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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 BROWSER REVIEW

Opera browser, a product of Opera Software, a subsidiary of Otella based in Norway, is the chromium-based browser that has built in features such as ad blocking, free VPN, memory improvements over Chrome itself and wallpapers and a light and dark theme pre-configured. Opera browser has been around for a long time. It started its life around 1994. Opera was co-founded by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, an Icelandic born programmer living in Norway at the time. Under the direction of Jon and his colleagues, Opera built some amazing features into their software such as; Tabbed browsing, fraud and phishing protection, bookmarks bar and many other features that the competition at the time simply didn’t have. Opera was very fast and it accomplished much of this thanks to the founding company’s own in-house Presto engine. Opera used Presto up to version 12 then dropped the engine in favor of a pre-built Web kit engine which was of similar fashion to what Google Chrome was using. Later on Web kit became Blink and now you can say that both browsers utilize their own “Blink Drive”(Witty Dark Matter reference that no one gets).

Opera works closely with Google as stated in their blogs. They try to help improve memory consumption within the Blink engine as this effects them as well. Another favorite browser of mine that uses this engine is Vivaldi. Like Vivaldi, Opera was a pioneer in many things during the 90’s and up. They’ve always paid attention to detail and had a sleek design. The interface is pretty straight forward. The developers don’t throw everything at you up front, but under the settings menu, you have a whole multitude of features and extras. At first glance as of Opera v. 50, the interface looks modern, it has a mellow, clear-looks style theme with a side-panel which holds Facebook web and Whatsapp messenger for web by default. It is configurable under settings and you can even unpin the panel and get rid of it if you want to, however, when opening a new tab page, the panel still shows up. Opera has two themes as of right now, a light theme(on by default) and a dark theme. Opera also comes with a multitude of start page wallpapers for you to choose from.

Opera browser loads pages almost instantaneously even in comparison with Chrome. I noticed a slight lag upon opening the browser, however, this quickly went away and is most likely part of the design(Noticed this in Vivaldi also, but Vivaldi might take a second longer to open). Opera is roughly on par with Chrome in regards to codecs support in Windows and also Linux, assuming you install the extra codecs package. Opera and Vivaldi scored about the same on my own Acid 3 test. Opera has been shown to use less memory than Chrome and others in popular Benchmark tests in the past(Note that the Acid 3 test and many others aren’t end-all-be-all in testing. It is important to do your own tests on your own hardware to get results privy to you). Opera has versions for Windows, Linux and Mac. There is also an Android and iPhone app. Opera 7 is even available for users of older, non-smart phones. Opera strives to use less bandwidth and resources overall on each version. Opera is also able to use almost all extensions that Chrome can, however, it has its own web store. The Ad blocker started small but has grown into a full fledged ad blocking application inside the browser. Opera uses Easy list, Easy Privacy, Malware domains and no coin to name a few. The company behind the browser had recently moved their VPN service over to their own servers, thus cutting costs and making it faster and more reliable to end users. Opera Turbo is another feature in Opera’s arsenal that increases browsing speeds on HTTP sites. It does this by directing traffic through Opera’s own servers to attempt to compress the webpage.

 Overall, I’m very happy with this browser. I like how far they have come and where they are heading. For now, it’s still not enough to pull me away from Vivaldi, nevertheless, they are an excellent choice for someone trying to ditch Chrome.

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