Like: Why I’m done with Chrome – A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering

This is quite an important thing, with big implications on privacy for Chrome users.

Bookmark: WikiMatrix - Compare them all

This is a handy site that lets you look up all the features of hundreds of wiki scripts, plus you can compare with others side by side.  Helps you figure out what is best for you.

This was also posted to /en/web.

via Million Short - What haven’t you found?

This is a search engine that lets you  dig deeper into the search results.  It lets you exclude the top 100 to 1 million most popular search results, getting you into the deep meat of the web.  The Wikipedia page on Million Short is also of interest.

I really like this!  Note, they seem to be using their own crawler, this could get even more interesting in the future.

Source: by Hope.  Thanks!

This was also posted to /en/search-engines.

I’ve built a lot of different niche web directories over the years.  Frankly there are some that I have forgotten about.  But here are some highlights.

Planet Doom - 2001 - 2005 this was my first directory/portal.  I learned a lot operating it and it had quite a lot of traffic.  At the time, Google was pretty poor at delivering results for niche searches so they would often put niche directory categories in their SERPs.  In effect they would “hand off” the search to the specialists.  As Google got better at it they moved away from featuring niche directories in the results.  Template - custom. Logo - custom both by Lynne Scott.

I went with Scifi/Fantasy/Horror in order to make myself a little different from most of my competition who were doing just Scifi and Fantasy.  Doing all three never was a good fit.

This is the directory that got carpet bombed by Google after my host, Searchking.com, sued Google.

Scifimatter.com - 2003 - 2012  Once it became clear that Google would never send traffic to Planet Doom (above) ever again, I took the backup database from Planet Doom, discarded the Horror listings and created Scifimatter.  The earliest version used a free version of the Gossamer Threads script which had a flat file database.  Later versions (pictured) used WSNLinks, if I remember right.  At various times this directory offered webring hosting and banner exchanges for webmasters.  By about 2008 it became clear that directories had had their day.  I stubbornly hung on to this neglected site until 2012 when I finally pulled the plug.  This was my favorite.  Template - off the shelf.

Shadowdark.org - This was a catchall domain.  From it I ran lots of different perl and php scripts on subdomains to save some hosting fees.  The sites were of all sorts of genres.  Three directories stand out and are listed below.

Planet Doom II -  experimenting, I revived the Planet Doom name as a Horror, Dark Fantasy and Scifi Monster Directory.  I used the free version of Fluid Dynamics Search Engine which worked pretty good for search but was hard to administer. The categories are fake, if you hover over a category you see it triggers a search engine search.  It did okay but was never super popular.  Ironically, today, using a site search engine script, something like this might make a better niche directory than a directory script.  PD II might have been ahead of it’s time.  Template - off the shelf.

The Ring Codex - I rushed this out to take advantage of all the hype about Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies which were forthcoming with fevered anticipation.  I used a free version of the Gossamer Threads perl script.  Codex had a lot of people using it.  I should have spent more effort on promotion and building the index.  The script had no captcha protection on the Add URL form so it eventually attracted automated spam submissions.  I think at one point I was manually deleting, one at a time, 200 spam submissions a day, with very few legit submissions.  Rather than spend money on upgrades, I closed it down.  Template - off the shelf.

Spy Fiction Guide - I was getting burned out on SF/F/H,  but espionage fiction had always been a favorite genre of mine.  With the fall of the Berlin Wall and eventual collapse of the USSR the spy genre seemed to be dying out. So this was sort of a labor of love on my part to keep the genre alive.  It was never wildly popular but I had fun.

The index of most of these were built by me using a dial-up internet connection which was a very time consuming process.  Niche directories were at their best when people were still building serious websites on Geocities, Tripod, Angelfire and the other free web hosts.

If you have read this far, I thank you.  This post was an itch I had to get out of my system.

This was also posted to /en/linking.

Like: Leaving Apple & Google: /e/ first beta is here! – Hacker Noon

I just reread the above article for the second time, this time more carefully.  Then I went back and read the older posts about this project that are linked to in the article, and I strongly suggest you read all of them too.

I think this is on the right track.

