Do you remember what it was like before the internet? If you’re reading this, I bet that there’s a pretty good chance that you don’t, and I may as well be asking, “Do you remember a Land Before Time?” I remeber a time before the internet, I remember when planning a night out with friends…
Category: tech
Anything technological (soft or hardware). This includes all topics open source: Apache web-serving, Drupal, Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Dreams of Electric Golden Sheep!
In 2012, Ubuntu, a very popular Linux desktop distribution, decided to strike the beautiful Electric Sheep screen saver program from it’s repositories (think app store), apparently because of some licensing issue or other. This decision also followed a philosophy of “fat trimming”, striking screen savers and other unnecessary bloat from the default set of installed programs, as users no longer needed…
Giving back to Tor: How to run a relay server
E Pluribus Unum Magnum Cepa Tor, or The Onion Router, is the software equivalent of an iron clad shield to the 1st amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. It protects user anonymity and privacy, allows a user to access hidden, deeply secure, and secretive parts of the internet, and allows website owners to operate…
Tor, what is it good for?
What is it good for? A whistleblower, journalist, or blogger in a hostile environment, a hostage or victim of human trafficking; those dominated, vulnerable, marginalized, propagandized, and all those generally in need of a way to speak out or seek out, to cry out maybe for the sake of their very lives… all of these folks need the same critical thing: a voice. They all…
Passwords no more: Client Side SSL authentication the easy way
Passwords, difficult to remember, difficult to remember to change, so much so that companies like Google, Mozilla, and Last Pass are always devising ways to help us keep track of them. Always subject to being hacked due to password weakness, insecure connections, or data breaches, they represent as much a security failure as they…
Let’s Encrypt The Web: Safeguarding internet privacy with free, trusted SSL
It’s not uncommon for modern computer users to run a home server, or for hobbyists or enthusiasts to purchase an affordable VPS and run apps for a Personal Cloud. With great apps like the Ampache media server, and platforms like Own Cloud, this is easier than ever, and an ever more attractive an option. If this is…
Ubuntu Dreams of Electric Sheep…
There is an updated version of this post here In 2012, Ubuntu, a very popular Linux desktop distribution, decided to strike the beautiful Electric Sheep screen saver program from it’s repositories (think app store), apparently because of some licensing issue or other. This decision followed a philosophy of “fat trimming”, striking screen savers and other unnecessary bloat from the default set of…
Damn the internet blockades! Run your own Private Proxy server with Seamless Authentication
Paying attention to the news, and to certain types of legislation that are constantly being passed around, it becomes more and more obvious that we people might want to secure our internet usage form prying eyes. I am a big proponent of privacy and security, and of just people keeping their nose out of other people’s…
Fancy 403: Ban them All!
Lot’s of tech savvy computer users these days have figured out how to set up a home server to act as a file server, a streaming media server, a legitimate web-site server, a proxy server, and any number of other case sues. Surely, having access to your home computer, akin to your own personal “cloud”, while…
SOCKS5 Proxy in Ubuntu 14.04: mystery no more!
Secure Your Internet Traffic on Ubuntu 14.04 with a SOCKS proxy (it’s easier than you think!) In this day and age, we use our computers for everything from banking and bills to searching for love, trolling our friends on social media sites, and even telling our deepest secrets to our most trusted allies. We trust our…