government or have to reveal information in court.

And even if they have been audited, the eyes can have gag orders on how and when they're listening into any VPN provider, so even a no-log VPN provider can be compelled to log stuff by their government without disclaiming it. That's why the 14 eyes stuff is important.

Exactly. Firefox isn’t perfect but I’m okay trading a few UX quirks for privacy. Firefox + DuckDuckGo + Mullvad VPN has been my combo of choice for awhile now. Plus, Sync is really useful because I can use Firefox with all of my privacy extensions and settings on my computer at work as well.

ChromeOS has actually changed a lot, beyond this author's description. Offline functionality has been regularly increasing (this is from March, some of the online-only functions mentioned have since become available), and native Android apps are coming to ChromeOS, too.

Well yeah. Ghostery sells the user data they collect (or at least used to?). I use uBlock Origin. Blocks ads, trackers, and malware; and uses less RAM and CPU than adblock plus (which i used before).

Because of this, posted yesterday in /r/tech: http://hackaday.com/2015/11/10/your-unhashable-fingerprints-secure-nothing/

Then somebody learned this, posted in /r/TIL, then someone posted it back to /r/tech.

This is my favorite map when it comes to colors.

https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=14.4193413&amp;y=50.0945102&amp;z=15

Worldwide it uses OSM data, has an android app with offline maps. Really good. But it lacks some Google features of course.

Windows Server does not have the same bloatware installed. For desktop you can already uninstall it using a simple command:

https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-uninstall-and-remove-the-xbox-app-in-windows-10/

My favorite player in terms of features (and free) is Mediamonkey. You can use Winamp plugins with it afaik. The downside is that it's ugly, so if like me, you care about that, Musicbee seems like the middleground between a full featured musicplayer, and something like foobar which can be very pretty. So Musicbee is what I'm using currently, and I really like it.

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

http://getmusicbee.com/

sorry for poor formatting, I don't have RES and forgot how to links.

It is not easy. Thinking it's easy just shows you have no idea.

This isn't 1996. You aren't fighting the cookie on whitehouse.gov, you're fighting the Evercookie served from every CDN you interact with which is also performing passive browser fingerprinting so that it can track you regardless of what IP your connection is coming from.

And then The Man is performing birds-eye surveillance for real time flow inspection with the ability to see through solutions like tor.

I use LastPass though I'm a fairly big open source fanatic.

Here's why:

• LastPass has released a simple, fully offline decryption tool for their blobs. This tool has fairly readable javascript source. This has been reviewed by many security conscious individuals. https://lastpass.com/js/enc.php

• LastPass has always been forthcoming about security and any issues with it in their product and has shown (to my moderate applied cryptography knowledge and to many better known cryptographers) that they have some idea what they're doing.

• Easy magic sync. No thought involved. Can use 2-factor authentication on sign-in too, which could save you in a few attack scenarios.

And here's why I don't use KeePass:

• If I recall correctly, key derivation under KeePass was questionably weak last time I checked. I'll examine this again to check.

• The state of synchronization with KeePass is absolute shit last time I used it

• The lack of browser extensions which work properly on Linux for KeePass made it simply useless to me

EDIT: Verified that bit about KeePass's key derivation. Seems different than last time I saw it, but it uses 6000 iterations of a custom AES-based key derivation function. AES executes extremely fast and most modern processors can perform accelerated AES computation. And they chose this instead of a major standard like PBKDF2 or scrypt... Key derivation fucking matters. Please stick to the well accepted standards in the cryptography community.

LastPass uses PBKDF2, Password Safe (a more secure looking open source solution) uses a method developed by Schneier which looks pretty good, http://www.schneier.com/paper-low-entropy.pdf. Unfortunately, for me, Password Safe is only just now beginning to get Linux support and the browser extension support for it seems non-existant.

http://www.fbpurity.com/news/

FB Purity ("Fluff Busting" after Facebook sent a threatening letter :D) cleans it up even more. No Ice Bucket Challenge, no "What Character are you", no recommended shit etc.)