1. /e/ is a fork of Android, already well established in mobile.
2. They are including making their own private cloud services (mail, calendar, storage, maps, notes, etc.)  This is key, because they recognize that it does little good to make a secure OS and hardware if all the services you use are still tracking you.  That is not private.  By providing these services they can make a more seamless, one login, operation that mainstream users are accustomed too.  With cloud services it also makes you data available on your PC and other devices.
3. They are developing their own app  store/repository (like Play) so that there will be a lot of free apps available.  I have a caution here: I expect Google will quietly maneuver to pressure Android app designers to make their apps exclusive on Google’s Play store and freeze out /e/.  But even so, there will likely be a lot of apps available.
4. I have learned by my own experience, that for many things you don’t really need a smartphone app: I actually prefer Facebook and Twitter on my phone browser better than the apps.  Less chance to spy on you if you are not using the app.  But this makes the choice of default browser a key decision - it had better be good.
5. They are making progress at a much faster pace than I anticipated. This is very good news.
6. They fully intend to find an OEM, manufacture and sell new phones with this /e/ OS fully installed.  This is vital for mainstream adoption.

I like the Librem 5 approach to hardware.  I like Linux being adapted to smartphones.  There are two weaknesses that the Librem does not address:

• Those cloud services we have been talking about.  You can have the most secure phone in the world but if you are still using Gmail, Calendar, Dropbox and Yahoo, than your data can be scanned and your privacy is compromised.
• Very few apps.  The Librem will ship with bare bones apps (browser, email, messaging, calendar, notes).  You will be dependent on the browser for web apps.  Unless the Linux community jumps in and starts developing Linux phone apps quickly this will hinder mainstream adoption.  This could make or break the Librem.

Source: Excursions.

This was also posted to /en/privacy.

The smartphone scams. Android won’t let you uninstall any of the core Google apps. So they are all still there hogging up memory even if you find a replacement.

Meanwhile in AppleLand every new generation of iPhone uses a different SIM so you can’t swap out your SIM card between phones. Sorta like MSWord changing their .doc format all the time. It’s a form of lockin, of DRM.

A pox upon both of them.

I got an email from my auto insurance agent, saying I can get a discount by letting the insurance company put a GPS tracker in my car for 90 days, and based on the results I might qualify for even more discounts.

As someone who strongly objects to all the tracking Facebook, Twitter, Google and every man and his dog do with my phone, I think I will turn her down.  I didn’t even have to think about it.

It just seems to me corporations want to know too much about us.  That needs to change.

Also I need to ditch this Android phone.

Like: Forget the new iPhones, Apple’s best product is now privacy

I have to admit, from a privacy angle you are better off with an iPhone over Android.  There is no way to make an Android phone secure from Google’s all seeing eye. Shame on them.  We really need more choices in phones and operating systems.

Like: NewsNow.co.uk > The UK’s #1 news portal

Don’t let the “UK” in the tag line fool you, while the UK is covered in the most depth the US and the rest of the world are also covered in massive detail along with subject and industry sectors.  Every 5 minutes, 365 days a year, 24/7 the Newsnow.co.uk  news aggregator relentlessly updates thousands of topics for the latest breaking news.  So if you want the latest commentary on Apple news, Android smartphones or crucial, breathless, breaking, Kardashian  butt-lift news you can find it all here.

This is the “Big Fire Hose” of RSS news feeds, but unlike Twitter NewsNow is organized, directory like, by subject so you can get news not only about smartphones but Nokia smartphones at that.  You can also search the index.  This is an awesome demonstration of the power of RSS.

Fair Warning: major rabbit hole here.

via Epic Privacy Browser, a secure chromium-based web browser that protects your privacy and browsing history | a free VPN privacy browser

With Epic you are always in Private Browsing mode.  No history and it blocks tracking cookies.  The big thing that makes it different from other browsers with private browsing is that it has a free VPN so your ISP can’t track your browsing.  I like that.

I wouldn’t make it my daily browser because I like having history and login details, but if I was traveling or on an open wifi network I’d use Epic.

We are down to just two operating systems for mobile phones (tablets too) Android and iOS.

Android is controlled by Google, no OEM phone maker that wants to do business globally will defy Google and try and fork it.  Android and a lot of the most popular apps tells Google everything it can about you and your every move.  In otherwords it leaks your privacy out like a sieve.

iOS is proprietary from Apple.  It’s a walled garden.  You do it Apple’s way or STFU.  It is probably more private than Android.  And it works.

That’s it. No other choices.

