Skip to main content

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
Post a Comment

BRAVE BROWSER REVIEW AND FEATURES

 Using Brave for over a week now, I can safely say that this browser is one of the best open sourced pieces of software for viewing the web that I have ever used. It’s lightning fast and is pre-configured for people who are new to the internet or are wanting to learn bit currency. Brave uses BAT tokens to pay both creators and users alike with a Brave Rewards feature that can be set to automatically contribute to preferred creators while using the users’ wallets. Brave browser strips advertising scripts and trackers from web pages, but with rewards enabled, will occasionally send you ad notifications in the browser itself which when clicked will take you to a page for that ad and will add BAT tokens to your account. Brave has recently released their sync 2.0 which is touted to be much more comprehensive than their older synchronization function. This sync now allows users to sync not only bookmarks, but also history and passwords as well. Brave doesn’t use google synchronization as it uses a block chain style sync. This is unique to Brave as it only syncs data to various instances of the Brave browser and it is not stored on outside servers. This sync data is protected though as it uses keywords as a sort of passphrase. Brave also makes use of QR codes for sync and wallet features. Brave seems to start faster than regular Chrome which shares an open source back end with the browser. Braver runs marginally faster when surfing due to the ability to save bandwidth and time with a built in ad blocking extension that eliminates connection to ads and trackers on a site in a more efficient way than using third-party extensions. This built-in feature also allows for custom rules and rules used by the other extensions, however, by default it is not reliant on those rule-sets. The top-sites feature also has a sub-feature which allows users to get paid for seeing sponsored images. This is easily turned off under the customization button in the new tab page. Brave offers a built-in dark mode theme much like Firefox and unlike Chrome or Chromium. While this might have used to be dependent on system theming it appears to be an independent feature now. I am currently using Brave 1.13 which may or may not be the exact version when you read this. Brave prevents certain kinds of fingerprinting by randomizing your user agent elements on pages that are known to fingerprint. Brave shields has multiple layers of protection from standard to aggressive for both fingerprinting and ad blocking which might break some sites if set to the aggressive setting. Brave also provides quick access to a tor window if you’re so inclined, however, this is still a work in progress and does not fully anonymize you as would be the case in Tor Browser Bundle. At the moment, Brave prioritizes most of its security and privacy through the use of its shield function, however, you can still go into settings>privacy and security>site settings and change permissions for sites. All in all, I am impressed with this application. While Brave does use the Chromium engine, it is fully open source and functional. However, BraveSoftware is protective of its trademark name. The Brave browser provides many features that new users would love to have in other browsers. I will continue using it to see if it continues to improve, but my thoughts are good about this application. The Brave website will be linked below.


Get Brave Here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NOSCRIPT CONFIGURATION FOR PALE MOON SPECIFICALLY

I wrote an article before about making Pale Moon more private. I covered a few of the settings and back end changes I make each time I install it. I mentioned Noscript, but I didn’t give any details about how I set it up. First though, you have to get the version already marked for your version of “Firefox” or in this case, Pale Moon. If you went to https://addons.palemoon.org/addon/noscript/ you would probably find the Pale Moon addons page devoted to the newest possible Noscript being marked specifically for Pale Moon. Other versions may work, but these are hybrid addons and the closer we get to Noscript 10, the less I trust it to work with Pale Moon specifically. I just opt to stick with 5.0.6. There have been people asking about what happens when Maone, the developer stops supporting the hybrid versions of Noscript, “Will it work with Pale Moon?” Why yes it will. Noscript blocks scripts, that’s its main function and it will do that as long as Java script exists on a page. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SSD PARTITION ALIGNMENT

I was searching for more information regarding SSDs last night as that is what I now use, I found an interesting little tip that most users will never have to worry about, but people using Arch Linux, Manjaro or Windows that was cloned from another drive may want to consider checking this. The Partition manager within Linux normally takes good care to ensure that you have some free space to be used by the SSD in the event that a cell becomes worn out or corrupted. Also, Linux generally ensures that a proper amount of unallocated drive space is set aside preceeding the partition. However, on my own image of Manjaro, I discovered that this was not the case. The partition was “out of alignment”. To fix this situation, I found an article on  Lifehacker that went into instructional detail about how to solve this from a live environment or an image of Gparted . Gparted is a separate live environment of Linux that is based on Debian and uses Gparted as the main tool to manage...
Post a Comment
Read more

PALE MOON PRIVACY SETUP

I did a review of Pale Moon back when 27.6.2 came out in linux. I had mostly great things to say about the browser then and my feelings towards it have not changed. Pale Moon is a very useful tool for scowering the net. It has privacy at its core with a few implementations made by Moonchild, the lead developer, built in. I also mentioned the point that Pale Moon has a canvas poisoning feature in the backend, however, I wasn’t very clear about how to turn it on. I thought in this tutorial, I’d show with a series of screen shots, some of the useful settings and preferences that I change to make Pale Moon a bit more private. I also thought I’d take this time to rant a little more about some of the not so savory issues with Firefox which have recently come under scrutiny by various people in the the Linux world. First order of business, if you haven’t heard, Mozilla recently added an extension into their browser which gave people ads. That’s right, they were ads for a specific t...
Post a Comment
Read more