Because the way it's supposed to work is they replace ads with ones that have been verified for safety and unobtrusivness. They pay the user the money instead of the site and in turn the user turns around and pays sites they choose either a percentage or a per view basis.

Basically the user gains a safer and more secure browsing experience while also rewarding sites they deem quality.

https://brave.com/about_ad_replacement.html

Sadly, I can only contribute business models myself. :(

I'm working on learning network design/terminology (I'm a software guy). The link provided is from my friend's network design course from a community college near Toronto.

Do you mistrust your PDF viewer? It's recommended you don't use Adobe Reader unless you need its obscure features -- and if you do, keep it updated.

An excellent PDF viewer is Evince. It does not have the vulnerabilities of Adobe Reader, because it doesn't use any code from Adobe.

Another thing: it's not the PDF format itself that is dangerous, is the current software that is defective. Other common vector for malware is Flash, Java, and other things a lot of people use but not everybody bother to keep up to date.

Some years ago you could send an image to someone - a regular JPEG - and, when this person opened it with their web browser (or other software using libjpeg) it would execute arbitrary code. Is JPEG dangerous?

Indeed this kind of bug has appeared many times - for example, this bug disclosed in March 2014 affect Microsoft implementations of JPEG in DirectShow, that affects thousands of programs.

and also for mobile,

(only the ones I have personally tested, there are others)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=keepass2android.keepass2android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hanhuy.android.keepshare

Same as this? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1629248706/earin-the-worlds-smallest-wireless-earbuds?ref=email

You can get them from $170. Not sure why it's shown as so much more.

I personally spend a lot on quality headphones and in-ears, but I prefer brands like Sennheiser and AKG.

I am very curious to see how these headphones perform though

It's definitely the kill switch feature.

http://www.cnet.com/news/thieves-now-stealing-fewer-iphones-more-samsungs/

In 2014 when iOS7 introduced activation lock, iPhone thefts dropped while Samsung thefts increased.

You have to look at the bandgaps for silicon (or whatever semiconductor is in the chip), there are quite a few in the visible range (hence monocrystalline silicon solar panels and semiconductor LEDs) and correlate with the Xenon spectrum.

You can read more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9017361

Science doesn't fail, only your knowledge of phenomena :)

(almost by definition, I'd say!)

Consumer reports about ford and top brands

more information

Outdated? Debatable. Get a Ford as long as it's a truck.

Actually, and I just looked this up, Airbnb is collecting and remitting taxes only in these jurisdictions.

PSA! It is collecting telemetry data (Here is the TelemetryManager.js from the extension.) https://hastebin.com/asenapexep.js It is also submitting the full URL of every web page you visit to Microsoft SmartScreen, including the path. Privacy wise that is generally not very good. (Here is BrowserProtection,js, where it submits the URLs https://hastebin.com/azaxuzusov.js)

I recommend installing a Pi-Hole in your home system. It blocks trackers pretty reliably through DNS filtering and redirecting. It works well for Apple devices that don't have hard coded DNS settings like some Android phones do.

https://pi-hole.net/

You can even set your phone to access the Pi-Hole from outside via VPN and route your cellular data traffic through it.

https://www.scaleway.com/en/docs/tutorials/pihole-vpn/

What /u/SpyreFox said.

You can, however, buy a radio that is capable of accessing those higher service bands. Uniden makes some nice ones. https://www.walmart.com/c/kp/police-scanners It is almost entirely pointless now. Almost all city police and ambulance have gone to encrypted communications.

https://www.zipscanners.com/resources/police-scanner-encryption-explained/#.V9W_7pgrLb0

Just as a side bit of knowledge, if you've ever played with 2.4ghz wifi, you make have come across the information that there are 14 wifi channels, but the USA is only allowed to use 1-12. That's because the last two actually can cause interference in the police bands that are just above the USA wifi bands.