Archive for the ‘Public service announcements’ Category

Because i truly believe that what we are doing on the Internet is no one’s business, whether we have something to hide or not, i support the use of SSL on as many websites as possible, so it’s only logical that i try to have a working ssl version of my blog.

So what is this SSL thing about?

For the non geeks amongst us, when you or i browse websites, every information i send and receive from said website travel in “plain text” format, which means that anyone that is relaying this piece of information from me to it’s destination, and vice verse can very easily see what websites i am looking at or what keywords i entered on google.

When you use an SSL website (if the URL starts with “https://” instead of “http://” the information are encrypted both ways between you and the website you are visiting.

That means that, yes your ISP may know that you are connecting to this, or that computer, they know you are probably visiting a website, but they cannot see what you are doing.

This is used by many online shops and online banking systems, usually everything involving sums of money is secured through SSL.

Why does it matter?

Because it shouldn’t be limited to this! Many governments are starting to complain about the rise in encrypted communications.

Saudi Arabia was about to ban Blackberry cellphones because they couldn’t easily access the encrypted information between Blackberry cellphones and RIM’s servers.

Google started a new beta service where you can connect to them and perform searches in https (  ), it doesn’t offer yet all the the common functions like image search but it’s already a nice step forward.

https://encrypted.google.com

The bottom line is that as surveillance systems become faster and more efficient, it is vital in order to keep our freedom that we use the tools that are available today to protect ourselves. If SSL browsing (and encrypted communications in general) becomes more widespread it will make general surveillance nearly impossible.

This is a thing that really agravate me, the proliferation of “i like it” buttons and comment windows that ask me to log on facebook, or simply websites that use your facebook session to log you in.

So here is a cure, for those who use any ad blocker compatible with AdblockPlus rules (AdThwart on chrome) simply add the following custom rules:

||*.facebook.*^$domain=~facebook.com|~127.0.0.1
||facebook.com/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net
||facebook.net/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbc
||fbcdn.com/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.netdn.net
||fbcdn.net/*$domain=~facebook.com|~facebook.net|~fbcdn.com|~fbcdn.net

Those rules will tell your navigator to block anything coming from facebook’s hosts, unless you are actually visiting facebook.

I just got this new keyboard working and have been making a few shortcuts triggered by key combinations, like ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12 and the like, and here are a few things I learned that should help everyone doing those kind of things.

1. The key combo you chose for your shortcut WONT work, or won’t be reloaded on next reboot unless it is sitting in specific folders, like the Start menu folder.
2. Shortcuts called with key combinations are unexplicably SLOW to start for some reason. But there is an easy fix to this:

The fix for Custom keyboard shortcuts slowness:

• Open the registry editor Start > Run > Regedit.exe
• navigate to the following key:

HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Session Manager

• right click and choose: New Value > Dword
• Name the new value “SafeDllSearchMode”
• Set it’s value to 1
• Reboot

This fix should remove most of the lag you experience when executing a custom keyboard shortcut.