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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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Noscript not working in Firefox 57 Quantum

As with any new chapter in a revamped piece of software's life, something breaks. Recently, Firefox updated to the latest version 57, which offers users a completely reworked UI, several speed enhancements and overall a more streamlined feel. The program's release was a milestone, not since 1.0 has the program gotten such a facelift with over 6 million lines of code tweaked and changed. Mozilla mentioned removing hundreds of bugs which slowed down the browser in the prior 56  release alone. With the code cleanup, they did a complete redesign of the icon style. Sadly, they also changed the extensions api over from XUL to WEBEX, that means that policeman, and many other content blocking extensions might not work anymore, it also means that flash is slowly becoming deprecated in the browser as well. What's more, Firefox will no longer support classic theme restorer etc. The lead developer of Noscript mentioned on his site https://noscript.net/ that he was hard working on finishing Noscript 10, the newest edition in a pretty large history of the extension. Giorgio Maone not only wrote Noscript, but at one time he was key in working with Firefox developers on the browser itself. He also had the opportunity to work with them yet again on the new apis for the extensions. He claims that he wants extensions to be more universal across browsers. He claims that Noscript should be ready by the end of the week, however, this means that he now has to maintain two separate extensions until June 2018. Tor uses an old ESR codebase from Firefox and thus uses the hybrid series of the extension. Browsers like Palemoon and Waterfox use this version as well. While Firefox Quantum is a very good release, the extensions transition wasn't well thought out on the part of the team. Many developers were not ready and aren't ready now. In the next day or so we should know more about the fate of Noscript, but for now, Firefox offers a replacement, the extension Umatrix, developed by Raymond Hill. Umatrix uses hosts files and a few other built in privacy features to help  block scripts and tracking cookies. Firefox already has tracking protection, however, this might be an improvement to that. Umatrix doesn't have clickjacking protection at the moment.

UPDATE: Noscript was recently released for Firefox 57. The interface is brand new, there are no viewable options for temporarily allowing a site at first glance, but toggling on the clock icon in the desired preset seems to work. Noscript now comes with a simple white interface with a four preset toggles. Each toggle allows the user to customize the underlying settings of the toggle for that particular page. Giorgio Maone has stated that more editions to the backend will becoming in the following weeks, including ABE and Clearclick. As of now, the Noscript icon appears very similar to the one before it, however at first visit to a site, you may notice that sometimes it shows a question mark, this is because Noscript doesn't already have the site white listed yet. Noscript 10.1.1 seems to be way more fine grained than the average user is used to, but overall, it's a definite refresh and I think the user could get used to this if given a few days to poke around. One more thing you'll notice after installing, you no longer need to restart the browser. 
This is the new UI as seen from within Firefox 57. As you can see I've already blacklisted a few sites from the preconfigured white list. With any luck we will see even more control added to the extension by the end of next week! https://noscript.net/

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