Long term the only other chances for a mobile OS come from Linux and here are the ones I’m aware of.

Sailfish - spun off from Nokia’s flirtation with Linux, this one does not seem to be gaining traction.  And it seems like the US is always being left out of release plans.  No OEM has adopted it. You can download it and try and install it on a couple of old model compatible phones.

KDE Plasma Mobile - it’s hard to tell how far along this Linux based OS is.  The screen shots are nice. (See notes for Librem 5 below.)

UBports Ubuntu Touch - This community effort seems to be making big strides.  When Ubuntu gave up on Ubuntu Mobile they turned it over to a volunteer community UBports who have been working away ever since.  It comes with a couple hundred apps and web apps, plus anything that the browser can handle.  If I were a phone OEM, I’d have my eye on this.  You can download this now and install it on several old model phones.  Some have an installation wizard.  (See notes for Librem 5 below.)

Puri.sm Librem 5 - this is actually a real phone hardware not just an OS.  The OS is Linux adapted to mobile.  The last I heard, the plan is that the Librem 5 will come with Purism’s mobile OS installed by default, but it will be fully compatible with UBports Touch and Plasma Mobile.  No word on how easy it will be to install any one of these.  Launch has been delayed from January 2019 to April 2019.  I’m hoping this is the point of the spear and proves very successful so that other OEM’s become interested in Linux phones.

Linux needs to get into mobile where all the growth is.  It can’t just stay on the desktop.  There may be others but these seem to be the furthest along.

Let me define this: Independent means not controlled by corporate or political masters. Unbiased means they don’t take sides with either the Right or the Left but state the facts.

I’m asking YOU. Whoever is reading this: What are the good, independent, unbiased, news sources?  I realized today I’m not sure anymore so I thought I would step outside my own little bubble and ask.  These could be any kind of news: news news, tech news, political news, international news, weird news, etc.  These can be big sites or news blogs. Who should I be paying attention too?

Feel free to use the comments below.

This is a follow on of: Let Us Build a New Web, so you might want to start with that.

Here I want to talk about expanding beyond a static site or just a blog.  For most of these I think I would probably also have a blog just because it’s easy to post updates and announcements on one.

Website Ideas:

You can use one for group journal type role play.  I have always wanted to use a wiki for world building for table-top RPG’s like D&D, CoC, Metamorphosis Alpha and/or Traveler.

Knowledge Base - a KB is great for making a detailed manual.  You see a lot of knowledge bases used in software support.  Here is an example for WSNLinks.

So if you have some detailed, step-by-step knowledge you want to share, a knowledge base might be perfect.

Some KB ideas: how to paint RPG miniatures, naval miniatures wargame rules,  table-top RPG rules manual, any kind of howto guide.

Directory - I’ll talk about two variants, there are more but I’ll stick with two for now.  1. Links Directories and 2. Business Directories.  Links Directories are collections of hyperlinks to websites (ie. Yahoo started out as a links directory.) Business Directories, may or may not have hyperlinks, but they generally list the name, address, phone number and hours of operation of a business.  Most include a map showing the business location (ie. Yelp, and the online Yellow Pages.)

1. Links Directory - this could be something as simple as using a directory for hosting your own bookmarks.  (ie. back in the day I knew someone who had a “Cool Directory” which was anything he thought was cool.  Basically his bookmarks.)  Make a topical directory, links to websites about a topic you are passionate about. (A cause, hobby, science fiction, anime, comics, etc.)  I do think that a blog compliments a directory well.  It gives the directory owner a voice.
2. Business Directory - these make perfect local directories, their strength is they can list bricks and mortar businesses that do not have a website.  These can also be used as restaurant review sites.  I always thought a directory of weird old tourist attractions would be cool.

Most hosting accounts have a couple of free forums scripts ready to deploy at the touch of a button.  I like SimpleMachines forum the best. YMMV.  If your community thrives and becomes big you can move up to something like Invision Community.

The down side of forums are they are very hard to get started.  They work best when you and a few friends decide beforehand you need one.  Otherwise, start a blog on the topic first, attract a following and then ask your followers if they would be interested in a forum for more chat.

For almost all the above I think you should have a blog.  It is always a good way to reach out by syndicating to social networks.  You can mix and match all the different scripts described above whatever works for you.  Again if all you need is X number of pages and then your topic is exhausted just make a static site.  Do it for you. Do what pleases you.

