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Blocklist-Update.sh

Blocklist-Update.sh is a script that I wrote to manage blocklists from bluetack etc to be used in conjunction with Transmission torrent downloader in Linux/MacOS. The script can be taylored to work with Qbittorrent as well, but the placement of the blocklists means you'd have to redirect the blocklist to go somewhere locally manageable as Transmission uses its own blocklist directory in .config. I believe there are about 10 lists there now. It works well for my needs. It can be ran weekly using crontab in standard user profile.  To download:  blocklist-update.sh To download the others:  Github
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EPISODES OF NOSTALGIA: MICROSOFT WINDOWS 95 THROUGH 7 PT.I

Windows, one of the world’s first major players alongside Apple, a heavy hitter with many advancements to computing. Some would argue that Bill Gates was the visionary and that Apple’s company may have built on what other people started, but that’s politics, it is based solely on opinion and has no place here. Microsoft originally debuted this Operating system in 1995(Codenamed Chicago), 3 years after starting development on it. Microsoft touted it to be a secure and powerful operating system, running on a measly 4MB of RAM, with a low end processor even for the time, but this was to help people transition from an even older and lighter Windows 3.1.

Windows 95 was a monumental release, it rivaled OS/2 directly and even put them in a power struggle for market share. Microsoft Windows 95 was built upon DOS which was a power user desktop at the time, it goes back to before the internet was even a thing. During the reign of Windows 95, Internet explorer 1.0 was released, but it wasn’t initially packaged with the first line of computer models running the operating system. Back in those days Netscape Navigator was really taking off and dominating the market. It was a project under AOL and Mozilla that later lead to the rise of Firefox.

Microsoft Windows 95 also was a step up on using a 32bit architecture. 32Bit cpu’s were a transition back at the time, they were new, not a lot of people had them, computers prior to 95 were still utilizing 16 bit applications etc. Windows 95 would run on 16 bit hardware, but its performance would be rather diminished. Because of the lack of performance, later computer models came out and a new baseline requirement for hardware was 8MB of RAM and 50 plus MB of hard drive space, an 80486 by Intel. 95 featured a primitive form of the modern Window’s Task bar and Start menu as we know them today, but this was later improved and featured in later versions. Windows 95 was discontinued around 2001. 
 

Windows 98 was a successor to the fame and fortune bestowing Microsoft with the inception of Windows 95. Windows 98 wasn’t a huge step forward from 95, but it did have some improvements. Mainly consisting of minor changes, Windows 98(Codenamed Cleveland) was mostly still a hybrid desktop, and still utilizing DOS as a base. Windows 98 was my first experience with Windows software, or any other, we had computer labs in school and before that they were off limits to younger users, I was at least in the second or third grade before I got to go in and use the machines. If memory serves me, it was a good while before my high school upgraded to a new Windows version. 





Windows 98 had a stunning interface, but it was very much like its predecessor Windows 95. Both Windows 95 and 98 used a Monolithic Kernel version. Windows 98 came with mostly under the hood changes, namely driver updates and hardware support. A refresh in the shell and the integrated software packages got a refresh, such as Media Viewer and Internet Explorer. Windows 98 was thought to be unhackable, but that was soon proven wrong. Windows 98 had its bugs. Check out this bug from the website http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-windows-98-bugs-worth-revisiting/
“AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ were quite popular back then. HTML-based chats were also a big deal back when Windows 98 SE first dropped. I remember specifically because I was constantly haunted by a user in a chat room who would private message me one little HTML code that would immediately send me into the Blue Screen of Death: I remember the day, many years later, that I finally read about this Windows 98 bug. It clicked in my head and I immediately thought back to when I was a confused preteen, getting owned over and over by this chat room user. It wasn’t fun. There are always alternative ways to achieve this same effect. You could easily mask a hyperlink and send someone to that file path through an IM client.
CON/CON and AUX/AUX were a nightmare.”
Windows has had its issues ever since. Yeah! Anyways, that concludes this episode of nostalgia. Stay tuned for part 2 where we discuss Windows Me, XP, Vista, and 7.

 I researched using multiple addresses mentioned below:
PS. I also forgot, as of 2015 there was an emulator application which would run Windows 95 in your browser. More about it here:

 

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