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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

WHY DID YOU DO IT FIREFOX??! WHYYYYYYY!!!!!!!

In the wake of the recent uprising about the fate of net neutrality now hanging in the balance, Firefox is kind of the go to browser with a company that touts itself as being at the forefront, standing behind it. Firefox has indeed made great strides when it comes to privacy. Tor is based on Firefox. In the Linux world, there really are a few good browsers that work best on low end devices, these pieces of software are relatively secure and do allow for private browsing. All these browsers keep your data local, which is a good thing when you are worried about net neutrality in general. Nevertheless, Firefox is still championing user privacy on the net as a whole. 

The latest scandal is based on Firefox, a nonprofit, being bailed out essentially. Now everyone believes that they have taken that to their heads to begin creating a filter to stop what they deem to be "Fake News". As of yet, it is unclear as to what constitutes fake news in this new filter, nor has anything been mentioned as to how they are going to accumulate such a wide range of fake news sites in the first place. This could have massive implications, if Mozilla uses bias to collect these sites and then filter them, it would mean that the world would only be left with Mozilla's views. On the other hand, if implemented correctly and without bias, Mozilla could silence a lot of biased propaganda news sources and in return leave a much cleaner web with fewer of its users dangling from the big, bad clickbaited hook that snags so many innocent individuals every day. 

As to the question of whether or not Firefox is still a reputable company, for the moment, I believe so, but it's totally up to you the user to make the final decision of what window you see your content through. Google has already proven that they are rather shady with data collection and the like. Hopefully, there will be more choices in up coming months. As for now, if you must have a fork, the best and most usable one I can recommend at this time is Pale Moon. http://www.palemoon.org/ Pale Moon is a solid browser built off of the older interface of Firefox, using roughly version 24 and staying XUL, XPCOM compatible. It uses Goanna(Fork of Gecko) that is very reliable. As for a fork for Chrome, Qupzilla is a light, basic, speedy browser that uses QTWebengine, originally it used webkit to render websites, which was the pre-Chrome, Safari version of rendering engine, but since has been facelifted multiple times, it is shaping to be a stable browser.

Finally, I'd like to ask you to not give up so readily on Firefox, They are doing a lot of great things for Open Source as a whole. Their contributions will be remembered, but why not keep it alive? I'd say give them another chance. I'm still unconvinced that this is a completely bad idea.

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