If you have ever had the yen to build a website the above can give you some ideas.  Feel free to comment if you have ideas of your own or questions.

This was also posted to /en/web.

Privacy Possum makes tracking you less profitable.

Firefox and Chrome.  It’s working on Vivaldi. :-)

Ghacks review for more info.

Masto.host has fully managed Mastodon hosting starting at 5 Euros a month.

Over the long run this is bad news especially for Twitter.  This is turnkey hosting, all you have to do is work the admin panel.  I  think we a crossing a threshold here in social networks and breaking silos.

The problem with Mastodon are that the weaknesses of Twitter remain, it is too easy to have pile-ons, mobs etc.  And so much depends on how well the Admins of each instance manage these things.  Plus there will be a lot of churn.

But with all that said a lot of small groups (including fringe groups) can have their own social network and it’s affordable.

Lunascape is the first web browser with 3 rendering engines:  Trident (IE), Gecko (FF) and Webkit.  This is handy for developers and others who want to see what a webpage looks like with different rendering engines.

Runs on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.

Personally I’m not sure I would use this as a default, but I think it would be handy to have it installed on my laptops.

The Europeans won’t come out and say it but the fact that Google, the dominant search engine in most of Europe, is controlled by Americans makes them nervous.  It should.

I’m repeating myself but it’s long past due for the EU to develop it’s own search engine.  A few years ago they were set to do that and then it just fizzled.  I also think small nations, the Baltic states come to mind, should at least have several directories or a small search engine, with their own index, covering their country, their language and on their soil.

This isn’t about nationalism, but it is important in the same way that a country having it’s own TV show, movie and news production is.  It has cultural, educational, informational and security implications.  Information, knowledge, controlling your own data, controlling your own search all of these things are power in the 21st Century.  We take these things for granted but they are very important.

And then I started thinking about this in the context of Brexit.  No matter what Brexit is going to happen and Britain is not going to be part of the EU.  Fortunately, the UK does have a search engine: Mojeek.com for global English language and Mojeek.co.uk which favors UK websites.  And it’s pretty darn good.  It is really something the British ought to get behind and start using, because it would be downright criminal to let it wither away.

Again this is not about nationalism, this is about having all your essential kit under your own roof.  Just my opinion.

This was also posted to /en/search-engines.

Like: Danielx on Whimsey.space, an interview.

This.  I can’t do this but Kicks Condor can.  And this is more of what we need.  This is the web I became entranced by.  This.

Here is an interesting artifact from the Web 1.0 past.  A list of known search engines and directories.

See the List Search Engine List

1. This is only a partial list.
2. This does not list the thousands of niche, national, regional and local directories of that time.

Look at that list - at least they were trying.

@simonwoods made a great point about (re)building the web and search.

I’m convinced the best answer to search is websites. Let people collect and curate the information, rather than play Google’s game and then inch-by-inch the alternative search becomes viable –

Here are a couple of takeaways I want to highlight:

1. We, the little people, need to rebuild the web.  It does not do to just complain about silos and then point out other corporate alternatives, first and foremost the web needs websites built by individual humans, not just corporations, SEO’s and people trying to get their hand in your pocket.  This is the foundation of everything.
2. People will not leave the silos and corporate web unless there is an alternative, ie. someplace to go and that someplace to go is actually many places built by us. See #1 above.
3. We should link freely from our sites to other sites we like.  This, literally, helps rebuild the hyperlinked network of threads that gives The Web it’s name.
4. Discovery, and search, will sort itself out, if we do #1,2, and 3.  We may have to relearn how to surf the web again, and that is not a bad thing.
5. Over time, we will eventually adapt to #4: humans will index this New Web we build using both old ways and new ways that have yet to invented.  And yes, machines are also likely to index it as well.  We may end up with 5,6, 10 or more favorite places we go to search and that is good.

How to Start

(Example: On my to-do list is to build a static website for my neighborhood’s Little Free Library.  It only needs to be 1 - 3 static pages.  I’m going to build it on Wordpress.com.  It should not take long.)

The point is, everyone has some skill, idea, knowledge that is worth sharing and equally, there are other people looking for the information you have in your head and take for granted.  Share it. We need to build that alternative.

Of course not everyone is going to build a website.  But more of us should be.  More of us can, we just don’t know how.

