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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

Update for all things Firefox

Having criticized Firefox in the past, I realize how this might sound coming from me. I have recently tested the new Firefox 57. I have to say, I am really digging the sleek, flat look, the dark theme set to compact, the layout of the menu, the customization page now has more items you can throw onto your toolbar. The speed, it's quickly replacing chromium for me. An issue many users might face, it might not be available for you for a few days in linux, depending upon your distribution's package maintainers. I am currently still in Manjaro 17.1pre2 Hakoila. As of yet, the latest package has not dripped down into the repos, so I had to improvise. You can download the tarball at Mozilla, the website recognizes what platform you are using. From there you have to cd into the Downloads folder from your terminal as in: cd ~/Downloads/, once there, you will find the tarball listed by doing a ls. To untar this file, you have to type tar -xvf $filename into the terminal and that should do it, once done, you can move it to your home folder and cd into the firefox folder and type ./firefox, or you can sudo mv firefox /opt/ and from there create a symbolic link from that directory to /usr/bin/firefox. Having done all of this you can now use the app finder to run firefox from that command, providing you don't already have firefox installed, if you do, then you would link it to /usr/bin/firefox-new and search for it in the app finder as before. To create a symbolic link, you have to type sudo ln -s /opt/firefox/firefox /usr/bin/firefox(new). Once Firefox is opened, you'll notice that many extensions were moved to the Legacy extensions tab, don't worry, a few will be updated in the coming week or so, others will have replacements. With the new Firefox, you get better privacy control, more control over preferences, and more features, now Pocket is almost integrated seamlessly into the browser. Pocket is there for people who have a ton of bookmarks, they can move them to the cloud by saving them to pocket. Users also have a new screenshot tool which was there in the previous version, but it's worth a mention as it is still fairly new. Firefox's new preferences layout also include upfront controls for location, camera, microphone, etc, however, my biggest gripe is that they have not added the old script blocking feature into the browser. Script blocking was a very useful feature back when Firefox was young, it wasn't as trending as it is now, but it did help when sites were hogging cpu and memory needlessly. Anyways, the new Firefox has really impressed me having installed it only yesterday. I am sure that like with all other versions, there will be a bug fix in the next week or so, but as for now, I have yet to find one.

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