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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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MANJARO 18.0 VIVALDI 1.16

Manjaro has a new stable update on the way. Some things I liked about the beta build of this release, it’s smooth and fast. Everything seems to work out of the box. The biggest gripe I can say, the themes. Now I haven’t done a lot of extensive testing with 18.0 as of late, lots of sidetracking going on. I did find a few quirks getting my scripts up and running in the live version if I recall. I have been noticing a lot of troublesome updates in my testing branch from updates on the way to 18.0. The current version is still 17.1.0 and most of the changes I believe are more under the hood than aesthetics. There appears to be a lot of library and driver support updates on the way. Pam and Pinentry recently updated in testing which has been giving me a fit. Each time I play video on VLC something throws me back to the login screen at random. One system had VLC totally stop working. My solution was to revert to a more modest player on both systems at this time. Parole Media player works flawlessly and is at version 1.0.1 at time of writing in Manjaro. The new main theme in Manjaro 18.0 xfce will be an augmented version of Adapta. Adapta is a theme already in use by the Mate version of Manjaro, a community build. Adapta has a nice, clean look and feel, however, getting the right amount of transparency is key with that theme, especially the dark version. Other Oses use the theme as well, however, it still doesn’t work well with all desktops. I personally think the new theme is a good choice, however, I don’t know if it’s quite ready for prime-time. We shall soon see. I will do more testing, but I’m still hopeful for the final release. A link to try the new build of Manjaro is here.

Other news sees Vivaldi switching its base from 65 to version 67 of Chromium’s engine. The Vivaldi browser since its inception has used Blink. Blink is an off-shoot of Webkit which was made popular by Safari. Vivaldi snapshot is well on the way to a final, but there are still some bugs they wanna get worked out. Most of these are just minor crashes and regressions from previous releases. Vivaldi snapshot is at 1.16 and includes syncing and a more aesthetically pleasing appearance in themes. Chrome has recently started to block ads from a number of sources including, but not limited to, google ads. Their reasoning was that user experience comes before profit for them. Google’s choice to block such ads is a real game changer for the browser industry, it’s surprising there is not more talk of it than there is. This has an impact on Vivaldi and Opera as well. More on that in another article, however, I do think it’s interesting to see it from the perspective of a Vivaldi user. Mostly security updates have been applied. The syncing feature will need more time and work before it will be fully capable and ready for stable. They are planning to add the ability to sync browser and website data settings to the cloud soon. You can find the latest snapshot here.

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