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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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OPERA TO INCREASE SECURITY IN BROWSER BY ADDING CRYPTOCURRENCY COUNTERMEASURES.

Opera is the first choice that many think of when they want to get away from the norm. Opera has been around since 1994 and since has brought countless improvements to the browsing experience. Under direction of Jon Von Tetzchner and his team, the browser added tab stacking, extensions, mouse gestures, and security enhancements before not seen by browser software and some which weren’t seen until Chrome in 2008. Opera also brought CSS support. It was the first to offer this. CSS allows website developers use something other than javascript to make their sites look pretty. It allows for control of text and background color on a page. It also handles font size for people who want to add a little something more than just bland HTML to their page.

Opera was at the forefront for many years and then it just kinda slacked off. That is where Vivaldi came in, however, Vivaldi didn’t really produce an actual browser until around April of 2016. Vivaldi did add features that Opera 12 had which they long forgot. Vivaldi uses the chromium engine, much like Opera, but they want to revive the old Opera 12 browsing experience. The reason for using the Chromium engine is because it is an incredibly pain-staking task to invent a new browser engine from scratch and Vivaldi’s team wanted to focus more on usability, functionality and features over reinventing the wheel. They therefore used the fastest engine they could find still being supported. Like Vivaldi, Opera did promise a web mail client coming shortly, but no one has heard anything new on that concept. Vivaldi on the other hand. Vivaldi has a community site, a blog site for bloggers and a fully functioning web mail client.

But enough of a comparison, the news is about cryptocurrency mining and countermeasures that Opera is putting in place in their built in ad blocker. That’s right, the Opera team are giving you another reason to use their browser and their ad blocker. They are adding a list of currently known currency mining operations on the web. This list will block scripts from those sites. You can read more about it on their desktop blog site. http://blogs.opera.com/desktop/2017/12/opera-50-beta-rc-cryptocurrency-mining-protection/

The Company may seem stagnant, but they are at the forefront of security and efficiency in their code now. The Opera team work with Google to try and improve their chromium engine for better memory and CPU consumption as well. Opera is fast, blindingly fast and offers a neat and organized browsing experience in a clean interface. If you want a really good browser that is stable, Opera is the place to be right now. Currency mining is only one of the things that the team are working on, you can find more at their security blog:

 While Vivaldi is coming along very nice with new user features, Opera is paving the way with security fixes and improvements to speed.  

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