Pro Tip: With Micro.blog you can build your own website/blog almost by accident, while you are posting to social networks.  Just use it to post away, the blog (website) just builds itself.  No effort.  :-)  Example: Mumblings by Simon Woods is a Micro.blog blog.

More posts on ideas for websites in future posts.

Feel free to add to the discussion: agree? disagree? please comment.

of being Brad Enslen

You know, nobody has ever seen Kicks Condor and Brad Enslen at the same time, same place.  The conspiracy theorists may have at it.

In Reply to:  Manton Reece - The way out

I think Manton nailed the big picture on this one pretty good.

I think we should consider forums again too.

Smaller social networks: Many people are looking for “the next Twitter”, but it’s not enough to replace Twitter with a new platform and new leadership. Some problems are inevitable when power is concentrated in only 2-3 huge social networks…

As big general topic networks, yeah Micro.blog, blogs and Mastodon are better.

As Manton says there has been a lot of talk about social networks recently.  I wish we were talking about forums more in these discussions as part of the solution.   Blogs and forums.

If you have serious bookmarks scattered about on various browsers and bookmarking services and want to consolidate them into one index you might consider a web directory script.

This solution is not for everyone, but if you already have a C-panel type web hosting account for your blog, the kind of hosting where you can create either more subdomains or host more domains you can do this with ease.

As an example: 1. I don’t have the hosting account but I need one for other projects anyway, 2. I’ve got about 30 parked domains I could be using, 3 or I could put the bookmark directory on a subdomain.

Pros:

1. Web based so you have access anywhere across all devices.
2. Searchable and can be categorized using any structure you devise.
3. Most directory scripts will let you have hidden categories that you can keep private.
4. Nobody is tracking what you bookmark and selling the info.
5. Dead link checker.
6. No ads.
7. It’s on your own domain so you have control.  You don’t have to worry about third party bookmark site getting bought up or going pay or changing business models.
8. Many directory scripts have a free version with fewer features.  This might be enough for a bookmarks directory.

1. Not quite as easy to add bookmarks to.
2. More set up and maintenance.

I’d never really thought about this until Amit Gawande asked about bookmarking.

Yahoo!, Dmoz, Looksmart, Snap/NBCi, Go.com, at one time there were a lot of First Rate web directories and now they are all gone.  There were also quite a few Second and Third Rate directories plus regional, local and niche.

With the rise of link popularity and Google’s Page Rank, all too soon, junk directories were springing up all over.

Most of the top tier directories are gone, but I found 7 directories, still alive, that have been around a long time.

Illumirate -  I remember it’s predecessor Hotrate from back in the 1990’s.  Sounds like they have tried different business models and lost several databases over the years and have settled down to be a small non-commercial general directory.  Kinda decent.  Nothing to really separate them from the pack but is not filled with spam.  Looks like a legit navigational directory.

Skaffe - They started out as a general directory and now they appear to be pushing themselves as a regional directory.  Sometimes you have to try different things to survive.

Gimpsy - This is kinda unique, it is organized around what you want to do (buy, get, read). It was never a favorite but it is pretty decent.

SeekOn - The results do not looked spammed out which is good.  They are pay inclusion only which is not good, but somebody has to pay for hosting.  They accept both websites and articles.

JoeAnt -  If I remember right this was founded by former Go Guides (editors) who were let go when Disney pulled the plug on it’s own portal at Go.com.  The look has really not changed over the years except somebody scrunched the categories all into one column to make it more mobile friendly.  I always felt the SERPs were too cluttered.  And in my quick testing I found some dead wood in the index.  JoeAnt was always hard to get into.

GoGuides.org - another directory founded by former Go.com Guides.  Sites are listed by rating. Another one that was hard to get into.  Seems to be maintained.  Fairly clean look.

SoMuch.com -  A general directory slanted towards internet and tech.  It started out as one man’s bookmark collection and went from there.  I like this because it is unpretentious and I do like the Category hierarchy.

Most of these have an option to pay a fee for faster review.  Frankly, I would not pay any general directory for inclusion.  Use the free submit option.

Beaker is a new peer-to-peer browser for a Web where users control their data and websites are hosted locally.

I barely understand the dat:// parts of this.  But I imagine this could be important, particularly in places where freedom is limited and for academia.

Source: Kicks Condor Blogging.